…... installation his attention on the return journey. Arriving over Vitry, Henry laid his bombs on the railway station, the objective being to disrupt enemy communications. His mission now accomplished, he headed back on the reciprocal course determined to knock out the balloon station. As he approached Arras, the ground crews saw him coming and started furiously to winch the balloon, with its occupant, back to the relative safety of the ground. They were not quick enough.
Ignoring the danger of the usually heavily defended balloon installation, Henry put his Camel into a dive and swooped down, pumping some 400 rounds into his target. With the balloon already hauled down to around 1,000 feet, the observer aboard had just seconds to make his escape, leaping from the basket and pulling his parachute ripcord in the same motion.
I chose to depict the scene a few 
moments later, just as the observer’s parachute snapped open. By this time the balloon is aflame, the basket and a tangle of ropes and guys, binoculars, telescopes and maps all plummeting towards the ground. Henry has banked his little fighter clear of the flaming debris, and remembers so close to the observer as to notice the fear in his face, the poor man convinced the British pilot was about to finish him off with his machine guns. However, in the best traditions of gallantry that prevailed amongst World War I fighter pilots, Henry merely waved a salute to the defenceless German and then headed back towards base. As Henry said:
“I wasn’t about to hang around to see if the other aircraft that had appeared on the scene were friend or foe.”
Although their architecture is
a little different, particularly the churches, the colours and contours of the countryside of northern France, especially in summer, are reminiscent of England. After I had finished painting this particular landscape, I felt it was a little too idyllic for a picture depicting a wartime action, so I included a dozen or so bomb craters, which seemed to do the trick.
‘Balloon Buster’ -
