So, let's take it from the top. Excerpted below are the crucial references to lighter than air transportation and warfare. I've chosen mostly the places where people are doing something different than what has been done before in technological terms. For example, Edward VIII made use of it extensively with respect to the Ausrissers, but what's different about that is that it's happening in North America and not Europe. Likewise, Coffmann in Egypt.
Also, passenger travel and even the attempt at some type of trans-Atlantic trip (as anything but an example of mad over-enthusiasm) is going to be taken out.
So, the tests I want to subject all these instances to are as follows:
(1) sufficient vertical lift for the mass it bears;
(2) distance travel (this is conceptually different from the first because it involves the crucial matter of fuel and supplies for the duration of a trip; and
(3) safety from flammability.
1601-Use of steam to power pumps to lift water out of the Saxon silver mines
1614-Karl von Droste publishes his theories asserting that hot air is lighter than cold air, and that the reason why is not reducible to differences in the composition of the air in question but the behavior of the particles of air instead.
1625-The Dutch adopt the Saxon invention of air-skins, and begin using them more aggressively for combat. They find that by keeping the airboats (as they call them) in the west against the setting sun they can blind cannon and musket-fire and easily pick off the enemy from above.
1686-In 1624 Philipp von Veltheim, a German cavalry officer experimenting with theories about the temperature and density of air, invented the German air-skin, a simple hot air balloon that was quickly put to military use by the Saxon army in plotting the movement of enemy forces at a distance, and by the Dutch in some air-to-ground bombardments. However, the vessels were seriously limited in their application by an inability to steer or propel them once launched. For more than twenty years, Louis XIV has been experimenting and perfecting airship design in secret, developing novel systems of sails and screws propelled by means similar to the steam pumps the Saxons use to drain mines.
Thus on a new moon the French airship corps Dieudonne, Apollo and Duc D’Orleans, each consisting of more than fifty balloons bearing five soldiers each, fly from Breda to Amsterdam, over the flooded waterline, and begin depositing hundreds of soldiers by rope ladders in Amsterdam. Even after the presence of the French soldiers is detected and the city garrison alerted, the source of the attack on the city remains unknown, partly because intuitively no one thinks to look up into the sky. The Apollo is the first to be discovered. Having already disgorged its troops and on its way back south, it is brought down by cannon fire.
1688-King Frederick II of England convenes a club of natural philosophers whom he asks to devise means to match and counter the French air corps.
1688-The English at Calles mount the first-ever successful defense against the French air corps.
1689-With Calles still under siege by the French, the English successfully devise a new military use for their more primitive airships, conveying supplies across distances out of range of enemy weapons.
This quickly emerges as a helpful advancement, as with a speed that surprises the Duke of Kent the duc de Luxembourg manages to recover Rennes and the Breton ports that had been supplying his army. Isolated west of Le Mans with the town still invested but his chance of taking it now gone, Kent is isolated. His answer is to march north into Normandy and essentially conduct a chevauchee, making his way along the coast to Calles. Many of his lieutenants consider the notion suicide and ask him to surrender so that they may be taken prisoner as gentlemen.
At the military college of Weimar, the Germans devise their own variant on aerial warfare: in decades past daredevils had taken to jump from high places with the use of large bonnets to catch the wind and slow their descent. After several youths had been killed in the Erzgebirge, the pastime had fallen out of fashion. Now it is revived, but with men jumping out of airships. This has the potential to make the use of airships much more versatile, because they will not have to be anchored to a structure for the soldiers to climb down a rope ladder.
1690-Their land siege of Calles having failed, and their airborne attack on the town having failed, the French now try to blockade it from the sea. The result is another naval defeat for the French. However, it does not counter the increasingly dire state of the town’s fortifications. After a heroic resistance, Calles, the last remaining possession of England’s medieval empire in France, falls.
Finally, the natural philosophers entrusted by the king with research into aerial warfare have results to demonstrate, which they do at Windsor Castle. Desiring improvements on the French airships, they have found a means of keeping ships aloft without the use of flame by applying fumes discovered by Robert Hook, which are produced from the application of sulfuric acid to iron. The demonstrations go well until on the third day the airship explodes in a massive fireball because the fumes are so volatile. The natural philosophers apologize profusely and swear they will not rest until they have designed a safe means of flameless, lighter than air travel. Frederick however tells them not to worry: he finds their idea quite useful.
