Barage Balloons

[Shuffler]

Rocket the balloons

[clerick]

If we had night time I'd be all for it.  Since we fight in the tropical tundra and have daylight all the time the balloons are too easily defeated to be of any real use.

[WYOKIDIII]

The whole purpose of barage balloons was to get the heavy steel cables used to anchor them into the air , to discourage the strafing and of important targets . So what would be the point in WWI arena ? No land targets to protect .

[clerick]

The whole purpose of barage balloons was to get the heavy steel cables used to anchor them into the air , to discourage the strafing and of important targets . So what would be the point in WWI arena ? No land targets to protect .

If they were indestructible it would be a great anti-vulching tool, but that would be silly.

[bortas1]

  is there any info about how effective those barage balloons where?

[clerick]

is there any info about how effective those barage balloons where?

I seem to remember reading that they were used on the Normandy beaches by the brits who suffered far less from strafing etc. than the Americans who didn't use them.

[Tilt]

Russians also used them in the defence of Moscow. Blimps were raised to a height of just over 8000ft and some in tandem to 14000ft. Many had mines hanging off them as well such that a plane catchinga cable would not just suffer abrasion damage but may pull a mine which would explode on contact.

Since 1941 until the end of the Battle of Moscow, 120 German planes crashed due to impacts against the steel cables and 35 exploded in flight after detonating a hanging mine.
 
As a result of the large amount of casualties, the Luftwaffe sent fighters to shoot down the barrage balloons, but they were replaced so quickly and nazi planes used to receive such a heavy response by Soviet fighters and ground defenses, that finally switched to night bombings. The Soviet response to jeopardize the enemy bombers was to keep the barrage balloons in the air at night and lower them before dawn. The total number of blimps deployed was over 3.000 units, which were sent aloft more than 300.000 times during the war.

[pembquist]

deja vue     http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,320360.0.html

[Krusty]

I seem to remember reading that they were used on the Normandy beaches by the brits who suffered far less from strafing etc. than the Americans who didn't use them.

Well, then there's also communications balloons, raising radio antenna way up, and meteorological balloons, because the weather was crap for so long it almost cancelled the invasion.

That doesn't make them barrage balloons, though.

[titanic3]

Would you be able to tell the difference from 10,000ft?

Even if I knew those balloons were barrage balloons, I still wouldn't fly within 1 mile of them.