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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0373.PDF
JUNE 26, 1909. ARMY AERONAUTICS. THE EARLY STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.—By A MILITARY EXPERT. THE visit which His Majesty paid to the balloon factory at Aldershot recently marked a red-letter day in the history of British military aeronautics, for it was the first occasion that the balloon section of Royal Engineers have been honoured by an inspection by the Sovereign. Years ago the Prince of Wales went down to Sir Hiram Maxim's work and actually took a short gliding trip on that inventor's ponderous steam aeroplane, but that is hardly the same thing. The Royal recognition is all the more gratifying as the Aldershot authoiities have recently been the recipients of a great deal of abuse, coming •chiefly from the uninitiated, accusing them of being behind their Continental rivals. The public are apt to forget that whatever advantage foreign powers may have gained has come from private sources and financed by money found outside the usual grant of their respective Treasuries. Few people are aware of the steady uphill fight against every adverse circumstance and official discouragement through which the Engineers have fought their way to their present position. The proposal to introduce a balloon equipment for reconnoitring purposes was first made by Lieut. Grover in 1863, wno died as Colonel Grover in 1893. This officer read a paper upon the subject at Chatham on April 23rd, 1863, entitled "On the uses of balloons in military operations." The essay was an excellent resume of the history of the balloon up to that year and the advantages that would accrue from a further development. In view of the present sizes it is interesting to note what were considered the essential dimensions in those days. The material it was proposed to use was silk, and the body •was to be 28 feet in diameter with a lifting power sufficient to raise two men to the desired altitude. At any rate the reading of the essay had the effect of rousing the War Office of that day, for one of Mr. CoxwelFs balloons was hired and taken to Aldershot, and after being fitted with •coal gas was experimented with at a height of 1,200 feet. But alas, with that fatal lethargy which seems to have been peculiar to so many generations of War Offices, the experiments languished and were finally dropped, leaving the work to be carried on by a few enthusiastic officers at their own expense. But an event of European importance brought the matter up again with the abruptness of a Jack-in-the-box. This was the Franco-German War of 1870-71. Everyone is familiar with the success of the French in avoiding the •cordon of investing Germans around besieged Paris by means of balloons. A Royal Engineers committee was constituted to consider the matter, and the chief points for their consideration were the nature of the apparatus most suitable for producing hydrogen in the field and the nature of the material to be used for the balloon •envelope. As this is not a scientific article we need not enter into the details of their deliberations, but the first •experi ments of using a fire-clay retort were found unsatis- factory, and wrought-iron tubes were substituted, with good results. Next, Sir Frederick Abel, the eminent •scientist, advised that silk, covered with unvulcanized indiarubber, would be most durable. Having come to these conclusions, practical work was commenced and a furnace was erected at Woolwich Dockyard In the meantime the Ashantee War broke out and the Balloon Committee, anxious to prove the use of the balloon, decided, without watting for the completion of their own equipment, to enter into negotiations with Mr. Coxwell for the supply of a com- plete balloon equipment for the sum of ,£1,200. But the difficulties of transport on the Gold Coast had been overlooked. To have carried sulphuric acid and zinc through the dense bush in packages of 80 lbs. each, whfch was necessary, would so have increased the cost that each ascent would have worked out at ,£2,400! This would have courted failure, and the sub-committee knowing full well that failure meant the abandonment of aeronautics by the War Office, the scheme was quickly dropped like a piece of red hot coal. For the next few years matters remained in the committee stage and seemed to have every indication of remaining in that moribund state, but in 1878 a change came over the scene with startling suddenness. A young Militia officer of the King's Royal Rifles who had been giving a great deal of attention to the subject appeared upon the scene. This was none other than Capt. Templer, better known afterwards as Colonel Templer, Superintendent of the Aldershot Balloon Factory, and it is to his efforts that the British public have to thank that it ever entered into the arena of aeronautics at the period which it did. To commence with, Captain Templer was an enthusiastic aeronaut, and Sir Frederick Abel suggested he should offer his services to the War Office, which he accordingly did, with the result that he was given a grant of J~ijo with which to build a small balloon. People sneer at the stinginess of the grant which the Govern- ment give the Aldershot factory at the present day. Ye gods, just think how far Captain Templer made his grant go. In the place of the ,£1,200 which I have mentioned as having been required by Mr. Coxwell, Captain Templer not only built his first War Office balloon " The Pioneer " for ,£71 but made it so that it did the work required of it. In addition to this, Captain Templer gave instructions to parties of Engineer officers in his own private balloon " The Crusader," and how generously this grateful country rewarded this energetic officer. He was granted a remuneration of ten shillings a day. So that sixteen years after young Lieut. Grover's first pro-' posal, the British Army had actually got a working balloon of its own. Isn't it typical ? Now came the opportunity of proving the practicability of these experiments. The Egyptian War of 1882 broke out, but the chance was lost. Had Sir Gerald Graham possessed a balloon detachment at Kassassin, the whole of the Egyptian position at Tel-el-Kebir would have been laid out like a map. There was one position of which the British forces were ignorant and that was the presence of a powerful eight-gun battery, and the left flank of the British advance passed quite close to it during the night advance. Had the Egyptians been aware of the nearness of our troops and opened fire the story of Magersfontein might have had an Egyptian predecessor, for it was curiously enough the Highland Brigade who were in such deadly peril. But this is digressing. Captain Templer went steadily on, and the experimental work was transferred from Woolwich to the famous School of Military Engineering at Chatham, and the scope of the work was considerably enlarged, particularly in training the officers and men in observation and signalling; and an attempt was made to get a detachment attached to the Nile Expeditionary Force to rescue the beleaguered Gordon in Khartoum. But it was not to be. Before the plans could be matured 375
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