"Previous to this time I had never even examined a balloon. My assistant, after giving directions to the men holding the four ropes, told me to take my place in the basket [attached to the balloon]. I complied, and before being fully aware that such was the fact found that we were leaving terra firma, and noiselessly, almost imperceptibly, were ascending toward the clouds I was urged to stand up also. My confidence in balloons at that time was not sufficient, however, to justify such a course, so I remained seated in the bottom of the basket I interrogated my companion as to whether the basket was actually and certainly safe. He responded affirmatively; at the same time, as if to confirm his assertion, he began jumping up and down So wrote Lieutenant George A. Custer of his first ascent in a balloon in the spring of 1862. Ordered by General W. F. "Baldy" Smith to go up and reconnoiter Confederate positions, the young officer was introduced to a mount vastly different from a cavalry charger. This balloon was one of up to eleven "aerostats" employed on behalf of the Union Army in 1862 and 1863 by the civilian "United States Balloon Corps". This organization was born after First Manassas, when President Lincoln persuaded General Winfield Scott to put an eccentric and flamboyant scientist on the governmental payroll as the head of the fledgling Union air force. Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe was an innovator in balloon technology, who carried telegraphs aboard his balloons in aid of airborne reconnaissance and even artillery fire control missions, and who invented a portable gas generator for balloon operations at or near the field of battle. The Balloon Corps traveled with General George B. McClellan to the Virginia Peninsula in 1862. There the balloons were sent aloft every day, weather permitting, to make and revise maps and to watch the enemy. The Confederates soon learned to minimize daylight troop movements, where possible, when under scrutiny from observers in Lowe's aerostats. The value of airborne observation was proved when aerial observers became the first to notice the Confederate retreat up the Peninsula from Yorktown, and when balloonists kept tabs on Confederate maneuvers during the Seven Days' Battles. Even the impoverished Confederates got into the act. Without the resources to fabricate a balloon, the plucky Rebels resorted to the expedient of a call for "every silk dress in the Confederacy" to make an aerostat. A "great patchwork ship of many and varied hues" was stitched together and was employed during the Seven Days, wrote Confederate General James Longstreet after the war. The Confederate balloon was filled from municipal gas supplies, then tethered to a railroad engine or a steamship and towed to a point from where the enemy could be observed. "One day it was on a steamer," Longstreet wrote, "when the tide went out and left the vessel and the balloon high and dry on a bar. The Federals gathered it in, and with it the last silk dress in the Confederacy. The capture was the meanest trick in the war and one I have never yet forgiven." The Union Army never seemed fully to grasp the value of aerial observation and the Balloon Corps disintegrated after Professor Lowe's resignation, just prior to the Gettysburg battle. During 1862 and half of 1863, however, the Balloon Corps made literally thousands of ascents, night and day in all seasons, and frequently under fire, a proud record indeed. The miniature balloon described below will add a striking and dramatic look to your gaming table, and will introduce a spark of novelty to any battle in which it is employed. The rules included are geared to "Johnny Reb", and presuppose the use of real and dummy unit counters upon which the balloon may spy. Confederate forces should be provided with a balloon only rarely. The side playing without a balloon should be afforded an ample number of dummy counters with which to play cat and mouse with the aerial observer. BUILDING THE BALLOON The best looking material for reproducing the "net" from which balloon baskets were suspended is the net-type bag in which grapes or cherries frequently are sold in grocery stores. This thin-stranded material comes already formed in the proper shape. Simply take a round toy balloon (green or blue looks best on the gaming table) and inflate it to about the size of a baseball (any larger and the balloon becomes grossly out of scale). Stretch the net bag over the inflated balloon and bind the open end of the bag with a length of thread. Trim away excess net below the thread, leaving about three quarters of an inch from which to suspend the basket. A serviceable basket can be made from the lid of a small bottle of hobby paint, or some similar small cup-shaped object. Drive a slim finishing nail through the center bottom of your "basket", then bend the point of the nail into a hook with pliars. Paint the entire basket an appropriate wicker shade and suspend the basket from the netting below the balloon. To suspend your balloon above the surface of the battlefield, straighten a wire hanger and bend one end into a hoop approximately