Operation Outward

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Operation Outward was the name given to the British World War II program to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons.

Outward made use of cheap, simple gas balloons filled with hydrogen. They carried one of two types of payload.

  • Three incendiary devices - six pound (2.7kg) flexible socks filled with flammable material - that were intended to start fires in forests and heathland.

A total of 99,142 Outward balloons were launched: 53,343 carried incendiaries and 45,599 carried steel wires.

Compared to Japan's better known fire balloons, Outward balloons were crude. They had to travel a much shorter distance so they flew at a lower altitude (16,000 feet, compared with 38,000 feet) and had no need for a mechanism to regulate altitude by means of dropping ballast or venting lifting gas. However the balloons were simple to mass produce and only cost 35 shillings each.

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[edit] History

On the night of 17 September 1940, a gale broke loose a number of British barrage balloons and carried them across the North Sea. In Sweden and Denmark, they damaged power lines, disrupted railways and the antenna for the Swedish International radio station was knocked down. Five balloons were reported to have reached Finland.

A report on the damage and confusion reached the British War Cabinet. On 23 September 1940, Winston Churchill directed that the use of free-flying balloons as weapons against Germany should be investigated.

The Air Ministry initially produced a negative report, possibly because the Ministry of Aircraft Production felt balloons would be ineffective weapons and would use up too many resources. However, the Admiralty took up the idea with more enthusiasm. They concluded balloons had the advantages of being low cost and not placing British personnel at risk. The design of the German power grid made it vulnerable to damage by short-circuit and large areas of pine forest in Germany made the countryside vulnerable to random incendiary attack. Furthermore, winds above 16,000 feet tended to blow from west to east, making it harder for the Germans to retaliate with similar balloons.

After a lengthy bureaucratic struggle between the Air Ministry and the Admiralty, the British Chiefs of Staff gave the go-ahead in September 1941 and a launch site was set up at Landguard Fort near Felixstowe in Suffolk. The first launches took place on 20 March 1942. Within days, the British were receiving reports of forest fires near Berlin and Tilsit in East Prussia.

Intercepts of Luftwaffe communications soon showed German fighters were trying to shoot down balloons. This encouraged the British 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.

In July, a second launch site was set up at Oldstairs near Dover. 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; this was Outward's greatest success. Balloon launches continued, though they were frequently suspended when there were large air-raids on Germany as it was feared the balloons might damage Allied bombers. In the lead-up to D-day invasion, balloon launches became more sporadic. The last balloons were launched on 4 September 1944.

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