Barrage Balloons over Kilburn

Barrage balloon over Kilburn, The Sphere, 11 March 1939

The crowd standing outside J. Salter’s a dentist at No.178 Kilburn High Road are looking across the main road in amazement, as a barrage balloon is launched from the car park of the Gaumont State cinema. The Midland Bank shown on the right is now the Spicy Basil Thai restaurant.

At the end of February 1939, the Gaumont cinema group took part in an RAF campaign to recruit 2,000 people for the Balloon Squadrons. While they showed the George Formby film ‘It’s in the Air’, barrage balloons with coloured streamers were launched over cinemas in Kilburn, and other parts of London.

During the War, more balloons were based in the Grange Park Kilburn along with a battery of AA guns.

The balloons were designed to stop low flying aircraft. Filled with hydrogen and connected to steel cables, they were tethered to the ground often using large concrete blocks. They had been used in WWI, but as preparation for the next war, Balloon Command had been formed in November 1938 at RAF Stanmore Park.

From May 1941 the WAAF, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, started to be trained and gradually replaced male operatives. In 1942, the press reported the success of Acting Corporal J.E. Dorey who lived at 133a Kilburn High Road. Having passed the balloon operating course, she was awaiting her posting as one of two officers in charge of a barrage balloon site.

Barrage Balloon, Coventry, by Laura Knight 1942 (IWM)

A Kilburn man described the balloons: ‘They were big, ungainly, silvery-gray elephantine objects, about the size of a bus, sometimes flaccid with lack of hydrogen. They tended to kick and sway to-and-fro if they were landed in anything much of a breeze and were obviously quite a handful’.

Locally several balloons caught fire and escaped their cables. Sometimes this occurred as the result of a lightning strike. On 28 April 1940 one burst into flames and landed on telephone wires in West End Lane, putting some phones out of order. A second accident occurred in 1943 when a balloon caught fire and fell onto houses in Gascony Avenue Kilburn.

The Balloon Command was disbanded in February 1945.

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