Anti Aircraft Balloon - Members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) held many roles in the Battle of Britain, including working as plotters in the Sector Station Operations Rooms. Plotters worked in three shifts in teams of about ten, tracking the size and direction of incoming German raids.
They received information on enemy raids from radar stations and the Observer Corps, and raids were tracked using wooden blocks displayed around a large table. These blocks showed the name of the raid and an estimate of its strength, and arrows placed behind each block showed the raid’s direction.
Anti Aircraft Balloon
The blocks were color coded to indicate how up to date the information was. Friendly aircraft were plotted in a separate room. On the evening of February 24, 1942, an anti-aircraft barrage of more than 1,440 rounds was launched at what was initially thought to be a Japanese aerial attack on the City of Angels.
Five civilian die – three from traffic accidents spawned by the chaos and two from heart attacks. In a typical Sector Station Operations Room there were usually eight men sitting on a balcony, above the WAAF plotters, each with a specific role.
The information the WAAFs plotted was used to direct squadrons into action by the Senior Controller, who was responsible for the squadrons based at his sector station, and the Assistant Controller, who kept up communications with other squadrons.
There were also two Deputy Controllers, one listening to communications from the other sectors and the other coordinating air-sea rescue. Alongside the Controllers there were also Liaison Officers, who maintained direct communication with Observer Corps Headquarters and Anti-Aircraft Command, as well as 'Ops A', who maintained permanent contact with the Group the Sector Station ownership to, and 'Ops B' who
'scrambled' the pilots into action. The 320th VLA (Very Low Altitude) battalion was raised in 1942, just a year after the Coastal Artillery Corps took over responsibility for barrage balloons from the Army Air Corps. There were 39 black anti-aircraft combations deployed during WWII.
Many of them manned mobile and semi-mobile automatic weapons and were detailed to defend various units. But the 320th holds the distinction of being the only all-black balloon battalion. In Washington D.C., Navy Secretary Frank Knox says: “As far as I know the whole raid was a false alarm and could be attributed to jittery nerves.”
Secretary of War Henry Stimson says 15 unidentified aircraft were over Los Angeles — possibly commercial aircraft operated by the enemy from secret fields in California or Mexico or light planes launched from Japanese submarines. Their goal is to determine the location of anti-aircraft defense or damage civilian morale, Stimson says.
Around 3,000 pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, but thousands of other people helped defend Britain in the summer of 1940. They were the Royal Air Force (RAF) ground crews who the pilots depended on in order to get in the air and engage the
enemy, the staff in the Sector Station operations rooms who 'scrambled' the fighters into action, and the teams operating defenses on the ground. For some Black soldiers, the worst moment was returning to the United States, where their war sacrifices meant nothing.
One recalls getting off the ship from France to discover he wasn't allowed inside stores on military bases. German prisoners were allowed in the PX; blacks couldn't go in the PX. White Southerners were frequently put in charge of Black troops on the theory that they knew how to control them.
Within three years after Normandy, the U.S. military would desegregate. Soon after, "Brown v. Board of Education" touched off the first sparks of the 20th-century American Civil Rights movement. “Roaring out of a brilliant moonlit western sky, foreign aircraft flying both in large formation and singly flew over Southern California early today and drew heavy barrages of anti-aircraft fire – the first ever to sound over United States continental soil against an enemy invader.
" Regardless of cause, air raid sirens first blare at 7:18 p.m. Thousands of air raid wardens go to their posts throughout Los Angeles County. That alert is lifted at 10:23 p.m. Tensions ease. Then, after midnight, all hell breaks loose.
From “Chapter 8: Air Defense of the Western Hemisphere” by William Goss, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 published in 1983: The Observer Corps provided vital information about incoming German raids. A chain of coastal radar stations was used to plot the raids but, in 1940, they were unable to track aircraft inland and manual tracking was needed.
The Observer Corps was significantly made up of volunteers, who mostly trained themselves in aircraft recognition and how to estimate their height. When the war broke out, there were 30,000 observers and 1,000 observation posts, which were manned continuously.
Their information was sent first to an Observer Corps Centre, and then on to Group and Sector Station Operations Rooms. The system worked well in good weather but the observers quarreled in rain or low cloud. TOP Photo: Observation squadron aims anti-aircraft gun at a Douglas plane during a military show for National Defense Week, Los Angeles, 1940. Photo Credit: Los Angeles Daily News Negatives.
Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California at Los Angeles. What, if anything, is being fired upon remains a mystery. Theories include weather balloons, UFOs, birds, or just jitters by Angelenos with Pearl Harbor still a fresh memory and, even fresher, a Japanese submarine torpedoing a Santa Barbara oil field on February 23.
There were many heroic stories and episodes during World War II. One was the all-black unit, the 320th VLA barrage balloon battalion. "The 320th VLA was the only black combat unit to participate in the D-Day landings and was the only barrage balloon battalion to land on the beaches. Because the American Army was segregated, the Soldiers of the 320th VLA were all black.
*On this date in 1944, The Normandy landing operations commenced. Termed D-Day was the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, in Operation Overlord during World War II. This was the largest seaborne invasion in modern history and began the liberation of German-occupied northwest Europe from Nazi control and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front.
The Prussians cut all communications between Paris and the provincial French forces and the first balloon, Neptune, left the city on Sept. 23, 1870, with regular flights beginning three days later. These flights carry supplies, 164 passengers and mail at a cost to senders of 20 centimes per letter.
