Marksmen took a few potshots at the bobbing general as he floated over the enemy, Crouch says. On April 11, 1862, during the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, a balloon carrying a Union general named Fitz John Porter came untethered and began drifting towards the Confederate position. They occasionally blew away, and sometimes blew back again.īut for as long as there have been balloons, the wind has had something to say about where they fly. Civil War, observation balloons were used by the Union Army. 'In military terms, it's always good to be able to get up high to see as much as you can behind the enemy lines,' he says. Crouch, an emeritus curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. When you're fighting a war, perspective matters, says Tom D. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln created the U.S. As early as 1794, the French army operated balloons during the Battle of Fleurus in combat against the Austrians. The love affair with balloons started long before airplanes took flight. And despite it all, nations just don't seem to be able to let go of their balloons. Generals have been put at risk, diplomatic relations strained, and millions of dollars of sensitive equipment ruined.

If the balloon's path really was a mistake, then the incident is just the latest in a long line of errant military balloons, which for over two centuries have been blown hither and thither by everything from breezes to gales China has maintained that it was an 'unmanned civilian airship.' military tracked it as it drifted across the country before an F-22 Raptor brought it down with an air-to-air missile three days later. The balloon was first spotted by the public over Montana on Feb. government is increasingly convinced that an alleged Chinese spy balloon was thousands of miles off of its intended course.Īn official, speaking on condition of anonymity on Thursday, told NPR that the government now suspects the spy balloon was supposed to surveil Guam and Hawaii, but ended up flying over Alaska, Canada and eventually, the rest of the continental United States.Īccording to the official, the probable cause of the course deviation was one of the oldest foes faced by military balloons: the wind.

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