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26-645: Cardington may refer to: Cardington, Bedfordshire , a village and civil parish in England Cardington Airfield , the nearby air base that has two vast airship hangars Cardington, Shropshire , a village and civil parish in England Cardington, Ohio , a village in the United States SS ; Cardington , a Hog Islander laid down in 1917, launched as SS Jolee Topics referred to by

52-851: A European tour promoting road safety. Cardington is the location of the two largest and most successful football clubs in Bedford Borough . Bedford Town F.C. compete at The New Eyrie stadium, and play in the Southern Football League Premier Division . Bedford F.C. use the McMullen Park stadium, and play in the Spartan South Midlands Football League Division One. Both of the football stadiums are located next to each other on Meadow Lane in Cardington. Cardington Artificial Slalom Course

78-621: A Very Low Altitude barrage balloon battalion of the United States Army, participated in the June 1944 Normandy landings , raising barrage balloons on Omaha Beach and Utah Beach . They remained stationed at Normandy until October 1944. In January 1945, during Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm raids on the Palembang oil refineries, the British aircrews were surprised by the massive use of barrage balloons in

104-678: A bombing dive. Due to the effectiveness of the Royal Air Force fighters' tactic of waiting for a dive bomber to complete its dive and then pouncing when it was pulling up - a moment when it was slow and vulnerable - the use of dive bombers against the UK was discontinued by Nazi Germany. Balloons proved to be of little use against the German high-level bombers with which the dive-bombers were replaced, but continued to be manufactured nonetheless until there were almost 3,000 in 1944. They proved to be effective against

130-518: Is an artificial whitewater canoe slalom course located on the edge of Cardington next to Priory Country Park . The course was the first if its kind to be built in the UK, and hosts national canoe slalom competitions and cups. It is also used as a main training area for the Viking Kayak Club . Barrage balloon France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom used barrage balloons in

156-574: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Cardington, Bedfordshire Cardington is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Bedford in Bedfordshire, England. Part of the ancient hundred of Wixamtree , the settlement is best known in connection with the Cardington airship works founded by Short Brothers during World War I , which later became an RAF training station. However most of

182-526: The First World War . While the French and German forces developed kite balloons , early British barrage balloons were spherical. Sometimes, especially around London, several balloons were used to lift a "barrage net" length: a steel cable was strung between the balloons, and more cables hung from it. These nets could be raised to an altitude comparable to the operational ceiling (15,000 feet or 4,600 metres) of

208-699: The R-31 and the R-32 . Some 800 people worked there in 1917, most of them travelled daily from Bedford . Shorts also built a housing estate, opposite the site, which they named Shortstown. The airships site was nationalised in April 1919, becoming known as the Royal Airship Works . In preparation for the R101 project the No 1 shed was extended between October 1924 and March 1926; its roof

234-805: The Ronan Point disaster of 1969), and reconstructions of notable fires including the Manchester Woolworth's fire of 1979. In 1972 the Fire Research Station was merged with the Building Research Station to form the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and in the 1980s onwards some of BRE's work in non-fire areas was done in the hangar until around 2001; this included multi-storey steel, concrete and wooden buildings which were constructed and then destructively tested within

260-544: The V-1 flying bomb , which usually flew at 2,000 feet (600 m) or lower but had wire-cutters on its wings to counter balloons. 231 V-1s are officially claimed to have been destroyed by balloons. The British added two refinements to their balloons, "Double Parachute Link" (DPL) and "Double Parachute/Ripping" (DP/R). The former was triggered by the shock of an enemy bomber snagging the cable, causing that section of cable to be explosively released complete with parachutes at either end;

286-463: The former RAF station is actually in the parish of Eastcotts , as is the settlement of Shortstown , which was originally built by Short Brothers for its workers. The village of Cardington is located to the north east of Shortstown and the RAF station, and houses most of the population of the parish, which was 270 in 2005, making it one of the least populated parishes in Bedfordshire. The Church of St Mary

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312-650: The Japanese defences. These were spherical and smaller than the British type. One Grumman Avenger was destroyed, and its crew killed, from striking a balloon cable. Barrage balloons were partly filled with highly pure hydrogen. "The top of the balloon was filled with hydrogen, the bottom half was left empty, so when it was put up at a certain height it filled with natural air", according to Dorothy Brannan, barrage balloon volunteer in Portsmouth, England. In 1942, Canadian and American forces began joint operations to protect

338-594: The No. 1 RAF Balloon Training Unit. For both airships and barrage balloons, Cardington manufactured its own hydrogen , in the Gas Factory , using the steam reforming process. In 1948 the Gas Factory became 279 MU (Maintenance Unit), RAF Cardington; and then, in 1955, 217 MU. 217 MU, RAF Cardington, produced all the gases used by the Royal Air Force until its closure in April 2000; including gas cylinder filling and maintenance. The two airship sheds ceased being part of