1692-The English launch a surprise attack in the Netherlands with landings on the island of Goeree-Overflakee. For the first time, the English make offensive military use of the new airships, first by using a new type in which bladders filled with explosive vapors, the airborne equivalent of a fire-ship, is sent against the French barracks at Goedereede, the pilot escaping before impact by means of rope ladder. English airships are then used in the French manner to ferry soldiers onto the island, in addition to boats. The next day the operation is repeated at Schouwen and Tholen.
1693-In the west, the Army of Luther under Von Wangelin achieves a breakthrough at Nijmegen, successfully outmaneuvering the French army and bypassing the strategic fortress of Cleve. Then, in the Battle of the Neder Rijn, the Saxons introduce steam-powered boats on the river bearing artillery. Both battles also feature for the first time airships fighting each other, with an astonishing 35 of 38 total airships on both sides participating being destroyed.
1698-Gerhardt von Closen, of Bremen, adapts the new mechanical means to assist in the aiming of artillery for the purpose of navigating aboard airships.
1703-Sophie dispatches the Army of Grotius to Vienna at once. She also dispatches airships to Vienna. In an alteration designed to make them harder to be shot down, the airships are filled with the combustible vapors the English use to make their fire balloons so combustible, because in sufficient quantity they lift the ships higher, above cannon range.
(1) What fails this as written is the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1686. Elsewhere early on you see how the ships are used militarily: reconnaissance; a way to fire on enemy troops using handheld guns; and a way to transport small numbers of troops.
Clearly, the reference to Louis's efforts to develop steering and superior navigation is a bit of handwavium, but it does not negate the basic military use of the airships in the war as such. Instead, what's clearly the case is that one cannot get a militarily significant number of soldiers, even in a sneak attack, aboard three airships.
Instead of several hundred on three, imagine a hundred with four or five each, and I think the reference stays. The key to the navigation not being a problem is that it's over a very short distance in a narrow window of time with the wind direction ascertained.
(2) In some cases, where the airships are traveling with an established army on the ground, supplies and fuel are not an issue because they are just carried on the ground. In a real sense in these scenarios the ships aren't really transportation, but military platforms.
(3) The idea here is either that hydrogen flammability is dealt with, say in the spectacular failure in front of King Frederick II of England; or it's accepted as a hazard and compensated for. When Sophie decides to use hydrogen in her balloons she essentially trades the flammability against the ability to rise higher and escape ground-based fire.
The fact that the resistance to ground-based fire does not extend to battle between opposing balloon forces is dealt with, because when that happens everything falls from the sky.
Also, not directly addressed but something factored into my reasoning about the use ofairships is the recognition that early modern artillery is not about targeting but about chucking metal (I believe the early eighteenth century is where that begins to change). And gravity does not help when it comes to chucking metal vertically. Hilariously, I can completely imagine an airship hovering over an opposing army, perhaps firing and perhaps not. Panicked, the army beneath it begins firing in an effort to bring it down. And promptly starts killing itself, as the shot falls on its own soldiers. Small arms fire might be more effective, but once again there are tactics to compensate (like the Dutch invention of moving your balloon into the sun of the people you are shooting at, and who are shooting at you).
***
So, I think we've pruned back unreasonable and excessive uses of lighter than air technology (such as troop carriers) and we've kept what reasonably corresponds to what would have been feasible for something close to Montgolfier level technology. In the timeline, they embraced a greater use of it earlier partly out of desperation and daring (whatever kept people from trying parachutes earlier, it was not necessarily the sophistication of the technology).
Now, crucially, I use phrases like airskin, airboat and airship interchangeably. In some ways this is my own desperation to get away from the vocabulary of balloons and give this technology a different name and a different identity.
Now probably in my head the three assault ships that Louis XIV sent into the Netherlands approximated something more like what we would call a rigid airship. Likewise with the other means of long distance travel. Other than that, I haven't really imagined the vehicles involved having a frame. Whatever their name in the timeline, they're more like balloons.
Thus they're not going to be quite as heavy, or that much harder to work than the balloons Tolstoy comically describe the Tsar's army trying to deploy against Napoleon in War and Peace. My Dutchmen are just better at it.
So, let's have a moment of silence for Apollo, Dieudonne, and duc d'Orleans. For herewith they pass from the timeline.
We can of course discuss this further.
