Ah, so maybe they did have wings...

[lindil]

If you ask me, I'd say Balrogs had wings, could beat a dragon easily and there were only seven of them. But whatever.

Beautiful and simple Keeper of DG!

Although I haveto remain on the fence re: dragon 'beating'. But I suppose they could not cooked by Dragons breath so easily being flames of Udun themselves.

I can't remember the exact quote but at the end of the SIl didn't Tolkien say when Morgoth released the winged dragons that this was his first assault upon the air, or something similar.

first off, most of the 7 Balrogs had been killed by that point or other wise accounted for [Rog's, Ecthelion's, Glorfindel's, one fled to Moria] Sow are talking about 3 left at most for the battle [ unless the Moria Balrog stuck it out for the whole battle which seems unlikely or he would have been 'neutralized']. So we are talking about 3 perhaps four in the final War of Wrath. That is probably an insignificant number to even organize the troops '...who had become great beyond count, so that Anfauglith could not contain it and all of the North was filled with War'.

Now before someone goes and quotes the other lines about saying that all of his Balrogs were destroyed and only a few were left to hide themselves in caves... I will [point out that as JRRT got older he revised the number of blarogs down and that CJRT forgot or decided not to refelct this in his Silmarillion. So all this boils down to, there were not enough balrogs left at that point to constitute a real threat to the Army of valinor compared to the 'assault from the Air' of the dragons.

The balrogs left [ 3 or 4] would have been insufficient to constitute an arial assault as I think there first and foremost job would be to govern the troops. There were simlpy not enough to act as arial shock troops in the way the dragons did.

I just read the relevant passages in the 77 Silm and there is no mention of an "first assault upon the air, or something similar.'