Nation’s first air force made more
than 3,000 balloon ascensions

It was the afternoon of June 17, 1861, as a keen-eyed observer surveyed the scene before him, then dictated to a telegraph operator by his side.

“This point of observation commands an extent of country nearly 50 miles in diameter,” he said, and the operator obligingly tapped out his words with the telegraph key.

“The city with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene. I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station, and in acknowledging indebtedness for your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service of the country.”

The man dictating the message was Thaddeus Lowe. He and the telegraph operator were in a gas balloon tethered 500 feet above the grounds of the Columbia Armory in Washington City. The telegraph cables, which ran along one of the rigging wires to the ground, were connected to the War Department and the White House. The man on the receiving end of the message was President Abraham Lincoln.

With a finely honed gift of salesmanship, Lowe was making his pitch to become the head of an aeronautic corps attached to the Union Army, using the balloon as a military machine.

Before the end of the summer of 1861, Thaddeus Lowe would be named the next “Chief Aeronaut” for the Union Army. Lowe used his position to obtain funding and the Government’s permission to build seven balloons, 12 field gas generators and a flat-topped balloon barge. The balloon barge was a specially made flat-topped “aircraft carrier” created by removing the superstructure and engines of the old steamer George Washington Parke Custis.

The use of balloons in war was not really new. In a letter to a friend written less than three months after the first manned balloon flight in France in 1783, Benjamin Franklin made this suggestion.

“Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each could not cost more than five ships of the line … and that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them.”

During the turmoil that followed the French Revolution, the government in France established a balloon corps attached to the army and a training academy for corps members. Its main purpose was to observe enemy positions and strength. Other European nations, including Denmark, Russia and Austria, either employed balloons in military actions or attempted to do so.

Under Lowe, the aeronauts in the U.S. Balloon Corps made more than 3,000 balloon ascensions and supported a number of campaigns. The Balloon Corps finally was disbanded when the Union army returned to Washington after the Battle of Chancellorsville.

But, it had indelibly left its mark as the nation’s first Air Force.