Edit: Wait, I just realized the Apollo, Dieudonne, and duc d'Orleans had been changed to groupings of smaller airships in a previous revision... So... that stays. Commercial air travel and transatlantic trips, still gone though.
Also, passenger travel and even the attempt at some type of trans-Atlantic trip (as anything but an example of mad over-enthusiasm) is going to be taken out.
So, the tests I want to subject all these instances to are as follows:
(1) sufficient vertical lift for the mass it bears;
(2) distance travel (this is conceptually different from the first because it involves the crucial matter of fuel and supplies for the duration of a trip; and
(3) safety from flammability.
1601-Use of steam to power pumps to lift water out of the Saxon silver mines
1614-Karl von Droste publishes his theories asserting that hot air is lighter than cold air, and that the reason why is not reducible to differences in the composition of the air in question but the behavior of the particles of air instead.
1625-The Dutch adopt the Saxon invention of air-skins, and begin using them more aggressively for combat. They find that by keeping the airboats (as they call them) in the west against the setting sun they can blind cannon and musket-fire and easily pick off the enemy from above.
1686-In 1624 Philipp von Veltheim, a German cavalry officer experimenting with theories about the temperature and density of air, invented the German air-skin, a simple hot air balloon that was quickly put to military use by the Saxon army in plotting the movement of enemy forces at a distance, and by the Dutch in some air-to-ground bombardments. However, the vessels were seriously limited in their application by an inability to steer or propel them once launched. For more than twenty years, Louis XIV has been experimenting and perfecting airship design in secret, developing novel systems of sails and screws propelled by means similar to the steam pumps the Saxons use to drain mines.
Thus on a new moon the French airship corps Dieudonne, Apollo and Duc D’Orleans, each consisting of more than fifty balloons bearing five soldiers each, fly from Breda to Amsterdam, over the flooded waterline, and begin depositing hundreds of soldiers by rope ladders in Amsterdam. Even after the presence of the French soldiers is detected and the city garrison alerted, the source of the attack on the city remains unknown, partly because intuitively no one thinks to look up into the sky. The Apollo is the first to be discovered. Having already disgorged its troops and on its way back south, it is brought down by cannon fire.
1688-King Frederick II of England convenes a club of natural philosophers whom he asks to devise means to match and counter the French air corps.
1688-The English at Calles mount the first-ever successful defense against the French air corps.
1689-With Calles still under siege by the French, the English successfully devise a new military use for their more primitive airships, conveying supplies across distances out of range of enemy weapons.
This quickly emerges as a helpful advancement, as with a speed that surprises the Duke of Kent the duc de Luxembourg manages to recover Rennes and the Breton ports that had been supplying his army. Isolated west of Le Mans with the town still invested but his chance of taking it now gone, Kent is isolated. His answer is to march north into Normandy and essentially conduct a chevauchee, making his way along the coast to Calles. Many of his lieutenants consider the notion suicide and ask him to surrender so that they may be taken prisoner as gentlemen.
At the military college of Weimar, the Germans devise their own variant on aerial warfare: in decades past daredevils had taken to jump from high places with the use of large bonnets to catch the wind and slow their descent. After several youths had been killed in the Erzgebirge, the pastime had fallen out of fashion. Now it is revived, but with men jumping out of airships. This has the potential to make the use of airships much more versatile, because they will not have to be anchored to a structure for the soldiers to climb down a rope ladder.
1690-Their land siege of Calles having failed, and their airborne attack on the town having failed, the French now try to blockade it from the sea. The result is another naval defeat for the French. However, it does not counter the increasingly dire state of the town’s fortifications. After a heroic resistance, Calles, the last remaining possession of England’s medieval empire in France, falls.
Finally, the natural philosophers entrusted by the king with research into aerial warfare have results to demonstrate, which they do at Windsor Castle. Desiring improvements on the French airships, they have found a means of keeping ships aloft without the use of flame by applying fumes discovered by Robert Hook, which are produced from the application of sulfuric acid to iron. The demonstrations go well until on the third day the airship explodes in a massive fireball because the fumes are so volatile. The natural philosophers apologize profusely and swear they will not rest until they have designed a safe means of flameless, lighter than air travel. Frederick however tells them not to worry: he finds their idea quite useful.
