HMS Manica, the first balloon ship
- Category:
- Military
- Front:
- War at sea
- Date:
- 23 March 1915
- Author:
- Łukasz Skowroń
The British chronology of the war records under 23 March 1915 the commissioning of HMS Manica, the first British ship fitted to carry a tethered observation balloon. According to most accounts the White Ensign was hoisted in her a day earlier, on 22 March. The ship was produced in enormous haste, for the needs of the fleet fighting at the Dardanelles.
The fleet needs eyes
The bombardment of the forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles, begun on 19 February, showed how hard it was for ships to hit targets they could not see. Turkish batteries hidden behind hills were invisible from the sea, and from a distance of a dozen or so kilometres the fall of shot could not be properly observed. Seaplanes from the carrier Ark Royal helped only to a limited extent, since they could not always take off and stay over the target. According to accounts, around 8 March a request for an observation balloon arrived in London from the Dardanelles.
Tethered balloons in the shape of an elongated “kite”, called Drachen after their German name, were much more stable in wind than the old spherical balloons. They were already used by the Germans, French and Belgians. The Royal Naval Air Service was only just organising its first balloon unit and had no equipment of its own. One of its officers was therefore sent to Paris, from where he brought back a balloon borrowed from the French together with a winch.
A freighter converted in a few days
On 11 March the Admiralty chartered Manica, a freighter of about 4,100 GRT, built in 1900 at Sunderland for the Bucknall line and owned since 1914 by Ellerman Lines. The ship was just unloading a cargo from Australia. In a short time she was given a long deck sloping down from the bow towards amidships, from which the balloon was launched, a dynamo driving a hydrogen compressor, a cable winch connected to the ship’s engines, a wireless cabin and quarters for the crew. The ship was manned by naval reserve officers and merchant seamen, and fewer than a hundred men of No. 1 Kite Balloon Section RNAS, under John Mackworth, embarked.
At Gallipoli
At the end of March Manica sailed from Britain for the Mediterranean and in mid-April reached Mudros Bay on Lemnos. After a few trial ascents her observers directed the fire of warships for the first time on 19 April. During the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April the balloon hung for many hours over Anzac Cove, and on 27 April its observers directed the heavy guns of the dreadnought Queen Elizabeth onto a Turkish transport lying on the other side of the peninsula, in the Straits, and brought about her sinking.
Manica’s success led the Royal Navy to convert further ships into balloon ships. Manica herself supported operations in East Africa in 1916, and in 1917 she was turned into a tanker.
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