The balloon, so to speak, has gone down. The RAF's Balloon Operations Squadron has been disbanded. No more will Clarence E Whiteknuckle III, heading for yet another failure of his GFT, have to thread his way past a barrage of Kite Mk IIDs in rural Oxfordshire. Nor, any more, will hordes of green squaddies make their first parachute jumps from the 800ft security, of a tethered blimp. The news that the British Ministry of Things is really quite pleased with its one airship just isn't adequate compensation for the loss of the RAF's quietest, most reliable and longest-serving aircraft.
Source: Flight International