The Union Army's Balloon Corps: “The Most Shot-At Men of the Civil War”
Pop quiz: When did the US military first employ aviators in combat operations? If you guessed 1947 with the establishment of the US Air Force, you’d be wrong. But that’s obvious - we all know how integral aerial warfare was during both World War I and World War II. So, 1917, when the US joined World War I? Wrong, again. Planes were invented in 1903, so the first use of airplanes by the US military was seen during World War 1.
However, as the title of this article may have given away, the first aviators who served in the war effort were members of the Union Army’s Balloon Corps, a group of civilian aeronauts who flew in hot air balloons during the Civil War.
New Technology in Europe While the US Lags Behind
Hot air balloons, the first successful technology used for human flight, were invented in France in 1783. The French were also the first to utilize hot air balloons in a military capacity not long after. In 1794, the French Committee of Public Safety’s Corps d’Aerostiers used balloons at the Battles of Charleroi and Fleurus to observe enemy troop movements. However, it was only a few years before the French hot air balloon corps was disbanded.
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, hot air balloons continued to be used sporadically for military purposes in Europe, but the United States military was much slower to adopt their use. Despite early interest in hot air balloons from even some of the Founding Fathers, proposals for the use of hot air balloons for reconnaissance during the Mexican-American War and Seminole Wars were rejected.
By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, there were several enthusiastic aeronauts eager to prove that hot air balloons could be a useful technology for the Union Army. Many, like James Allen, John Wise, and John La Mountain, sent letters or conducted demonstrations for military and government officials attempting to make the case for balloons in the war effort.
These so-called “professional aeronauts” were part scientist, part adventurer, and part entertainer. In the end, it was a fourth aeronaut, the greatest promoter of the bunch though perhaps not the most experienced balloonist, who managed to convince President Lincoln himself and founded the Union Army’s Balloon Corps.
Thaddeus Lowe and the Origins of the Union Army Balloon Corps
Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913) was an American inventor with a passion for aeronautics. Despite having no formal education, Lowe fancied himself a “professor” and was heavily involved with the scientific community. In the late 1850s, Lowe had made a name for himself in the scientific community and the public consciousness as he attempted to prove that trans-Atlantic flight could be possible if a large enough hot air balloon was built.
What he lacked in official scientific training, Lowe made up for with personal connections and superior showmanship.
Just as the Civil War was beginning, Lowe made headlines in April 1861 when he attempted to demonstrate the potential of long-distance flight in a hot air balloon. He planned to fly east from Cincinnati, Ohio, but was blown off course and accidentally landed in Confederate South Carolina.
Though Lowe was initially arrested by Confederate forces on suspicion that he was a Union spy, he quickly convinced his captors that he was not and was allowed to return home to Cincinnati. After this experience, he fashioned himself the first “prisoner of war” of the Confederacy.
A few months later, Lowe used this experience and his connections in Washington, D.C., to get an audience with President Lincoln. While other aeronauts had faced a variety of technical issues during their earlier demonstrations, Lowe was not only successful in safely flying his balloon; he also incorporated another piece of new technology: the telegraph.
From hundreds of feet above Washington, Lowe sent a telegram to the President:
This point of observation commands an extent of country nearly 50 miles in diameter. 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.
This was enough to convince Lincoln, who heavily encouraged the War Department to move forward with the use of hot air balloons. The Army funded the construction of seven hot air balloons of varying sizes. The Intrepid, Constitution, United States, Washington, Eagle, Excelsior, and Union were specially made to be more durable for military use.
Additionally, the Union Army’s Balloon Corps was officially created, with Thaddeus Lowe appointed as Chief Aeronaut. Many of the others who had made demonstrations, including James Allen and John La Mountain, joined the Balloon Corps under his leadership. The Balloon Corps was not an official military unit. Instead, the aeronauts who served in the Balloon Corps were civilian employees of the War Department with honorary titles.
Battle Testing the Balloon Corps
The primary use case for military hot air balloons as presented by Lowe and other aeronauts was aerial reconnaissance. From a tethered hot air balloon high in the sky, they could keep an eye on enemy movements, make maps, direct artillery fire, and conduct other live reports during battles. Whether this theory proved true in practice depends on who you ask.
Minor Successes
Throughout the Civil War, Balloon Corps aeronauts made about 3,000 flights in support of the Army of the Potomac, many of which were tied to well-known battles or campaigns, such as the Peninsula Campaign and the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.
As Lowe would tell it, the reports he and his fellow aeronauts made during these battles were highly significant and made a major impact. There certainly were some successes, especially in between battles, such as the creation of detailed maps noting the locations of enemy works.
Furthermore, surviving Confederate sources indicate that at the very least the presence of Union hot air balloons was sufficiently intimidating and prompted unconventional troop movements for the sake of stealth that had the potential to hamper Rebel success.
For their part, Confederate forces did unsuccessfully try to shoot down the balloons on numerous occasions. According to Command Sgt. Maj. James Clifford, U.S. Army (Ret.), in an article for the Army Historical Foundation,
“Confederate gunners resented the fact that they were being observed from above. Every balloon ascent brought potshots from every rifle and gun below.”
Once at their final altitudes, the balloons were out of range of Confederate fire, so they changed tactics. Instead of trying to shoot the balloon down from the air, Confederate gunners focused their fire during a balloon's ascent or descent, in addition to firing on ground crews. While there were some near misses, the Confederates never successfully shot down a Union balloon.
Eventual Failure
However, despite these minor successes, the general consensus amongst historians is that the efforts of the Balloon Corps likely had little consequence in any major battles. More often than not, battlefield conditions made it extremely difficult for aeronauts to accurately spot locations of importance or keep track of events.
