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USS Akron
USS ''Akron'' (ZRS-4) was a helium-filled rigid airship of the U.S. Navy, the lead ship of her class, which operated between September 1931 and April 1933. It was the world's first purpose-built flying aircraft carrier, carrying F9C Sparrowhawk fighter planes, which could be launched and recovered while it was in flight. With an overall length of , ''Akron'' and her sister ship were among the largest flying objects ever built. Although LZ 129 ''Hindenburg'' and LZ 130 ''Graf Zeppelin II'' were some longer and slightly more voluminous, the two German airships were filled with hydrogen, and so the two US Navy craft still hold the world record for the largest helium-filled airships. ''Akron'' was destroyed in a thunderstorm off the coast of New Jersey on the morning of 4 April 1933, killing 73 of the 76 crewmen and passengers. The accident involved the greatest loss of life in any airship crash. Technical description The airship's skeleton was built of the new lightweight ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duralumin
Duralumin (also called duraluminum, duraluminium, duralum, dural(l)ium, or dural) is a trade name for one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The term is a combination of '' Dürener'' and ''aluminium''. Its use as a trade name is obsolete. Today the term mainly refers to aluminium–copper alloys, designated as the 2000 series by the international alloy designation system (IADS), as with 2014 and 2024 alloys used in airframe fabrication. History Duralumin was developed by the German metallurgist Alfred Wilm at Dürener Metallwerke AG. In 1903, Wilm discovered that after quenching, an aluminium alloy containing 4% copper would harden when left at room temperature for several days. Further improvements led to the introduction of duralumin in 1909. The name is mainly used in pop-science to describe all Al-Cu alloys system, or '2000' series, as designated through the international alloy designation system originally created in 1970 by the Aluminum A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moffett Federal Airfield
Moffett Federal Airfield , also known as Moffett Field, is a joint civil-military airport located in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County, California, United States, between northern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale. On November 10, 2014, NASA announced that it would be leasing of the airfield property to Google for 60 years. The airport is near the south end of San Francisco Bay, northwest of San Jose. Formerly a US Navy facility, the former naval air station is now owned and operated by the NASA Ames Research Center. Tenant military activities include the 129th Rescue Wing of the California Air National Guard, operating the HC-130J Combat King II and HH-60G Pave Hawk aircraft, as well as the adjacent Headquarters for the 7th Psychological Operations Group of the US Army Reserve. Until 28 July 2010, the US Air Force's 21st Space Operations Squadron was also a tenant command at Moffett Field, occupying the former Onizuka Air Force Station. In addition to these m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alloy
An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductility, opacity (optics), opacity, and lustre (mineralogy), luster, but may have properties that differ from those of the pure metals, such as increased strength or hardness. In some cases, an alloy may reduce the overall cost of the material while preserving important properties. In other cases, the mixture imparts synergistic properties to the constituent metal elements such as corrosion resistance or mechanical strength. Alloys are defined by a metallic bonding character. The alloy constituents are usually measured by mass percentage for practical applications, and in Atomic ratio, atomic fraction for basic science studies. Alloys are usually classified as substitutional or interstitial alloys, depending on the atomic arrangement that forms the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles E
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was '' Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as '' Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch and German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun ''*karilaz'' meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (< Old English ''ċeorl''), which developed its depr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spy Basket
The spy gondola, spy basket, observation car or sub-cloud car (german: Spähgondel or ) is a crewed vessel that an airship hiding in cloud cover could lower several hundred metres to a point below the clouds in order to inconspicuously observe the ground and help navigate the airship. It was a byproduct of ''Peilgondel'' development (a gondola to weight an airship's radio-locating antenna). They were used almost exclusively by the Germans in the First World War on their military airships. Development The ''Peilgondel'' was developed by Paul Jaray to act as a heavy plumbbob for an airship's radio antenna. A free-hanging antenna wire would move and flex in the wind hindering communications; the added weight reduced this movement. Jaray then developed the ''Peilgondel'' further into a crewed spy gondola. Use Spy baskets were used on, among others, Schütte-Lanz and Zeppelin airships. , it was not always certain which airships used them: the blueprints for LZ 62 (L 30) and LZ 72 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zeppelin
