Balloons agaist cruise missiles?
Antti Rasila
Hi,
In the 1st World War one of the very first countermeasures agaist the aircraft were closure
balloons. I think that they were used to defend London against early V1 cruise missiles in
WW2 as well. I've been wondering, would they make any use agaist todays sofisticated cruise
missiles, such as Tomahawk, ALCM, etc.?
After all, they fly rather low, with highly predictable paths and targets. Protecting key
industrial complexes, bridges and such with balloons should be rather cost effective and
easy. Protecting balloons agaist fighterplanes with AAA should be effective as well.
Balloons are so cheap to mass produce that using any advanced weapons agaist them is
huge waste of money.
Had closure balloons defeated cruise missiles or made any difference at all in for example
Yugoslavia? If not, why?
BOD
Interesting point. The only thing I could come up with is that downing
aircraft in WW2 with ballons relied on the aircraft flying into the
tethering cables, but missiles being that much smaller, can slip through
the gaps. Also, some missiles like the British ALARM missile actually
drop down onto their target from strait above. Still, probably worth a
try...
Bod Yates
16(R) Squadron
Jaguars
Maury Markowitz
> In the 1st World War one of the very first countermeasures agaist the
> aircraft were closure balloons.
You are referring to "barrage balloons".
> I've been wondering, would they make any use agaist todays sofisticated
> cruise missiles, such as Tomahawk, ALCM, etc.?
They would be essentially useless. The nature of the attack has changed
dramatically and this makes all the difference.
WWII:
large airplanes
flying closely packed for defence
known approach vectors - because of the last item
medium altitudes
Now:
small missiles
fly far apart in both space and time
each one comes from a different direction
very low altitudes, even between buildings
Barrage balloons worked in WWII because the thing they were "aiming" for
was the _formation_ of planes. Since the planes in the formation had to fly
together for protection they were tightly packed thus the chance of one of
them hitting your cable if they flew over was high - and they couldn't really
move out of the way to any large degree because they might hit the plane
beside them, or force it into the cable.
Not so with a cruise missile. For one the Tomahawk is only 8 feet across,
and can come from any angle. This means you'd pretty much have to surround
your entire city with balloons every 7 feet or so. This doesn't sound
terribly cheap. Of course with the altitudes in question one might not need
a balloon, but a big fence. But such things can be spotted by the keyholes,
and the route profile changed to "hop" it.
Maury
Osmo Ronkanen
Antti Rasila <ara...@rock.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>
>Had closure balloons defeated cruise missiles or made any difference at all in for example
>Yugoslavia? If not, why?
The difference is that a pilot knows that flying under the balloons is
not a good thing so he does not do it. A missile does not know that. You
may drop some missiles that way but it does not prevent them.
There is also a difference between shooting down missiles and planes.
If you shoot down 10% of the planes on each mission the losses are
intolerable to the attacker. If you shoot down 10% of the missiles, the
attacker only has to use 11% more missiles to get the same effect.
Osmo
wal...@oneimage.com
>1) It's a big sky.
2) Do the math. Figure how mnay balloons you need to get 50%
coverage against something with about a 12 foot wingspan.
Now figure the cost of keeping them all up in the air.
Walt Bj ftr plt ret
B. Colwell
deter low level attack. The number of a/c that were actually brought down by
them, were very low.
Antti Rasila <ara...@rock.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:7q682q$ier$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
>
> Hi,
>
> In the 1st World War one of the very first countermeasures agaist the
aircraft were closure
cruise missiles in
sofisticated cruise
> missiles, such as Tomahawk, ALCM, etc.?
>
Protecting key
> industrial complexes, bridges and such with balloons should be rather cost
effective and
> easy. Protecting balloons agaist fighterplanes with AAA should be
effective as well.
> Balloons are so cheap to mass produce that using any advanced weapons
agaist them is
> huge waste of money.
>
David Bromage
> The main purpose of Barrage balloons was to keep a/c at altitude and to
> deter low level attack. The number of a/c that were actually brought down by
> them, were very low.
In later years, some of the low level light bombers (e.g. Mosquito) had
countermeasures for severing the cables.
