Balloon ship
A balloon ship was a ship equipped with a tethered balloon for observation . They were used by various navies during the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century in order to have the broadest possible view of the surrounding sea. After various experiments, the design was formalized at the beginning of the 20th century, but was soon displaced by the development of aircraft mother ships and aircraft carriers at the beginning of the First World War .
history
Balloons were the first aircraft that were abandoned by ships and used for military purposes. As early as 1798 during the Egyptian expedition , the ship La Patriote carried a balloon, which, tied up near the coast, was supposed to serve as reconnaissance. However, the ship sank off Alexandria before a first attempt at flight was made. In 1803, the British Admiral Charles Henry Knowles suggested equipping a frigate with a tethered balloon, which was supposed to serve to investigate French preparations for invasion in the port of Brest.
The first known actual use of a balloon from a ship took place on July 21, 1849. At that time, the Austrian marine steamer Volcano let a manned hot air balloon rise in order to be able to drop bombs on Venice, but unfavorable winds made the attempt fail.
During the American Civil War (around the time of the peninsula campaign of the Union states in Virginia to push back the Confederate troops and capture their capital, Richmond) balloons were used to spy out the positions of the Confederate Army . However, the battles soon shifted to the densely forested interior of the peninsula, which the balloons could no longer reach.
A coal freighter, the George Washington Parke Custis , has been stripped of the deck rigging to accommodate the gas pumps and balloon devices. From there, Prof. Thaddeus SC Lowe, Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps, made his first ascents over the Potomac River and telegraphed messages of the first successful balloon flight in history to be launched from a ship. As a result, more barges were converted to help out with more military balloons. They were transported by the eastern waterways; none of these civil warships has ever sailed at sea.
Types
Balloons rising from ships led to the formal development of balloon ships of the navies of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Sweden prior to World War I.
About ten such ships were built, which were either decommissioned after the war or converted into aircraft mother ships.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Hans-Joachim Mau, Charles E. Scurrell: Aircraft carrier carrier aircraft . Bechtermünz Verlag, ISBN 3-86047-122-8 , p. 8
- ↑ The history of the aircraft carrier from the First World War to the present day . Karl Müller Verlag, ISBN 3-86070-8147 , p. 7
- ↑ Carriers: Airpower at Sea - Chapter 1: The Early Years on: Sandcastle VI
Remarks
- ^ According to Hans-Joachim Mau, Charles E. Scurrell: Aircraft carrier carrier aircraft . Bechtermünz Verlag, ISBN 3-86047-122-8 , p. 9