The First Serbian Balloon

The Aviation Museum in Belgrade organised an exhibit about balloons to mark the 100^th anniversary of purchasing the first balloon "Serbia".

By Jovo Simišić

Although the exhibits related to balloons in the Aviation Museum are sparse, information about the arrival of balloons to Serbia, collected in recent years by Čedomir Janić, founder and first director of this institution, are profuse and interesting.

To remind us of history: at Annonay near the city of Lyon, France, brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier on June 5, 1783 launched the first balloon made of paper and filled with hot air; air was heated by burning straw and wool. The balloon ascended as high as 300 metres and covered a distance of 1,500 metres. In September of the same year, in Paris, before an audience that included King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, the brothers Montgolfier demonstrated the flight of a much bigger and decorated balloon that carried in its basket three passengers: a ram, a rooster and a duck. Soon thereafter, on November 21, by royal permission that allowed human passengers aloft, three volunteers embarked the balloon: Pilâtre de Rozier, a doctor of science and then curator of the Museum of Paris, Marquis D’Arlandes. The balloon flew over Paris and descended ten kilometres from the city. The flight lasted 25 minutes.

Dositej Obradović and balloons

The same year when balloons were launched in France, prominent Serbian educator and European traveller Dositej Obradović expressed his interest in them during his stay in the German city of Leipzig, at the end of 1783 and beginning of 1784, where he attended lectures on physics and prepared his first book entitled "The Advice of Common Reason". Fascinated with balloons as a great accomplishment of the human brain, in March 1784 Dositej decided to go to Paris to see these fantastic flying devices called aerostats with his own eyes. He refers to this event in his autobiography entitled "Život i priključenija" (Life and Engagement) published in Leipzig in 1784.

"I had in my bag about 50 ducats, which I wanted to save for my visit to Paris the following autumn and there to see that wonder; how the French, who are not covered with feathers, can fly like fairies in the air." Dositej realised this plan at the beginning of August 1784, when he arrived to Paris, where during his stay he certainly saw balloons flying over the French capital.

Dositej’s follower Atanasije Stojković, a doctor of natural sciences from the German University in Göttingen, published in the period 1801-1803, in three volumes, the first textbook of physics in the Serbian language. This was also the first systematised work about natural sciences among the Serbs. The work entitled Physics, written in the simple language for the community of Slavs-Serbs has almost 1000 pages of texts and drawings. Apart from physics in modern meaning, it also deals with the contemporary knowledge of chemistry, mineralogy, geography and astronomy.

In the second volume of this important work, published in 1802, at the end of the chapter on air and gasses, Stojković dedicated a separate chapter of seven pages, actually a complete small treatise, to "those wonderful machines by means of which we can rise up into the air and fly through it." To name the device he conceived the term "shar aerostatic", actually a combination of the Russian word "shar" for ball and then the most frequently-used French term aerostats that indicated flight of devices lighter than air. In several places in his text Stojković uses the word balloon instead, a term that would be finally accepted and adopted in the Serbian language at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century.

The oldest positive text on the topic of aviation, in Serbian periodicals, is "Walking on Clouds" by the famed scientist and publicist Djordje Stanojević, published in the journal Fatherland in Belgrade, in 1883, exactly 199 years after the first balloon flight. The following year, all these texts were merged and published in a separate book under the same name. All this took place after Belgrade reinstated its freedom from the Turks (1876) and Serbia its independence and sovereignty. The text is important not only because it illustrates that Serbia was trying to keep pace with contemporary world trends of that time, but also because it provides elemental scientific data in presenting the flight of the balloon.

The First Balloons above Belgrade

According to data that is not sufficiently reliable, the first balloon with a human crew had flew over Belgrade some 10 years before Stanojević published his "Walking on the Clouds", in October 1873. The show was organised by French balloonist Nicholas Bede. The balloon travelled from Terazije, flew over the city to the great admiration of citizens who finally got the opportunity to see the flying device, and landed in the suburb of Senjak. According another source, the balloonist-artist flew over Kalemegdan and performed the circus-trapeze under the balloon. According the magazine Odjek (Echo) of August 1885, Bede once again visited Belgrade on his way to the Pest exhibition and, on August 18, exhibited flying near the Weifert Brewery.