Cheers
David
B. Colwell
flight which reverberated through the a/c, Attempting to severe a cable,
must have had a pretty high "pucker" factor !
David Bromage <dbro...@fang.omni.com.au> wrote in message
news:qAIx3.11$hs5.4...@news0.optus.net.au...
Mike Tighe
Bromage) wrote:
>B. Colwell (bmco...@home.com) wrote:
>> The main purpose of Barrage balloons was to keep a/c at altitude and to
>> deter low level attack. The number of a/c that were actually brought down by
>> them, were very low.
>
>In later years, some of the low level light bombers (e.g. Mosquito) had
>countermeasures for severing the cables.
I think the Mosquito was too light, but some Lancasters did carry a
system where a balloon cable might be guided, by a strengthened
leading edge, into a guillotine apparatus. Memory says that the cable
would trigger an explosive charge that fired the cutter blade. (But
did it ever work in practice?)
--
Mike Tighe
Speaking from the bottom left
hand corner of the big picture.
LesB
>I think the Mosquito was too light, but some Lancasters did carry a
>system where a balloon cable might be guided, by a strengthened
>leading edge, into a guillotine apparatus. Memory says that the cable
>would trigger an explosive charge that fired the cutter blade. (But
>did it ever work in practice?)
The Germans carried out trials with a steel *half hoop* fender
arrangement which ran from wingtip to wingtip projecting in front of
the kite like half a hula-hoop. It was braced from the front of the
aircraft. The idea was to fend off or push the balloon's wire to one
side and away from the kite until it slipped off at the wingtip.
Didn't get anywhere though as it seriously affected the performance of
the aircraft and also tended to pull the balloon down onto the
aircraft. Don't know what kite the did the trials with.
LesB
{take out one to mail}
EE Canberra Tribute Site
http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~lesb/canberra.html
Gord Beaman
>On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 03:20:54 GMT, dbro...@fang.omni.com.au (David
>Bromage) wrote:
>
>>B. Colwell (bmco...@home.com) wrote:
>>> The main purpose of Barrage balloons was to keep a/c at altitude and to
>>> deter low level attack. The number of a/c that were actually brought down by
>>> them, were very low.
>>
>>In later years, some of the low level light bombers (e.g. Mosquito) had
>>countermeasures for severing the cables.
>
>I think the Mosquito was too light, but some Lancasters did carry a
>system where a balloon cable might be guided, by a strengthened
>leading edge, into a guillotine apparatus. Memory says that the cable
>would trigger an explosive charge that fired the cutter blade. (But
>did it ever work in practice?)
>--
>Mike Tighe
Well RCAF Lancasters did have a flush cover plate rivetted over some mechanisms on
the leading edges just inboard of the inboard engines and just inboard of the outer
engines too. I was given to understand that these points covered the original 'cable
cutters'. How true this is is another matter, all I can vouch for is that the covers
were there and that we were told the above in Flight Engineer school.
--
Gord Beaman
PEI, Canada
silverpelican
"B. Colwell" <bmco...@home.com> wrote:
> Dave, Do you know how this modification worked ? I once hit a seagull
in
> flight which reverberated through the a/c, Attempting to severe a
cable,
> must have had a pretty high "pucker" factor !
> David Bromage <dbro...@fang.omni.com.au> wrote in message
> news:qAIx3.11$hs5.4...@news0.optus.net.au...
> > > The main purpose of Barrage balloons was to keep a/c at altitude
and to
> > > deter low level attack. The number of a/c that were actually
brought
> down by
> > > them, were very low.
> >
> > In later years, some of the low level light bombers (e.g. Mosquito)
had
> > countermeasures for severing the cables.
> >
> > David
>
>
Don't know about the Mosquito but the HE-111 had an anti-balloon system
that involved cables from the nose to the wing tips. Don't know how
well this worked. I doubt that the pilot actually attacked the cables
but was some kind of defensive measure.
--
"When pelicans grow older, their feathers turn
silver", Birds of the World, First Edition
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Bev Clark/Steve Gallacci
defense against cruise missles. Barrage balloons were somewhat successful
in intercepting Fi-103(V-1) missles during WWII.
