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RAF Cardington, near Bedford, is instantly recognisable because of its two colossal airship sheds, built for an earlier chapter in British aviation. By the Second World War, Cardington’s wartime value lay less in airships and more in balloons. The station became a major centre for the manufacture, storage, repair and training associated with barrage balloons – one of the most visible elements of Britain’s air defence during the early war years.
After Britain’s airship programme ended, Cardington developed into a support and storage station. In 1936-37 it began building barrage balloons and became No. 1 RAF Balloon Training Unit. That designation placed Cardington at the heart of a defensive system that many people remember visually: balloon ‘barrages’ above London and other strategic targets, designed to deter or disrupt low-level attacks by forcing enemy aircraft higher into the range of anti-aircraft guns and fighters. The balloons themselves were only part of the story. What mattered equally was the organisation behind them – trained crews, winch vehicles, rigging procedures, transport, maintenance, gas supply, and the discipline to operate safely under wartime pressure.
Cardington’s facilities were ideal for this task. The vast sheds provided protected space for balloon handling drills, repair work and storage of equipment away from weather. Training was physical and practical: crews learned to inflate, launch and recover balloons, manage cables and winches, and respond to sudden changes in wind or equipment failure. Safety procedures had to be meticulous because hydrogen was hazardous and because balloons operated in a busy air defence environment where mistakes could endanger people on the ground as well as friendly aircraft.
WAAF personnel were heavily involved in balloon work across the country, and Cardington became associated with the training and support of balloon crews, reinforcing how the wartime RAF depended on a far broader workforce than aircrew alone. Cardington also handled repair and support functions for balloon equipment, contributing to the availability of balloons on the front line of home defence.
The station’s wartime story included other administrative and support activity. As the RAF expanded rapidly, personnel processing and specialist functions were spread across multiple sites, and Cardington hosted a mixture of units connected with training, storage and support. The ability to manufacture and handle hydrogen was another strategically important capability: balloons required reliable gas supply, and Cardington’s industrial infrastructure helped sustain operations at scale.
By 1944-45, as the threat shifted and Britain moved onto the offensive, barrage balloon operations gradually reduced, but Cardington’s specialist role remained an essential part of the home front’s defensive architecture. Today the surviving sheds are the most dramatic physical legacy, and they help frame the Second World War story clearly: RAF Cardington was a place where air defence was built not only with aircraft and radar, but with thousands of trained balloon crews, equipment systems and the industrial-scale logistics required to keep a national defensive barrier aloft.