Operation Outward - An experience not to be missed in the NWO
History Operation Outward began by accident - several British barrage balloons were torn from their cables and blown to Scandinavia. On the night of September 17, 1940, the fugitives caused a real blackout in Northern Europe.
Lightning Outward
On the night of September 17, 1940, the neutral Swedes suffered the most. The locals wrote the following about the events:
Sweden's west coast witnessed a massive "invasion" of foreign barrage balloons on Wednesday evening. The balloons arrived in such numbers on the coast of Halland province that sparks occasionally lit up the sky when the aerial objects' cables touched electrical wires.
One of the British balloons worked so effectively that it brought down a local broadcasting tower. Hanging steel cables dragged behind the balloons and caused serious damage to power lines - several cities in Finland, Sweden and Denmark were left without power. Several railway lines were cut off, and substations burned out.
As much as the incident upset the Scandinavians, it inspired the British – it was decided to organize similar balloon raids on Nazi Germany and the occupied territories of Europe. Incidentally, balloons that broke away in windy weather made life difficult for the British themselves, and reports about this were repeatedly sent to the military department. The end of the story was put by Winston Churchill, who advocated an “ungentlemanly war” with the Nazis.
The British war with the Nazi power lines could have looked like this
The operation was called Outward and it was decided to send all the meteorological balloons to it. Preliminary tests showed that balloons with a diameter of 2,4 meters at a distance of up to 50 kilometers with a probability of 10 to 75 percent touch the high-voltage wires and short-circuit them. Considering the low cost of the products, the efficiency seemed more than impressive. Even a thin steel wire, dragged through the air behind the balloon, caused a short circuit. If it touched two or more phases in the electrical system, then 4,6-meter arc discharges were caused, which destroyed the wires. Even if the automatic system turned off the power supply in time, in subsequent operation these areas became the most dangerous.
The British had information that Peterson coils were installed at substations in Germany, fairly slow automatic switches that were not designed for interphase short circuits. The main profile of such systems was protection against ground faults. At the same time, in Great Britain itself, despite a more developed power transmission network, more sophisticated protection was installed at substations, allowing one not to fear retaliatory actions from Germany. More precisely, one should have feared, but the consequences would have been much milder.
The British had another bonus, which was mentioned above - a huge number of weather balloons in warehouses. When launched en masse, they caused not isolated damage to power lines, which could be quickly repaired, but multiple destructions, diverting a lot of forces and resources.
History is repeating itself at the modern level. Russia is launching hundreds of relatively inexpensive kamikaze "Geran-2" at military infrastructure facilities in Ukraine. The enemy shoots down some of them, but spends a lot of resources on this. For example, it lifts them into the air Aviation to fire at targets in the air. The British also counted on the accelerated wear and tear of the Luftwaffe's combat equipment during the repulse of the weather balloon raids.
There aren't many photos left from Operation Outward.
The first weather balloons with two types of payload were sent to the Germans on March 20, 1941. Some of the balloons were equipped with short-circuit wires, the rest with incendiary devices. The second option can hardly be called humane, especially since the weather balloons caused fires not only in Germany, but also in the territory occupied by the Germans, which caused civilians to suffer. They had a very indirect attitude to the German military machine. But let's leave that on the conscience of the British.
Operation Outward began on the North Sea coast, with three launch sites allocated 80 km apart. It is noteworthy that Outward was commanded by the Admiralty, although it was strictly an air operation. This added complications later, if only because the efforts of two agencies had to be coordinated so that the aircraft would not simply collide with the weather balloons.
How it worked
The power-cutting balloons in Germany were not primitive latex balloons filled with hydrogen and with steel wire attached. There were many difficulties. First of all, after launch, the balloon immediately shot up and reached 7-7,6 kilometers. If it continued to climb, it would eventually burst from the inflated shell. Therefore, a special valve was provided that forcibly released the hydrogen, after which the device descended at a speed of 61 meters per minute. After some time, this valve closed, so that the entire structure would not collapse into the sea prematurely.
But even that was not enough. The design included a cylinder with special ballast oil, which was gradually drained over enemy territory, which made it possible to compensate for the lifting force and maintain a level flight of the weather balloon. They saved on the design of the cable, which was supposed to close the power line. Of its 300 meters, only a third was made of steel wire - the rest was made of hemp. It was cheaper and lighter.
According to British calculations, the balloons in combat condition had to fly about 50 km at an altitude of about 300 meters, closing the power lines on the underlying surface. The balloons reached the enemy coast in about 8 hours, but this was only under ideal weather conditions and a tailwind. Ideally, such somersaults in the sky were better carried out at night - the Luftwaffe would notice the threat later. But in the dark, the bomber aviation of the Royal Air Force worked, and the losses from a collision with balloons filled with hydrogen and cables could be significant.
The aviators eventually pressed, and Operation Outward was a strictly daytime operation. Night bombers returned to the airfields around 10 a.m., and only then did the closing and incendiary balloons take to the skies. On average, one post on the coast sent up to 10 balloons into the sky per hour. The work was dangerous - each balloon was filled with several liters of explosive hydrogen, and it was necessary to wear fireproof clothing. But during the entire time, not a single operator died, although explosions of detonating gas during refueling did occur. Over the three years of Operation Outward, about 100 thousand balloons were sent to the German rear, half of which were equipped with incendiary ammunition.
The Germans tried to improve the design of the power lines under the blows of latex balls, but it only got worse
The British calculated that it would be most efficient to use “hydrogen Drones» in winter. At this time of year, the balloons were assisted by winds, and damage to power lines was more difficult for the Germans to repair. The load on the power grid is always higher in winter, which is why the criticality of outages increases.
How effective was Operation Outward? On the one hand, the Germans did not respond to the British with anything similar, although the wind was often northwesterly. The British explained this by the fact that the Nazis did not have enough latex, and at first they simply had no time for it - the Reich was preparing to invade the Soviet Union. But then intelligence reports began to arrive, which indicated massive damage to power lines all the way to Hungary. They did not cause critical damage, but they certainly distracted a lot of repair crews. The British were also pleased with the 250 fighters that the Germans launched with each launch of thousands of latex balloons - this was an obvious consumption of scarce fuel and equipment resources.
The apotheosis of the effectiveness of the balloons with cables was July 11, 1942, when a short circuit on a 110-kilowatt power line disabled a generator at a power plant in Leipzig. A fire broke out, and the Germans lost 250 MW of generating capacity for a long time. Perhaps this incident alone recouped all the British expenses for Operation Outward. Considering that the launch of one weather balloon cost 8-9 US dollars at the exchange rate of the 40s. Interestingly, after the fire, the Germans installed more sensitive machines that responded to strong gusts of wind and migratory birds, which made things even worse. Such is the multiplier effect. The launches of weather balloons into the German rear ended in early September 1944. There were several reasons: contradictions between the Admiralty and the Royal Air Force, the effectiveness of which was not obvious in 1944, a banal shortage of latex, and the ever-increasing cost of producing hydrogen.
The history of Outward cannot but suggest the use of British developments in the SVO. The enemy territory has been shrouded in high-voltage power lines since Soviet times, and this cannot be ignored. Now a paradoxical situation has arisen, when the Russian Army has worked and is working on substations, but does not touch the power lines. The experience of Great Britain shows how relatively inexpensive means can distract a lot of enemy forces. With minimal collateral damage, which is important.
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