Actually, at the end of the 19^th century, ballooning was a new field of sport competition in Europe. This expensive sport was practiced only by more wealthy people who exhibited an adventurous spirit and were ready to face numerous dangers of flying in unknown and changeable atmospheric conditions, and the challenges of descending in different regions and countries. These aviation enthusiasts and adventurers were assembled in aviation societies and the most important discipline they practiced was covering the longest possible distance in balloons, in some cases up to 1000 kilometres, and remaining aloft as long as possible. Flights often finished in crashes, additionally attracting the attention of the public, and newspapers in Serbia and Vojvodina frequently wrote about balloonists’ flights and their unhappy outcomes. The first sport balloon flights on the territory of today’s Serbia were recorded in the 1880s, when several balloons launched in Austria landed in the districts of Bačka and Banat in Vojvodina.

Thus, at the beginning of May 1899, two Austro-Hungarian officers, Oscar Ilmor and Julije Jelinek, planned to travel in balloon from Vienna to Belgrade, which was a specific sport discipline in sport ballooning called a flight to a determined destination. The Austrian balloonists informed the press and the Serbian border police of their flight. However, wind pushed balloonists eastwards, and they were forced to land east of the town of Pančevo, some 50 kilometres off their aim.

Balloon "Serbia"

In February 1901, the Serbian Ministry of Armed Forces sent engineering captain Kosta Miletić to attend the Aviation-technical School near Petrograd in Russia. By November 1902, he had mastered steering free and anchored balloons. The crown of his training was participation in the great Russian military maneuvers in September 1902, when he managed to cover 180 kilometres flying in a balloon at an altitude of 1,100 metres.

Miletić returned to Serbia, but quite some time passed until the army was in a situation to purchase its first balloons. After the so-called Annexation crisis in 1908-1909, when the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia decided to reinforce and modernise its army as soon as possible in order to be able to respond to threats from the north. Among other things, two balloons and an accompanying car with bottles in which hydrogen for balloons was stored and transported were ordered from the factory of August Ridinger, located in Augsburg, Germany. The hydrogen station was ordered from Switzerland and the field winch required to ascend and descend the anchored balloons were ordered from Russia. Balloons and the hydrogen station were delivered at the end of 1909 and the following year Serbia received the gas car and the winch.

The free flying balloon was named "Serbia" and another balloon, of the Parsifal type, to be anchored to the ground during observations, was named "Bosnia and Herzegovina". Balloons and other material were placed in the warehouses of the Ministry of Armed Forces in Belgrade. The Balloon Department was established on the eve of the Second Balkan War, in 1913.

Politika, 11th April, 1909 No. 1879, p.3 Serbian Balloon A ticket for the first Serbian balloon "Serbia" Yesterday our newspaper received a very interesting postcard from Germany: the first ticket for the first Serbian balloon. This ticket was certainly thrown from the balloon above Augsburg: the head side is like an ordinary ticket with an address, but at its bottom, in big printed letters, in the German and French languages, is the following note: The finder of this ticket is most kindly asked to deliver it to the post office. Postage will be compensated. Jat’s balloon The first Serbian, and also Yugoslav, sport balloon was Jat’s hot air balloon Viva-77 Sport. This balloon, with a volume of 2190 cubic meters, manufactured in October 1987, by the American company Cameron Balloons Inc., was as of January 1991 in the possession of Aero Club Jat. In June 1991, it received a flying permit with the designation YU-AOE. Immediately upon registration, the training of the first crew began: pilot Milomir Stošković, balloon master Petar Kasunić, operators of the balloon mouth Mira Paskota and Dušica Petrović and the operator of balloon top Nedeljko Todorović, all members of the Section for Aircrafts-lighter-than-air of the Jat Air Club. Last flight of the balloon was performed in September 2004, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Politika. Upon expiration of resources, the balloon was transferred to the Aviation Museum, complete with equipment and documentation.