This is the first book since F. Stansbury Haydon's 1941 Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate Armies
to treat extensively the brief but important contributions of ballooning to the war efforts of both sides. The chief man behind the push to use balloons as military reconnaissance weapons was Prof. Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, one of America's premier early aeronauts. Working against a hidebound military uninterested in balloons, Lowe managed to convince President Lincoln of their possible military uses and became the head of a small group of aeronauts who worked with the Union Army of the Potomac. The group surveyed by air the Confederate defenses and troops in northern Virginia during the fall of 1861 through the spring of 1862 and proved of some use during the siege of Yorktown. Lowe persevered with his balloons until the late spring of 1863, when the balloon corps was shunted aside by officers not interested in this innovation; it ceased to exist after Lowe resigned and went home. Evans, founding curator of California's Hillier Air Museum, describes Lowe's introduction of air to ground communications (via telegraph), successful launchings of balloons from ships and an air-directed artillery barrage. The brief operations of a Confederate balloon corps in 1862 is also covered. With Haydon's book long out-of-print, Evans's insightfully written volume, which includes 60 illustrations and three maps, helps fill a gap in existing Civil War literature, but will excite only Civil War and aeronautics buffs. (July)
