AtDDtA1: Garçons de '71

[Dave Monroe]

   "Darby shrugged.  'News to me.  Inconvenience, we're only the runts
of the Organization, last at the trough, nobody ever tells us
anything--they keep cutting our orders, we follow 'em, is all.'
   "'Well, we were over by Mount Etna there back in the spring,'
Penny said, 'and you remember those Garçons de 71, I expect.' ..."
(AtD, Pt. I, Ch. 2, p. 19)


Mount Etna

Historical eruptions of Mount Etna

The record of Etna's eruptions goes back to about 1500 B.P., and its
list of documented eruptions is the longest of any volcano in the
world. This record is clearly dominated by flank eruptions which
caused much more alarm among the people living near the volcano, so
that the picture of Etna's historical eruptions is far from complete,
especially during the period prior to the 17th century...

[...]

Since 1865 flank eruptions appear to occur in clusters, or series, and
most remarkably, the last eruption in such a series is also the most
voluminous (the 1928 eruption being an exception). Four such series
occurred between 1865 and 1993: (1) 1874-1892, (2) 1908-1928, (3)
1942-1951, (4) 1971-1993....

http://boris.vulcanoetna.com/ETNA_erupt1.html

8 July to 29 December 1892. Eruption on the southern flank, south of
Montagnola and north of Monte Gemmelaro, forming the spectacular row
of pyroclastic cones named Monti Silvestri (in honor of the Italian
volcanologist of the 19th century). This is the last strongly
explosive flank eruption for more than 100 years ...

1893-1898. Summit activity; lava effusion within the Central Crater
observed as early as July 1893....

http://boris.vulcanoetna.com/ETNA_elencold.html

Or is something else being referred to here?  Let me know ...


"Garçons de '71"

During the Siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871,
balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The
balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_than_air/military_balloons_in_Europe/LTA4G2.htm

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_than_air/military_balloons_in_Europe/LTA4G1.htm

Bismarck's Prussian troops had Paris under siege in September, 1870.
They surrounded the city and cut its communication lines. One reason
Paris managed to withstand the siege for five months was her airmail
service. And since this was 33 years before the Wright Brothers flew,
you may well wonder what I'm talking about!

I'm talking about balloons. The first hot air and hydrogen balloons
had flown in Paris 86 years before the siege. Balloons had seen their
first serious military use ten years before, in the American Civil
War. Lincoln set up an air balloon corps in 1861.

For two years the American armies in the East had been pretty static.
The Union Army had ten balloons in service most of that time. They
rose on tether lines to reconnoiter enemy positions. Some even used
telegraphy to communicate with the ground.

Those balloons were useful until the war started moving faster than
the few balloons could. The corps disbanded in 1863. But it'd
established that you can gather information from the air.

Now, seven years later, Paris had an urgent need to communicate with
the outside world. The French were already using tethered balloons to
observe the enemy. Now they decided to set up an air mail service.
They sent out a call for every existing balloon in Paris and they set
up shops for building far more balloons.

In all, 66 balloons left Paris carrying information to France beyond
the German lines. Most flights were made at night. In all, the
balloons delivered 102 passengers and 11 tons of mail. The mail
amounted to 2-1/2 million letters. The balloons also delivered 400
carrier pigeons for return mail. To bring mail back by pigeon, the
French outside Paris used early photography to reduce 16 pages of text
to a 1¼" by 2" piece of film. But pigeons are unreliable. Only one in
eight ever arrived back.

The balloonists had their troubles too -- but less than anyone
expected. Two were lost at sea. Six were captured by the Germans when
they landed. When others came down behind enemy lines, their pilots
managed to deliver the mail anyway. One landed on an island off the
coast of Brittany. The most dramatic flight was one that landed in a
Norwegian forest after an astonishing 875-mile trip. One flight
carried the Minister of the Interior. He landed in an oak tree. But he
landed safely nonetheless.

Getting back into Paris was another matter. You can't control where
balloons go. So Paris lost an aeronaut on every flight. Several tried
to catch favorable winds and fly back in. None succeeded. The very
last flight out, made on January 28, 1871, carried news of the
Armistice.

So the point had been made. Flight meant communication. This was the
harbinger of enormous change. The world had been altered in ways that
would reach far beyond one more forgotten war.

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1132.htm

So is necessity the mother of invention? The four-month Prussian siege
of Paris in 1870 offers some clues. Telegraph lines had been cut, and
Paris couldn't communicate with the rest of the world. Necessity
demanded a solution.

Parisians wished they could fly over the enemy's lines. In fact, two
usable forms of flight did exist: carrier pigeons and balloons.
Balloons could get out, but where they went was uncontrollable and
only vaguely predictable. And there was no way to guide a balloon into
Paris from outside. Carrier pigeons couldn't be sent anywhere; they
could only find their way back to Paris.

The obvious trick was to fly both messages and crated pigeons out of
Paris in balloons by night, and to send microfilmed messages back by
carrier pigeon. Several pigeons had to be sent with duplicate messages
because enemy soldiers shot as many as they could.

[...]

So Parisians went to work. They set out to build balloons the same way
they'd always built sporting balloons. The Post Office commandeered
two train stations for factories, while trains stood idle....

[...]

>From September through January, sixty-two one-way flights left Paris.
It was old technology, serving grave necessity -- a heroic effort. But
it left behind all kinds of new questions about flight....

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1492.htm

The siege of Paris and the establishment of airmail by balloon 1870–71
The Franco-Prussian War in 1870 proved to be catalyst for the use of
free flying, manned balloons to transport post in an official,
organised manner, that was capable of being both regular and
relatively secure. War between France and Prussia was declared on 19th
July 1870.... With increasing urgency for the French, the problem
arose as to how the besieged positions could communicate with the
outside world.

http://www.historyofaircargo.com/extracts.html

Within days of the beginning of the siege, the director general of the
Posts established the Balloon Post, designed to carry the mails out of
Paris....

http://www.arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&mode=&tid=2029986

Nature
(Thursday, May 30, 1872)
The Paris siege balloons,   p. 88

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?type=div&did=HISTSCITECH.0012.0174.0012&isize=M

Was anyone involved actually called a "Garçon de '71"?  Let me know ...