A Dull Rumble Blew 20 Fellows Out of the Hangar: The Ups and Downs of Balloon Training in 1918

It was a tricky operation letting the hydrogen gas out of a Caquot balloon as Walter Ecabert of the 13th Balloon Company recalled in the following letter. The balloon had developed a leak so the crew pulled it into a hangar and commenced the job of extracting the hydrogen. Then tragedy struck. 

    "The 14^th Company boys had about half the gas out of the balloon by that time. About 25 of our men had just gotten in the hangar and lay their tools down when a dull rumble and the whole top of the balloon exploded. It made the hangar, went off, and it blew about 20 fellows out the front end uninjured and several through the sides. The hangar was a big tent. There were about 50 men in the hangar at the time and the only openings were the front and a small door about three feet wide on the side. It is surprising how they got out the wat they did as the balloon and hangar were all burned in less than a minute. Two men who were way in the back end where the hangar was all closed up were killed and 18 injured. The two that were killed were burned so bad that parts of the flesh dropped off. One only had part of one shoe left and the other had everything burned off but the lower part of each shoe and a small spot of red hair on his head. One of the injured had his wrist and shoulder blade broken. I saw one fellow with his coat all torn and his back full of blood and dirt and others had their hands burned clear to the bone." A static electricity discharge was later determined to be the cause of the explosion. 

    Ecabert's letter, loaded with details on the training activities of his balloon company at Fort Omaha, was first published in the May 24, 1918, edition of the Shelby County Democrat published in Sidney, Ohio.

This fine view of a Caquot Type R observation balloon shows not only the observers' basket but the series of control ropes used to keep the balloon from drifting off over enemy lines. The balloons totaled 92 feet in length and 32 feet in diameter, filled with 32,200 cubic feet of hydrogen gas. Two observers would go aloft to a maximum of 4,000 feet for their missions which included spotting enemy artillery positions, supply dumps, and concentrations of enemy aircraft. The balloons were prime targets for enemy fliers and being filled with hydrogen, once struck, a balloon's demise was both quick and spectacular.
(Author's collection) 

Fort Omaha, Nebraska

May 17, 1918

          We moved out to Florence Field last month and it is about a mile north of Fort Omaha. This is the same field where we were flying our balloon before we moved. We live in tents out here the same as we did at the fort but we have mess halls to eat in and have white dishes so we don’t need to bother about washing our mess kits every meal.

          This is some dirty place out here. The land around our company tents has all been cultivated and is black and loose such that when the wind blows it flies everywhere. One evening when we got back to our tents our beds and everything had about a quarter inch of dust all over them. It rained a little today so the dust is settled for a while. A cyclone went north of us last week and it is a good thing it did or we wouldn’t have had anything left in camp. It struck Iowa and Illinois and did a lot of damage.

          I spent all last night guarding our balloon. It takes about 15 men besides the six regular guards to watch the balloon on windy nights. They have to be watched very closely because hydrogen gas expands or contracts 35 cu. ft. per 1,000 cu. ft. for every 10 degrees change in temperature. We had our balloon out today and a shower came up and we hauled it down and started for the hangar with it and a cool wind started blowing before we got halfway to the hangar. The gas contracted so much that the balloon became so flabby that we had to take nearly all the sandbags off so the balloon could lift itself clear off the ground. So you can see why they require such close watching. If the sun comes out on a cloudy day, the balloon gets tight enough to burst in a few minutes, then the gas transferred from the balloon to a nurse bag. If it is in the air, the surplus gas escapes through the automatic valve in the nose of the balloon.

Balloon Bed, Florence Field, Fort Omaha, Nebraska
(Douglas County Historical Society)

          Our balloon nearly got away from us Thursday morning May 7^th. We had just put it up for the first flight of the morning. It was up about 1,200 feet and the wind tore one of the fins on the rear end that acts as a balance. It started to dart around like a kite when the tail tears off, then it started nose downward and went down within 175 feet of the ground then started up again darting about in a circle all the while. It started to drag the 7-ton winch sideways but we got it stopped and then put what we call a spider (which is about five ropes 40 feet long spliced together at one point and attached to a pulley and the other ends are free) on the cable and about 100 of us got hold of the spider and hauled it down by hand. When it got to within 75 feet of the ground, the pilot of the basket pulled the ripcord and ripped it open; then the gas escaped and it settled slowly to the ground. Neither of the pilots were hurt but they couldn’t get out of the basket for ropes. All the ropes but one were wrapped and tangled around the basket. I never saw such an entanglement of ropes. We didn’t put to any other balloons that day but worked on a balloon bed near our hangar the rest of the day.

          A new bunch of artillery officers and cadets had a balloon out that same morning maneuvering with it but they found it leaked so they took it into our hangar to take out the gas and make repairs. It was left there about 8 o’clock in the morning and then was turned over to the 14^th Company to take the gas out. We quit work about 8:30 and were just taking the tools back to the hangar. The 14^th Company boys had about half the gas out of the balloon by that time. About 25 of our men had just gotten in the hangar and lay their tools down when a dull rumble and the whole top of the balloon exploded. It made the hangar, went off, and it blew about 20 fellows out the front end uninjured and several through the sides. The hangar was a big tent.

