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Saturday, June 08, 2019 10:42:59 AM
Yours is the second photo regarding the blimps on D-Day so I looked it up. Our military thought of everything.
What did we use blimps for on D-Day, couldn’t the Nazis just shoot them down?
Liam Crowleigh, My father was a POW at Stalag Luft III (Great Escape camp)
Answered Oct 12 2018 · Author has 4.1k answers and 12.5m answer views
The balloons you see in the photo are there as part of the anti-aircraft defence system for the ships, and later on the beach once the beachhead was established.
You can see one balloons being launched from a landing craft in the right foreground and another in the centre along the beach. They weren’t all that big and were unmanned.
They wouldn’t bother high altitude bombers but then high altitude attacks against ships weren’t very effective - not that the Nazis had many high level heavy bombers by that time in the war.
But against low level attacks they were very effective.
The balloons were tethered to the ships with steel cables. If an enemy plane tried to strafe or bomb the ships at a low level they’d have to zigzag between the many cables. Not easy to do at 400+ mph with machine guns and AAA coming up at you at the same time.
If a plane didn’t zig at the right time and a wing touched one of the cables in all probability to wing would be cut right through. If the wing wasn’t cut through by the cable then the movement would pull the balloon down until it hit the plane from above and would self-destruct bringing the plane down with it.
Of course by then the Luftwaffe didn’t have a lot of aircraft available in the area that were capable of attacking the invasion fleet. If I remember correctly the Luftwaffe managed to get two Messerschmitt Me-109s over the fleet that made one run over the beaches to be able to report they had followed Goering’s orders and then returned to base when they realized the suicidal futility of continued sorties.
Such balloons were also used over major cities and other important targets to deter low-level attacks. They were apparently quite effective in keeping enemy aircraft at higher altitudes than optimum for bombing.
https://www.quora.com/What-did-we-use-blimps-for-on-D-Day-couldn-t-the-Nazis-just-shoot-them-down
What did we use blimps for on D-Day, couldn’t the Nazis just shoot them down?
Liam Crowleigh, My father was a POW at Stalag Luft III (Great Escape camp)
Answered Oct 12 2018 · Author has 4.1k answers and 12.5m answer views
The balloons you see in the photo are there as part of the anti-aircraft defence system for the ships, and later on the beach once the beachhead was established.
You can see one balloons being launched from a landing craft in the right foreground and another in the centre along the beach. They weren’t all that big and were unmanned.
They wouldn’t bother high altitude bombers but then high altitude attacks against ships weren’t very effective - not that the Nazis had many high level heavy bombers by that time in the war.
But against low level attacks they were very effective.
The balloons were tethered to the ships with steel cables. If an enemy plane tried to strafe or bomb the ships at a low level they’d have to zigzag between the many cables. Not easy to do at 400+ mph with machine guns and AAA coming up at you at the same time.
If a plane didn’t zig at the right time and a wing touched one of the cables in all probability to wing would be cut right through. If the wing wasn’t cut through by the cable then the movement would pull the balloon down until it hit the plane from above and would self-destruct bringing the plane down with it.
Of course by then the Luftwaffe didn’t have a lot of aircraft available in the area that were capable of attacking the invasion fleet. If I remember correctly the Luftwaffe managed to get two Messerschmitt Me-109s over the fleet that made one run over the beaches to be able to report they had followed Goering’s orders and then returned to base when they realized the suicidal futility of continued sorties.
Such balloons were also used over major cities and other important targets to deter low-level attacks. They were apparently quite effective in keeping enemy aircraft at higher altitudes than optimum for bombing.
https://www.quora.com/What-did-we-use-blimps-for-on-D-Day-couldn-t-the-Nazis-just-shoot-them-down
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