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155–157. and developed in detail in 1893.Dooley 2004, p. A.187. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word ''zeppelin'' came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and as scouts, resulting in over 500 deaths in bombing raids in Britain. The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily slowed the airship business. Although DELAG establish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buoyancy Compensator (aviation)
The static buoyancy of airships in flight is not constant. It is therefore necessary to control the altitude of an airship by controlling its buoyancy: buoyancy compensation. Changes which have an effect on buoyancy * Changes in air temperature (and thus the density of air) * Changes in lifting gas temperature (for example, the heating of the hull by the sun). * Accumulation of additional ballast (for example, precipitation or icing on the envelope) * Changes in ballast (for example, during a flight maneuver or the dropping of ballast) * Changes in weight of fuel on board, due to fuel consumption. This was a challenge especially in the large historic airships like the Zeppelins. For example, on a flight from Friedrichshafen to Lakehurst, the rigid airship LZ 126, built in 1923-24, used 23,000 kg gasoline and 1300 kg of oil (an average consumption of 290 kg/100 km). During the landing the airship had to release approximately 24,000 cubic meters of hydrogen to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maybach VL II
The Maybach VL II was a type of internal combustion engine built by the German company Maybach in the late 1920s and 1930s. It was an uprated development of the successful Maybach VL I, and like the VL I, was a 60° V-12 engine. Five of them powered the German airship '' Graf Zeppelin'', housed in separate nacelles. The engines developed and were of capacity. They could burn either Blau gas or petrol. The American USS ''Akron'' used eight of them, mounted internally, as did its sister ship ''Macon''. The engines were reversible, meaning different cams could be engaged allowing the engine crankshaft to run in either direction, enabling reverse thrust. Lürssen built the fast yacht ''Oheka II'' in 1927; powered by three VL IIs, it was the fastest vessel of its type and became the basis of Germany's E-boat E-boat was the Western Allies' designation for the fast attack craft (German: ''Schnellboot'', or ''S-Boot'', meaning "fast boat") of the Kriegsmarine during World War II; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goldbeater's Skin
Goldbeater's skin is the processed outer membrane of the intestine of an animal, typically cattle, which is valued for its strength against tearing. The term derives from its traditional use as durable layers interleaved between sheets of gold stock during the process of making gold leaf by goldbeating, as a batch process producing many "leaves" at the same time. In the early modern production of airships, application of its high strength-to-weight ratio and reliability were crucial for building at least the largest examples. Manufacture To manufacture goldbeater's skin, the gut of oxen (or other cattle) is soaked in a dilute solution of potassium hydroxide, washed, stretched, beaten flat and thin, and treated chemically to prevent putrefaction. A pack of 1,000 pieces of goldbeater's skin requires the gut of about 400 oxen and is thick. Up to 120 sheets of gold laminated with goldbeater's skin can be beaten at the same time, since the skin is thin and elastic and does not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II
The ''Graf Zeppelin'' (; Registration: D-LZ 130) was the last of the German rigid airships built by Zeppelin Luftschiffbau during the period between the World Wars, the second and final ship of the ''Hindenburg'' class, and the second zeppelin to carry the name "Graf Zeppelin" (after the LZ 127) and thus often referred to as ''Graf Zeppelin II''. Due to the United States refusal to export helium to Germany, the ''Graf Zeppelin II'' was filled with hydrogen and therefore never carried commercial passengers. It made 30 flights over 11 months in 1938–39, many being propaganda publicity flights; but staff of the Reich Air Ministry were aboard to conduct radio surveillance and measurements. The airship, along with its LZ 127 namesake were both scrapped in April 1940, and their duralumin framework salvaged to build aircraft for the Luftwaffe. Design and development The ''Graf Zeppelin II'' was virtually identical to the ''Hindenburg'', and was originally designed to use hydro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin
LZ 127 ''Graf Zeppelin'' () was a German passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. Named after the German airship pioneer Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a count () in the German nobility, it was conceived and operated by Dr. Hugo Eckener, the chairman of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. ''Graf Zeppelin'' made 590 flights totalling almost 1.7 million kilometres (over 1 million miles). It was operated by a crew of 36, and could carry 24 passengers. It was the longest and largest airship in the world when it was built. It made the first circumnavigation of the world by airship, and the first nonstop crossing of the Pacific Ocean by air; its range was enhanced by its use of Blau gas as a fuel. It was built using funds raised by public subscription and from the German government, and its operating costs were offset by the sale of special postage stamps to collectors, the support of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
