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Dirigible defence

Words:
Jan-Carlos Kucharek
Credit: Lindsay Fowke Photography

Fact is often stranger then fiction, and the establishment of the RAF’s ‘Balloon Command’ in 1938 seems to fit the bill. Set up to store the barrage balloons that were released to defend the UK’s cities from air attack, No 11 Balloon Centre was built in the Gloucestershire village of Pucklechurch to help defend Bristol. What’s left of the hangar structure, now grade II-listed, has been protected using over 4000m2 of Tata Colorcoat’s Trisomet wall and roof panels, some original window positions ‘painted in’ to show where they would previously have been.

 

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