Study: A Balloon Site, Coventry (I) by Dame Laura Knight, graphite on paper

This small compositional study of four WAAFs holding the rope of a barrage balloon is one of several preparatory drawings by Dame Laura Knight for a painting commissioned by the War Office to encourage recruitment of women to RAF Balloon Command - 'A Balloon Site: Coventry' (1942, Imperial War Museums). Months earlier, in 1941, WAAF operators replaced men at RAF Balloon Command.

Following devastating Blitz raids over Coventry, Knight was briefed to encourage ‘the right sort’ of women to enlist as Women’s Auxiliary Air Force balloon operators, and she emphasised the figures’ agility and strength in handling the unwieldy balloon. In her introductory essay for ‘War Pictures by British Artists: Women’ (1943), Knight articulated her interest in the theme of women’s wartime employment, enthusiastically describing their extended professional opportunities which had formerly been the preserve of men. Her account of female balloon operators alludes to the scene of A Balloon Site: Coventry, referencing the women’s strength and, at the same time, their glamour, perhaps to appeal to a range of agile women recruits while eschewing assumptions about required masculine attributes: ‘Come fine, come storm, by day or by night, the Balloon must go up or down, be tended as a living thing, a guardian … Stray strands of hair, golden, red and brown, escape from regulation caps while girls move weights and haul on rope and wire.' Bequest of the artist. Copyright: the artist's estate and Bridgeman Images / RAF Museum.