The balloon that started the US Air Force

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This podcast was produced on the lands of the Wabakal and Gadigal people.

G'day, Matt Bevan here.

So the good news is I'm on the mend from the flu that has plagued me for the last few weeks and my voice is sounding

okay,

I think.

The bad news is that being sick means that we are running about three days behind schedule, which isn't ideal when you're trying to come up with smart things to say about the ceasefire in Gaza.

We will be back on Thursday with an original episode about that, but in the meantime, we're bringing you a very fun interview I did with Mark Finnell a little while back.

Well, kind of an interview that Mark Finnell did with me, when my voice was significantly less sick for his show, no one saw it coming.

This chat is about one of the topics I have been secretly but particularly obsessed with over the last little while: balloons.

This one is about how balloons are used for spying.

I hope you like it.

Professor Lowe is on stage in Cincinnati.

He's wearing a top hat and tails, and he's speaking to an enraptured audience.

The year is 1861, and he's explaining this sort of outlandish theory that there's a wind high above the people on the ground that travels from west to east.

And he's going to prove this theory by riding that wind across the Atlantic in a really big balloon.

And midway through his speech, one of his assistants came up to him and whispered in his ear that the conditions were looking really good to launch the balloon.

And so without missing a beat, he leaves the stage and starts to inflate his giant balloon.

And he was about to take off in his tailcoat aboard his balloon Enterprise at three o'clock in the morning.

He was ready to take off.

Thaddeus Lowe was about to make history, just not in the way he expected.

Where did this idea of spying on people from the sky start?

And yeah, it started with this guy.

My name is Mark Finnell, and this is the story of how one very sharply dressed man in a balloon wanted to prove a theory and instead became a spy that changed how wars were fought.

And no one saw it coming.

The theory is actually how I got into this story in the first place.

The theory is something that we now know exists, the jet stream.

So the jet stream is wind, basically, that is high up in the atmosphere and it travels from west to east around the northern hemisphere, right?

And so this allows you to float balloons up into the air, which will drift from west to east.

So this, if you haven't already recognized his voice, this is Matt Bevan.

I am the host and writer of the ABC News podcast, if you're listening.

And Matt, not vastly dissimilar to me, often finds himself heading down rabbit holes in search of good stories.

Do you remember a couple of years ago, there was this strange story of a Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the United States.

So that spy balloon, they think now was sent to spy on Hawaii, on the American naval installations in Hawaii, but it got caught in the jet stream and ended up drifting all the way over the continental United States because anything that gets high enough up and loses control will get gradually drifted over in that direction.

And so Matt traced a story that started with a Chinese spy balloon all the way back to the origins of that jet stream theory, which led him to the year 1861 and to a man with an outrageously fabulous name and an even more outrageously fabulous moustache.

I think the name explains the moustache.

Once I tell you his name, you'll be able to imagine the moustache that this man had.

His name was Professor Thaddeus Sobieski Konstantin Lowe.

And professor, by the way, was very much a self-given title.

He was not a university professor or trained in any particular

expertise.

He was a showman who did something in the sort of 1850s and 1860s that was known as a science show.

Think of a magic show with all the showmanship, but instead of magic tricks, it's like actual science.

He would be making a big spark jump from one electrode to another.

He'd, you know, make this thing lift up.

And his big thing was that he would take off in a balloon and sort of fly above the town, tethered to the ground, almost always tethered to the ground.

This was actually a trade that he had learned and been passed down

from a man with an even more spectacular name who was Professor Reginald B.

Dinklehoff.

These names are spectacular, like truly spectacular.

I don't think that Dinklehoff, that was his real name.

I think that might have been a made-up name.

Thaddeus Sobieski-Konstantin Lowe was really his name, but Professor Reginald B.

Dinklehoff, I'm skeptical.

Okay, so real name or not, the story goes that Professor Reginald was touring his science show in New Hampshire when a young Thaddeus Lowe came to see it, and somehow he just became part of the show.

And Thaddeus just sort of became his assistant and then inherited the equipment and the show and the title of professor when the old master went into retirement.

So that was when he was 18.

This story takes place 12 years later.

He's been doing this show for 12 years.

It's now 1861, specifically the 19th of April, 1861.

And it was on this fateful day that Thaddeus decided to embark on the biggest, boldest kind of scientific showmanship.

He's got this theory that he thinks that this jet stream exists.

And his way to prove that it exists, his plan is he's going to launch in his balloon, go up, up, up high, and then use the jet stream to drift across the Atlantic.

And to raise money and to sort of gin up a bit of excitement and support, he's sort of going on a tour of the northeast of the United States, going to various towns, giving speeches about his plan and all that kind of thing.

