F. Stansbury Haydon
Author of Military Ballooning during the Early Civil War
About the Author
F. Stansbury Haydon taught at the University of Maine and at the Johns Hopkins University and served as chief of staff of the ROTC at Yale University.
Works by F. Stansbury Haydon
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
Members
Reviews
Flawed but still interesting. Flaws first:
It’s dated. The original was published in 1941 (under the title Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate Armies). The paperback reissue (under the title Military Ballooning During the Early Civil War) I have was published in 2000, with a new introduction and some photographs but no other changes.
It’s incomplete. This is volume 1 of a proposed two volume set, but Haydon never got around to completing the second volume (another war intervened). Although Haydon returned intact from North Africa and Italy, he apparently lost interest in balloon and the Civil War. He left a sheaf of notes for the second volume but nobody else took up the project. Thus, the book stops partway through 1863. There are a number of tantalizing references to the second volume.
It’s an expanded doctoral dissertation, and thus has all the lively style and evocative language that dissertation secretaries insist on.
Now the good parts:
It’s an expanded doctoral dissertation, and thus has all the careful research and extensive references that dissertation committees insist on.
It’s well organized and covers the early part of the war well, and includes a historical survey of pre-Civil War military ballooning.
It’s interesting enough given the rigors of the style. Haydon allows himself some speculation about politicians and generalship, skating on the edge of calling some of them incompetent bags of meat in uniforms or top hats.
Haydon finds military ballooning got off to a quick start during the French Revolution; the Directory was surprisingly receptive to the idea and went as far as establishing a military balloon school and setting up a corps of balloonists with distinctive uniforms and equipment. The balloon Entreprenant apparently contributed significantly to the French victory at Fleurus in 1794. However, Napoleon was not interested in balloons and the school and corps were abandoned; to be fair a balloon service probably wouldn’t have fit very well with Napoleonic military tactics.
Military ballooning was handicapped by excessive claims by proponents. Balloonists themselves usually were circumspect, but enthusiastic amateurs came up with all sorts of ideas; giant balloons that would transport armies across the English Channel; balloon bombers that would rain projectiles down on helpless armies, and so forth. Balloon bombers were actually used during the Austrian siege of Venice in 1849 – the Aerial Torpedo Force would send small pilot balloons over the city, map their course, then send a larger balloon carrying explosives and time fuses to drop the projectile and detonate the charge. Despite apparent careful planning, the balloon attacks were not very successful.
By the start of the Civil War, civilian ballooning had been going on in the US for some years. Enthusiastic volunteers began deluging Washington with letters and telegrams or showing up at the War Department in person. In the time-honored tradition of the American military, the Army set out to find the right method of using balloons by trying everything else first.
The first off the ground was James Allen of Rhode Island, who volunteered his services to his state and ended up in the Rhode Island Light Battery of Marine Artillery, which was eventually assigned to a regiment commanded by Ambrose Burnside. Allen had his own balloon; the catch was filling it. At the time the usual balloon inflatant was “town gas”, i.e., manufactured gas from pyrolytic destructive distillation of coal. That meant that Allen had to fill his balloon at a gas main, then have it towed to its destination manually. This proved very difficult; the soldiers assigned were not very good at being a ground crew; the streets and roads in Washington and northern Virginia were clogged with troops, and the balloon had to get past trees and telegraph wires on its way to the front. (Haydon doesn’t mention how this was done; I assume the towing cables were thrown over the wires and picked up on the other side). This first time Allen got to the front lines he had been rushed and unable to fill his balloon to capacity; it was a windy day and the partially inflated envelope acted almost as a kite and didn’t allow the balloon to get very far off the ground. The second time he tried Allen’s balloon burst during inflation.
The next attempt was by John Wise of Pennsylvania, who had similar problems. On the first attempt the officer in charge of the towing detail tried to hurry things up and the balloon was torn open on a tree branch. On the second try, the ground crew lost control of the balloon and it sailed away in the direction of the Confederacy; quickly alerted Union soldiers brought it down with rifle fire (making the first successful anti-aircraft attack in history). Haydon notes that it isn’t clear what would have happened if Wise had been successful getting his balloon to the front; in either case he would have been in time for First Manassas; whether the balloon would have been of use to McDowell or just another piece of equipment captured by Beauregard is unclear. Wise became a line officer and served with distinction; he took up ballooning again after the war and was lost without a trace on a flight over Lake Michigan in 1879.
