In the world of aviation, most people think of airplanes as a means of travel.

Commercial airplanes dominate our skies, and though they have been used as devices of death,

that's not what they were meant for.

Military planes, however, were developed to aid in wartime operations, and though they started

with just surveillance, they quickly became machines capable of causing casualties on a massive scale.

Music We've covered commercial airplanes being used to cause death in the past. If you haven't watched or heard that episode, there's a link in the description.

Obviously, commercial airplanes are not built to take life,

but that's where most of the world's aviation developments have come from,

building a better war plane.

As soon as human beings realized they could carry out military operations

from the skies, they begin building contraptions that could elevate them above the battlefield.

The 1909 Right military flyer is listed as the world's first military aircraft, but that's not

true. It might have been the first military airplane, but the

French were taking to the skies during combat before that. The French Aerostatic Corps

flew observation balloons during the Battle of Flores in 1794. The French continued using

balloons in future conflicts, including the Napoleonic Wars and the Franco-Prussian War.

The balloons did more than just gather information, though. They waged psychological warfare.

Austrian troops saw the French balloon as an agent of the devil working with the French Republic. That fear factor in

better battlefield intelligence helped France win at Flores. Almost seven decades after the French

innovation, balloons returned to warfare during the American Civil War. Faddius CS Lowe led the Union Army's balloon corps after convincing

President Lincoln about aerial reconnaissance through an impressive demonstration. Union and

Intrepid, the largest ones, could hold 32,000 cubic feet and carry five people. Smaller balloons like

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