Balloons in War
Mar 03, 2017
By Tom Crouch
Having watched the first humans rise into the air, Benjamin Franklin predicted that the new invention would have considerable military value, enabling an aerial view of an enemy’s army for “conveying intelligence into, or out of, a besieged town, giving signals to distant places, or the like.” France put theory into practice by creating the Aerostatic Corps during the Revolutionary Wars. T. S. C. Lowe organized a much more ambitious Balloon Corps for the Union armies during the American Civil War. European observers, noting the role that balloons had played in the US, were inspired to organize military aeronautical units in their nations.
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