five inches in diameter. Bend the rest of the hanger up from the hoop perpendicularly, and bend an arm with a hook over the center of the hoop from which the balloon may be suspended by its netting (see illustration). As a final touch, add an "aeronaut". Stone Mountain's casting of an officer peering through binoculars, placed in the basket, makes an excellent aerial observer. GAMING WITH THE BALLOON Appendix F of the original "Johnny Reb" rules makes provision for use of balloons, with the following limited rules: 1. From where the balloon is located, the observer is assumed to have an unobstructed line of sight of 3600 to a distance of three feet at early morning and late evening, and of five feet at mid-day. 2. For every enemy hidden movement marker within the determined radius, roll one die, with the number indicated meaning that if the number is rolled the opposing side must report whether the hidden movement marker is real or dummy. No other information need be given. marker in open: roll 1,2,3,4 marker in light woods: roll 1,2 marker in heavy woods: roll 1 For visibility purposes the presence of buildings, fences, forts or other obstructions are ignored, but woods are still counted as concealment. The "playability" of the balloon is enhanced, however, by modifying and adding to the above rules as follows. These enhancements simulate the arguably limited utility of an observation balloon, while permitting the balloon to confer some benefit to the player wily enough to exploit such newfangled technology. 1. At the beginning of each turn, the player with the balloon may select one - and only one -enemy unit marker to "observe". If the roll is successful, the real or dummy nature of the selected marker must be revealed per the Jonny Reb rules (except that counters in the open should be revealed on a roll of 1-5, not 1-4), as well as the type of unit the counter represents (i.e., cavalry, infantry or artillery). The observation roll is made at the very beginning of each turn, but such a roll can only be attempted if the casting representing the overall commander of the forces owning the balloon is within one inch of the ground crew (see below) at the beginning of the turn. 2. Use one stand of three or four infantry castings to represent the "ground crew" of the balloon, the ground crew administers the balloon's mooring, gas apparatus and telegraph, and can be located and moved about anywhere within the circular base of the balloon's stand. The mixed soldiers and civilians of the ground crew move at the disordered rate for the applicable terrain at all times, unless routed. The ground crew checks morale like a single section of artillery, and may be "supported" by batteries, infantry, or both. The ground crew takes saving rolls and hits like an unlimbered artillery crew, except that "kills" need not be inflicted in multiples of two. Melee rules for artillery crews apply. 3. The ground crew may be wiped out, routed, or may voluntarily exit the circular base of the balloon. If the ground crew leaves the circle of the base, however, no observation rolls may be made until the beginning of the turn subsequent to the turn upon which the crew re-enters the circle of the base. 4. If both friendly and enemy units occupy the circle of the base at the beginning of a turn, no observation roll can be made. If only units of one side occupy the circle, the balloon may be "released" (that is, its moorings are cut). The ground crew or unit releasing the balloon must place a "Hold" order and the player must announce the intent to release; any fire by the the unit that turn is halved. If the balloon is released, it is removed from play for the remainder of the game. 5. Moored Civil War era balloons were not terribly mobile. The balloon may only be moved by its ground crew, which places a "Hold" order for the equivalent of eight fifteen minute turns, during which the balloon is "reeled in", packed up and stowed, and during which observation rolls are not possible. The ground crew then moves and takes hits with the stowed balloon like limbered artillery; an additional eight turns without observation rolls are required to deploy the balloon upon its arrival at a new location. The moral: deploy the balloon wisely in the first place! 6. Balloons frequently were fired upon. Because balloons commonly were deployed at a height beyond the effective range of rifled muskets, these rules presuppose that only artillery may effectively fire at a deployed balloon. Because elevation of the guns was a problem, the crew of any section of artillery intending to fire on a balloon must first spend a turn bracing logs and rocks under the gun's wheels, using the procedure for hasty works. Thereafter, if the gun is within thirty inches (measured from the muzzle to the basket), fire by rolling two dice with no modifiers. A roll of 2 is a hit for smoothbores; a roll of 2 or 3 is a hit for rifled guns, and a single hit destroys the balloon immediately. Back to The Zouave Vol IV No. 2 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 The American Civil War Society This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com