Bombers for General Lee?

[atuttle32]

This is an article printed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on January 15, 1950 - since I'm fairly new to Civil War history as it pertains to weapons, etc., this story may already be widely known. I have never heard of it. I tried googling it but couldn't find it ... thoughts? suggestions? opinions?

http://richmondthenandnow.com/Newspaper-Articles/Bombers-for-General-Lee.html

Thanks!
Amelia

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It Seemed a Good Idea at the Time . . .

Bombers for General Lee

By Frank Cunningham

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Packed away today in a crate at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington is a model of a machine that might have turned the tide of the War Between the States.
It is an airplane model, designed by a Confederate engineer with the idea of providing a fleet of bombers for General Robert E. Lee. With control of the air, the South might have broken the North's naval blockade and opened the road to Washington for the men of General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson and the legions of Stuart, Longstreet and Early.
Eighty-eight years ago, to the few who knew of the secret of Powers' bomber, the model looked like the South's answer to gain control of the air from North's armada of balloonists.
The Northern balloons had weak Confederate rivals. The story goes that ladies of the South contributed silk dresses to make an observation balloon for use against McClellan in his peninsula battles. We do know that this balloon--whether made from ladies dresses or ordinary balloon silk--fell into enemy hands when the vessel from which it was operating was stranded by a receding tide and fell prey to the Yankees. The South also had a cotton hot-air observation balloon.
So the South had its two short-lived balloons. But the North had a large balloon corps, manned for a time by such famed early air conquerors as Professor John Wise, John LaMountain, and Professor T. C. S. Lowe, the commander of the balloon corps.
John LaMountain took up his war balloon from the deck of the USS Fanny and so this ship became the first aircraft carrier in the United States Navy. LaMountain made a umber of observations for the military.
The most outstanding "aviation" work in the war was performed by Professor Lowe. Arriving at the Virginia front in the Fall of 1861, Lowe soon had his balloon, the Union, high in the air observing Confederate movements. He too, had his aircraft carrier, USS Parke Curtis, used for river work. By 1862, Lowe was in command of seven balloons and he had possibly a dozen or so aeronauts and a large ground crew. Because of the rapid ebb and flow of Union fortunes on the Virginia battlefields, Lowe devised mobile gas units for filling his craft.

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Confederate raiding parties unsuccessfully sought to capture the sky eyes of the invaders. Lowe, sometimes with Northern generals in his basket, continued to look down on the movements of the gray-coated troops. With General Stoneman, McClellan's cavalry commander, Lowe is said to have peered almost into the windows of Richmond from their sky perch.
McClellan's Peninsula Campaign fared badly for "Little Mac" and it has been stated that at Fair Oaks his army was saved from destruction by the observations of Professor Lowe.
Far away, at Mobile, Ala., was William C. Powers, an "agricultural engineer-mechanic." Powers felt that the Confederacy could break the blockade from the air. Powers knew balloons were not the answer. They raised comparatively small loads and could not be steered.
The Confederate government had offered $100,000 to anyone devising a means of smashing the Federal ring around Southern ports. Powers got to work with pencil, drawing instruments and an amazing knowledge of engineering. His model plane was built. To quote the Smithsonian Institution:
"This model which he constructed, and the accompanying plans which are additional evidences of his ability, and of the detailed thought he put into his work, revealed that he intended to put to use a steam engine as power. It was to rotate shafting and gears and drive two pairs of rotors or air screws; one pair to raise the shaft vertically, the other to drive it horizontally. A rudder was provided for steering and a rolling weight was to balance the craft fore and aft."
The car was to be 68 feet in length and the screws were to run at 6 9/22 miles per minute. The car was designed with a criss-cross slatting framework. Oddly enough, the same design was later used in the construction of the British-built Blenheim bombers as it was felt that such construction afforded strength and, at the same time, lessened the possibility of damage from enemy guns. An examination of the model and the 16 sheets of drawings accompanying it reveal that while it would not fly--it had too limited power and the airscrews were not properly efficient--it does contain "several features of the modern successful helicopters."

