Maybe also remembering the use of balloons in the US Civil War.
The terror bombing of London in WWI brings up an interesting point, the danger of hydrogen as a lifting gas and the theory of an accidental explosion on the Hindenburg. The British thought they could take bring down German zeppelins by igniting the hydrogen in them from machine guns mounted in their military biplanes. It turned out to be extremely difficult to do, even after loading the guns with a mix of incendiary and explosive bullets. They finally succeeded after firing an entire magazine of these bullets into the same spot into a zeppelin. Hardly a stray spark causing the ignition as sometimes theorized for the Hindenburg.
Even by WWI with simple single-engine biplanes, the zeppelins were giant sitting ducks begging to be turned into cigar ash. Hence the “how quaint” remark about the USA thinking they could in any way stand up as military threats. (Unless they were thinking of a V0 autopiloted blimp). In fact, even with helium, the easily flammable part of the craft was the doped fabric skin. If zeppelins had become a major threat in WWI, I imagine some form of airborne Molotov cocktail would have been the next step. I suspect nowadays we have better choices.
They killed 700 Londoners, injured 2,000 and terrified a great many more.
The link mentions that explosive shells made holes to get air into the cells. The incendiaries of course ignited the hydrogen and oxygen mixture.
See my post above. It turned out to be much more difficult to take down a Zeppelin from a biplane. Regular bullets passed right through the skin and gas bags. The low pressure hydrogen didn’t leak out very fast and didn’t readily mix with the air so phosphorous incendiary bullets created for just this purpose weren’t igniting the gas. Explosive bullets were mixed in to create larger holes in the skin and gas bags and it was still difficult to ignite the hydrogen.