And on the 19th of April 1861, he's giving a speech that was at a dinner that was being organized in his honor.

in Cincinnati, being organized by the newspaper the Cincinnati Daily Commercial.

And midway through his speech, one of his assistants came up to him and whispered in his ear that the conditions were looking really good to launch the balloon.

And so he sort of excused himself midway through his speech and he was about to take off aboard his balloon Enterprise at three o'clock in the morning.

He was ready to take off.

The reason Thaddeus needed to leave at such a weird hour was because of the weather, right?

So he needed to make sure that the wind was blowing in the right direction because there is actually no way for for him to steer that balloon.

And so at three o'clock in the morning, when the conditions were just right, Thaddeus takes off without even bothering to change his outfit.

He was wearing his top hat and tails from this fancy dinner.

Three o'clock in the morning, there's a crowd there ready to watch him go.

He packed the basket of the balloon with water, hot coffee, snacks, the early edition of the Cincinnati Daily Commercial Newspaper, waved goodbye to the crowd and took off and disappeared into the darkness.

Can you just paint a picture for me of this balloon?

Because I've read that it is like one of the largest balloons that had been constructed at the time.

Interestingly, it's not a hot air balloon.

It is a gas-filled balloon.

So very long story short, the hot air balloon was invented in the 1790s by the Montgolfier brothers in France, but they had the problem where they had to carry a fire around in order to heat the air to go into the balloon.

Simultaneously, they discovered that if you filled it with a light gas, like hydrogen or helium, or you could also use methane, so like just the gas that comes through in town pipes, and you could inflate a balloon and take off and use that.

And that was by far the preferred method of traveling around until the Hindenburg explosion.

So basically, hot air balloons were invented and then nobody used them for 170 years.

years.

In the intervening time, they only ever used gas-filled balloons and that is what

Thaddeus was using.

And it was a pretty big balloon, not his biggest is my understanding.

He had a bigger one, but this one, for whatever reason, was the one that he was planning on using for his adventure.

And so, yeah, so he was filling it with just town gas and taking off in the middle of the night.

So what did that look like then?

Like, was it closer to the, like the Hindenburg or more like a hot air balloon?

No, no, no.

It looked like what we would imagine as a hot air balloon.

It's just mean, it's just at the bottom, it's like tied off.

It looks like a balloon, really, like, like what would we would imagine a party balloon, really, except made of cloth and

colorful and that kind of thing, you know, nice and nice and bright and pretty.

He was a showman, after all.

So made of various, you know, coloured cloth and pretty similar to current hot air balloons, except tied off at the bottom and with no fire in it to,

you know, what they do with the hot air balloons.

You know, on our show, we add sound effects afterwards.

You don't actually have to do it.

Oh, you don't actually have fair enough.

Yeah,

it's good.

Just a note to the sound designer, you can take a rest on that one.

No, that's exactly what it sounds like.

There's no need.

So he takes off at three o'clock in the morning.

He leaves Cincinnati and he's on his way.

This is good news.

Seems like everything's going to plan, right, Matt?

Right?

Yeah, so he takes off and he's flying towards Washington.

And at sunrise, he lets out a little bit of gas in order to come down and figure out where he is.

It's been very windy through the night.

He knows he's traveled quite far.

But he comes down and

he sees some plowmen plowing a field.

And he shouts to them to try and get their attention, right?

But these plowmen in a field have never seen a balloon and they're hearing this voice and they have no concept that the voice could be above them.

And so they're just sort of looking around at ground level for where this voice is coming from.

And so they're kind of sort of looking around and eventually he just shouts, what state is this?

And the plowmen kind of shout to nobody at all, just sort of to the to the ghostly voice embodied voice.

They're like, oh, it's Virginia.

And Professor Lowe thinks this is fantastic because Virginia is right in between where he took off and where he needs to go.

But the problem was that Virginia is a very large place, a very large state, and the bit that he wanted to be at was in the very top corner of Virginia, and he was in the opposite corner of Virginia.

So sometime in the night, he had been blown very significantly off course.

He wasn't aware of this, and the plowman on the ground had just told him that he was in Virginia.

So he launches off again and travels a bit further.

And the other piece of information that he doesn't have is that Virginia is now not part of the United States anymore.

Virginia is part of the Confederate States of America.

He wasn't across this fact.

Yes, while Thaddeus was in the air, the U.S.

Civil War was unfolding below him, which saw the North, the Union, and the South, the Confederates of the country, pull apart.

And so when he asked, what state is this, he probably should have been asking, what country is this?

Yeah, what country is this?

Exactly, exactly.

But it didn't occur to him to ask that.

So he took off, you know,

he launched his balloon.

He went a bit further along and he saw a town, a small town, and he's like, I'm probably coming in somewhere near Washington, D.C.