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And what happened after Powers had built the model?
The ingenious Confederate inventor hid it!
The superior resources of the North meant that if such a craft should fall into Yankee hands the mighty plants would turn out many of these air bombers and the stars over the Southern cities and plantations would witness the carnage wrought by the airborne invaders.
Death might come to the Confederacy but it must never come through the air!
Powers' model was given to the Smithsonian Institution by William V. and Clara McDermott. It has its place among the great "flying machines" of history.
Today, though, the model rests in a crate at the National Museum. It was placed there along with other historical relics during World War II and hasn't been returned to the display cases.
Few people ever heard of Powers' bomber. Few ask about it at the Museum today.

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[M E Wolf]

Southern Historical Society Papers.
Vol. XXXVII. Richmond, Va., January-December. 1909.
Tells Story Of Flying Machine Of Confederacy.

Was Designated by Richmond Inventor and Partly Built, Scheme Was to Drop Explosives from Air Into Washington--Destroyed by Gale.
From Richmond, Va., News Leader, September 22, 1909.

Inspired by recent pictures and articles published in The News Leader regarding the flying machine being built by George Bebout, of this city, the following letter has been received, which throws light upon a little known incident of the Confederate war:

"The notice of the aeroplane of Mr. Bebout given in a late issue of your paper reminds me of the trite saying that there is nothing new under the sun. At the same time we hope that Mr. Bebout will not feel badly under the circumstances when he is informed that he is not the first projector of a flying machine in Richmond.

"During the war between the States a machine was commenced which was to take President Davis and his cabinet, together with some ordnance officers, to the upper air of Washington.

"The officers were to be supplied with an abundance of large hand grenades, and when these argonauts of the air were at a point immediately over the top of the White House, perchance during a session of Lincoln's cabinet, combustibles, as if aerolites, were to be dropped.

"It would then proceed to the upper air in the neighborhood of the capital during a session of congress and compel incontinent adjournment. Needless to write that if the mortars in Washington could not have been successfully trained upon this new power in the air, before the executive and legislative branches had been killed or demoralized, the North would have petitioned for peace.

"The yard in which this early flying machine was in progress of manufacture was at the east corner of Seventh and Main Street, a lumber yard. No modern war engine can compare with the potentialities for destruction which was to have been possessed by the Confederate device. Hence, during its construction many spectators observed it.

"It is not known to the writer whether these persons saw only the model, or the parts of the final machine. There was an extensive framework composed of rectangular bars of light, white pine. So far as my recollection goes no canvas for wings or balloon appointments were seen; no motor and no wheels to furnish the machine with a start.

"Doubtless wheels were sufficiently numerous in the inventor's head.

"I regret that I do not know the name of the would-be inventor. For one of its purposes the machine was an eminent success, even before it was completed, for it was made to fly. Indeed it flew into pieces. One night a strong wind came up and relieved the inventor of all embarrassment. There was a rattling of pine bars of an inch in diameter, and splinters filled the air, and thus fled the hope of the Confederacy to appeal to Washington from high heaven.

"It is improbable that President Davis encouraged such diabolism as was intended to be carried out by the promoters of that enterprise.

"In return of the idea the people in Richmond often surveyed the heavens at night and sometimes thought they saw a Yankee balloon ready to drop explosives on the city.

"Had invention progressed as far as it will in the near future, the Federal government of the sixties would not have hesitated to have used air machines for the destruction of the South, or until it should have surrendered. This it would have sought to have justified by the well-worn plea of 'war measure.'"
'THOMAS R. EVANS."

 

[TerryB]

"Reverse the proteleium motors! Engage the omnipton! Man the airstream influencers! Gadzooks, we are making 30 miles per hour! Can the human body stand the strain without damage to the brain and entrails!"