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Nonprofit aims to save Civil War’s ‘Kitty Hawk’

The Columbian
Published: November 25, 2011, 4:00pm

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (AP) — A multimillion-dollar preservation effort by a nonprofit group is seeking to save the ground where the Union launched its balloons over Virginia during the Civil War.

Little of the original battlefield has been preserved. But the 285-acre slice of the Gaines’ Mill battlefield includes a ravine that shielded the North’s balloons from Confederate troops while they were launched.

The historic encounter in the skies occurred on June 27, 1862, when two Union balloons — the Intrepid and the Washington — rose aloft only miles west of Richmond while their Southern counterpart Gazelle floated over the capital of the Confederacy. These balloons were the unarmed drones of war, collecting intelligence on rival troop movements from a vantage of 1,000 feet above the earth.

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