So I'll come down and I'll land here and I'll jump out and I'll ask the locals where I am.

And they probably won't freak out too much because I imagine that the people around Washington, D.C.

have probably seen a balloon before.

It'll probably be fine.

Spoiler alert, it was not fine.

So Thaddeus wasn't anywhere near Washington, D.C.

He was hundreds of kilometers away in the town of Pea Ridge, South Carolina, very much in the Confederate States of America, which as of that morning was at war with the United States.

So they weren't super jazzed to see him.

They kind of thought that he might be the devil because, you know, this man had descended from the sky wearing a top hat hat and a frilly suit and started greeting them in a New England accent.

Famously, the devil speaks with a New England accent.

Well, if you're in the Confederacy, definitely.

Yeah.

And so he decided to offer them some gifts.

So he pulls out his bottle of water and his thermos.

He poured his boiling hot coffee out to prove, look, I haven't been flying for very long, so I've come from somewhere nearby.

Don't worry about it.

And then he cut open the water bottle to show that the water inside had frozen solid because he'd been up in freezing temperatures up in the sky.

But as it turned out, this just made everything much, much worse.

Because, you know, this man had now landed.

He's got the New England accent and he's in this weird suit.

And he's just produced from one bottle boiling water and then from another bottle frozen water in an age when refrigeration doesn't exist.

And so they're going, this is straight up witchcraft.

One man straight up accused him of being the devil, you know, to kind of go, how could anyone but Satan himself produce a block of ice and boiling water from the same basket?

So basically, the one old man stepped forward and said, he's probably not the devil.

He's probably a spy from the Yankees.

You know, he's a Yankee spy.

We just have to shoot him because we're at war with them.

And Professor Lowe responded by turning back to his basket, pulling out his gun and threatening to, quote, dispatch the first man who should make any hostile advances, end quote.

Yeah, so things are not going well at this point for Thaddeus.

Not only has he accidentally landed his balloon in the Confederate States of America, he's been accused of being Satan, and now he's in an armed standoff.

Long story short, no one actually gets shot.

But Thaddeus does get arrested and put in custody overnight.

And by the next morning, he has inadvertently made history.

He learned that he was now a prisoner of war, the first ever held by the Confederacy, and the first prisoner of war of the American Civil War.

This did not necessarily mean bad news for him.

A local politician asked him to come for dinner.

An angry mob, though, then kind of came and threatened to hang him.

Then finally, the head of the University of South Carolina vouched for him and gave him a passport issued by the mayor of the city of Columbia.

And the passport read, this is to certify that Professor T.S.C.

Lowe, now accidentally in our midst, is a gentleman of integrity and high scientific attainments and trust that this letter to which I have affixed the seal of the city of Columbia, South Carolina, will answer as a passport for him through the Confederate States of North America.

Signed, W.H.

Boatwright, Mayor.

And with this piece of paper, Thaddeus was a free man again.

But this whole experience had given him this new lease on life.

He wasn't going to cross the Atlantic now.

He had a new idea.

Yes, a new idea that was actually planted by the Confederates themselves.

He's been very clearly given an idea by the people of Pea Ridge, which is they accused him of being a Yankee spy.

And he was like, maybe I could be a Yankee spy.

So how does one begin?

I've had the thought, why don't I be a spy?

But how does one start, Bat?

So his idea was that he could spy on the enemy using his balloon, using balloons, right?

And he decided that he would basically go and tell the US government, I've had this idea for spying from balloons.

How about, you know, you help me out with this.

But the US Army were kind of skeptical that it would be of any use,

basically saying, yeah, okay, so you could fly over the battlefield.

That would give you a very good view of the enemy's position.

But how are you actually going to help anybody on the ground?

And what exactly are you going to do for us if you get blown off course and end up 900 miles away in South Carolina?

All very good points, you might argue.

But Thaddeus was not deterred, and he keeps trying.

And somehow, he manages to land himself a meeting with President Abraham Lincoln and one very skeptical general.

So eight weeks after his flight, he goes into the White House to meet with the Secretary of War and the head of the U.S.

Army, whose name was Winfield Scott.

General Scott was one of the main opponents of the whole idea.

He thought the whole thing was stupid and pointless.

He was known by his men as old fuss and feathers

and was totally uninterested in the idea of using balloons for reconnaissance.

Lowe explained his plan to the president and the whole time he was doing that, General Scott was making disapproving grunts and noises, just going,

you know, you can add those sound effects too.

So he's really not keen on it.

But then General Scott in the meeting sort of folds his hands over his big paunchy tummy and falls asleep.

What ends up happening is Thaddeus and Lincoln sort of just speak quietly.

and let General Scott sleep.

And while he's asleep, General Scott is unable to dispute anything

and by the end of the meeting Lowe leaves with a check of $250

and the president's approval for a demonstration of the potential usefulness of his balloon for reconnaissance.

