Military Use
The first military use of aircraft in Europe took place during the French Revolutionary Wars, when the French used a tethered hydrogen balloon to observe the movements of the Austrian army during the Battle of Fleurus (1794).
In 1811 Franz Leppich went to Napoleon and claimed that he could build a hydrogen balloon that would enable the French to attack from the air. Napoleon then ordered that he be removed from French Territory. In 1812 the secret service from Russia got Leppich Passports with the name Schmidt and then he and a secret undercover person went to Moscow to Count Rostopchin. Near Moscow a "Werft" was set up and with about 50 other German-speaking mechanics, and he started to build "air bouts". When the balloon was finally tried out, they worked but were unable to move against the wind . Leppich did final work after the burning of Moscow, on this about a year longer near St. Petersburg and then he left for Germany again. There he worked on the subject up to 1817. In 1818 he received a patent in his and his brothers name in Vienna for making nails with a punch.
In Tolstoy's novel, War and Peace, Count Pyótr Kiríllovich Bezúkhov (Pierre) makes an excursion to see this balloon though he does not see it. Tolstoy also includes a letter from the sovereign Emperor Alexander I to Count Rostopchin concerning the balloon.
Hot air balloons were employed during the American Civil War. The military balloons used by the Union Army Balloon Corps under the command of Prof. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe were limp silk envelopes inflated with coal gas (town gas) or hydrogen.
Read more about this topic: History Of Ballooning
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