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Balloon Busting 101

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After reading about how dangerous balloon busting missions were, I decided to do some research. Hope this helps others to understand more about balloons and the history behind it.

There are two kinds of lighter-than-air craft: balloons and an airship.
[B]Balloons[/B]
These unpowered LTA craft can lift but are at the mercy of the wind.

[B]Airship[/B]
An airship is a powered LTA craft that can lift and then maneuver in any direction against the wind. The airship is broken down further into three categories: the nonrigid airship, often called a blimp; the semirigid airship, and the rigid airship, sometimes called a Zeppelin. Dirigible is also used to describe all airships deriving from the French verb “diriger” (“to steer”)

The theory behind LTA craft is that of buoyancy. Balloons and airships lift because they are buoyant, meaning that the total weight of the airship or balloon is less than the weight of the air it displaces.

The Montgolfier brothers, born in Annonay, France, were the inventors of the first practical balloon. The first demonstrated flight of a hot air balloon took place on June 4, 1783, in Annonay, France. Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier, paper mill owners, were trying to float bags made of paper and fabric. When the brothers held a flame near the opening at the bottom, the bag (called a balon) expanded with hot air and floated upward.

The Montgolfier brothers built a larger paper-lined silk balloon and demonstrated it on June 4, 1783, in the marketplace at Annonay. Their balloon (called a Montgolfiere) lifted 6,562 feet into the air. At the time, the Montgolfiers believed they had discovered a new gas (they called Montgolfier gas) that was lighter than air and caused the inflated balloons to rise. In fact, the gas was merely air, which became more buoyant as it was heated.

Frenchman, Jacques Charles invented the first hydrogen balloon in 1783. Less than two weeks after the ground-breaking Montgolfier flight, the French physicist Jacques Charles (1746-1823) and Nicolas Robert (1758-1820) made the first untethered ascension with a gas hydrogen balloon on December 1, 1783. Jacques Charles combined his expertise in making hydrogen with Nicolas Robert's new method of coating silk with rubber.

The third balloon type was invented by Pilâtre de Rozier and is a hybrid of a hot air and a gas balloon. Gas balloons have an advantage of being able to fly for a long time, and hot air balloons have an advantage of being able to easily change altitude, so the Rozier balloon was a hydrogen balloon with a separate hot air balloon attached. In 1785, Pilâtre de Rozier took off in an attempt to fly across the English Channel, but the balloon exploded a half-hour into the flight. This accident earned de Rozier the title "The First to Fly and the First to Die".

Crossing the English Channel was accomplished by Jean Blanchard whom designed a hydrogen balloon with flapping devices to control its flight. Jean Blanchard soon moved to England, where he gathered a small group of enthusiasts, including Boston physician, John Jeffries. John Jeffries offered to pay for what became the first flight across the English Channel in 1785.

John Jeffries later wrote that they sank so low crossing the English Channel that they threw everything overboard including most of their clothing, arriving safely on land "almost naked as the trees."

The first military use of a balloon was at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794, when L'Entreprenant was used by the French Aerostatic Corps to watch the movements of the enemy. On 2 April 1794, an aeronauts corps was created in the French army; however, given the logistical problems linked with the production of hydrogen on the battlefield (it required constructing ovens and pouring water on white-hot iron), the corps was disbanded in 1799.

The first major-scale use of balloons in the military occurred during the American Civil War with the Union Army Balloon Corps established and organized by Prof. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe in the summer of 1861. Originally, the balloons were inflated with coal gas (aka town gas) from municipal services and then walked out to the battlefield, an arduous and inefficient operation as the balloons had to be returned to the city every four days for re-inflation.

Eventually hydrogen gas generators, a compact system of tanks and copper plumbing, were constructed which converted the combining of iron filings and sulfuric acid to hydrogen. The generators were easily transported with the uninflated balloons to the field on a standard buckboard. However, this method shortened the life of the balloons, because traces of the sulfuric acid often entered the balloons along with the hydrogen.

The first application thought useful for balloons was map-making from aerial vantage points. Later their value in aerial reconnaissance was realized and put into use as a Forward Artillery Observer (FAO) by directing artillery fire via flag signals. Meanwhile across the pond the experimental balloon ascents for reconnaissance purposes were conducted by the Royal Engineers on behalf of the British Army.

During the Paraguayan War (1864–70), balloons were also used for observation by the Brazilian Army. Observation balloons were retained well after the Great War, being used in the Russo-Finnish Wars, the Winter War of 1939–40, and the Continuation War of 1941–45. The advantage of observation by the enemy must be eliminated and balloon busting was sometimes a full time gig for some pilots.

[B]Attacking[/B]
Balloon busters were military pilots known for destroying enemy observation balloons. Seventy-six flying aces in World War I were each credited with destroying five or more balloons, and thus were balloon aces. To help those pilots, their aircraft were fitted with incendiary rounds to catch the hydrogen balloons on fire. Tactics were employed to tip the favor in their direction.

Attacking solo and low to the ground, the enemy wouldn't think it was a hostile plane. Some attacked from the clouds to catch the observer offguard. Some attacked from below the balloon if they could. Lorries were used to quickly reel in the balloon at the sign of an attack. Others would attack, not from the sun but going away into the sun making it difficult for the enemy to target them.

[B]Defense[/B]
Due to their importance balloons were usually given heavy defenses in the form of anti-aircraft artillery and standing fighter patrols stationed overhead. Other defenses included surrounding the main balloon with barrage balloons; stringing cables in the air in the vicinity of the balloons; putting machine guns in gondolas for observers to use; and flying balloons booby-trapped with explosives that could be remotely detonated from the ground. These measures made balloons valuable but very dangerous targets to approach.

The observers did have parachutes but sometimes they would catch on the rigging or the flaming balloon would hit them on the way down. There are accounts where pilots would shoot the parachuting observer since it was more difficult to replace a trained observer than a burst balloon.

An interesting video from a game I found online [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feVuWSaWdL8"][B][COLOR="#FF0000"]Balloon Busting[/COLOR][/B][/URL].

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