Random Facts by Joshua Wu Joshua Wu

A hot air balloon is defined as a type of aircraft that cannot maneuver in the air, propelled by a type of bag above the basket or gondola, where the pilot generally sits. The bag is called an envelope and beneath it, a source of heat is placed. The heat makes the air lighter, which is trapped by the bag. The trapped air causes the whole craft to become buoyant in the air like helium in a balloon, since the heated air, compared to the outside air, has a lower density. Flying wires connect hoops and wires sown into the balloon to the carriage. 















The hot air balloon is significant because it was the first sign that man could take flight. Previous attempts to take to the sky, such as emulating birds with mechanical wings, or other contraptions did not work and seemed futile. Precursors to the balloon included the sky lantern that the Chinese used in military signals, in a manner like smoke and fire was used to signal things. 







The reason why the balloon can float in the air is that it makes it buoyant; the force of the heat going upwards, like how a piece of floating wood floats upwards from water, creates force, pushing up against the envelope and lifting it upwards. The hot air is trying to escape upwards, pushing the balloon up. This is like if you took a life-jacket and draped a piece of cloth over it and submerged the pair: the force of the life-jacket floating upwards would propel the piece of cloth into the air, which is the principle of the balloon.







The impact of the balloon was not instant, years of mistrust and errors, like how one of the first innovators in hot-air balloons died from falling from his craft or like how his wife later died on one from hydrogen in the balloon igniting from fireworks, but over time the balloon was fashionable to ride on, and to watch a balloon air festival was a sign of staying with the times.

The beginning of the US Navy was when 6 ships of legendary status were laid down due to the imposing presence of Algerian, Tunisian, and Tripoli pirates, and the previous Quasi-War with France. One of these ships was the USS Chesapeake, a frigate that participated in the War of 1812.















The reasons for the War of 1812 are many, but one of the big reasons was that Britain was seizing US ships. Oftentimes, the British ships would take sailors and forced them into service for the Navy, citing that they were “deserters”. However, chances were that they were not deserters, but many British sailors were attracted to deserting to the American Navy and ended up joining of their own accord. 







The British became fed up with the desertion and began to bully around America, parking ships outside the coast to search for deserters. The USS Chesapeake was cruising in preparation for a long journey, with the deck cluttered with ropes and all sorts of items, making the ship far from battle-ready. There was no reason to be, (or so they thought), as there was no immediate threat. 







Earlier, British ships that had docked in the harbor had secreted several deserters who joined the Chesapeake’s crew. The fourth-rate frigate HMS Leopard was sent off to search the Chesapeake for deserters. The search warrant presented did not receive a conclusion and the Leopard fired a shot across the Chesapeake’s bow to order submission. When the Chesapeake did not comply, frantically trying to get into battle readiness, the Leopard fired multiple broadsides into the American ship. The Chesapeake managed to fire a single shot and the commander surrendered in humiliation.







This incident, the Chesapeake-Leopard affair, incited the War of 1812. The public began to doubt the frigates that were tasked with defending the country. While the easy takeover by the British was from surprise, this was not the first time the Chesapeake would be humiliated by the British. 







The commander of the HMS Shannon, a frigate, Captain Broke, sent a challenge to Captain James Lawrence of the Chesapeake after the ship moved to Boston to stop the Shannon from disrupting the harbors and seizing ships. The nature of the challenge was less of a brawl than a duel. The two ships met each other, but the Chesapeake’s first broadside landed several shots instead into the water. The second broadside again had less effect but the carronade shots wrecked the forecastle of the Shannon and did a sizeable amount of damage. However, the Shannon was not sitting idle, and the British gun crews fired broadsides into the Chesapeake, causing many casualties in the gun crews operating the cannons on the Chesapeake. The ships came next to each other and became lashed together. The Chesapeake was unable to assemble a boarding party, while a force of 20 men led by Captain Broke boarded the Chesapeake, eliminating the resisting marines aboard the Chesapeake. James Lawrence was shot and the battle was completely lost.

Since the ascent of the Wright Brothers shook the world, the plane has been an important part of life. Once again, with many innovative inventions, the plane was weaponized for war. 