The first successful balloonist was John La Mountain of New York. La Mountain was personally recruited by Benjamin Butler, who was commander at Fortress Monroe on the Peninsula at the time. La Mountain scored a number of firsts: first ascent from ship board, first night ascent, first observations in the US that were actually militarily useful, and first free observation flights. La Mountain’s free flights depended on his observation that winds near the surface in Northern Virginia generally blew westerly but changed to easterly at altitude; La Mountain would thus cast off, float over the southern lines at 1000 feet or so, then drop ballast to ascend to height (he claimed 18000-24000 feet, which I find a little dubious, but which Haydon accepts), catch the eastern air current, float back over Union territory, and open the gas valve to quickly descend before he could be carried back west again. He made several such flights; they were militarily useful but depended on the Confederate lines being west of Union lines which only obtained very early in the war. As an effect of La Mountain’s free flights, Beauregard ordered camouflage for all gun positions; thus at very least the flights had nuisance value. La Mountain seems to have been a difficult personality; he left the Union service over a dispute with the man who eventually became the acknowledged head of Federal balloonists, Thaddeus Lowe. Lowe was fairly restrained, but requested that all the balloonists in the Army be placed under his command; La Mountain apparently had a history with Lowe dating back to before the war and categorically refused, going so far as accusing Lowe of corruption and lack of patriotism.
Thaddeus Lowe was the fourth and most successful Union balloonist (in the time period covered by Haydon). Like the other early balloonists, Lowe is referred to as “Professor Lowe” in Army communications, despite not having a teaching position anywhere (or even a college degree); by historical American tradition the title of “Professor” was always applied to balloonists, college instructors, and piano players in whorehouses – all honorable positions. At any rate, Lowe’s strongest trait seems to have been his ability to endure Army bureaucracy. Although field commanders were sometimes interested in balloons, the War Department and the high command were not, and seemed to go out of their way to make things difficult. Lowe was never given a military commission; he was a civilian contractor (this caused him some concern as he feared he would be treated as a spy if captured). The balloon service was shuttled among various military specialties; it started out under the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, then went to the Quartermaster Corps, then the Corps of Engineers, and finally the Signal Corps (which refused to have it, leading to its disbandment in 1863, just before Gettysburg). All of these assignments had problems; the Bureau of Topographical Engineers had no enlisted men and therefore ground crew had to be drawn from whatever line unit was handy. Lowe complained that as soon as he had a group of soldiers trained in balloon handling their return would be demanded by their parent regiment and he would have to scrape up another bunch and start training all over. The Quartermaster Corps was particularly problematical; as a civilian, Lowe was subordinate to any officer. Junior quartermaster officers seemed to take particular delight in confiscating Lowe’s wagons, dumping out all the balloon equipment, and taking them off for some ordinary duty (this prevented Lowe and his balloons from being available at Antietam). The Quartermaster Corp also had particular problems with Lowe’s requisitions; things like silk balloon patches, japan drier and sulfuric acid were not normal Army stores and it often took weeks for Lowe’s vouchers to be approved and paid. Pay, and even rations, for the balloonists and ground crew was also a problem; they enlisted men were supposed to draw rations and pay from their parent units but these were sometimes miles away from balloon observation posts.
It’s rather amazing Lowe managed to accomplish as much as he did under the circumstances; even then, it’s not quite clear what he actually did accomplish. McClellan liked balloons; he went up himself at least once, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that balloon observation actually made any difference in any of McClellan’s battles. Lowe’s records of observations seem fairly pedestrian; he could see encampments and get some idea of unit strength by counting tents; dust clouds showed troop movements on roads (Lowe got good enough to tell cavalry from infantry by noting how fast a dust cloud moved). Gun emplacements were visible, and Lowe took topographic engineers up a couple of times to make maps. He solved the problem of gas by switching to field-generated hydrogen, using special tank wagons, iron filings, and sulfuric acid. (Interestingly, Lowe was later a prime developer of carbureted water gas for lighting, made by thermal decomposition of steam; however, although he made preliminary attempts at field water gas generation he was unsuccessful and fell back on chemically generated hydrogen).
Ironically, one of the most successful balloon missions in the early war took place not with the Army of the Potomac but in the west, at Island Number 10 on the Mississippi. A balloon had been sent west under John Steiner. Unfortunately, nobody had bothered to tell anybody in the western commands that a balloon was being sent to them, and poor Steiner languished unpaid in Cairo (it didn’t help that Steiner only spoke English poorly and with a strong German accent). On his own initiative, Steiner offered himself and his balloon to the Navy under Commodore Foote, and Foote accepted; Steiner was instrument in directing fire from Foote’s mortar boats and was acknowledged as greatly contributing to the Confederate surrender.
