The Dandelion Offensive

 Strange offshoots of technology are quite fascinating.

M.G. Mangin, Aéronaute

Lighter-than-air travel especially enchants me. While not dead and dusted, the golden age of airships is long since passed. I have much to say about powered LTA vehicles, but why not start with something simpler? This post details a concept I have thrown around a few times in my mind. I call it The Dandelion Offensive.

The idea would be an early attempt at an airborne assault conducted without airplanes, possibly even before their invention. What would carry the forces conducting the assault? Balloons, of course! Benjamin Franklin detailed something rather like what I envison:

"Five Thousand Balloons capable of raising two Men each, would not cost more than Five Ships of the Line: And where is the Prince who can afford so to cover his Country with Troops for its Defense, as that Ten Thousand Men descending from the Clouds, might not in many Places do an infinite deal of Mischief, before a Force could be brought together to repel them?"

The Siege of Paris in 1870 saw extensive use of unpowered balloons to cross enemy lines, perhaps it could have inspired an offensive balloon corps? Though such a body would be much more limited than a parachute corps. They would need to find a wind current which was friendly to their needs, and pray that it remained so during the operation. The balloons would be highly visible on landing, and any weather that could conceal them would likely wreck the small craft. Even before the development of dedicated anti-aircraft weaponry there were numerous instances of small arms and repurposed cannons bringing down balloons. Perhaps sufficient numbers could offset that danger, callous though that may seem. Operation Market Garden and events like it reveal the difficulties in reinforcing and coordinating airborne infantry following a drop, something which could only be made worse in an era without portable radios. After the invention of radios and planes the whole exercise becomes moot, since any enemy air presence would turn the operation into a duckshoot. 

There would nevertheless be advantages to the scheme. With back-of-the-napkin math at a low altitude and light load approximately 200 square metres of material would be needed per balloon. Nowadays 200 square metres of Goldbeater's skin (200 square metres being approximately how much a 2 person Caquot balloon with a ceiling of 500m would require if spherical) costs around 226 pounds, which translates to 1.5 pounds in 1900. Tens of thousands of men could be outfitted for less than the cost of a single Destroyer, each balloon individually being over ten times less expensive than a rifle. And via that same logic, low-cost decoy balloons could be sent at a lower altitude or in a first wave to try and tie up any anti-air assets in use. This is of course assuming the balloons are filled with inexpensive hydrogen, since helium was not widely adopted until the 1920s. 

But even with the advantage of cost this is not an advisable undertaking. That is the idea. Many creative sorts enjoy designing detailed magic systems or top-of-the-line machines. Things of beauty and precision and complexity, form and function melded together as one. I prefer dodo birds. Evolutionary dead-ends and horrible ideas brought to life through the ego of their mad creators. This is why my miniature conversions are so often twisted mutants, or why I find so much joy in a fictional failed state. My tanks catch fire at random, my aircraft tear themselves to bits while turning, and my military strategies are shambolic by design. The Dandelion Offensive is fundamentally a tragedy. It is sending thousands of men aloft on flammable platforms with no way to control their path or defend themselves. It is the sort of undertaking that a general promotes to raise his own standing, that a company undertakes to squeeze profit from war, and that a soldier accepts because he must.

It is hardly a coincidence that I first conceived of it while listening to Curly's Airships.