Before the plane, a few things like balloons for scouting or the occasional blimp were all that hung in the sky for wartime. The first planes that flew in the skies were quickly realized as an important asset and moved from reconnaissance to attack and other duties. World War 1 debuted the importance of the canvas planes that were fragile and sported machine guns. By the time of World War 2, the plane had evolved to the metal rotund craft that was characteristic of the planes of the time. 







Japan was becoming a rising force in the world, defeating Russia in a war and quickly moving to secure the resources it needed to become a superpower, by invading China. It was here where a new plane made its showing against the Chinese Air Force to great effect, downing and having an unbelievable KDR. This plane was the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero.







The cultural and psychological difference between the Japanese forces and the American forces was apparent in the first engagements that happened. Pearl Harbor instigated a wave of fervor that carried over to the war effort, which was why American pilots were so astounded at how badly they were outclassed. The A6M Zero was a plane that prioritized maneuverability and speed, with pilot safety as a secondary. Contrast that to the lumbering Naval plane that was the standard, the Grumman F4F which was coated with layers of armor and was heavily outclassed by the Zero in terms of dogfighting capability. The Japanese pilots utilized their superior climbing rates by diving down like a bird plucking a fish out of the water, attacking, then rising into the air. Subsequently, tactics like the Thach weave were created, but there was no denying that the Japanese plane was a massive contributor to the early dominance of the Japanese force.







The fall of the Zero happened when the US put the industrial factories to work, developing fighters that would manage to outclass the Zero. Planes like the Grumman F5F Hellcat and the Vaught F4U Corsair, as well as the P-38 Lockheed Lightning (the plane which took out Admiral Yamamoto), dominated against the Zero. They had various advantages over the Zero while being more superior in many areas like speed or diving capability, like the ability to change engines if need be, to upgrade the quality, and the Zero missed out on hydraulic boosting to increase maneuverability, especially at extreme speed.

Humanity is known for war, and for trying to find anything that will give them an advantage. One advantage that can be found is not with technology, but with nature: animals. From horses and chariots to even carrier pigeons, animals have been used for war and other responsibilities since the birth of fighting. It is no surprise that humans would try to use the biggest land animal as a weapon of war. 















The elephant is a massive animal and one that is capable of much destruction. However, what makes it less conventional is its unruly behavior, as an untrained elephant is just as likely to gore you instead of your opponent. Elephants are very smart animals, able to make connections and correlations. Humans exploited their mindset and made them tamer by taking a young elephant and chaining it with chains then staked it into the ground. Of course, a fully grown elephant could rip the stake from the ground with no problem, or even a pole, but the younger elephant would struggle, futile. Eventually, the elephant would become docile at the feeling of constraining around the leg, so even a cloth could tie an elephant in place since it thinks that it cannot move whenever something is around its leg. 







After an elephant had been successfully molded, mentally and physically, to the needs of war, many empires would use them to battle. Alexander the Great had one general, Seleucus Nicator, who is known for establishing the Seleucid Kingdom, with a capital at Babylon. It was he who attempted to foray into the territory of Chandragupta Maurya, who was one of the utilizers of war elephants. Needless to say, it didn’t go well for Seleucus. A Greek phalanx may be effective against men, but going up against elephants is another story. Chandragupta had archers positioned in boxes atop the elephants, sniping at people below, while the elephant charged the enemy. Seleucus had to give up some land, which was annexed, but in return, received his own 500 war elephants, which he used to battle-turning effect in the Battle of Ipsus. 







As effective as elephants are, and as good at psychologically suppressing instincts humans are, the elephants are, at the heart, a wild beast. Hannibal of Carthage found out about this, though his bringing of 80 elephants over mountain ranges to battle is legendary. Most animals are easily scared and frightened by loud sounds, which the Roman troops that Hannibal faced found out. They would blow horns to scare the elephants, making them charge with abandon, at their lines, then part their troops so the elephant charge would go past, then attack. It was in this manner that Hannibal suffered his greatest defeat.

The British Navy was once the force which Britain was able to exert an immense amount of influence over the colonies, being once the most disciplined and effective force. When the War of 1812 broke out, the British Army was still in Europe fighting, so the Navy was sent to start a siege of the USA by means of a naval blockade.















