HOT AIR AND SILK SKIRTS: THE CONFEDERATE AIR FORCE
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
head up a detail to build and deploy an observation balloon.
Bryan, only 21 years old at the time, was an aide-de-camp to Brigadier General John B. Magruder and had no previous experience with ballooning whatsoever. Nevertheless, he took to the assignment with gusto. The balloon made for him was rather crudely constructed, consisting of a cotton envelope made marginally airtight by a coating of varnish. Unlike the hydrogen-filled aerostats used by the pilots of the Union Balloon Corps, Bryan’s balloon was filled with hot air, simply because equipment for generating hydrogen was not available to the Southern army in the field.
Despite his inexperience and the limitations of his equipment, Bryan proved to be a capable aeronaut during his first excursion. On April 13, 1862, he launched his balloon over Yorktown, Virginia, during the Peninsula Campaign. Union gunners immediately unleashed shots at the skimpy wicker basket suspended beneath the balloon, and Bryan signaled via semaphore to his ground crew to let out more tether line to increase his altitude. Once safely out of range, he began sketching a map of Union positions. The task was complicated by the balloon’s tendency to rotate constantly on its single tether. However, from his vantage Bryan noted “a wonderful panorama spread out...Chesapeake Bay, the York and James Rivers, Old Point Comfort and Hampton...and the two opposing
armies lying facing each other.”
Not long after his first flight, Bryan was ordered by General Joseph E. Johnston to take to the air again over Yorktown. As Confederate soldiers watched Bryan’s ascension with awe, one of the men accidentally became tangled in the balloon’s tether line. The hapless enlisted man was being dragged up into the air, but a quick-thinking soldier seized an axe and severed the cord securing the balloon to the windlass. Bryan was surprised to find himself in free flight for the first time.
Wind currents buffeted the craft above both Northern and Southern encampments. After a few hours, Bryan was relieved to see the camp of the Confederate 2d Florida below, until the soldiers of that regiment, mistaking him for a Yankee spy, opened fire on him. Bryan was able to escape and stay airborne, finally landing in an orchard that fronted the York River near Williamsburg.
Although Bryan soon retired from aerial duty, the Confederacy was hardly ready to yield air supremacy to the Union. The balloon operations that followed Bryan would form the basis for one of the most enduring legends of the Confederacy – the so-called “Silk Dress Balloons.” The popular story is that a call went out to the grand belles of the South, asking them to donate their finest silk dresses to construct a balloon that,would save their country. Like so many myths, this one has little to do with reality.
The second Confederate balloon was actually the brainchild of Captain Langdon Cheeves of Savannah, Georgia. Cheeves built his balloon at the Savannah Armory in the spring of 1862. Because balloon silk was a scarce commodity in the war-torn South, Cheeves’s balloon was built entirely of multi-colored dress silk – not of actual dresses. Despite the colorful appearance of Cheeves’s balloon, not a single Confederate belle was forced to sacrifice her Sunday best for the cause.
When General Robert E. Lee required reconnaissance of Union positions for his planned offensive on Gaines’ Mill, Virginia, in June 1862, Cheeves was ordered to report to Richmond with his balloon. He was robbed of his opportunity to serve his country aloft, however, when the “Silk Dress Balloon” was captured by the Union ironclad Monitor during the airship’s journey down the James River aboard the C.S.S. Teaser on July 4, 1862.
A final Southern experiment with aerial observation came in the summer of 1862, when balloon enthusiast Charles Cevor began construction of a 7,500 cubic-foot aerostat at the behest of General P. G.T. Beauregard. As Cheeves had, Cevor reportedly used various colored pieces of silk to construct his ship, making this the second “Silk Dress Balloon.” Cevor’s balloon went into service at Richmond in the fall of 1862 and remained as an aerial observation post in the Confederate capital until the following summer. According to accounts, Cevor’s balloon “proudly wore its bright flowered pattern, squared off by multi-colored plaids and iridescent blues” until one day it was blown from its mooring and captured by advancing Union troops. The bits and pieces that remained were unceremoniously cut apart, sent to Washington, D.C., and given to members of the U.S. Congress as souvenirs.