Right?

So don't fall asleep in important meetings.

That's the lesson for General Scott.

So Thaddeus Lowe now has approval from President Lincoln himself to demonstrate how he can use his balloon to spy on people.

And after splashing some of that sweet presidential cash, he's able to launch his balloon outside the white house a week later and inside the balloon he's got a telegraph machine qmat bevan sound effects like a morse code

that kind of machine the telegram machine is connected via wire dangling from the balloon to the network of the telegraph company so he can now send a telegraph wherever he wants in the world from his balloon.

He sends the telegraph to President Lincoln, who is watching from his balcony.

The message that is sent is from the Balloon Enterprise, Washington, D.C., 18th of June, 1861, to the President of the United States.

Sir, this point of observation commands an area nearly 50 miles in diameter.

The city with its girdle of encampments presents a superb scene.

I have the pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed.

from an aerial station and in acknowledging indebtedness for your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service of the country, signed TSC Lowe.

And he's at that moment feeling the exact same way I do whenever I get on a plane that does have Wi-Fi.

That's right.

Absolutely.

That's what this story is about.

This story is about the, no one saw it coming.

This is the invention of airplane Wi-Fi.

So he comes down.

By the time he gets to the ground, Lincoln has sent him a congratulatory reply.

But General Scott is still stopping Lowe from using his balloon in battle.

So Lowe goes to see the president and says that General Scott is still stopping me.

Lincoln grabs his hat, says, come on, marches out into the hallway, storms into General Scott's office with Professor Lowe sort of following behind him.

You've got to remember that Lincoln is a really tall guy as well.

Large, imposing figure.

He says, General, this is my friend, Professor Lowe.

He is organizing an aeronautics corps for the Army and is to be its chief.

I wish you would facilitate his work in every way.

And that's it.

Balloons become a key part of the Union's war effort from that day on.

So this is essentially the beginning of what we now know as the U.S.

Air Force.

But how did it actually, like, how does aerial reconnaissance at this point in time work?

Like, take me through what being a balloon war spy involved for somebody like Thaddeus Lowe.

So he'd go to a battlefield somewhere and he would take off in his balloon, hovering above the battlefield, tethered to a wire,

which was a telegraph wire, to a receiver on the ground.

And so what he could see is, so he'd be above like the Union Army's cannon corps.

The cannons would fire a volley over at the enemy.

and he'd send down, you missed to the left.

And they would reorient their cannons and fire again.

And he'd go, okay, now you need to be a little bit closer to you.

They reorient the cannons a little bit further.

And so they were able to shoot at things that they couldn't see from the ground and accurately hit them by basically just being given warmer, colder instructions from Thaddeus Lowe from the balloon.

So it's also the birth of Marco Polo and Battleship, the board game.

Yes, it's exactly the birth of battleship.

So another thing that they did was they tethered the balloons to ships, to naval ships.

So they'd go around with the naval ship with a balloon above it, and the balloon would be able to see if there were any other ships on the horizon to shoot at or whatever, and assist with range finding with the cannons on the ship.

Is he not a bit of a target, though?

Like, surely he's the most obvious thing to hit.

He is, absolutely.

But the thing is that this is the 1860s, remember?

And the people who are trying to shoot at him are shooting at him with muskets and cannons.

And muskets and cannons are not designed to shoot up in the air.

And so basically all of the enemies were constantly trying to shoot him, but he was high enough in the air that none of their bullets could reach.

And so he became known as the most shot at man in the world.

So they're constantly trying to shoot each other down and they were totally unsuccessful.

And that was the birth of aerial reconnaissance and air forces, basically the military use of aircraft, was invented by Thaddeus Lowe after he was accused of being a Yankee spy when he landed in Pea Ridge, South Carolina.

That's incredible that all of this aviation history, all of this spy history,

and also the history of the board game battleship, which is not canon, but let's imagine that it is, can all be linked back to this one guy drifting off course in the middle of the night.

Yep.

Well, let me just say this.

If anybody listening to this has balloon-based content that they would like Matt to investigate, please do let us know.

No one saw it coming at abc.net.au.

And of course, you can find brilliant content from Matt.

I'm going to say the word content because I hate the term, but now that you're a multi-platform super-powered brand, this is what you are.

Powerhouse.

That's right.

Powerhouse.

You can hear more of the powerhouse that is Matt Bevan on the great many iterations of if you're listening, the podcast, the YouTube.

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Matt Bevan,

this has been a delight.

I'm levitating as I exit this studio.

Yes, it's like you're filled with helium.

But not hydrogen.

No, because that would be bad.

So there you go.

Balloons.

I'll be back on Thursday with an episode about NASA.