Haydon’s last chapters concern the mechanics of balloon service; how a balloon was prepared (including a varnish recipe; that’s what “japan drier” was for); how long it took to inflate a balloon; how long one could be used without re-inflation; details of the signaling code (Lowe had a special airborne telegraph set, and sometimes it was patched through all the way to army headquarters or even the War Department); equipment costs; and whatever is known of the location of balloon observation stations. No balloon was ever shot down (other than Wise’s runaway), but that was not for lack of trying by the Confederacy; there were a couple of close misses. The Confederates learned it was easier to hit the area around the ground crew than a balloon in the area, and Lowe quickly learned to launch from covered sites, like reverse slopes; the closest call was a Confederate heavy shell that was aimed at the balloon crew but burst in the latrine of a nearby line unit, causing no injuries but leaving everybody in the area doused with the contents. Lowe’s field generators were captured during the Peninsula Campaign, leading some southern papers to claim that a balloon had been captured.
Although the original publication title promised attention to Confederate balloons, very little is mentioned; to be fair a lot of southern records were destroyed. Haydon does note there was a Confederate balloon at the siege of Charleston and promises details in never-completed Volume II. Haydon comments that neither the southern or northern newspaper accounts are remotely reliable when it comes to accounts of balloon use; there were many reports of Confederate balloons in newspapers on both sides but as far as Haydon can tell these were misidentification of northern balloons or just figments of reporter’s imagination.
As mentioned, not light reading; Haydon does a reasonably job of maintaining reader interest but the constraints of a doctoral dissertation militate against it. OTOH there are all the footnotes anybody would ever want so if you’re inclined to go back and trace Haydon’s original sources you can do it. There’s unfortunately little discussion of the actual tactical or operational value of balloons; maybe Haydon was saving this for the second volume or perhaps he felt it was inappropriate to speculate in a dissertation. Probably best used as an addition to a already pretty complete Civil War library.… (more)
It’s dated. The original was published in 1941 (under the title Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate Armies). The paperback reissue (under the title Military Ballooning During the Early Civil War) I have was published in 2000, with a new introduction and some photographs but no other changes.
It’s incomplete. This is volume 1 of a proposed two volume set, but Haydon never got around to completing the second volume (another war intervened). Although Haydon returned intact from North Africa and Italy, he apparently lost interest in balloon and the Civil War. He left a sheaf of notes for the second volume but nobody else took up the project. Thus, the book stops partway through 1863. There are a number of tantalizing references to the second volume.
It’s an expanded doctoral dissertation, and thus has all the lively style and evocative language that dissertation secretaries insist on.
Now the good parts:
It’s an expanded doctoral dissertation, and thus has all the careful research and extensive references that dissertation committees insist on.
It’s well organized and covers the early part of the war well, and includes a historical survey of pre-Civil War military ballooning.
It’s interesting enough given the rigors of the style. Haydon allows himself some speculation about politicians and generalship, skating on the edge of calling some of them incompetent bags of meat in uniforms or top hats.
Haydon finds military ballooning got off to a quick start during the French Revolution; the Directory was surprisingly receptive to the idea and went as far as establishing a military balloon school and setting up a corps of balloonists with distinctive uniforms and equipment. The balloon Entreprenant apparently contributed significantly to the French victory at Fleurus in 1794. However, Napoleon was not interested in balloons and the school and corps were abandoned; to be fair a balloon service probably wouldn’t have fit very well with Napoleonic military tactics.
Military ballooning was handicapped by excessive claims by proponents. Balloonists themselves usually were circumspect, but enthusiastic amateurs came up with all sorts of ideas; giant balloons that would transport armies across the English Channel; balloon bombers that would rain projectiles down on helpless armies, and so forth. Balloon bombers were actually used during the Austrian siege of Venice in 1849 – the Aerial Torpedo Force would send small pilot balloons over the city, map their course, then send a larger balloon carrying explosives and time fuses to drop the projectile and detonate the charge. Despite apparent careful planning, the balloon attacks were not very successful.
By the start of the Civil War, civilian ballooning had been going on in the US for some years. Enthusiastic volunteers began deluging Washington with letters and telegrams or showing up at the War Department in person. In the time-honored tradition of the American military, the Army set out to find the right method of using balloons by trying everything else first.
