Montgolfier balloons invented in 1758 instead of 1783

Prompted by Trump's claim that the Continental Army captured all the British airports. Planes certainly didn't exist in 1783...but balloons did.
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What would have happened if French scientists invent the balloon 25 years earlier, in 1758? Maybe Montgolfier's parents get involved with the invention. At the very least, they can get interested in 1775 when one of the brothers thinks about inventing a parachute.

The French and Indian War is going on in 1758. The pressures of wartime encourage the French to deploy the balloons in the field as observation platforms. The British naturally notice this, capture a few balloons, and reverse-engineer the design. The Indians presumably figure out how to do this too.

By the time the war ends in 1764, the French, English, and Native Americans have experienced pilots and rudimentary airfields. This comes in handy in later years such as (say) 1776, 1789, and 1812...

Is this plausible? Can the balloons be lifted high enough to get out of range of firearms and host a marksman or observation platform?

Note that parachutes could come a few years earlier.
 
Things that come to mind:

1. Since weight will be at a premium, the pilot can be a woman or child armed with a spyglass and parachute. If the balloon is shot down she can parachute down to safety, ditch the chute, and walk back to her forces dressed as a camp follower or something. The enemy will have never expected a woman to be part of the opposing army, and it will allow women who wish to serve to do so in some fashion.

2. Bags can be painted black, blue, or white to camouflage the balloon (black for night missions where the spotter looks for enemy campfires). I don't think they have any transparent material that will work at this time.

3. The spotter can communicate information down to the people on the ground by attaching messages to rings on the tether and simply dropping the ring. No need to scream down and alert opposing forces.

4. Marksmen will make no sense as the balloon will be buffeted around by the winds, ruining their aim. The sound of the weapon firing can also alert the enemy.

5. Housewives who wish to help the war effort can sew pieces of bags for the balloons.

6. The Wikipedia article on the Montgolfier brothers claims that Joseph believed the balloon could be used as an aerial troop transport (he was considering an attack on Gibraltar at the time).

7. The same article has this, indicating that an earlier invention was plausible:

"Some claim that the hot air balloon was invented about 74 years earlier by the Brazilian/Portuguese priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão.[11] A description of his invention was published in 1709(?) in Vienna, and another one was found in the Vatican in about 1917.[12] However, this claim is not generally recognized by aviation historians outside the Portuguese-speaking community, in particular the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale."

I was toying with the idea of having unmanned flights with a spyglass on the balloon that could be rotated from the ground but realized there is no way to get the observation down to the ground.

FYI, the first manned balloon flight took place in 1796 (in this case 1771 as everything is moved 25 years earlier). The first war which made extensive use of balloons was the Civil War.
 
The balloons of the pre-synthetic fabric era, especially the hot air ones, used silk for the fabric due to strength and lightness. The Native Americans have no way to access this in any quantity (captured clothing is not enough) and in any case they did not produce fabrics of any sort in the quantities needed, let alone having the requisite properties. While the chemistry of the late 18th century could produce hydrogen as the lifting gas, hydrogen generators were bulky and required significant amounts of materials to make hydrogen in quantity. You needed a wagon or two for the actual generator and the the acid and iron to make the hydrogen. Hauling that around on the road net of the Civil War was hard enough, in 18th century North America good luck. Hydrogen filled balloons are not ASB, but there is an issue with how mobile they would be and also how effective in spotting for areas of dense forest.
 
Could they transport them by ship? Many of the major cities are on the coast after all, and there are rivers all over the place.

FYI, I just thought of an interesting weapon to be used against the balloons: fire arrows if the balloons get too low. If hydrogen is the lifting gas, I'd expect that it would puncture the balloon and/or ignite the hydrogen (though I would suspect your commander would be more intent on capturing the balloon rather than destroying it).
 
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