Weapons Development in Context: The Case of the World War I Balloon Bomber

Abstract

Weapons Development in Context: The Case of the World War I Balloon Bomber CHARLES A. ZIEGLER In 1918, the United States Army carried out a program to develop unmanned, wind-driven balloons as bomb-carrying attack vehicles. The objective was to blanket all of Germany with incendiary bombs and canisters of lethal gas by launching “balloon bombers” in enormous numbers from bases in France where prevailing winds would carry them eastward. The program succeeded, and preparations for the balloon bomber offensive were under way when the armistice intervened. Because the program was cloaked by a “cover story” that disguised its true purpose, the development of this weapon has remained virtually unknown. This account thus fills a small gap in the historical record. From an analytical perspective, however, the significance of the World War I balloon bomber stems from it being the earliest example, albeit in primitive form, ofwhat are today called “weapons of mass destruction.” Hence, by providing a window on the interplay of technological, social, economic, and military factors involved in the decision to develop one of the firstweapons of this kind, this case study sheds light on the genesis of indiscriminate mass bombing as a calculated method of warfare. Background The invention of the balloon in 1783 was followed by suggestions for using balloons in warfare, including proposals to employ them as bombers. Since artillery was a reliable means of bombarding targets at distances up to a mile away, proponents of aerial bombardment realized that balloons would become useful only if they could be brought to bear on more distant targets. These could be reached by bomb-carrying balloons in only two ways: by powering them so they could be steered to the target or by launching them in numbers sufficient to ensure that the wind would cause some to drift over it. Both options were attempted in the first half of the 19th century. Dr. Ziegler is lecturer in cultural anthropology at Brandeis University. Part of the research for this article was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and part was performed while the author was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/94/3504-0009$01.00 750 The World War I Balloon Bomber 751 In 1812 the Russian tsar funded a serious effort to develop a steerable balloon bomber propelled by human muscle.1 This project failed for lack of a suitable power source, as did other 19th-century attempts to construct a practical, steerable balloon. The viability of the second option was contingent on the development of an unmanned expendable bomber. In this regard, the deployment of large numbers of manned balloon bombers in a kind of “shotgun” attack on a distant target was never seriously considered by responsible military authorities. But in 1818 a treatise appeared in which the author, Charles Rogier, suggested that enemy harbors that could not be brought under fire by shipboard cannon or land-based artillery could be bombarded from the air by unmanned, rocket-carrying balloons launched from ships.2 Rogier’s idea was ignored for some thirty years, but in 1848 a lieutenant in theAustrian artillery, Franz Uchatius, began to experiment with a variation of Rogier’s concept—Uchatius’s balloons carried not rockets, but free-fall bombs. He designed an 18-foot-diameter balloon inexpensively made of varnished linen and paper that could carry an explosive-filled bomb weighing up to 40 pounds. The bomb, provided with a contact detonator, was released from the balloon by a fuse that burned through the support rope. Uchatius completed testing of his balloon bombers in the spring of 1849, and that summer he got an opportunity to use them in combat. The Italians had revolted against Hapsburg rule, and in the process of suppressing the insurgents the Austrians besieged Venice. Shallow water prevented their blockading fleet from approaching within cannon range. Although their artillery was able to bombard the city from positions on nearby marshlands for a time, these positions had to be abandoned, and the siege commander called on Uchatius to continue the bombardment by aerial means.3 Uchatius...