The first off the ground was James Allen of Rhode Island, who volunteered his services to his state and ended up in the Rhode Island Light Battery of Marine Artillery, which was eventually assigned to a regiment commanded by Ambrose Burnside. Allen had his own balloon; the catch was filling it. At the time the usual balloon inflatant was “town gas”, i.e., manufactured gas from pyrolytic destructive distillation of coal. That meant that Allen had to fill his balloon at a gas main, then have it towed to its destination manually. This proved very difficult; the soldiers assigned were not very good at being a ground crew; the streets and roads in Washington and northern Virginia were clogged with troops, and the balloon had to get past trees and telegraph wires on its way to the front. (Haydon doesn’t mention how this was done; I assume the towing cables were thrown over the wires and picked up on the other side). This first time Allen got to the front lines he had been rushed and unable to fill his balloon to capacity; it was a windy day and the partially inflated envelope acted almost as a kite and didn’t allow the balloon to get very far off the ground. The second time he tried Allen’s balloon burst during inflation.
The next attempt was by John Wise of Pennsylvania, who had similar problems. On the first attempt the officer in charge of the towing detail tried to hurry things up and the balloon was torn open on a tree branch. On the second try, the ground crew lost control of the balloon and it sailed away in the direction of the Confederacy; quickly alerted Union soldiers brought it down with rifle fire (making the first successful anti-aircraft attack in history). Haydon notes that it isn’t clear what would have happened if Wise had been successful getting his balloon to the front; in either case he would have been in time for First Manassas; whether the balloon would have been of use to McDowell or just another piece of equipment captured by Beauregard is unclear. Wise became a line officer and served with distinction; he took up ballooning again after the war and was lost without a trace on a flight over Lake Michigan in 1879.
The first successful balloonist was John La Mountain of New York. La Mountain was personally recruited by Benjamin Butler, who was commander at Fortress Monroe on the Peninsula at the time. La Mountain scored a number of firsts: first ascent from ship board, first night ascent, first observations in the US that were actually militarily useful, and first free observation flights. La Mountain’s free flights depended on his observation that winds near the surface in Northern Virginia generally blew westerly but changed to easterly at altitude; La Mountain would thus cast off, float over the southern lines at 1000 feet or so, then drop ballast to ascend to height (he claimed 18000-24000 feet, which I find a little dubious, but which Haydon accepts), catch the eastern air current, float back over Union territory, and open the gas valve to quickly descend before he could be carried back west again. He made several such flights; they were militarily useful but depended on the Confederate lines being west of Union lines which only obtained very early in the war. As an effect of La Mountain’s free flights, Beauregard ordered camouflage for all gun positions; thus at very least the flights had nuisance value. La Mountain seems to have been a difficult personality; he left the Union service over a dispute with the man who eventually became the acknowledged head of Federal balloonists, Thaddeus Lowe. Lowe was fairly restrained, but requested that all the balloonists in the Army be placed under his command; La Mountain apparently had a history with Lowe dating back to before the war and categorically refused, going so far as accusing Lowe of corruption and lack of patriotism.
Thaddeus Lowe was the fourth and most successful Union balloonist (in the time period covered by Haydon). Like the other early balloonists, Lowe is referred to as “Professor Lowe” in Army communications, despite not having a teaching position anywhere (or even a college degree); by historical American tradition the title of “Professor” was always applied to balloonists, college instructors, and piano players in whorehouses – all honorable positions. At any rate, Lowe’s strongest trait seems to have been his ability to endure Army bureaucracy. Although field commanders were sometimes interested in balloons, the War Department and the high command were not, and seemed to go out of their way to make things difficult. Lowe was never given a military commission; he was a civilian contractor (this caused him some concern as he feared he would be treated as a spy if captured). The balloon service was shuttled among various military specialties; it started out under the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, then went to the Quartermaster Corps, then the Corps of Engineers, and finally the Signal Corps (which refused to have it, leading to its disbandment in 1863, just before Gettysburg). All of these assignments had problems; the Bureau of Topographical Engineers had no enlisted men and therefore ground crew had to be drawn from whatever line unit was handy. Lowe complained that as soon as he had a group of soldiers trained in balloon handling their return would be demanded by their parent regiment and he would have to scrape up another bunch and start training all over. The Quartermaster Corps was particularly problematical; as a civilian, Lowe was subordinate to any officer. Junior quartermaster officers seemed to take particular delight in confiscating Lowe’s wagons, dumping out all the balloon equipment, and taking them off for some ordinary duty (this prevented Lowe and his balloons from being available at Antietam). The Quartermaster Corp also had particular problems with Lowe’s requisitions; things like silk balloon patches, japan drier and sulfuric acid were not normal Army stores and it often took weeks for Lowe’s vouchers to be approved and paid. Pay, and even rations, for the balloonists and ground crew was also a problem; they enlisted men were supposed to draw rations and pay from their parent units but these were sometimes miles away from balloon observation posts.
