Balloons in Warfare.

Manawatu Herald, 24 February 1900, Page 3

Balloons in Warfare.

When General Buller arrived in Natal he expressed the hope that the successful traps into which the British troops had been led by treacherous guides would teach them the value of scouting. By scouting is not meant merely the employment- of men, mounted or on foot, in advance or on the flanks of a moving force, but observations ot every description, including those from balloons, General Buller has not forgotten to follow his own advice, and the use of a balloon apparently saved him from disaster. His land scouts failed to locate several masked batteries beyond Vaalkrantz, on the road to Ladysmith. But the balloonists detected then, and it was foond that instead of the British guns dominating the Boer position, as cabled last week, the reverse was the casej and the retirement across the Tugela followed. Military balloons are very different in construction to the ordinary pear-shaped silk bags with which we are wont to associate the name. According to descriptions in English papers they are made of skins of the intestines of oxen, and it is stated that no fewer than 40,000 skins are necessary for the construction of one balloon of the average size. The balloons are made at the Ballooning School at Aldershot,

attached to the Royal Engineers. The work is carried on day by day under the eye of Colonel Templer, who has invented nearly all the appliances connected with the balloons, including the skin covering itself. It is always Colonel Templer's boast that he can in six hours provide a dozen balloons, with parachutes and photographic and all other instruments, and have them placed on a railway waggon ready to be taken away. This is achieved by having each balloon, with the requisite, packed up in its own wicker car, all ready to be hoisted on to one of the special carriages that carry the gas cylinders ai d the accomplished army of aeronauts, who ride like firemen on their engines. As will have been seen from the cable messages, several of the balloons at the front are in constant use. The Balloon Corps is subject to a special and a very strict system of drill. When the word command is given, the men spring to their places on the waggon, the balloon is unpacked and filled in a remarkably short time, and hovers over the waggon the horses are whipped up, and the whole concern is rapidly transported to any part of the field. A telegraph wire is attached to the car, and to a small windlass a battery. When the word is given, the balloon shoots upward, the rope attached to it paying out automatically. The aeronauts have special constructed photographic cameras, and each of them has practised mapping from the balloons for years. They know that they are not in any danger, for at the height which they have attained the chances are a thousand to one against the shell hitting them, and even a shrapnel would not wreck them so quickly as to prevent them using their parachutes. So they proceed with their work, and communicate to those below the results of their observation. Besides a regular and separate code of signals they have their telegraph wire, and sometimes they are equipped with wireless telegraphic appliances as well. Hitherto the military balloon has been most freely used by the French. The occasion on which the greatest military service was rendered by the balloons was duriug the siege of Paris, when Gambetta escaped to organise the resistance of the provinces to the invaders. — H.B. Herald.