Qualla: U.S. Naval Air Station Berehaven Ireland

U.S. Naval Air Station Berehaven Ireland: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Imagine a balloon - not a hot-air craft, not a rigid airship, but a fat sausage-shaped envelope of doped fabric, hydrogen-filled, with an observer in a small wicker basket slung below it. Now imagine it tethered by a long cable to a destroyer beating across the North Atlantic, the observer up at five hundred feet scanning the water for the periscope wake of a German U-boat while the ship below punches through swell. That was the idea of the United States Navy kite balloon programme in 1918, and Berehaven on the south coast of Ireland was the place from which it was meant to fly.

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U.S. Naval Air Station Berehaven Ireland: Five Bases in Ireland

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. When the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, the most pressing tactical problem on the Atlantic was the German submarine campaign. Convoys of cargo ships were being hunted to the bottom on the approaches to Britain and Ireland; Allied shipping losses had reac...

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U.S. Naval Air Station Berehaven Ireland: Commissioning, April 1918

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Ensign Carl E. Shumway of the United States Naval Reserve Force took command on 26 April 1918. The station was formally commissioned three days later, on 29 April. The location had been chosen because the natural shelter of Berehaven - the long sound between the Beara mainland an...

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U.S. Naval Air Station Berehaven Ireland: Practice Without War

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The base did what it could. Practice flights were made from trucks towed across the open ground around the station, the balloons running on long tethers as the trucks moved - approximating, on land, what a balloon-towing destroyer at sea would feel like. Balloons were flown at ar...

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U.S. Naval Air Station Berehaven Ireland: The Armistice and the Closure

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. By the latter part of October 1918, the Navy had decided to relocate the lighter-than-air work to Queenstown to make the balloons easier to get to the destroyers. Then the Armistice of 11 November ended the war before the move could be completed. The anti-submarine patrols stoppe...

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U.S. Naval Air Station Berehaven Ireland: What is Left

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Berehaven itself remained a Royal Navy base through the interwar period - it was one of the three Treaty Ports retained by Britain after Irish independence, not finally handed back until 1938. The American kite balloon installation has left almost no physical trace on the ground ...

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