It’s rather amazing Lowe managed to accomplish as much as he did under the circumstances; even then, it’s not quite clear what he actually did accomplish. McClellan liked balloons; he went up himself at least once, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that balloon observation actually made any difference in any of McClellan’s battles. Lowe’s records of observations seem fairly pedestrian; he could see encampments and get some idea of unit strength by counting tents; dust clouds showed troop movements on roads (Lowe got good enough to tell cavalry from infantry by noting how fast a dust cloud moved). Gun emplacements were visible, and Lowe took topographic engineers up a couple of times to make maps. He solved the problem of gas by switching to field-generated hydrogen, using special tank wagons, iron filings, and sulfuric acid. (Interestingly, Lowe was later a prime developer of carbureted water gas for lighting, made by thermal decomposition of steam; however, although he made preliminary attempts at field water gas generation he was unsuccessful and fell back on chemically generated hydrogen).
Ironically, one of the most successful balloon missions in the early war took place not with the Army of the Potomac but in the west, at Island Number 10 on the Mississippi. A balloon had been sent west under John Steiner. Unfortunately, nobody had bothered to tell anybody in the western commands that a balloon was being sent to them, and poor Steiner languished unpaid in Cairo (it didn’t help that Steiner only spoke English poorly and with a strong German accent). On his own initiative, Steiner offered himself and his balloon to the Navy under Commodore Foote, and Foote accepted; Steiner was instrument in directing fire from Foote’s mortar boats and was acknowledged as greatly contributing to the Confederate surrender.
Haydon’s last chapters concern the mechanics of balloon service; how a balloon was prepared (including a varnish recipe; that’s what “japan drier” was for); how long it took to inflate a balloon; how long one could be used without re-inflation; details of the signaling code (Lowe had a special airborne telegraph set, and sometimes it was patched through all the way to army headquarters or even the War Department); equipment costs; and whatever is known of the location of balloon observation stations. No balloon was ever shot down (other than Wise’s runaway), but that was not for lack of trying by the Confederacy; there were a couple of close misses. The Confederates learned it was easier to hit the area around the ground crew than a balloon in the area, and Lowe quickly learned to launch from covered sites, like reverse slopes; the closest call was a Confederate heavy shell that was aimed at the balloon crew but burst in the latrine of a nearby line unit, causing no injuries but leaving everybody in the area doused with the contents. Lowe’s field generators were captured during the Peninsula Campaign, leading some southern papers to claim that a balloon had been captured.
Although the original publication title promised attention to Confederate balloons, very little is mentioned; to be fair a lot of southern records were destroyed. Haydon does note there was a Confederate balloon at the siege of Charleston and promises details in never-completed Volume II. Haydon comments that neither the southern or northern newspaper accounts are remotely reliable when it comes to accounts of balloon use; there were many reports of Confederate balloons in newspapers on both sides but as far as Haydon can tell these were misidentification of northern balloons or just figments of reporter’s imagination.
As mentioned, not light reading; Haydon does a reasonably job of maintaining reader interest but the constraints of a doctoral dissertation militate against it. OTOH there are all the footnotes anybody would ever want so if you’re inclined to go back and trace Haydon’s original sources you can do it. There’s unfortunately little discussion of the actual tactical or operational value of balloons; maybe Haydon was saving this for the second volume or perhaps he felt it was inappropriate to speculate in a dissertation. Probably best used as an addition to a already pretty complete Civil War library.… (more)
In Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 1, F. Stansbury Haydon writes the essential history of the Union Balloon Corps. Haydon begins his account with a study of previous uses of balloons during wartime in France and various early proposals for an American balloon corps. He then proceeds to biographical and historical analyses of the men who first attempted to create a balloon corps during the Civil War: James Allen, John Wise, and John La Mountain. Of these, La Mountain was most successful, but personality conflicts with Professor Thaddeus Lowe, a contemporary aeronaut, put an end to La Mountain's aspirations.
The bulk of Haydon's account focuses on the balloon corps under Lowe, beginning with Lowe's early work in August and September of 1861. The next chapters focus on the Balloon Service of the Army of the Potomac, with chapters dedicated to material and personnel, administration, and operation. Haydon ends with a description of the Balloon Corps' work from November 1861 - March 1862 and a look at attempts to utilize the balloons further south and out west.