          There were about 50 men in the hangar at the time and the only openings were the front and a small door about three feet wide on the side. It is surprising how they got out the wat they did as the balloon and hangar were all burned in less than a minute. Two men who were way in the back end where the hangar was all closed up were killed and 18 injured. The two that were killed were burned so bad that parts of the flesh dropped off. One only had part of one shoe left and the other had everything burned off but the lower part of each shoe and a small spot of red hair on his head. One of the injured had his wrist and shoulder blade broken. I saw one fellow with his coat all torn and his back full of blood and dirt and others had their hands burned clear to the bone.

          One of the ambulances that was taking the injured to the hospital was wrecked on the road but no one was hurt. About 50 coats, hats, sweaters, and overcoats that the fellows had laying around the hangar were burned. There were about 150 cylinders of gas piled up just outside the hangar and we carried them away in about three minutes. If they had let go there would have been something doing. It was getting pretty hot there and the gas would have expanded enough to burst them.

Florence Field, Fort Omaha, Nebraska showing one of the huge hangar tents that housed the balloons when they were undergoing maintenance. It was within one of these structures that the explosion occurred as described by our correspondent.
(Douglas County Historical Society) 

I came nearly being in the worst of it myself. I just went into the front end of the hangar and was going to the back end (where the two fellows were killed) to see how they were getting along with the gas when I changed my mind and walked out the side door. When I got about 10 feet outside the door, the balloon exploded. I was on the side the wind was coming from and didn’t feel a thing. I thought it had just burst until I saw flames shoot about 75 feet into the air. I ran about 150 feet then stopped. It didn’t scare me any but some of the fellows threw their mess kits away, jerked their hats off, and ran way up the hill about an eighth of a mile. It was serious enough but it made a person laugh, too, to see some of them run and pull off all kinds of stunts. Our lieutenant was with us and burned his hands pretty bad trying to get one of the dead men out of the fire. It looks like he has a pair of boxing gloves on all the time.

1st Army Balloon Patch

The explosion was caused by what they call static electricity and was supposed to have been generated by the silken folds of the balloon rubbing together and when the balloon touched the ground it caused a spark which in time ignited the hydrogen gas which is about three times more inflammable than natural gas. That static electricity is produced easier on some days than others. For instance, on a hot day when thundershowers come over there is an abundance of it in the air. Today a big black cloud went over and two pilots were up in one of the balloons and they got a shock from the electricity that the balloons attracted from the cloud. Another day, a thundershower came over and static electricity followed the cable down the winch and sparks were flying out everywhere around the wheels.

The cable broke on one of the balloons the next Sunday after the explosion and the balloon went way above the clouds and drifted about 75 miles over into Iowa before they got it. There were two men in the basket and I suppose they kept the valve cord open to let the gas escape slowly until they came near the ground then ripped the balloon open. Tuesday this week a lieutenant got a broken ankle in our balloon. It was pretty windy and they took all the balloons in but ours and when they hauled down for the last time the wind caught it when about 100 feet from the ground. It went nose downward and the nose rammed into the ground and the basket struck and tore the two forward suspensions out so that it hung by the two rear corners. The other lieutenant that was in the basket was hurt some, too, but I don’t know how bad. One evening our balloon went up about 1,500 feet and the pilot threw out two parachutes with sandbags on them and the next morning the paper came out stating that two aviators from Ft. Omaha made parachute leaps and nearly landed in the river. That shows what kind of bunk some of those reporters write up.

Y.M.C.A. building at Fort Omaha in 1918. 

The Knights of Columbus are putting up a building out here and will have it done in ten days. The Y.M.C.A. is going to put a building up as well. They have all light and telephone wires underground here on account of getting around with balloons. The lead tubing that the wire is encased in has to be encased with concrete on account of gophers. They are just thick around here and dig the ground up everywhere. They look something like a ground squirrel only they haven’t the stripes on their sides and I think they are a little larger and quick as a wink. We chased one under the floor of the guard tent yesterday when I was on guard and we chased it around for about half an hour before we got it out then it got away. The officer of the guard had his pistol out and was going to shoot it but the officer of the day wouldn’t let him. He was afraid someone would make a kick.

Walter Leroy Ecabert would survive training at Fort Omaha to serve with the 13th Balloon Company in the A.E.F., departing from Newport News, Virginia on July 10, 1918. Interestingly, after his discharge from the army in 1919, Ecabert would move from his home in Dayton, Ohio, back to Omaha, Nebraska, by 1930 and would spend the rest of his life there working as a draftsman in the refrigeration industry, passing away April 16, 1965 at age 72.

To learn more about balloon training at Fort Omaha during World War I, please check out the Douglas County Historical Society's superb article "Training the Angels of Hell: Fort Omaha's Balloon School in World War I." 

Source:

Letter from Private Walter Leroy Ecabert, 13^th Balloon Co., Shelby County Democrat (Ohio), May 24, 1918, pg. 6