Chapter 2

Observation balloons were so dangerous to attack because they were so well protected. The installation included machine guns and 75 mm cannon, plus the presence of one or more fighter airplanes. Originally, an effort was made to shoot the balloons down with regular ball ammunition, but that was a total waste of time. The balloons couldn't care less about the small holes punched by conventional bullets.

The French came up with the idea of firing rockets with explosive warheads at the balloons. This was a great idea in theory, but it left a lot to be desired when it came to practice. The main problem was that the rockets were unreliable and had a short range for anything like accurate fire. Not only that, the nose of the rocket dipped as soon as it was fired, so the rockets were angled up around 15-20° to compensate for this.

This up angle for the rocket launching tubes made people think that the balloons had to be approached from below. Any plane that did that came within easy shooting distance of the antiaircraft fire and developed an impressive set of holes. The best strategy that anybody had come up with was to approach the balloons at their level and to fire all of the rockets, generally eight of them, in sequence like ripple fire from a squad of riflemen.

The hope was that at least one of the rockets would strike the balloon and start a fire with the hydrogen for fuel. Good luck! Yeah, it worked sometimes, but not often enough to be a good way to bring down an observation balloon while the other side was shooting all it had at you.

Consider the fact that the best of the balloon busters was a Belgian who had brought down 35 balloons in several years of effort. Most of his work had been with the rockets, so you can see how effective the rockets had been. There was nothing wrong with the concept, but the rockets were too damned unreliable to do a good job with the current strategy.

Fortunately, by the time the Americans started trying to knock down balloons, the incendiary bullet had come along. That was much more effective in killing balloons, but only if you could get close enough to score a lot of hits. The problem with the incendiary bullets was that just fire and hydrogen were not good enough, there had to be enough oxygen along to support the hydrogen's combustion. That meant that the hydrogen had to catch fire at the edge of the balloon's envelope where there was some oxygen. Otherwise, the fire would just go out.

I started trying to figure out how to improve the chances of starting a fire in the observation balloon without having my SPAD catch fire or being hit by AAA fire. It seemed to me that diving onto the top of a balloon was a good way to shield yourself from AAA fire. The main problem with that was that the flames from the burning hydrogen were going up as your plane was coming down, so you had to be damned alert not to get caught by the fireball.

It occurred to me that this might be the time to go back to the rockets. The were not all that fast as they flew through the air, so it might be possible to fire the rockets and turn away before they actually struck the balloon. The more I thought about it, the better the idea sounded. I took my idea to Col. Handly to see if I could get him to approve a test run. Of course, my guns would be loaded with the incendiary bullets whether or not I carried rockets, so I was able to talk him into letting me give my idea a try.

I had an advantage because I had shot rockets at balloons at the beginning of the war when I had been flying for the English in that pusher plane. Therefore, I presented a hard-sell as an experienced balloon buster. I think that was what sold him on letting me try my idea.

It did take more persuasion before Sgt. Alfred was willing to go along with chancing "his airplane" with such a wild scheme. I used my same argument on him about me being an experienced balloon buster, so he finally agreed to honor my request. Sure, he could have been ordered to mount those "fool" rockets, but it was better to have him doing it because he wanted to. I had to have everybody's full cooperation to make this idea work, and I was relieved when Sgt. Alfred finally caved in.

We managed to scrounge up some launching equipment and some of the old rockets from stores because everybody had been too busy to worry about getting rid of them. The quartermaster was happy to cooperate because he was at last going to be able to comply with the scrapping order without using any of his men.

It took less than a day to mount the launching tubes, etc. I was ready to leave with the rest of my flight when the takeoff was scheduled for just before dawn the next morning. Like everybody else, Jack thought that I was crazy, but he was good natured enough to go along with my crackpot scheme. He was going to lead the other two planes in covering for me when I made my pass at the observation balloon. If everything went as I hoped, he and the other guys were going to be in more danger than me, but I did not point that out.

We took off with Jack leading the way and me flying as his wingman. I think that was so Jack could keep an eye on me in case I tried an even more stupid idea than the one with the rockets. The added drag from the rockets did make my SPAD the slowest one in the flight, so it was good that Jack was watching me so closely. That kept me from being left behind, especially if we ran into any German fighters before we reached our target balloon.

After about 20 minutes of flying, we reached the site of our targeted balloon. Jack had planned to send one of the planes up with me to act as top cover while he and the other plane flew around at the level of the balloon to distract the AAA people. We still had favorable lighting conditions so that we were very difficult to see, and we were right on top of the balloon crew before it registered with them that we were in the neighborhood.

Jack and Bill Evers opened up on the balloon as they would do in a normal attack, and they started to get a lot of AAA fire. They flitted about and managed to stay in one piece, but they did not get a good sustained shot at the balloon. As far as I could tell, the Germans had not noticed me or John Spencer at about 5,000 feet over the balloon.

The balloon was at about 1,000 feet altitude, so we were hard to see from the ground even in good light, and this early dawn light was doing a good job of keeping us out of sight. I tried to hurry so that Jack and Bill would not be in danger any longer than necessary. I lined up along the length of the balloon and dipped my nose into the steepest dive that I could control.

I accelerated to what must have been close to 160 MPH, and I began to worry about shedding my wings, so I throttled back as much as I dared. I used my machine gun tracer bullets to line me up and launched all of my rockets the moment that I thought I was in proper position. The rockets streaked toward the back of the balloon with more than the usual accuracy because they were going down and not horizontally.

I pulled out of my dive as quickly as I could after firing the last of the rockets and zoomed off to my left. I was still about a thousand feet above the balloon, and had not yet been spotted. John was still orbiting over the action trying to watch the path of the rockets and maintain a lookout for German planes at the same time.

Suddenly, he took off toward the east, and I knew that meant that he had seen some approaching D. VIIs. Just as I decided that I could no longer goof around watching the balloon and the rockets, they made contact, and there was a momentary pause as the rockets tore into the back of the balloon. The rockets did their job and exploded after they had penetrated the skin of the balloon.

Even with all of the careful work I had done in aiming the rockets, only two of the eight actually hit the balloon. But that was enough! There was a heart-stopping fireball that exploded from the balloon's top surface, and the whole thing kind of folded in upon itself as it fell, burning, to the ground. The two observers in the basket under the balloon jumped with their parachutes, and I had to turn away before I could see what happened to them.