Thunder Over Cincinnati



   By the time that the news of the Paris raid had reached Richmond, Manget had already been agitating the War Office to try out his operation. Exactly why Mechanics Hall was hesitant is really unclear but, it seems likely that the primary reason was because very few people in the war office even knew that the CSS Thunder existed. Even President Wheeler was in the dark and quite miffed that his Generals had never bothered to mention this before now. The Paris raid ended any debate and shined a spotlight on the entire project. Manget was given the green light he had been looking for and he wasted no time setting the wheels in motion. His airship and his troops were leaving their base and moving north no sooner than he got his telegram to go.
Their primary target was sitting right on the Ohio river between the cities of Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky. Until the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, the J. Roebling Bridge had been the largest suspension bridge in the world. It was one of several primary arteries across the river and of strategic importance in supplying the front lines in Kentucky and Tennessee. The Confederate plan was simple. They were going to drop it in the river and not only cut off the north south traffic but, block the river traffic with it’s wreckage.
The plan sounded simple enough but, to the chagrin of the Confederate strike team, it was far more complicated than it looked. The first problem they encountered was the weather. They found themselves stuck for three extra days at their staging area near Lafayette, Tennessee. The lack of weather information, combined with the normal torrential weather of the late spring, almost put an end to the operation before it even began.
The weather was a problem that was overcome by simply waiting for a stretch of clear skies. No one could actually know about the weather over the target so, no one worried about it. The real problems were yet to come and then only after the operation was underway. While many of these snags might seem to be a lack of planning, the truth of the matter was, no one had ever attempted such an operation before. As simple as it looked on the surface, it was anything but that in actual execution.
So much effort had gone into getting the assault team to it’s target that almost no thought had been given to what they should do once they were there. That is not to say that the Confederates had completely ignored the tactical concerns. They had just over simplified the requirements. They never considered exactly how hard it is to destroy a bridge of that size. Modern calculations have revealed that they did not bring enough explosives with them and, as a result, no matter what happened on the ground, Roebling was going to stay up.
The first part of the Confederate plan went well enough. The Thunder dropped it’s troops, in the dark, and well short of the bridge. It was a spectacular success because, up till that point, every single attempt to repel from the rear gondola had resulted in someone getting injured and even one death. The forty seven man strike team landed with all of it’s gear and proceeded towards the bridge. That was the first and last thing that would go according to plan.
Despite the fact that the Roebling was a major artery, no one in the planning of the operation ever seemed to consider that the bridge would be in use. It was not only in use but choked with traffic. Perhaps they thought the darkness would mean few people would be there. They were very wrong. The Confederates did luck out in one aspect. No infantry or other types of combat troops were moving across the bridge when they finally managed to begin the assault. There were guards of the Ohio Territorial Militia but, at least the Confederates were expecting them and had a plan.
Unfortunately, the diversion did not go as expected. The CSS Thunder was the diversion and, according to the plan, she crossed over the river and even managed to loiter around just north of the bridge. Given the recent events in Paris, there was no one who was just gazing at the airship. Not only were the bridge guards shooting at the Thunder but, it seemed as if nearly everyone in Cincinnati was running to their roof and joining them. The heavy volume of unexpected fire forced the Confederate airship to back off and gain some altitude so it would be out of range of the small arms.
The other problem was that it only distracted the guards on the north side of the bridge and the troops on the south side were now alerted and that was where the Confederate ground team began their assault. Some unknown US officer also called in for the reaction team and, by the time the Confederates got there, the US position had been reinforced. This led to a shoot out on the Kentucky side that involved a very high volume of bullets in a congested area. Civilians who just happened to be crossing the bridge were not playing victim either. Many of them joined in the fight.
With this in mind, it is rather surprising that the Confederates managed to do as well as they did. They actually overran the perimeter defenses and seized a small portion of the south span before being stopped by the Ohio militia. They even managed to detonate some of their charges but the damage to the bridge was minimal. After almost an hour of fighting the Confederates were running low on ammunition and the US troops were getting a constant stream of reinforcements on both sides of the bridge. The Confederate mountain troops were forced to withdraw. The most surprising aspect of this was that the only ones who pursued them were civilians that they easily kept at bay. The surviving members of the assault team were eventually and successfully winched back on Thunder and the Confederate airship did make it back to friendly lines with no further incidents.
The attack was instant news, world wide, and something of a shock to the people of the United States. Eugene Debbs wasted no time lambasting President Root for being monumentally incompetent for allowing such a thing to happen. At this point it seemed as if Root’s reelection bid was doomed and, with it, the cause of the Triple Entente.
On the other side of the front lines, despite the tactical failure, the citizens of the Confederacy were drunk with the elation of success. They now seemed to have a grand new weapon that no one else did and, despite it’s shortcomings, people were mostly of the opinion that next time they would do better. While the civilians might have felt this way, the Confederate military was a bit more subdued in their reaction. They had very mixed feelings about the Cincinnati Raid and with good reason. They were not so pessimistic as to shut the program down or keep Manget from taking another go at it.
Unfortunately the reaction in the US was enough to prevent another raid on any bridge over the Ohio river. The guards at each crossing were tripled and this easily put them beyond the abilities of the Confederates to attack with a vertical assault. The Confederate airship program would also be dealt a serious blow when in late summer, while moored at her hangar in Ocala, a hurricane destroyed both the Thunder and it’s shelter. The home of the CSS air fleet would relocate to Northern Alabama after that. It would delay the CSA program and set them back for months.
The most lasting effects of the raid were, in it’s immediate aftermath, completely unseen. They were the kinds of things that cannot be planned for or even expected. The first of these was the presence of a particular individual on that morning. He was a member of the Ohio Territorial Guard. Born in Michigan, of immigrant parents, his name was Frank Zholhus. Frank was in his late twenties and had long since served his time in the regular army. He was somewhat angered when, after the war broke out, he found himself being drafted back into the military, specifically the Ohio militia system, as a part time reservist. He was required to give three months a year to military missions, inside the state. In May of 1900 his job was guarding the Roebling Bridge.
The other effect was the presence of yet another individual. His name was Paul Laurence Dunbar who was a relatively successful poet and writer, with publications in such periodicals as Harpers Weekly. Dunbar was a native of Kentucky and, more importantly, the son of former slaves. To put it simply, Dunbar was a black man. On that morning, he was driving his buggy and fighting traffic on the Roebling bridge. He had just returned from visiting friends in Dayton. Due to Dunbar’s ill health (he was suffering from the first stages of tuberculosis) one of those friends chose to accompany him on the journey home. This man was the owner of a moderately successful bicycle shop and his name was Wilbur Wright.
The two men were caught in the fire of the initial Confederate assault and forced to flee northwards on foot. The exact details of what happened after that are unclear. What we do know is that Dunbar took a bullet wound in the chest and it punctured his left lung. He died in the arms of Wilbur as they both sheltered from the hail of fire, under a wagon. Wilbur would survive the battle and eventually make it back home. He also returned with an attitude that both surprised and shocked his siblings. This change of heart, at the time, was completely unknown outside of the Wright family. However, before this chain of events would reach it’s inevitable conclusion, the entire world would know.