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As far as the Chamber of Mazarbul -- there's no reason to think that wings would make a stitch of difference as to whether or not a winged or unwinged Balrog would be able to pass through the door. Why wouldn't a Balrog, like any winged creature, be able to fold its wings into its body? By the same logic, no garden-variety songbird should be able to fit through the round hole of a bird-house.
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Mr. Underhill -
Everything that Tolkien tells us indicates that the chamber was very large. Certainly, a term like "cavernous" suggests a hall of immense proportions.
I agree that the Balrog would be able to fold his wings back. The real issue here is the wingspan to body ratio. It's my understanding that every flying creature in existence has a ratio of roughly 3 to 1 in terms of wings and body. Let's make the width of the hall smaller just to be fair, since we do not have specific dimensions. If the hall was 75 feet across instead of 100, that would make the wings 75 feet outstretched, and the Balrog 25 feet high. There's no way a 25 foot Balrog gets through that door, even if his wings (which he doesn't have
) are folded flat.
Also, a twenty-five foot Balrog doesn't seem to fit well with anything else we know. I believe we have just two references to how tall Balrogs were. One early passage in HoMe describes a Balrog as "no more than man-high yet terror seemed to go before it." Another description from BoLT states that the Balrog was "double his stature", 'his' in this context refers to Glorfindel. The latter quote would make a Balrog 13-14 feet tall. It was not so much the physical size of the Balrog as the fear he instilled and the shadow he carried along. Such creatures of 6-14 feet could get through that door, but their wings could not possibly have touched the sides of a "cavernous" hall when stretched out from wall to wall. Hence, the reference in the text must be figurative rather than literal.
Helen - -
I'll stick with
Obloquy's answer here.
Note that the only real description we have of the creature is this:
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it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape, maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it.
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Nothing about wings. Since flying things have a wingspan of three times their body length, wouldn't someone have clearly commented on those wings at some point in the Legedarium? They would have been so noticeable. Tolkien is very clear about winged and flying dragons. Why would he treat a Balrog differently?
Regarding time ill spent....don't feel bad. This is a subject I swore never to touch. I promise never to think about Balrogs after today.