Barrage balloons viewed head-on at some distance might resemble silvery spheres
-Found posted by Pinterest user Kathrynne Krause [
Link here] with the caption,
"my grandmother told me that barrage balloons were silvery, and I never saw it until this photo."
(Guessing, due to the large number of women and their headgear that these are British, but by no means certain).
This British barrage balloon looks sort of round (if not silvery) viewed from the front- I'm guessing German balloons were similar
From "Illustrated" (formerly known as "Weekly Illustrated") magazine, August 31st 1940 in an article appropriately titled
"The Balloon Goes Up", found here
https://www.fulltable.com/vts/m/mag/ill/c.htm
(a nicely illustrated article if you're into barrage balloons!)
Two images found at Alamy (stock photograph provider), each captioned
External Quote:
The Nazi propaganda image shows a light- and sound-test battery belonging to the observation artillery battalion locating enemy guns on the Western Front. Published in December 1940.
From an image search, I found these pictures on a site intriguingly called "Psywarrior"- apparently both Britain and Germany used balloons to carry propaganda leaflets in WW2
https://www.psywarrior.com/BalloonPSYOP.html
External Quote:
The first photo above depicts German troops with their small balloons which the caption jokingly tells us could carry five Hitler Speeches.
-From the "Psywarrior" website, link as above.
In the first years of WW2, Allied fighter planes flying from England didn't have the range to escort bomber aircraft into Germany.
In 1943, the USAAF P-47 Thunderbolt (and later the P-51 Mustang) changed this.
It was soon realised that these aircraft, as well as escorting bombers, could be ground-attack aircraft in their own right, and at low-level were much more accurate at attacking point targets (locomotives, bridges, armoured vehicles) than the bombers.
External Quote:
On 3 March 1944, the
55th Fighter Group flew their P-38s over Berlin.
(Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escort_fighter). British Mosquito light bombers had been making "nuisance" raids- some accurate- into Germany from mid-1942.
External Quote:
on 30 January 1943, the 10th anniversary of the
Nazis' seizure of power, a morning Mosquito attack knocked out the main Berlin broadcasting station while
Luftwaffe Chief
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was speaking, putting his speech off the air.
(Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito).
I wonder if the use of low-level point attacks by Allied aircraft, which increased in frequency and effectiveness as airstrips in Europe were taken by advancing Allied forces (and as aircraft and their payloads were developed- P-51D Mustangs, Typhoons carrying RP-3 rockets), the Germans might have used any balloons available as improvised barrage balloons.
A few tethered party balloons bobbing around near a fixed target might not be a real physical threat to a 'plane, but it would be a brave pilot who'd take the chance, I think. If balloons
were used in this way (supposition on my part) I guess it's inevitable that some would go adrift... maybe unlikely. (And I haven't read of fighter pilots who flew ground attack missions ever reporting balloons being used this way).
There were party balloons in Nazi Germany (though I doubt their production had high priority in later war years),
found this on Alamy
The caption reads,
External Quote:
"On the ""Spring Day of the German Child"", organised by the regional administration of the Berlin NSV, mothers pull their decorated prams to the meeting places where games are organised for the older children."
Weird, eh?
As well as real balloons, I guess we shouldn't rule out the possibility of Allied airmen making misidentifications or having temporary perceptual problems- many thousands of often very young men were involved in conditions of the utmost stress.
The interiors of bombers could be very cold, this can increase tearing of the eyes. And there are all the usual suspects- reflections (including on cockpit, window and turret glass), searchlight reflections on cloud or distorted by atmospheric ice crystals, sundogs, etc. etc.
It's going to be difficult to find a likely single source (if there is one) for the "silvery spheres" without more information- hopefully a photograph- I think.
Edited to add: It's just struck me that the balloon in the photo with five WW2 German soldiers looks a bit like the silvery sphere filmed by a Predator UAV over Iraq...