The infant US Navy had barely any ships and thus could not face the British in an all-out battle where rows of ships sailed in orderly formations and bombarded each other, instead, the Americans had their few frigates, including the Constitution, a heavy frigate, which is the focus of our story today. Other ships included Chesapeake, the President, the United States, the Congress, and the ill-fated Constellation. These were all ships; frigates designed to be powerful enough to defeat their British and French counterparts, thus being heavy frigates to ensure the upper hand against other frigates, yet they needed to be fleet enough to evade the largest of the British ships, the ones with tiered decks and large guns, the ones that participated in massive battles.







The British string of losses against these frigates was met with bitterness, as the British populace considered the power of the American frigates to be much more like a ship-of-the-line, the front row ships for battle, than a frigate, thus seeing a larger ship picking on one that was outclassed. It was the actions of pirates that caused the building of these ships, as the trade was being disrupted. It was one of the frigate on frigate battles where the USS Constitution faced the HMS Guerriere in combat. The way ships fought was due to their gun placement; since they could not rotate their guns so much as the ships could fly, they had to maneuver into an advantageous position where the full length of the ship’s guns could be brought to bear. Thus, crossing the bow of another ship allowed yours to rake across it, dealing heavy damage.







The Guerriere wasted no time and sent a barrage of shot as soon as the American ship entered range, doing negligible damage. Isaac Hull, the commander of the Constitution, closed in after exchanging some fire to a close range of 23 meters. Using canisters full of small metal balls, called grapeshot, and round shot, double-loaded into the cannons of the Constitution, the Constitution managed to take out the mizzenmast of the Guerriere. With the mizzenmast causing friction in the water after collapsing, the Constitution managed to cross the bow, and they became entangled, leaving only the bow guns of the Guerriere to fire, while the Constitution could make full use of her main batteries. The ships were locked together, though boarding parties failed to take hold. After a spectacular action where the ships rotated counter-clockwise, the bowsprit (the front of the Guerriere) became entangled with great force. The force reverbed through the ship and took out the foremast, which also collapsed the mainmast, leaving the ship an unmanageable hulk.







This was one of the first battles where the small US navy managed to win a series of battles and shattered the British mirage of invincibility.

The age of the wooden ship and fixed cannons orderly protruding from the hulls of these ships was in far swing when the Civil War rolled around. The Anaconda plan put into action by the Union utilized the warships they had to cut off the Confederacy and sever their lifeline. Of course, the Confederacy did not stand for this. They sent a ship, the CSS Virginia, a ship made off the scuttle lower hull of the steamship USS Merrimack and was outfitted with a cast-iron ram, as well as iron plates around it. The ship, unlike wooden ships, was low to the surface of the water and appeared much like a turtle with the shell protruding. The sides of the ship had cannons coming out of the hull, much like the wooden ships commonly seen. The iron ship had 14 cannons, and the iron plates allowed the Merrimack to be nearly invincible to iron shot. 















Only something truly special could stop the iron juggernaut about to roll into Hampton Roads and steamroll the wooden frigates there, and the Union had a plan. What met the CSS Virginia was what described as “a cheesebox on a raft”, and did look like that. A small, short cylinder on top of an oblong undersection was what looked like the USS Monitor. The cylinder was what made the USS Monitor so special – It was the first of the design of a turret that contained two cannons and freely rotated to allow the Monitor to attack without positioning the whole ship. The small understory of the Monitor, which was submerged sometimes, contained cramped quarters where the crew moved about.







The CSS Virginia managed to pillage Hampton Roads for a while, sinking the USS Cumberland, a sloop of war, with her ram, and sunk the USS Congress with cannon. The Union ships were unprepared and did not manage to effectively stop the Virginia, as she also injured the USS Minnesota. The Monitor managed to meet the Virginia after struggling through the waters and began a long duel. Due to a large amount of armor, the duel was a practical stalemate. At one point, the Virginia hit the pilothouse and blinded the pilot of the Monitor. The attempts to ram by the larger Virginia had no effect. Eventually, the Virginia was forced back by the tide and the time.







Though the battle ended in a stalemate, the effect of the battle established the dominance of armored ships and most importantly the power of the turreted cannon.