The year: 1861. The problem: Pro-slavery states had broken away from the Union, rising up in armed revolt as the treasonous Confederate States of America, and so far were able to fight the Union Army. One solution: Balloons. Yes, balloons.
And bizarrely, it was tried and kind of worked. Back in the American Civil War, the American military founded its first aerial force, the Union Army Balloon Corps. Thank Union desperation and several entrepreneurs American aeronauts with a good pitch. They came to the U.S. military with their own balloons, offering them as reconnaissance tools to help crush the breakaway states.
Scientist and aeronaut Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, thanks to his personal connections, was able to pitch President Abraham Lincoln on the idea. He had actually had some very recent experience: while on a test flight of his balloon in April 1861, he accidentally landed in South Carolina and was captured by Confederates on suspicion of being a spy. He wasn’t, but when he came to Lincoln weeks later, he had realized what aerial units could do. Lowe wasn’t alone. Existing scientists and aeronauts like John Wise and John LaMountain rushed to show the Army how their private balloons could be useful for the cause.
This was not that crazy of an idea. Balloons were a well-understood and relatively widespread invention by the 1860s. Their military usage was limited; the French military had briefly tried them as observation units, but Napoleon Bonaparte ultimately deflated the idea. This was the same time that the American military was importing camels to the United States for use in the American southwest. The Army was experimenting with new ways to master its domains.
Eventually Lowe was tasked with testing it out, floating above the First Battle of Bull Run. Even though it was a Confederate victory, Lowe’s ability to send updates and signals to commanders was proven. The Union Army Balloon Corps was formed. As the Federal Aviation Agency noted, the corps was technically part of a civilian outfit, the Bureau of Topographical Engineers. Over the next two years, the balloonists would see action at several major battles, including the Peninsula campaign and the siege of Vicksburg.
Lowe and the Union Army’s fleet of balloons were not floating weapons platforms. No one strapped a cannon to the basket of a balloon or had a line of infantry form up on its side. These were not, unfortunately, balloon technicals. Instead, they were initially privately owned balloons. It was only after the formal establishment of the Balloon Corps that the Army began building ones specifically for military recon. One of them was the Intrepid, a 32,000-foot capacity balloon built to go to higher altitudes and longer distances. Among other things, the balloon featured its name bannered across it, while the other side showed an eagle and a large image of Gen. George McClellan. Other balloons in the corps included the Union, the Eagle and Excelsior.
The Union Army Balloon Corps did prove useful. Several balloons positioned along the Potomac helped commanders see Confederate advances and defend Washington, D.C., and they were later used to see farther ahead in campaigns to recapture Southern territory. Their ability to spot enemy positions also helped with artillery targeting. Aeronauts used signal flags to help signal Union commanders. The corps was also innovative in another way. The balloons were not used for long-distance flights; to transport them Lowe and his troops took a U.S. Navy barge, the USS George Washington Parke Custis, and turned it into a mobile launch platform. They invented the first aircraft carrier.
The Confederacy did, in the name of keeping up with the Union, try its own hand at ballooning. It made a handful of balloons, but given how strapped it was for supplies — a problem that escalated once the Union began pressing the war effort — the balloons were poorly made and many were lost in the course of the war. The two sides never had a balloon versus balloon situation and there was never an aerial dogfight between the two balloon corps. However, they did try blasting them out of the sky during the Peninsula campaign. Confederate troops proved unable to, their rifles failing to shoot down the balloons.
Unfortunately for Lowe and other balloon enthusiasts, the floating corps was short-lived. Several competing aeronauts made for poor organization and not every military commander considered their balloons useful even after they were fielded. By 1863, Lowe had strained relations with the military, and on top of that his pay was cut. He eventually resigned, leaving command to two brothers, James and Ezra Allen. Aside from being aeronauts, they actually had some military experience. Despite that, the problems facing the corps continued and the Union Army Balloon Corps would be disbanded in August 1863, well before the end of the Civil War.
However, the tactic was revolutionary for the U.S. military. The Army Signal Corps would eventually form a balloon unit, which would see limited service during the Spanish-American War. The military’s experiments with balloons continued, and the aircraft saw use in World War I as well. In the interwar period, advanced balloons with specialized baskets found extensive use in scientific experiments, as the military tried to reach the stratosphere in a kind of proto-Space Race.