Despite the book's title, Haydon never examines the Confederate balloon corps. He alludes to it on occasion and even mentions some of the southern aeronauts, but he may have intended to focus on this material in the never-written second volume. Even without the Confederate balloons, Haydon created an impressive historical work drawing extensively upon primary sources, from military records, private letters, newspaper accounts, and more. He corroborates or shows the error in Union aeronauts' observations with Confederate records of troop movements, demonstrating just how effective the balloon corps was. Haydon laments the army command's poor implementation of the balloons, quoting Joel Roberts Poinsett, who said "that such an innovation 'can only succeed in willing hands'" (p. 397). Haydon's book is a must-have for Civil War buffs and those interested in the history of science.… (more)
The bulk of Haydon's account focuses on the balloon corps under Lowe, beginning with Lowe's early work in August and September of 1861. The next chapters focus on the Balloon Service of the Army of the Potomac, with chapters dedicated to material and personnel, administration, and operation. Haydon ends with a description of the Balloon Corps' work from November 1861 - March 1862 and a look at attempts to utilize the balloons further south and out west.
Despite the book's title, Haydon never examines the Confederate balloon corps. He alludes to it on occasion and even mentions some of the southern aeronauts, but he may have intended to focus on this material in the never-written second volume. Even without the Confederate balloons, Haydon created an impressive historical work drawing extensively upon primary sources, from military records, private letters, newspaper accounts, and more. He corroborates or shows the error in Union aeronauts' observations with Confederate records of troop movements, demonstrating just how effective the balloon corps was. Haydon laments the army command's poor implementation of the balloons, quoting Joel Roberts Poinsett, who said "that such an innovation 'can only succeed in willing hands'" (p. 397). Haydon's book is a must-have for Civil War buffs and those interested in the history of science.… (more)
Statistics
- Works
- 1
- Members
- 33
- Popularity
- #421,955
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 3
- ISBNs
- 3
Military ballooning came into its own only with the American Civil War. Soon after the start of the conflict, a number of aeronauts offered their services to the United States government. In response, the Union Army Balloon Corps was formed to provide airborne reconnaissance on behalf of Union forces. Though balloons were employed successfully by Union forces in the east for a variety of observation and artillery-spotting efforts (and inspired less-successful efforts by their Confederate forces to field their own balloons), they were often treated with skepticism and disdain by many officers, and the Balloon Corps withered from neglect by the end of 1863.
The story of military ballooning during the Civil War is one that is often dealt with only in passing, or told through the lives of the remarkable individuals who took to the skies and championed the cause of flight. This is one of the reasons why F. Stansbury Haydon’s book is such a valuable study of its subject. Intended as the first volume of a two-part survey of ballooning during the war, it is a remarkably thorough work that employs an impressive range of archival materials to tell the history of his subject. Beginning with the prewar history of military ballooning, he chronicles the various attempts to use balloons in warfare prior to 1861, most of which provided only a limited return on the effort involved.
The impetus for military ballooning came not from the army, but from patriotic aeronauts. As Haydon demonstrates, there were a number of individuals who were attempting to realize the promise of lighter-than-air flight. The war gave them an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of using balloons for observation. Though a number of individuals approached the government independently, the key figure proved to be Thaddeus Lowe, an amateur scientist who before the war began was attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. Lowe’s determination and organizational skills proved essential to the early success of the Union Army Balloon Corps, which by the autumn of 1861 was conducting regular observation of Confederate forces for the Army of the Potomac. Haydon makes clear that the use of balloons was largely due to the enthusiasm of the army’s commanders, particularly George McClellan, for the new technology, with the skepticism of commanders elsewhere limiting the use of balloons on other fronts.
Haydon describes all of this in a work rich in detail. Throughout it he chronicles the ascents by Lowe and the other airborne observers, using the details to demonstrate the accuracy of their observations. Nor is his narrative confined to the operations of the aeronauts, as he also describes the technical aspects of balloons themselves, including how they were constructed and the methods used to inflate them. The range of information in the text is impressive, yet Haydon demonstrates throughout his text a sure command of his subject, never getting bogged down in trivia or distracted by tangents. It’s a masterful work, and one that makes the lack of the promised second volume (a casualty of the Second World War) all the more regrettable. Despite being published eighty years ago, it has yet to be surpassed as a history of military ballooning during the Civil War – and given the high quality of Haydon’s scholarship, it is difficult to imagine anyone how anyone could improve upon it.… (more)