Modern missles could be re-profiled to avoid balloons if they were too
static, but there may be times and places where batchs of balloons could
well prove to be effective.
MegaShaft_2000
Mike Tighe <mik...@dircon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:37c81eb6....@news.dircon.co.uk...
> On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 03:20:54 GMT, dbro...@fang.omni.com.au (David
> Bromage) wrote:
>
> >B. Colwell (bmco...@home.com) wrote:
> >> The main purpose of Barrage balloons was to keep a/c at altitude and to
> >> deter low level attack. The number of a/c that were actually brought
down by
> >> them, were very low.
> >
> >In later years, some of the low level light bombers (e.g. Mosquito) had
> >countermeasures for severing the cables.
>
> I think the Mosquito was too light, but some Lancasters did carry a
> system where a balloon cable might be guided, by a strengthened
> leading edge, into a guillotine apparatus. Memory says that the cable
> would trigger an explosive charge that fired the cutter blade. (But
> did it ever work in practice?)
> --
> Mike Tighe
wal...@oneimage.com
>In article <4BRx3.3495$2k6....@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>,> "B. Colwell" <bmco...@home.com> wrote:
>
>Don't know about the Mosquito but the HE-111 had an anti-balloon system
>that involved cables from the nose to the wing tips. Don't know how
>well this worked. I doubt that the pilot actually attacked the cables
>but was some kind of defensive measure.
Both sides had 'cable cutters' along the leading edge or in the He111 the 'fenders'
I think most were cartridge-operated to shear the cable like the
jaws of a bolt-cutter.
During the Battle of Britain barrage ballons were occasionally a target of fighter
pilots who had nothing better to do.
Britain used barrage ballons in WW1 - there is a case where a
giant Staaken bomber (about 135 foot span) hit a cable but managed to stagger
away and got home safely. Of course it was only cruising about 70 TAS . .
Main problem is it takes a LOT of balloons to wall off an area. They worked
against V1s because the attacks were for the most part canalized by the siting
of the launch pads so 360 coverage was not needed. Cruise missiles of course
can now fly any approach pattern desired.
Walt BJ ftr plt ret
M T Rotcod
the balloons into obvious target areas such as areas of town with lots of
government buildings etc. Maybe as small as a few city blocks. This would
allow you to obtain good 360 deg. coverage with the added benefit that the
cruise missle stirking the balloon cable my crash down into a nearby apt
building or hospital providing your country with lots of civillian casualtys to
put on tv. To avoid this very scenaio it is quite likly that these areas would
then be attacked by manned aircraft which atleast gives your Air Defense the
oppurtunity to shoot at something that would cause news if its was hit. Not
much use in a all out WWII type of war but might be worth a try in a big fish
vs little fish scenario where the small guys real hope of victory lies in the
political arena And besides any time the enemy is reacting to you is better
than you reacting to him or so a friend of mine who knew alot more about these
things than I do used say.
hound
>A good use of balloons against cruise missles might be possible if you condense
>the balloons into obvious target areas such as areas of town with lots of
>government buildings etc.
<snip>
Reminds me of the time that some Greenpeace activists attempted to
intercept an ALCM that was flying along a test route up in Canada.
Evidently, the protesters strung up some nets in an attempt to "catch"
one. This was back in the mid eighties.
-hound
Urban Fredriksson
balloons and hit the target from above. Which is sort of
what you want for some targets anyway. Is lidar to see and
avoid obstacles unreasonable?
--
Urban Fredriksson gri...@canit.se Military aviation: weekly news, Swedish
military aviation and aircraft, the rec.aviation.military FAQ
New Viggen photos added July 30 http://www.canit.se/%7Egriffon/aviation/
Maury Markowitz
> Dave, Do you know how this modification worked ? I once hit a seagull in
> flight which reverberated through the a/c, Attempting to severe a cable,
> must have had a pretty high "pucker" factor !
> > countermeasures for severing the cables.
Actually the first plane that I can think of that had them was the Lanc.