Overall some 2,000 Black troops hit Omaha and Utah beaches in Normandy, participated in the D-Day invasion. African American history of this era of American military history shows that Blacks were discouraged from enlisting in the first place;
they found the military was no refuge from racism. Banned altogether from the Marines and Air Force, confined to jobs as longshoremen and cooks in the Navy. The only branch that blacks could join was the Army's combat unit.
But their life there was an endless stream of humiliations, from being herded to the back of military buses on U.S. bases to being refused food by white units on the beach in Normandy. Not the least at variance are the media reports.
According to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner a witness puts the number of planes at 50. Three are shot down over the ocean. A battery near Vermont Ave. takes out another. “Air Battles Rages Over Los Angeles” is the headline of the Examiner’s “War Extra.”
The normally more staid Los Angeles Times says: In response to the French balloon flights, Alfred Krupp developed a breech-loading 37-millimeter cannon mounted on a pedestal fixed to the bed of a carriage. Some sources describe the gun as a Ballonabwehrkanone or “balloon-defense gun.”
Riggers and fitters were responsible for preparing aircraft for missions - wheeling them into position, checking them over and warming the engines. When pilots were ‘scrambled’ fitters started the aircraft engines while riggers strapped pilots into their parachutes - all packed by WAAFs - before the fitter jumped out and the pilot climbed in and took off.
Engineers worked frequently on aircraft, repairing damage after missions and carrying out vital maintenance to get them flight ready. Armorers were responsible for bombs, defensive ammunition and flares at the airfields. They re-armed aircraft guns when they landed and fused and loaded bombs onto aircraft.
On Oct. 7, 1870, French interior minister Leon Gambetta left Paris in the balloon Armand-Barbès in order to rally troops near Tours. The last balloon took off from Paris on Jan. 28, 1871, the day of the armistice.
“Probably much of the confusion came from the fact that anti-aircraft shell bursts, caught by the searchlights, were themselves mistaken for enemy planes. In any case, the next three hours produced some of the most imaginative reporting of the war: “swarms” of planes (or, sometimes, balloons) of all possible sizes, numbering from one to several hundred, traveling at altitudes which ranged from a
few thousand feet to more than 20,000 and flying at speeds which were said to have varied from “very slow” to over 200 miles per hour, were observed to parade across the skies. These mysterious forces dropped no bombs and, despite the fact that 1,440 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition were directed against them, suffered no losses.”
Barrage balloons became a liability as Allied forces pushed inland and took control of the countryside. VLA units were slow and cumbersome, and to deploy them, units had to have hydrogen-generating trucks, tank trucks, and all sorts of equipment to maintain the balloons.
By the end of October 1944, the 320th VLA Battalion was returning to Camp Stewart, Ga., to train for service in the Pacific Theater. They eventually made it as far as Hawaii before the war ended.
RAF Balloon Command operates the giant barrage balloons that floated above the potential targets of German raiders. The balloons forced the German aircraft to operate at higher altitudes, reducing the accuracy of their bombing and bringing them in range of anti-aircraft guns.
During the Battle of Britain WAAFs worked in Balloon Command alongside men. By July 1941, when this photograph was taken, the shortage of men meant far more women were assigned to Balloon Command and many formed all-women crews.
Members of Balloon Command had to raise or lower the balloons to the correct height using winsches. They were also responsible for keeping the balloons inflated and in position, which could be very difficult, especially in bad weather and during high winds.
Units from the 320th landed on both Omaha and Utah beaches at 9 a.m., two hours after the invasion began. The first balloon was floated at 11:15 p.m. that night, and by the next day, all of their balloons were knocked out by German artillery fire.
But, they were resupplied and were able to float new balloons quickly. The 320th had five batteries and a headquarters battery, with around 700 Soldiers. It took them so long to deploy their balloons because of intense fighting on the beaches.
As infantry units solidified their lines, the 320th Soldiers established their positions. Because putting up a balloon on the beach gave German artillery observers something to sight-in in, they didn't float balloons until the night of June 6.
After the war, Japan says it has no planes in the area at the time of the “raid.” The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 posits weather balloons as the most likely explanation.
A photo from the Los Angeles Times has been used to “prove” it is an extraterrestrial craft. Another explanation appears in an article attributed to the veteran Los Angeles newsman Matt Weinstock in which he interviews a man who says he served in one of the anti-aircraft batteries:
The Army's Anti-Aircraft (AA) Command operated searchlights and anti-aircraft guns against incoming German raids. AA Command was a crucial part of the Dowding System and was in constant contact with the RAF. Anti- aircraft guns shot down approximately 300 Luftwaffe aircraft during the Battle of Britain.
Searchlights were mainly used to help anti-aircraft guns take accurate aim at night but they could also be used to help damaged bombers navigate in the dark on their return. On hearing a code word, every searchlight near a damaged its beam vertically and then horizontally towards the nearest airfield to guide the bomber safely to land.
It's estimated that 3,000 aircraft were helped in this way. As well as carrying out their regular duties, members of the ground crew would be called upon during German raids on their airfields. They towed aircraft damaged away from runways to make room for others to land, repaired damage from raids, fought fires and helped pilots out of their aircraft.
Ground crew fulfilled these responsibilities whilst sometimes under fire themselves, leaving them extremely vulnerable. Many were killed during the Battle of Britain. The first untethered balloon flight took place on Nov. 21, 1783, with the first military use occurred during the French Revolutionary Wars.
A century later during the Franco-Prussian War, the French again deployed observation balloons — and when Prussian troops besieged Paris, they became a vital lifeline out of the encircled city.
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