This was compounded by the fact that the majority of the aeronauts were civilians, not trained soldiers. This left their operations relatively disorganized and inefficient. Additionally, the aeronaut community prior to the war was a small one, and existing rivalries and infighting between Lowe and others exacerbated these issues.
All of this meant that military leaders often didn’t trust the reports given to them by the aeronauts. Even when trained military officers were brought up in balloons as more skilled observers, some accounts note that they may have been too distracted by being in the sky to make any valuable assessments from a military standpoint.
In the spring of 1863, the Balloon Corps was finally assigned direct oversight in the form of Captain Cyrus Comstock. Comstock’s goal was to make the Balloon Corps both more efficient and more effective. Under Comstock’s leadership, reports from the Balloon Corps were incorporated into a larger system of military intelligence for the first time.
However, what could have been a new beginning for the Balloon Corps quickly brought about its end. Over a year into the endeavor, Lowe now had a military officer usurping his control and telling him how to run his operation. This only exacerbated existing tension amongst the aeronauts who had long felt they were being underpaid.
In the spring of 1863, Lowe officially resigned from his position as Chief Aeronaut, and the Balloon Corps was officially disbanded just a few months later. While it had seen some limited successes, the Balloon Corps certainly did not meet the expectations set by Lowe and other aeronauts at the start of the war.
Why Was the Balloon Corps Ultimately Grounded?
Clearly, the concept of balloon reconnaissance was not a bad one. It had been successfully utilized more than fifty years before the Civil War, and would be successfully used again during World War I.
So why did the Balloon Corps fail?
Historians have suggested many different theories. According to Civil War expert and museum specialist Thomas Paone of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, it was likely a combination of factors.
Logistics
In order to successfully launch the balloons, they had to be transported to a suitable site along with a large generator on a wagon, which would produce the gas necessary to inflate them. While these wagons, which Lowe invented, were a major technological feat at the time, Paone explained that they were still cumbersome and required a lot of logistical effort to move and operate.
Available manpower created even more logistical problems because, as a civilian organization, the Balloon Corps did not have any permanent soldiers assigned to it in the field.
“They would normally request a few companies of troops from whatever unit was nearby to assist with the inflation and operating the ropes that were used to raise and lower the balloons,” Paone explained.
“This meant that troops had to be retrained each time the balloon unit moved and were assigned a new unit, creating more burden for an already burdensome and complex operation.”
Changes in Leadership
It wasn’t just changes in ground troops that impacted the Balloon Corps over the course of the war, but changes in military leadership. As generals came and went from the Army of the Potomac, support for the Balloon Corps waxed and waned.
Many of the Army of the Potomac’s early leaders from 1861 to mid-1862 were supportive of the Balloon Corps. Major General George B. McClellan was generally supportive, while Brigadier General Fitz John Porter even made over 100 ascents with Lowe.
However, as time went on and the Army of the Potomac saw mixed success, later leaders like Major General George Meade were explicitly disinterested in using the Balloon Corps. Lowe’s early connections who backed the program early on left their posts and left Lowe with little support for his initiative by 1863.
Civilian Status and Pay Issues
Lowe’s loss of support exacerbated other challenges that stemmed from the aeronauts' status as civilian employees of the War Department, rather than soldiers, chief amongst them: pay.
As civilians, they had fewer protections despite being placed in dangerous situations in battle. If they were captured by Confederate forces, they could have been executed as spies. Worse, if anything did happen to them, their families would not be eligible for pensions like those of Union soldiers.
While they were initially promised relatively fair compensation, oftentimes the Army just didn’t pay the balloonists the rate they’d been promised or didn’t pay them at all for months at a time. This led some to quit even before the Balloon Corps was dissolved, and was one of the final straws that led to Lowe’s resignation.
The Balloon Corps’ Legacy
In principle, balloon reconnaissance should have been a boon to the Union Army’s efforts. In practice, the Balloon Corps faced both logistical and technical challenges that ultimately made it ineffective.
However, the Balloon Corps represents an important starting point for the US Army’s aerial reconnaissance efforts, and later iterations of balloon reconnaissance built on lessons learned from Lowe’s Civil War endeavors.
For example, when the US used hot air balloons for a similar purpose during World War I, they were manned by members of dedicated military support units who had received specialized training and understood how to operate within the military’s expectations. This effectively overcame many of the issues that resulted from the Balloon Corps’ civilian status.
As recently as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military used similar technology in the form of unmanned aerostats (aircraft that float like balloons).
As Thomas Paone explained, “Modern aerostats were tethered just like those in the Civil War, but an array of sensors and cameras replaced the humans in wicker baskets from the past.“
150 years of technical progress meant that by these conflicts, human error in observation and battlefield interference were less problematic.
Ultimately, it seems Lowe and his contemporaries were not wrong in their belief that the hot air balloons could be of service to the US Army. Unfortunately for Lowe, a variety of challenges present during the Civil War meant that it was just not the right time for his ideas to be fully realized.
Have you ever seen a new strategy or piece of technology fail because the world wasn’t ready for it yet?
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BY DANA CONGELOSI
Military Spouse and Contributing Writer at VeteranLife
Marine Corps Veteran
Dana is a military spouse who has spent more than five years navigating the unique rhythms of military life alongside her partner. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Anthropology from St. Lawrence University and has built her career across museums, public libraries, and recreation. Thro...
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Dana is a military spouse who has spent more than five years navigating the unique rhythms of military life alongside her partner. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Anthropology from St. Lawrence University and has built her career across museums, public libraries, and recreation. Thro...
