In 1869, during the siege of a fort at Wakamatzu by the Imperial Japanese troops, the besieged sent up a man-carrying kite. After making observations, the officer ascended again with explosives, with which he attempted to disperse the besieging army, but without success.
During the siege of Paris, in 1870, there were several experienced balloonists shut up in the city, and the six balloons at hand were quickly repaired and put to use by the army for carrying dispatches and mail beyond the besieging lines. The first trips were made by the professional aeronauts, but, as they could not return, there was soon a scarcity of pilots. Sailors, and acrobats from the Hippodrome, were pressed into the service, and before the siege was raised 64 of these postal balloons had been dispatched. Fifty-seven out of the 64 landed safely on French territory, and fulfilled their mission; 4 were captured by the Germans; 1 floated to Norway; 1 was lost, with its crew of two sailors, who faithfully dropped their dispatches on the rocks near the Lizard as they were swept out to sea; and 1 landed on the islet Hoedic, in the Atlantic. In all, 164 persons left Paris in these balloons, always at night, and there were carried a total of 9 tons of dispatches and 3,000,000 letters. At first dogs were carried to bring back replies, but none ever returned. Then carrier pigeons were used successfully. Replies were set in type and printed. These printed sheets were reduced by photography so that 16 folio pages of print, containing 32,000 words, were reduced to a space of 2 inches by 1¼ inches on the thinnest of gelatine film. Twenty of these films were packed in a quill, and constituted the load for each pigeon. When received in Paris, the films were enlarged by means of a magic lantern, copied, and delivered to the persons addressed.
Spherical canister of compressed hydrogen for use in inflating military balloons. A large number of these canisters may be tapped at the same time and the inflation proceed rapidly; a large balloon being filled in two hours.
In more recent times the French used balloons at Tonkin, in 1884; the English, in Africa, in 1885; the Italians, in Abyssinia, in 1888; and the United States, at Santiago, in 1898. During the Boer War, in 1900, balloons were used by the British for directing artillery fire, and one was shot to pieces by well-aimed Boer cannon. At Port Arthur, both the Japanese and the Russians used balloons and man-carrying kites for observation. The most recent use is that by Spain, in her campaign against the Moors, in 1909.
The introduction of compressed hydrogen in compact cylinders, which are easily transported, has simplified the problem of inflating balloons in the field, and of restoring gas lost by leakage.
The advent of the dirigible has engaged the active attention of the war departments of all the civilized nations, and experiments are constantly progressing, in many instances in secret. It is a fact at once significant and interesting, as marking the rapidity of the march of improvement, that the German Government has lately refused to buy the newest Zeppelin dirigible, on the ground that it is built of aluminum, which is out of date since the discovery of its lighter alloys.
The German military non-rigid dirigible Parseval II. It survived the storm which wrecked the Zeppelin II in April, 1910, and reached its shed at Cologne in safety.
Practically all the armies are being provided with fleets of aeroplanes, ostensibly for use in scouting. But there have been many contests by aviators in “bomb-dropping” which have at least proved that it is possible to drop explosives from an aeroplane with a great degree of accuracy. The favorite target in these contests has been the life-sized outline of a battleship.