1692-The English launch a surprise attack in the Netherlands with landings on the island of Goeree-Overflakee. For the first time, the English make offensive military use of the new airships, first by using a new type in which bladders filled with explosive vapors, the airborne equivalent of a fire-ship, is sent against the French barracks at Goedereede, the pilot escaping before impact by means of rope ladder. English airships are then used in the French manner to ferry soldiers onto the island, in addition to boats. The next day the operation is repeated at Schouwen and Tholen.
1693-In the west, the Army of Luther under Von Wangelin achieves a breakthrough at Nijmegen, successfully outmaneuvering the French army and bypassing the strategic fortress of Cleve. Then, in the Battle of the Neder Rijn, the Saxons introduce steam-powered boats on the river bearing artillery. Both battles also feature for the first time airships fighting each other, with an astonishing 35 of 38 total airships on both sides participating being destroyed.
1698-Gerhardt von Closen, of Bremen, adapts the new mechanical means to assist in the aiming of artillery for the purpose of navigating aboard airships.
1703-Sophie dispatches the Army of Grotius to Vienna at once. She also dispatches airships to Vienna. In an alteration designed to make them harder to be shot down, the airships are filled with the combustible vapors the English use to make their fire balloons so combustible, because in sufficient quantity they lift the ships higher, above cannon range.
(1) What fails this as written is the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1686. Elsewhere early on you see how the ships are used militarily: reconnaissance; a way to fire on enemy troops using handheld guns; and a way to transport small numbers of troops.
Clearly, the reference to Louis's efforts to develop steering and superior navigation is a bit of handwavium, but it does not negate the basic military use of the airships in the war as such. Instead, what's clearly the case is that one cannot get a militarily significant number of soldiers, even in a sneak attack, aboard three airships.
Instead of several hundred on three, imagine a hundred with four or five each, and I think the reference stays. The key to the navigation not being a problem is that it's over a very short distance in a narrow window of time with the wind direction ascertained.
(2) In some cases, where the airships are traveling with an established army on the ground, supplies and fuel are not an issue because they are just carried on the ground. In a real sense in these scenarios the ships aren't really transportation, but military platforms.
(3) The idea here is either that hydrogen flammability is dealt with, say in the spectacular failure in front of King Frederick II of England; or it's accepted as a hazard and compensated for. When Sophie decides to use hydrogen in her balloons she essentially trades the flammability against the ability to rise higher and escape ground-based fire.
The fact that the resistance to ground-based fire does not extend to battle between opposing balloon forces is dealt with, because when that happens everything falls from the sky.
Also, not directly addressed but something factored into my reasoning about the use ofairships is the recognition that early modern artillery is not about targeting but about chucking metal (I believe the early eighteenth century is where that begins to change). And gravity does not help when it comes to chucking metal vertically. Hilariously, I can completely imagine an airship hovering over an opposing army, perhaps firing and perhaps not. Panicked, the army beneath it begins firing in an effort to bring it down. And promptly starts killing itself, as the shot falls on its own soldiers. Small arms fire might be more effective, but once again there are tactics to compensate (like the Dutch invention of moving your balloon into the sun of the people you are shooting at, and who are shooting at you).
***
So, I think we've pruned back unreasonable and excessive uses of lighter than air technology (such as troop carriers) and we've kept what reasonably corresponds to what would have been feasible for something close to Montgolfier level technology. In the timeline, they embraced a greater use of it earlier partly out of desperation and daring (whatever kept people from trying parachutes earlier, it was not necessarily the sophistication of the technology).
Now, crucially, I use phrases like airskin, airboat and airship interchangeably. In some ways this is my own desperation to get away from the vocabulary of balloons and give this technology a different name and a different identity.
Now probably in my head the three assault ships that Louis XIV sent into the Netherlands approximated something more like what we would call a rigid airship. Likewise with the other means of long distance travel. Other than that, I haven't really imagined the vehicles involved having a frame. Whatever their name in the timeline, they're more like balloons.
Thus they're not going to be quite as heavy, or that much harder to work than the balloons Tolstoy comically describe the Tsar's army trying to deploy against Napoleon in War and Peace. My Dutchmen are just better at it.
So, let's have a moment of silence for Apollo, Dieudonne, and duc d'Orleans. For herewith they pass from the timeline.
We can of course discuss this further.
Edit: Wait, I just realized the Apollo, Dieudonne, and duc d'Orleans had been changed to groupings of smaller airships in a previous revision... So... that stays. Commercial air travel and transatlantic trips, still gone though.
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And thank you for the catch.