A potted history, based on
http://www.bbrclub.org/1940%20Status.htmhttp://www.rafweb.org/Sqn900.htmPlus other sources and books.
Nationally:
Balloon Command existed from 1/11/1938 to February 1945.
It was divided into Barrage Balloon Groups, all having roughly the same life span. Groups were divided into Balloon Centres, and the only new ones to be formed after the initial set-up, to operate the Anti-Diver Belt, were:
No 22 Balloon Centre, Biggin Hill, from 19/2/1944 to 20/11/1944
No 23 Balloon Centre, Gravesend, from 1/2/1944 to 15/1/1945
No 24 Balloon Centre, Redhill, from 1/2/1944 to 15/1/1945.
No new home based squadrons formed after August 1940, except for No 954, based at Cobham, Surrey, in 1943/1944, for the defence of Brooklands airfield.
The Balloon Training School closed in 1943 and many squadrons disbanded from late 1943 onwards. Some were re-formed in 1944, with crews drawn from existing squadrons, to operate the Anti-Diver Belt.
The main reason claimed for the existence of the balloons was that they kept enemy aircraft high and within the field of fire of AA guns, hence the few actual successes awarded to them. Others claim they were more of a hazard to our own aircraft. Let the figures speak for themselves:
54 enemy aircraft are known to have hit balloon cables, of which 26 were destroyed.
310 friendly aircraft hit balloon cables, of which 129 were destroyed.
The Anti-Diver Belt destroyed approximately 300 of the 4261 land-launched V1s destroyed by all the defences.
KentKent Squadrons came under No 1 Balloon Centre, Kidbrooke.
No 952 Squadron formed at Sheerness in November 1939 and had a strength of 8 land based and 32 waterborne balloons by August 1940. From the minutes of the meetings in Otis’s Reply#18 it seems to have had a strength of only 8 waterborne ballons over the winter of 1939/1940, which were used to defend the Yantlet Dredged Channel from December 1939 to early 1940 (Minsterboy’s Reply#5). The RAF’s objection to balloons over the Thames and Medway, and the Navy’s complaints that those authorised had not materialised, leads to the impression that the squadron was always intended as a convoy escort unit. The 8 land based balloons were presumably for the defence of Sheerness.
No 961 Squadron was formed at Dover in July 1940 with 16 land based and 8 waterborne balloons. I can find no mention of it ever having moved, and it seems to have existed until the disbandment of Balloon Command.
The second website listed above has this entry:
No 960 Squadron:
24 (16 waterborne) balloons in August 1940.
February 1940 to pre-December 1943, Lyness, Orkney.
1944 – Canterbury.
Is this a typing error, and this squadron supplied 8 land based balloons after the Canterbury blitz of 1942?Two other squadrons operated by No 1 Balloon Centre were: 901 at Abbey Wood, and 902 at Kidbrooke. I don't think either of those were in Kent, even before the transfer of territory from Kent to London.
And that, so far as I can make out, is it, although I obviously can’t claim not to have missed something.