Manned not air balloons existed as far back as the 1700s. Why did it take until WWI for them to be used in any capacity as weapons?
Slower than a horse, so not even useful for communication
compagnie d'aérostiers
>>65095621They used them for observation during the Napoleonic wars. They couldn't do much else because they could only move in the same direction as the wind since they had no engines. Come on man, this is like asking why they didn't use laptops during WW2. Do you normally have trouble with hypotheticals?
>>65095621Because you can just about carry one an extra sardine sandwitch with them as cargo and have almost zero controllability. But they did get kinda used before WWI:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Army_Balloon_Corps
>>65095657>asking why they didn't use laptops during WW2Well, you know, because the other side would have hacked them. Duh.
>>65095621>not air balloonsThen what did they use? Helium?
>>65095621It didn't take that long, the Austrian navy used balloon bombs during the siege of Venice in 1849. But they weren't very effective due the reasons this anon brought up>>65095657
>>65095621there where a lot of problem getting them into action during the Napoleonic warswhen they did go into action their contribution was very minorlargely due to "we see a lot of cav moving around the woods on the left"only for the guys on the ground having found the message they had dropped to go "what woods we don't see any woods"the lesson learned was that until you had a good way of communicating with the observers and good maps you could use to make sure their observations where useful the whole balloon thing was more of a problem than a solution
>>65095621It almost impossible to actually steer them.
>>65095660The sheer clusterfuck of the USA balloon core in the Civil War is hilarious. First American aviator taken POW afaik
>>65095657>They couldn't do much else because they could only move in the same direction as the wind since they had no engines.Just get a couple dozen guys to drag the thing 30 miles
