by Charles Esseltine

In our timeline Benjamin Franklin witnessed the flight of one of the worlds first hot air balloons. He commented "Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each, could not cost more than five ships of the line; and where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense as that 10,000 men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?” . He died before the first American balloon took flight.

In a history next door to ours, he had stayed out of foreign relations and had concentrated on his scientific interests, and became not one of the founding fathers of our country, but the greatest inventor since Leonardo da Vinci. After designing the lightning rod he invented a electromagnet, which led to him inventing an electric motor. He was the fist person to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water. This nearly lead to his untimely demise, as the explosion almost destroyed his lab. If he hadn’t left his lab to answer the door, he would have only been a footnote in the history of science. In his next experiment with hydrogen, he trapped each gas in waxed fabric bags. When he tied the bags off, and released them from the clamps, the hydrogen bag went straight to the roof. Within five years, he had tied all of the inventions together into a lighter-than-air craft that he dubbed the Airship. The size of a small sailboat, it could lift only three people due the weight of the electric motor. It could travel only five to ten miles an hour, but it could climb far above the clouds.

This caught the world’s attention, and made Franklin into an international celebrity. And while the governments of the world saw them as nothing more than toys for those silly colonists, the fledgling Revolutionary Army saw the potential of the airships. They secretly bought twenty of them, and loaded each of them with two small cannons. When the Continental Congress declared their independence from England they were the new country’s best kept secret. When the British navy sent troopships to stop the revolution, the ten ships were able to destroy over 80% of the fleet, with only one ship lost. And that ship was hit by a lightning bolt. They also were key observation posts to direct the troops in battle. They used another one of Franklin’s inventions the wireless (a.k.a radio) to talk between divisions.

The British army was no match for the American forces. The British surrendered two months after the first ship was sunk. With the British forces so badly depleted, they were no match for the colonial revolts of 1777 that broke the empire's hold on nearly all of its colonies.

Franklin's inventions revolutionized the world. Because of the electric motor, slavery never became big in America, and was abolished in 1805 with very few protests. His wireless communication equipment, while it took up an entire room, allowed news to travel around the world within minutes.

Elsewhere in Europe, Spain to be precise, the peasants were revolting. So revolting in fact that the new Spanish king, Charles III moved his throne to Mexico after the fire that killed Ferdinand VI was traced back to one of the peasant groups. He took with him most of the royal wealth, and almost all of the army. They set up a new capital San Carlos in what would have been Cancun in our timeline, and the new Imperial Spanish Mexico (ISM) was formed. They founded a country based on Spanish supremacy, and began a program of killing, or enslaving anyone that wasn’t of “Pure Spanish Stock”. And it went on for generations. Most of the world didn’t care, because human rights wasn’t a popular subject. Even America turned a blind eye to the practice, because it didn’t affect them. Well for nearly seventy years it didn’t....

This caused many of the indigenous people to flee into the United States. Most of them joined the army to fight the Spaniards. They included members of many Indian tribes, as well as some of the Chinese, and Japanese slaves that Mexico had imported for menial labor.

Then in 1853 the Mexican army began “Annexing” Franklin (most of what we would call Texas and Arizona in our time line), the U.S. Army was called in to stop them. They were met by the fierce Mexican army’s armored cavalry. But they managed to hold them at a small fort called Alamo.

While America’s example of air power was lost on the other governments that just saw it as a passing fad, America continued to improve on it, and by the 1850's they had airships that could lift over a hundred men, and their equipment, or ten tons of bombs or rockets.

So a fiery young commander named Geronimo commanded the rescue mission that led 10,000 para-troopers into the heart of the Mexican armored cavalry. They struck in broad daylight, dropping on them from the east, with the sun to their back. They landed in amongst the enemy, and fought almost to the last man. But they broke the army, and sent them reeling back.

A picture of Geronimo was taken right before he jumped. With his rifle held high, he said “Follow me!”. And they did, each one yelling “Geronimo!”

BUILDING THE MODEL

When I saw the contest, the subject just sort of popped up right away. The biggest trouble was finding the figure. All of the local stores were out of para-troopers in any scale, and I didn’t want to use the 1:72 that all of the civil war figures come in. So I finally found a 1:35 WWII U.S. paratrooper set. But they had machine guns! A little work with the knife, and they were ready.

I looked up what colors were used in the 1880's, and played with them. So he wound up with a blue jacket, and brown pants. I used Testors flat brown, and Humbrol Matt Blue for the rest. As for the shoulder hash, and other markings, I let my imagination run wild.

After cleaning the flash, and mold lines off the figure, I used Testors glue to assemble the figure. The parachute I made from medical tape, and paper stips. These were attached with CA, and painted to match with the white harness.

The background is a collections of odds, and ends from my greebles box, and a few LEGO’s (Ya LEGO’s The little plastic clear pieces come in handy!). The “wood” floor is a piece of sheet styrene that came pre-scored. I added some vertical scores, sanded down the edges, and gave it a wash, and then a top coat, applied with a cotton rag. (Boy did my hands get dirty, but the result was worth it. I used the sand and rag technique on the shelves as well. Using the sand paper in only one direction, and following with the rag in the a circular motion, I get a grainy look to the plastic. I wasn’t sure if I should have the door open, or closed, but when I found a piece of memory book paper, with a cloud pattern, I went with the open door. I wasn’t sure if the “shelves were going to be shelves, until I looked at the other figures in the set. None of them could be easily modified in the time I had left. So “More Greebles!”

Image: The intrepid commander

Image: Jump light

Image: Building the parachute