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Updated: May 17, 2025
No one who was at the Dardanelles, however vivid the horrors and the heat and dust and flies, will forget the beauty of the scene, especially at sunset, and it was seen at its best from the basket of a kite-balloon.
On August 25 the Battalion, and with it the rest of the Brigade, moved back from Goldfish Château to Query Camp, near Brandhoek. The weather, which had been fairly fine for several weeks, now again broke in thunderstorms and rain. Trees were blown down along the main road to Ypres. The clouds hung low or raced before the wind, so that no aeroplane nor kite-balloon could mount the sky.
From 1916, however, they were towed by merchant auxiliaries and light cruisers to spot submarines, observers communicating with the patrol ship by means of telephone. One of the most wonderful sights I have ever seen was from the observer's basket of the kite-balloon let up from S.S. "Manica" in June, 1915. We were spotting for the guns of H.M.S. "Lord Nelson" bombarding Chanak.
The German artillery had been testing the efficiency of a quick-firing gun when used against a balloon, and they decided that the latter would have no chance of escape except at night. A German kite-balloon was kept moving at an altitude of 600 metres, and the guns trained upon it were distant 3,000 metres.
Up to about May, 1915, when the vessels to which they were attached could stand in close to shore and overlook the enemy's positions from a distance of three or four thousand yards, a large amount of spotting of great value was carried out by these balloons for ships at Gallipoli, but when the Turks brought long-range guns into position, kite-balloon vessels were obliged to lie out beyond 11,000 yards and their services were rendered comparatively slight for this purpose.
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