Word: balloons
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...from western Germany and Air Marshal Göring was reported visiting there to calm the populace. Fact is, as frankly acknowledged by the authoritative British weekly The Aeroplane: "There is no real defense against night bombing." At the coast and around London and other populous centres, Britain has balloon barrages which force enemy bombers above 20,000 ft. Inside these, searchlights and anti-aircraft batteries take up the job. The British have found, as have others, that sending up more than two or three fighters against a night-bomber attack is as likely to result in fighter collisions...
...around the two-and-a-half-mile, brick-&-asphalt oval without a mechanic at his side-relying on a mirror to inform him of what his opponents were doing behind his back. Since that day, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been the proving ground for many another automotive innovation: balloon tires, four-wheel brakes, Ethyl gasoline, straight-eight motors. But to auto-racing fans, the annual Indianapolis Memorial Day classic is just a gigantic picnic, the Kentucky Derby of the horseless carriage...
...works until 4 a.m. at a laboratory in the Admiralty (given him by Churchill when First Lord last year), is credited with discovering the secrets of German magnetic mines and how to beat them. Dr. Lindemann, whose friends call him "Prof," was a pioneer advocate of the present London balloon barrage, years ago vainly urged the Air Ministry to build fleets of robot planes which would be sent up by radio control to crash head-on into enemy bombers...
Connecticut's Representative James A. Shanley told the House that Benjamin Franklin had envisioned parachute troops in 1784. In a letter about balloon ascensions in Paris that year he wrote: "Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, as that 10,000 men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief, before a force could be brought together to repel them...
Reaching the spot, searchers found cool, collected authorities, heard the true explanation: a barrage balloon had broken its moorings, and lest its trailing wires short-circuit power lines a French pursuit plane had shot it down. Parisians had mistaken floating fabric for parachutists...