How the world's first aircraft carrier operated during the American Civil War

The history of aerial warfare during the 19th century is strange and unfamiliar territory

For almost the whole of human history, warfare has been a two-dimensional activity. Armies, and individual soldiers, can move back and forth or from side to side, but they cannot move up and down. This restriction on mobility, which at first sight seems so obvious as to be hardly worth stating explicitly, has had profound implications during time of war, particularly in the last century or so, for defence against bombs dropped from aeroplanes.