Basically it was a small C shaped attachment on the wing leading edge with
the open part of the C facing towards the middle of the wing. I believe
there were two, but I don't have the diagrams handy, sorry. They had a
chisel point mounted in front of a small explosive charge (I assume a blank
303 cart) that fired out of the wing from the one side of the C to the other
side, trapping the cable in the middle and (hopefully) cutting it. I think
the system was triggered by the mechanism itself being moved. If a cable
were to be caught on the wing it was supposed to slide into one of the
cutters, but there didn't seem to be any provision for protecting the wing
inside of the engines or the engines themselves.
Canadian helos mount an updated version of the same thing, and the system
is sold widely outside of Canada. In this case the system looks like a small
antenna on the cabin roof and floor, angled forward. Cables (in this case
horizontal ones) that hit the front of the cabin eventually pull into the
system and when they get trapped at the point where they meet the cabin
there's a blade that cuts the cable. Apparently they can easily cut through
a power cable. However due to the construction of the Bell's they use them
on, the skids still have a small gap where the cable can snag the skid and
not get caught in the cutter, and of course the main blades are not protected
either. I'm also curious if the cabin front can actually withstand a cable
strike at 100knots.
Maury
LesB
Another consideration regarding barrage balloons was/is that if the
cable was sheared or parted from the balloon - and it did happen
accidentally on occasion - there was a significant weight of steel
hawser cable falling out of the sky. This was enough to cause serious
damage on the ground to houses, people, etc.
David Bromage
> On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 03:20:54 GMT, dbro...@fang.omni.com.au (David
> Bromage) wrote:
> >B. Colwell (bmco...@home.com) wrote:
> >> The main purpose of Barrage balloons was to keep a/c at altitude and to
> >> deter low level attack. The number of a/c that were actually brought down by
> >> them, were very low.
> >
> >In later years, some of the low level light bombers (e.g. Mosquito) had
> >countermeasures for severing the cables.
> I think the Mosquito was too light, but some Lancasters did carry a
> system where a balloon cable might be guided, by a strengthened
> leading edge, into a guillotine apparatus.
They were used on some Mosquitos, but I forget which squadron trained with
them. The Lancaster cable cutters were modified for the Mosquito for an
attack on a specific bridge protected by balloons and torpedo nets. They
carried small (~600lb, I think) versions of the bounce bomb to get over
the nets and hit the pillar.
> Memory says that the cable
> would trigger an explosive charge that fired the cutter blade.
That's how it was supposed to work. :)
Cheers
David
John Halliwell
<dbro...@fang.omni.com.au> writes
>They were used on some Mosquitos, but I forget which squadron trained with
>them. The Lancaster cable cutters were modified for the Mosquito for an
>attack on a specific bridge protected by balloons and torpedo nets. They
>carried small (~600lb, I think) versions of the bounce bomb to get over
>the nets and hit the pillar.
Are you refering to "Highball" which was designed to be used against
large capital ships. As far as I'm aware it wasn't used operationally.
--
John
Preston, Lancs, UK.
David Bromage
Maybe not that actual weapon, but probably something similar and used in a
similar way.
IIRC, the RAF also considered using smaller bounce bombs for attacking
trains. If a train was attacked and there was a suitable tunnel ahead, the
driver would stop the train in the tunnel just inside the far end. In
theory, a small bounce bomb could be able to bounce into the tunnel and
damage or destroy the locomotive. I don't think that was ever actually
tried.
Cheers
David
Mary Shafer
> Dave, Do you know how this modification worked ? I once hit a seagull in
> flight which reverberated through the a/c, Attempting to severe a cable,
> must have had a pretty high "pucker" factor !
I don't know anything about barrage balloon cables and WW II aircraft,
but many modern helicopters have cable cutters. The ones I've seen
are mounted between the fuselage and the rotor and are passive
devices.
I talked to one pilot who cut a power line with just such a cable
cutter in a helicopter and he said he didn't even know about it until
he got back on the ground and the ground crew told him. He said he
was going pretty fast through El Cajon Pass and there was enough wind and
turbulence that he probably didn't distinguish the cable cutting from
the rest of it.
I don't know if they found shreds of insulation or a shiny spot on the
cutter or if they just asked him where he'd been and correlated that
with the damage report, though. He said that they put marker balls on
the replacement cable and he's sure they weren't there before.
