Long Before Chinese Spy Balloons there were Austrian Terror Balloons: History's First Use of Hot Air Balloons in Warfare 1849

  An American observer named Edmund Flagg who was working as an envoy on behalf of the United States government to the nascent revolutionary Republic of San Marco described what he saw floating in the skies above Venice on the morning of July 15, 1849 as, “Dozens of small cloudlets.”  He said that, “Every five minutes, or so it seemed, scores of them would come majestically floating over the city.”

That day, although the city of Venice, the City of Canals, had been under siege by the Austro-Hungarian Army and Navy for nearly five months, thousands of Venetians were out and about in the city’s squares to celebrate a day of Thanksgiving dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who thus far had brought their tiny rebellious Republic through a year and a half long War for Independence against the mighty and powerful Habsburg Empire of central Europe.

A later generation of historians would call what happened in Venice and other Italian cities during 1848-49 in the midst of Europe’s Year of Revolutions (1848) the First Italian War for Independence, but at the time, Venetians felt that their struggle was one of good against evil; God against the Godless.

On the cloudless morning of July 15, 1849 a massive crowd in the Piazetta stood transfixed, and genuflected in the public square not out of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, but out of the seemingly other-wordly sight that greeted their eyes as they looked up towards the heavens.

Hands pointed upward, people blinked and murmured in amazement. 

There were so many objects floating in the air above Venice that morning, at that moment, that to some it seemed like the sun itself had been blotted out of the sky.

And then, as even smaller specks of fire began to descend from these floating cloudlets and plummet down toward the city, and the truth of what was happening dawned on the unsuspecting Venetians gathered below in the many public squares, women screamed and men started to run for their lives in terror.

Sources differ as to the exact number, but on July 15, 1849, perhaps as many as 200 unmanned hot air balloons, each carrying 33 pounds of explosives, drifted over the city of Venice in history’s first aerial attack, and the first ever recorded aggressive use of hot air balloons in the history of warfare.

Long before Chinese Spy Balloons drifted over the American mainland in an attempt to gather intelligence and cause panic, Austrian Terror Balloons were sent on a bombing raid in the skies over Venice in a failed attempt to break the deadlock of a month’s long siege.

It didn’t work.  But much of the technology employed by the Austrian Navy in the making and deployment of their so-called balloon bombers was revolutionary and literally hundreds of years ahead of its time.

The idea for the hot air balloon bombs originated in the mind of an Austrian artillery officer named Franz von Uchtatius, who prior to assuming command of all Austro-Hungarian cannon besieging Venice in 1849, had been in civilian life, a largely unsuccessful inventor and renowned tinkerer with an interest in electricity and the chemical composition of metals

After the First Italian War of Independence, nearly two decades later in the late 1860’s Franz von Uchtatius would go on to receive some world renown in military circles after he figured out a way to strengthen the metal alloys used to make cannon, but for the time being in the summer of 1849, von Uchtatius was more concerned with breaking the siege of Venice any way that he could--including by using hot air balloons as terror weapons.

His idea for delivering his balloon bombs to Venice was nothing short of ingenious.

Franz von Uchtatius

An article from the year 1849 published in the journal Scientific American reported that von Uchtatius’ unmanned balloon bombs were detonated, “by electro-magnetism by means of a long isolated copper wire with a large galvanic battery placed on the shore.  The bombs fall perpendicularly and explode upon reaching the ground.”

This, at least in theory, is how the pilotless hot air balloon bombers designed by artillery officer turned inventor Franz von Uchtatius were supposed to work.  But such a scheme would have required two hundred plus batteries, with two hundred plus very long copper wires attached to them, and then everything would have had to break right as two hundred unmanned hot air balloons drifted in the air currents above Venice in order for the bombing raid to succeed.

With such long odds, it’s no wonder that the Austrians first ever aggressive use of hot air balloons in warfare, didn’t really do much to break the five month long siege of Venice, at least not from a purely military standpoint anyway.

But the Austrian Navy was nothing, if not persistent, and they launched not one, but two, unmanned balloon bombing attempts on Venice during July of 1849.

The first bombing attempt three days earlier on July 12th had been, by all accounts, an abject failure.  It was reported that this first attempt failed because, “The wind was not in their favor,” according at least to a contemporary Austrian newspaper.

However, the second unmanned balloon bombing attack was much bigger than the first and even more ingenious.  What made the attack on Venice on the morning of July 15, 1849 so unprecedented in the history of warfare was not simply the fact that it was the first ever air raid in history (though this surely would have been enough to make it memorable!) but part of it was also launched from a sort of improvised nineteenth century aircraft carrier!

Just off shore in Venice’ famed harbor was a ship unlike any that anyone had ever seen before: SMS Vulkan.  The Vulkan, commissioned by the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1843, was a specially designed paddle-wheeled steamer that had been fitted with long ropes to tether hot air balloons to the ship’s deck.  Initially used solely for observation, in July of 1849 during the siege the observation balloons aboard the steamship Vulkan were armed with a piloted balloon equipped with a time-fused bomb to be released over Venice itself.

It seems that only two balloon bombers were launched from the improvised balloon carrier SMS Vulkan and that one of those bombers somehow drifted over Austrian lines and released and detonated its bomb over Austrian soldiers who were besieging the city!

SMS Vulkan

Although the use of balloon bombers during the Austrian siege of Venice in 1849 was largely, even laughably ineffective from a military standpoint, it did like almost all subsequent air raids in history accomplish one important goal--it terrorized the civilian population of Venice and may have hastened the city’s eventual surrender.

Western European newspapers of the time who covered the siege extensively referred to Austria’s balloon bombing campaign as history’s first ever shock and awe campaign, and one in particular, the British Morning Chronicle described the balloon bombers as, “Producing extreme terror in Venetians.”

As one aviation historian, Dr. Brett Holman, has noted of the balloon bombers, “The bombs used were filled with shrapnel which isn’t really much use for anything but killing and maiming people.”  Dr. Holman goes on to say in his article on the balloon bombing for www.airminded.com “There were few qualms on the part of the Austrians about targeting and killing civilians.”

In the end, the Austrian Siege of Venice in 1849 dragged on for over five long months, and eventually two much older weapons, starvation and disease, broke the spirit of the Italian Independence movement and the Republic of San Marco surrendered to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The city of Venice would not be bombed again until June of 1915 during the First World War--once again by Zeppelins of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires in an ironic sort of repetition of history sixty-seven years later.

History’s first balloon raid may not have caused much damage in a military sense, but it did cause fear and terror to enter the hearts and minds of a besieged civilian population in a way it never had before in the history of mankind.  In 1849 hot air balloons were a new and terrifying weapon that drifted across the skies like something out of a science fiction novel, and even today, something as old and out-dated as a balloon drifting across the skies above our heads can still cause fear, terror and dread…