Quote:
Originally Posted by Stefan
Why is that a stupid weapon? It's pure genius from a design point of view, required hardly any resources and whilst it wasn't used much it did work. I've always thought it was pretty smart. The panic the first (and only) casualties it caused brought about at least justify the expense of several pads of paper and a small bomb.
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One of the lesser known British campaigns against German industry was Operation Outward which made use of cheap, simple gas balloons filled with hydrogen.
The balloons carried one of two types of payload.
A trailing steel wire, intended to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit,or three incendiary devices - six pound (2.7kg) flexible socks filled with flammable material - that were intended to start fires in forests and heathland.
From 1941 until 1944 a total of 99,142 Outward balloons were launched: 53,343 carried incendiaries and 45,599 carried steel wires.
Communications intercepted by the British soon showed German fighters were trying to shoot down these balloons. This encouraged the British to continue with the campaign as it was felt that the harassment value on German air defences alone justified Operation Outward. It cost the Germans more, in terms of fuel and wear and tear on aircraft, to destroy each balloon than it cost the British to make them.
Outward's greatest success was on 12 July 1942, a wire carrying balloon struck a 110,000 volt power line near Leipzig. A failure in the overload switch at the Bohlen power station caused a fire that destroyed the station.
Operation Outward is considered to have been successful in terms of the disruption it caused to both the German defence system and in the damage it caused in relation to its total cost to the British