We've also had bird strikes that weren't noticed in flight--I remember
seeing a little smear with a sparrow feather stuck in it on the nose
of the NT-33A one time it was here, but the safety pilot said they'd
never noticed a thing. Mind you, there's a big difference between a
sparrow and a gull.
I do remember one SRV (Spin Research Vehicle, originally the
3/8ths-Scale F-15 RPRV) post-flight debrief when the NB-52B pilot told
us they'd had to shut down two engines right after takeoff because
they'd ingested some birds, but they still got to about 45,000 ft at
the expected time and didn't bother to tell us until after the flight.
When asked about the bird ingestion, they actually saw changes in the
engine parameters that they interpreted as the result of bird
ingestions, but hadn't been certain of an ingestion until the crew
chief produced feathers after the flight.
--
Mary Shafer http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html
sha...@rigel.dfrc.nasa.gov Of course I don't speak for NASA
Lead Handling Qualities Engineer, SR-71/LASRE
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA
For non-aerospace mail, use sha...@ursa-major.spdcc.com please
M.J.Powell
<sha...@rigel.dfrc.nasa.gov> writes
>"B. Colwell" <bmco...@home.com> writes:
>
>> Dave, Do you know how this modification worked ? I once hit a seagull in
>> flight which reverberated through the a/c, Attempting to severe a cable,
>> must have had a pretty high "pucker" factor !
>
>I don't know anything about barrage balloon cables and WW II aircraft,
>but many modern helicopters have cable cutters. The ones I've seen
>are mounted between the fuselage and the rotor and are passive
>devices.
the RAF were trialling this before WW II at Martlesham Heath. There are
accounts of the biplanes spinning round the cable and leaving in a
different direction.
Mike
--
M.J.Powell.
Dweezil Dwarftosser
<sha...@rigel.dfrc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>We've also had bird strikes that weren't noticed in flight--I remember
>seeing a little smear with a sparrow feather stuck in it on the nose
>of the NT-33A one time it was here, but the safety pilot said they'd
>never noticed a thing. Mind you, there's a big difference between a
>sparrow and a gull.
MacDill AFB - which is the tip of a peninsula jutting out into Tampa
Bay - always had a lot of birdstrikes...from little sparrows to big
seagulls. Many times, I had seen sparrows put a four-inch dent in the
leading edge of an F-4 wing, or even into the smoothly-curving lazy
"S" of the F-4's engine-inlet interior. (Gull-sized birds could take
down the airplane.) But once in a while, they had strikes that went
days, or even weeks without anyone noticing.
I once opened an F-4E radome, and there, sandwiched between the thick
rubberized-fabric seal on the radome's underside and the gun-muzzle
fairing was a sparrow's remains. ( It resembled strips of thin,
cooked bacon with thin bones and just a few feathers.)
We surmised that it struck the mating area between the gun fairing and
the fabric ( at 450 knots ?) and rapidly decellerated as it forced
itself eight inches or so into the non-existant slit between the two
pieces.
The radome hadn't been opened in two weeks, and no birdstikes were
noted on that aircraft during that time.
Come to think of it, the resemblance to bacon makes sense. There was a
lot of kinetic energy and friction involved getting that bird in
between the radome and the gun...
- John T.
saa...@gmail.com
saa...@gmail.com
a425couple
> On Friday, August 27, 1999 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-5, Antti Rasila wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> In the 1st World War one of the very first countermeasures agaist the aircraft were closure
>> balloons. I think that they were used to defend London against early V1 cruise missiles in
>> WW2 as well. I've been wondering, would they make any use agaist todays sofisticated cruise
>> missiles, such as Tomahawk, ALCM, etc.?
>>
>> After all, they fly rather low, with highly predictable paths and targets. Protecting key
>> industrial complexes, bridges and such with balloons should be rather cost effective and
>> easy. Protecting balloons agaist fighterplanes with AAA should be effective as well.
>> Balloons are so cheap to mass produce that using any advanced weapons agaist them is
>> huge waste of money.
>>
>> Had closure balloons defeated cruise missiles or made any difference at all in for example
>> Yugoslavia? If not, why?
>
I'd think that since the wingspan of cruise missiles is
relatively small, that defense would not be workable.