In September 1783, a balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers lifted three passengers into the sky of Versailles: a sheep, a goose and a rooster. Two months later, people made their first hot air balloon flight. And soon balloons began to be used for military purposes.
Aerobomb
After the bourgeois revolution took place in France at the end of the 18th century, literally all of Europe took up arms against it. The troops of Great Britain, Holland, Austria, Prussia, Spain and Portugal were involved in military operations against the country engulfed in revolutionary events. Gathering forces to fight them, the Jacobin Convention in 1793 appealed to French scientists for help. In response, physicist Guiton de Morveau suggested using balloons for reconnaissance and observation.
The proposal was accepted. The balloon, built specifically for use in the army, was raised to a height of up to 500 meters during testing. From there it was possible to observe the movements of enemy troops at a distance of up to 25 kilometers.
Half a century later, in 1848, the inhabitants of Venice rebelled against Austro-Hungarian rule - the war began. The Austrians laid siege to the city located on the islands in the lagoon. Artillery in those days was not yet distinguished by a large firing range and could only fire on its outskirts. For the most part, the shells did not reach the target at all and fell into the water. And then the Austrians remembered about balloons. They decided to deliver incendiary and explosive bombs to Venice with a tailwind, hanging them from cylinders filled with hot air.
The Austrians dubbed this miracle weapon aerobombs. The spherical envelope of the balloon was made of thick writing paper. Fabric ribbons were glued to the seams of the vertical stripes from the outside and from the inside. A canvas circle with a loop for raising the balloon was glued to the upper part of the ball, and a hoop was attached from the bottom, which served as a support for a small hearth. The bomb was suspended on a rope a little more than a meter long, and its disconnection was ensured by a special ignition cord, the burning time of which was carefully calculated. When the bomb began to fall, the balloon rose vertically upward with a candle, burst, and unburned coals fell down together with the hearth, often causing fires.
Before the balloons were launched, zeroing was carried out. A trial balloon was launched from a suitable hill, and the Austrians, observing it, plotted its flight path on a map. If the trajectory passed over the city, then the bombing was carried out from this hill. If the balloon flew to the side, then the starting position was changed accordingly. These air strikes did not cause much damage, but the nerves of the inhabitants of Venice shook thoroughly. When flocks of balloons appeared in the sky, panic began in the city, and the wooden Venetian fleet was in a hurry to move away from the coast every time.
Of course, one could not expect great accuracy from such a bombardment, but some successful hits did take place. So, one of the bombs exploded in the very center of the city, on St. Mark's Square, and alarmed the whole city.
Great names
Initially, balloons were filled with hydrogen directly from a barrel, where sulfuric acid reacted with iron shavings. Such a gas production system was serviced by dozens of workers, and filling the balloon envelope lasted up to two days. The great Russian scientist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev came to the conclusion that hydrogen can be stored in metal vessels under high pressure. While he was pounding the thresholds of the Russian military department, in England in 1880, engineer Thors-ten Nordenfeld launched the production of steel cylinders for storing and transporting hydrogen under a pressure of 120 atmospheres.
Alexander Matveyevich Kovanko (1856-1919) was a great enthusiast of aeronautics in Russia. In the second half of the eighties of the XIX century, he was the clerk of the commission for the use of aeronautics, pigeon mail and watchtowers for military purposes, commanded a detachment of military balloons and visited France and Belgium for the exchange of experience. With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 under
Kovanko's leadership launched the development of new models of field aeronautical vehicles and a radical restructuring of the heavy and cumbersome material part of the fortress balloons. Thanks to the conviction and energy of Alexander Matveyevich, the East Siberian field aeronautical battalion was formed, which was the honored inventor and headed. The Kovanko battalion was armed with four tethered balloons, horse winches and gas generators, which made it possible to fill the balloon shell with hydrogen in 20 minutes.
Already during the siege of Port Arthur, it became clear what invaluable benefits balloons could bring to the besieged Russian troops. Especially after the enemy fortified camp was examined from an improvised tethered balloon, which was shot with 12-inch shells from battleships”. We also note that by the beginning of the war the Japanese were able to commission a reconnaissance ship, which had a tethered balloon. It was from him that the squadron of Admiral Rozhestvensky was discovered in advance, which was defeated in the Tsushima battle.
Heaven's phone
In 1913, after two representatives of the French army visited the St. Petersburg Aeronautical Park, Kovanko was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. By the beginning of the First World War, Russian aeronautical units were manned with admirable thoroughness of the Allies and were armed with 46 balloons that had good stability even in strong winds.
The following facts testify to their effectiveness. The 14th aeronautical company was stationed under the Ivangorod fortress. In the period from 9 to 13 October 1914, when Austrian troops approached the fortress, the balloon raised to a height of 400 meters continuously corrected the hostilities. From it, the enemy's positions, the location of his trenches and barbed wire, and traffic on the roads were reconnoitered in detail. The firing of our artillery, corrected by telephone from a balloon, turned out to be so effective that the enemy fled from the trenches without waiting for the attack of the Russian infantry. This decided the fate of the battle under the fortress. Balloons turned out to be such a serious problem that planes began to use them to fight them, which either shot them with machine guns or set them on fire with liquid phosphorus.
Weapon of retaliation
The balloon was not forgotten during the Second World War. The balloons were raised above the front line by artillery spotters or observers from headquarters. They were also used to create barriers around large cities that impede the free flight of bombers. The balloon forest over Moscow, Leningrad or London is one of the most characteristic features of that war. But the scope of application of balloons was not limited to this.
Shocked by American bombing, Japan in October 1944 decided to strike back. For this, a special balloon regiment was created, at the disposal of which the Japanese General Staff planned to allocate 15 thousand balloons for five months, to which high-explosive fragmentation bombs were attached. Preparations for retaliation strikes were carried out in the strictest secrecy. However, America turned out to be a very big target. Balloons flew into the forests, then into the mountains, then on the prairie, leaving the cities somewhere to the side. According to the American press, this whole adventure had only an insignificant psychological effect.
It is curious that balloons were used for reconnaissance purposes even during the Cold War. The Americans equipped them with photographic and other equipment and launched them from the territory of their allies towards the USSR. old fighters MiG-17.
