Document created: 4 September 03
Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2003

War of the Aeronauts: The History of Ballooning in the Civil War by Charles M. Evans. Stackpole Books (http://www.stackpolebooks.com/ cgi-bin/StackpoleBooks.storefront), 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania 17055-6921, 2002, 368 pages, $27.95 (hardcover).

First-time author Charles M. Evans has written an excellent history of the birth of American airpower in War of the Aeronauts, which he began researching in graduate school. Evans provides an admirable overview of early ballooning and of the first US and Confederate air forces. Woven around the universal themes of personalities and resistance to change, the book devotes most of its text to balloonist Thaddeus Lowe and his exploits with the Union army of the Potomac.

Lowe was a ballooning pioneer, an innovator, and an excellent organizer, as well as a supreme egotist and self-promoter. On 17 June 1861, he brought a balloon to Pennsylvania Avenue, directly across from the White House, where he made an ascent and sent a telegram to President Lincoln from the balloon. Lincoln was impressed enough to invite Lowe to spend the night at the White House and personally took him to see Winfield Scott, general in chief of the Union army. Lincoln told a skeptical Scott, “This is my friend Professor Lowe, who is organizing an Aeronautics Corps for the Army, and is to be its Chief. I wish you would facilitate his work in every way” (pp. 86–87).

Lowe became a civilian “contractor” attached to the Bureau of Topographical Engineers (mapmakers). Insisting on being paid a colonel’s salary, he proved very adept at organizing teams to inflate, transport, and operate his balloons. He also devised portable hydrogen-gas generators that combined sulfuric acid and iron shavings to produce combustible gas. Among other innovations, Lowe built an “aircraft carrier” from a 122-foot barge, a telegraph train to transmit messages from balloons to army field headquarters, and colored flares for signaling troop movements. His development and employment of an “oxyhydrogen” arc lamp made him the first person to use artificial light in combat operations, and he hired other “aeronauts” to expand his reconnaissance capability. Finally, Lowe understood the need to build sturdy balloons and equipment that could withstand the rigors of the field. His strengths and expertise won him the support of Maj Gen George B. McClellan, commander of the army of the Potomac. Unfortunately, Lowe’s personality eventually became his undoing. Extremely jealous of other balloonists who offered their services to the Union army, he refused to cooperate with any of them. Although McClellan continued to support him, most other senior officers grew weary of Lowe’s ego.

Lowe and his balloonists provided effective aerial reconnaissance during several major campaigns in 1862 and 1863. In March 1862, Lowe became the first to discover that the Confederates had abandoned their long-held position near Centreville, Virginia, and in April he moved his balloons to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in support of the Peninsula campaign. In May 1862, he discovered the Confederate evacuation of Yorktown and observed the Battle of Williamsburg. He also reported on Confederate troop movements during the Battles of Seven Pines/Fair Oaks, Mechanicsville, and Gaines Mill, where he was nearly overrun by Confederates. When McClellan retreated, Lowe had to ground his balloons due to the loss of iron shavings, essential to the production of hydrogen.

After Lincoln dismissed General McClellan in the fall of 1862, Lowe never again enjoyed the full confidence of the army commanders. Both Gen Ambrose Burnside and Gen Joseph Hooker employed Lowe’s balloons during the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, respectively, but Hooker allowed the Topographical Corps to cut Lowe’s pay and reduce his prestige. After the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, a demoralized Lowe resigned, and the army never employed the balloon corps again. The high command had lost interest in aerial reconnaissance.

Most probably Lowe failed because of his egotistical personality. Officers became disgusted with his self-centered attempts to build a reputation at the expense of his rivals. Many of them also distrusted the balloonists and felt that Lowe exaggerated his observations for self-serving purposes. Still others saw the balloonists as a carnival act and refused to take them seriously. Even more importantly, Evans concludes that the horrible slaughter of the Civil War shocked the nation into feeling that it had “no more time to waste on novel ideas concerning the war effort. The time for experimenting with fanciful contraptions of war was over. Proven concepts of technology . . . would remain, because their effectiveness was categorically tested on the field of battle” (p. 293).

Evans’s book is excellent- well written, researched, documented, and illustrated. Aside from the fact that the author seems to accept Lowe’s writings and accounts too uncritically, the book offers a well-balanced account of its subject. It will be of great interest to the Civil War community because little else exists on the subject. War of the Aeronauts is also relevant to modern military officers and airpower historians since it provides excellent case studies on the impact of personalities in a military bureaucracy, radical technological change, and the innate conservatism of military professionals. Billy Mitchell, anyone?

Col Allan W. Howey, USAF, Retired
Centerville, Ohio

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.