The Ballooning Civil War
Days after the Civil War began, inventor Thaddeus Lowe landed a balloon in South Carolina on a test flight. Alarmed southerners briefly jailed him as a spy, and after returning to north he became one. Showing President Lincoln he could telegraph enemy locations directly from the balloon, Lowe persuaded Lincoln to make him Chief Aeronaut of the newly created balloon corps. The balloons proved useful, and the rebels were never able to shoot one down. But Union generals could not turn the advantage into victory, and the new technique lost support. War balloons were abandoned in 1863.
World War One saw a revival of the balloon corps, but a newer technology, the aeroplane, got all the glory.
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