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Thread: Film of ballon operations in the Great War

  1. #1

    Default Film of ballon operations in the Great War

    Short video showing a balloon crew preparing to launch, raising and lowering the balloon. Along with some aerial footage from the observers point of view. Good shots of the hydrogen generator wagon and nice aerials of the trench lines.


    http://www3.nfb.ca/ww1/wartime-film.php?id=531371

  2. #2

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    Noticing the complete and utter lack of any sort of protection against aerial attack for all those gas canisters, personnel, etc.; an "Iron Hand" mission would be doing land-office business against it....

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by csadn View Post
    Noticing the complete and utter lack of any sort of protection against aerial attack for all those gas canisters, personnel, etc.; an "Iron Hand" mission would be doing land-office business against it....
    And yet, no record of anyone thinking of doing it. Maybe the multiple MG mounts and AAA batteries had something to do with that?
    Karl

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jager View Post
    And yet, no record of anyone thinking of doing it. Maybe the multiple MG mounts and AAA batteries had something to do with that?
    Karl
    Just shows how much could be seen from up there.
    Although flying in an aircraft gives a fleeting idea of how much you can see, those static views brings it home far more acutely.
    Thanks for your post Ray.
    Rob.

  5. #5

  6. #6

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    Iron Hand missions, iirc, required several parts. Anti-Radar which are irrelevant in WW1, Heavy Ground Strike to suppress ground fire, and the air superiority birds to make sure the strike is covered from above.

    So discarding part 1 is no problem, as well as part 3 as that would have been ignored as part of the balloon buster mission.

    Part 2 is what you are really concerned with. Now suppressing ground fire will be hard as most aircraft will have to be hardened against ground fire and be given extra guns or other firepower. And yes this could be done. The problem is that the planes sent to kill balloons were normal pursuit planes. This pilots were mostly air superiority types and had no training on the missions you want. Then the squadrons/jastas and their superiors were not oriented to multi-mission environments. Hence, no ability to plan ahead to provide the extra munitions, extra armoring, etc. needed. It wasn't time to do this, the planning for all these missions wasn't done for decades. No staff studies to even consider the possibility. You are trying to get viet nam era tactics 50 years too soon.

    Now yes, you could probably get away with such a ground strike once or twice, then the staffers would get the reports add up the data, and detail all the firepower they think they would need. Then you would lose a few of your iron hand missions until you harden aircraft and increase/improve your firepower. Rinse and repeat a few cycles, and you would be losing squadrons instead of individual aircraft during your learning cycles. Just not that economical. Seems it would be better to try to sneak some mortars within range and kill the balloon base that way. Granted not as much glory for the flyboys, but that is not the name of the game.


    Quote Originally Posted by csadn View Post
    Noticing the complete and utter lack of any sort of protection against aerial attack for all those gas canisters, personnel, etc.; an "Iron Hand" mission would be doing land-office business against it....

  7. #7

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    Courage is needed to board those ballons. Anyone knows an approximation of how many ballons observers died in the war?

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by wargamer View Post
    Now suppressing ground fire will be hard as most aircraft will have to be hardened against ground fire and be given extra guns or other firepower. And yes this could be done.
    There's other options, used later in history with some success -- have one acft. draw fire, while others come in to "blind side" the AA. Alternately, depending on how many acft. one is using: Send all of them barreling in on one gun, take that one out, move to the next.

    Quote Originally Posted by wargamer View Post
    The problem is that the planes sent to kill balloons were normal pursuit planes. This pilots were mostly air superiority types and had no training on the missions you want.
    This is a problem of logistics -- instead of using single-seat fighters (which, esp. with Nieuports, prove suicidally weak against concentrated AA), use bombers and bomber/attack-trained crews. The Breguet 14B2 is good for this; the "home defense" Bristol F2B is an absolute nightmare for the ground-pounders.

    Quote Originally Posted by wargamer View Post
    Then the squadrons/jastas and their superiors were not oriented to multi-mission environments. Hence, no ability to plan ahead to provide the extra munitions, extra armoring, etc. needed. It wasn't time to do this, the planning for all these missions wasn't done for decades. No staff studies to even consider the possibility. You are trying to get viet nam era tactics 50 years too soon.
    True, the planning for this wouldn't exist for 50 years -- but then, no one even *had* airplanes *at all* a decade or so before WW1 kicked off; so there was no way of knowing what could, or could not, be done. It isn't as tho' the tech didn't exist -- they had photo-recon, so one could get pics of the balloon defenses and the nearby terrain to determine the best attack approach; upgunning was not unknown (see above re "home defense F2Bs"); the Germans were working up an armored dedicated ground-attack bird when their war effort went kerfloogie (Junkers J.I, IIRC). All the ideas were there; all it would have taken was one genius to tie them all together into a functional package (for a historical example: Look at what George Patton and Erwin Rommel each did with the cavalry -- combine cavalry ideas with the modern armored and motorized vehicles to create a new construct).

    The real problem is one which has bedeviled armies since the first days of armies: Hidebound Traditionalism -- best exemplified by the Royal Navy admiral who (according to the tale) looked at Britain's first submarine and said: "The dratted things didn't exist when *I* was a middie; I don't see why they should exist *now*!". The HTs are inevitably the ones running the military; the last thing any of them wants to hear is "oh, by the way -- all your knowledge and experience is no longer relevant to modern warfare", because that means very shortly they will be retired, and lose all the pay and perks of their positions. So, whenever someone comes along with a New Idea, the HTs each do their level-best to squash the New Idea aborning -- and thus we get foot-mobile armies walking very slowly in large groups towards massed high-rate-of-fire automatic weapons....



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