jjares reviewed on 5/29/2021 + 3294 more book reviews

This is an amazing story of balloons and airships and how they've been used since 1794! Until reading this, I thought balloons came into being in the 1960s, but I was about a century and a half late to the party. Although most looked at the flying balloons as entertainment, by the 1790s, the French were using balloons in battles with their enemies. Union troops used balloons during the Civil War and even the Confederacy had three balloons. The Union watched troop movements and communicated with a telegraph wire.

This book tells the long and varied history of balloons and dirigibles, and it makes for fascinating reading. Dirigibles had an extensive history before, during, and after World War I and II. Of course, the Hindenburg disaster is included. What I wasn't aware of was that the Germans and the Americans wanted to swiftly resolve the accident; no one wanted to take responsibility for an international incident.

The surprising thing is that dirigibles and lighter-than-air vehicles have not gone the way of the dodo bird; they are used constantly and NASA has extensive plans for their continuation into space. This is a great overview of a surprising aspect of air traffic.

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