364-564: The RAF Cardington site in the late 1940s and they were put to other uses. The fence was moved, so they were outside the main RAF Cardington site. From 1970, No. 2 shed was used by the Fire Research Station for large-scale fire tests in sheltered conditions which could not be carried out at their site in Borehamwood, Herts. Such tests included work on sprinklers in high-rack storage, department stores and other locations, gas explosions (following

390-557: The Virgin has pieces dating from the 12th century, although the church itself was mostly rebuilt between 1898 and 1902. It is a Grade II listed building. Cardington became one of the major British sites involved in the development of airships when Short Brothers bought land there to build airships for the Admiralty . They constructed a 700-foot-long (210 m) airship hangar (the No. 1 Shed) in 1915 to enable them to build two rigid airships,

416-516: The bombers of the time. By 1918 the barrage balloon defences around London stretched for 50 miles (80 km), and captured German pilots expressed great fear of them. In 1938, the British Balloon Command was established to protect cities and key targets such as industrial areas, ports, and harbors. Balloons were intended to defend against dive bombers flying at heights up to 5,000 feet (1,500 m), forcing them to fly higher and into

442-399: The combined weight and drag bringing down the aircraft. The latter was intended to render the balloon safe if it broke free accidentally. The heavy mooring cable would separate as the balloon and fall to the ground under a parachute; at the same time a panel would be ripped away from the balloon causing it to deflate and fall independently to the ground. The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion ,

468-579: The fortunes of the airship industry in the other shed in the 1980s, but the efforts ended in failure. In the 2000s decade, the site was used for the development of a new design of airship, the Skycat, by the company Hybrid Air Vehicles . In the 2010s the site served as a base for Hybrid Air Vehicles' Airlander 10 prototype airship. In early 2011 two Goodyear Blimps ( Spirit of Safety I and Spirit of Safety II ) were refurbished in Shed 1, prior to their deployment on

494-571: The huge space available. This shed was completely reclad for BRE in the 1990s by the Property Services Agency and its contractors and thus was looked after in comparison with the other shed. The buildings tests were mentioned during the course of the BBC series The Conspiracy Files as evidence in the controversy surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on 11 September 2001. A company called Airship Industries tried to revive

520-428: The location of enemy troops to be bombed. After the war, some surplus barrage balloons were used as tethered shot balloons for nuclear weapon tests throughout most of the period when nuclear weapons were tested in the atmosphere. The weapon or shot was carried to the required altitude slung underneath the barrage balloon, allowing test shots in controlled conditions at much higher altitudes than test towers. Several of

546-422: The more serious incidents, known as "The October Incident", caused an estimated loss of 400 tonnes of steel and 10 tonnes of ferro-alloys. As a result, balloons were stored during the winter months and training was improved. Lessons learned from breakaway balloons led to Operation Outward , intentional release of balloons trailing conductive cables to disrupt power supplies on the occupied European mainland. On

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572-511: The range of concentrated anti-aircraft fire: anti-aircraft guns could not traverse fast enough to attack aircraft flying at low altitude and high speed. By the middle of 1940, there were 1,400 balloons, a third over the London area. While dive-bombing was a devastatingly effective tactic against undefended targets, such as Guernica and Rotterdam , dive-bombers were very vulnerable to attack by fighter aircraft when pulling up after having completed

598-556: The road to Aachen in west Germany in 1944, the British 2nd Tactical Air Force floated barrage balloons along the American First Army sector front line (a.k.a. "bomb line") to designate the location of friendly troops during the air assault preceding the advance of ground forces, which took Aachen on October 21, 1944. Conversely, during the First Army advance past Aachen to nearby Düren , barrage balloons were floated eastward to mark

624-455: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Cardington . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cardington&oldid=902785313 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Place name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

650-559: The sensitive locks and shipping channel at Sault Ste. Marie along their common border among the Great Lakes against possible air attack. During severe storms in August and October 1942 some barrage balloons broke loose, and the trailing cables short-circuited power lines , causing some localised disruption to mining and manufacturing . In particular, metals production was disrupted. Canadian military historical records indicate that one of

676-567: Was raised by 35 feet and its length increased to 812 feet. The No. 2 shed (Southern shed) was originally located at RNAS Pulham , Norfolk. It was dismantled there and re-erected at Cardington in 1928. After the crash of the R101, in October 1930, all work stopped in Britain on airships. Cardington then became a storage station. In 1936/1937 Cardington started building barrage balloons ; and it became

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