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An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a
lifting gas A lifting gas or lighter-than-air gas is a gas that has a density lower than normal atmospheric gases and rises above them as a result. It is required for aerostats to create buoyancy, particularly in lighter-than-air aircraft, which include ballo ...
that is less
dense Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematically ...
than the surrounding air. In early dirigibles, the lifting gas used was
hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...
, due to its high lifting capacity and ready availability.
Helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...
gas has almost the same lifting capacity and is not flammable, unlike hydrogen, but is rare and relatively expensive. Significant amounts were first discovered in the United States and for a while helium was only available for airships in that country. Most airships built since the 1960s have used helium, though some have used hot air.A few airships after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
used hydrogen. The first British airship to use helium was the ''Chitty Bang Bang'' of 1967.
The envelope of an airship may form the gasbag, or it may contain a number of gas-filled cells. An airship also has engines, crew, and optionally also payload accommodation, typically housed in one or more
gondolas The gondola (, ; vec, góndoła ) is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian lagoon. It is typically propelled by a gondolier, who uses a rowing oar, which is not fastened to the hul ...
suspended below the envelope. The main types of airship are non-rigid, semi-rigid, and rigid. Non-rigid airships, often called "blimps", rely on internal pressure to maintain their shape. Semi-rigid airships maintain the envelope shape by internal pressure, but have some form of supporting structure, such as a fixed keel, attached to it. Rigid airships have an outer structural framework that maintains the shape and carries all structural loads, while the lifting gas is contained in one or more internal gasbags or cells. Rigid airships were first flown by Count
Ferdinand von Zeppelin Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (german: Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin; 8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general and later inventor of the Zeppelin rigid airships. His name soon became synonymous with airships a ...
and the vast majority of rigid airships built were manufactured by the firm he founded,
Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH is a German aircraft manufacturing company. It is perhaps best known for its leading role in the design and manufacture of rigid airships, commonly referred to as ''Zeppelins'' due to the company's prominence. The name ...
. As a result, rigid airships are often called
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 ...
s. Airships were the first aircraft capable of controlled powered flight, and were most commonly used before the 1940s; their use decreased as their capabilities were surpassed by those of aeroplanes. Their decline was accelerated by a series of high-profile accidents, including the 1930 crash and burning of the British
R101 R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Mi ...
in France, the 1933 and 1935 storm-related crashes of the twin
airborne aircraft carrier An airborne aircraft carrier is a type of mother ship aircraft which can carry, launch, retrieve and support other smaller parasite aircraft. The only dedicated examples to have been built were airships, although existing heavier-than-air ai ...
U.S. Navy helium-filled rigids, the and USS ''Macon'' respectively, and the 1937 burning of the German
hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...
-filled '' Hindenburg''. From the 1960s, helium airships have been used where the ability to hover for a long time outweighs the need for speed and manoeuvrability, such as advertising, tourism, camera platforms, geological surveys and
aerial observation Aerial reconnaissance is reconnaissance for a military or strategic purpose that is conducted using reconnaissance aircraft. The role of reconnaissance can fulfil a variety of requirements including artillery spotting, the collection of imagery ...
.


Terminology


Airship

During the pioneer years of aeronautics, terms such as "airship", "air-ship", "air ship" and "ship of the air" meant any kind of navigable or dirigible flying machine. In 1919
Frederick Handley Page Sir Frederick Handley Page, CBE, FRAeS (15 November 1885 – 21 April 1962) was an English industrialist who was a pioneer in the aircraft industry and became known as the father of the heavy bomber. His company Handley Page Limited was ...
was reported as referring to "ships of the air," with smaller passenger types as "air yachts." In the 1930s, large intercontinental flying boats were also sometimes referred to as "ships of the air" or "flying-ships". Nowadays the term "airship" is used only for powered, dirigible balloons, with sub-types being classified as rigid, semi-rigid or non-rigid. Semi-rigid architecture is the more recent, following advances in deformable structures and the exigency of reducing weight and volume of the airships. They have a minimal structure that keeps the shape jointly with overpressure of the gas envelope.


Aerostat

An aerostat is an
aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...
that remains aloft using buoyancy or static lift, as opposed to the aerodyne, which obtains lift by moving through the air. Airships are a type of aerostat.Ege (1973). The term ''aerostat'' has also been used to indicate a tethered or
moored balloon A tethered, moored or captive balloon is a balloon that is restrained by one or more tethers attached to the ground and so it cannot float freely. The base of the tether is wound around the drum of a winch, which may be fixed or mounted on a vehic ...
as opposed to a free-floating balloon. Aerostats today are capable of lifting a payload of to an altitude of more than above sea level. They can also stay in the air for extended periods of time, particularly when powered by an on-board generator or if the tether contains electrical conductors. Due to this capability, aerostats can be used as platforms for telecommunication services. For instance, Platform Wireless International Corporation announced in 2001 that it would use a tethered airborne payload to deliver cellular phone service to a region in Brazil. The
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
's ABSOLUTE project was also reportedly exploring the use of tethered aerostat stations to provide telecommunications during disaster response.


Dirigible

Airships were originally called ''dirigible balloons'', from the French ''ballon dirigeable'' often shortened to ''dirigeable'' (meaning "steerable", from the French ''diriger'' – to direct, guide or steer). This was the name that inventor
Henri Giffard Baptiste Jules Henri Jacques Giffard (8 February 182514 April 1882) was a French engineer. In 1852 he invented the steam injector and the powered Giffard dirigible airship. Career Giffard was born in Paris in 1825. He invented the injector a ...
gave to his machine that made its first flight on 24 September 1852.


Blimp

A blimp is a non-rigid aerostat. In British usage it refers to any non-rigid aerostat, including barrage balloons and other
kite balloon A kite balloon is a tethered balloon which is shaped to help make it stable in low and moderate winds and to increase its lift. It typically comprises a streamlined envelope with stabilising features and a harness or yoke connecting it to the mai ...
s, having a streamlined shape and stabilising tail fins. Some blimps may be powered dirigibles, as in early versions of the Goodyear Blimp. Later Goodyear dirigibles, though technically ''semi-rigid airships,'' have still been called "blimps" by the company.Mackinnon, Jim
"Piece by piece, Goodyear's new airship arrives at Wingfoot hangar,"
September 6, 2012, updated September 7, 2012, '' Akron Beacon Journal,''
Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...
(Goodyear blimps' base), at Ohio.com, retrieved June 28, 2021


Zeppelin

The term zeppelin originally referred to airships manufactured by the German Zeppelin Company, which built and operated the first rigid airships in the early years of the twentieth century. The initials LZ, for (German for "Zeppelin airship"), usually prefixed their craft's serial identifiers. Streamlined rigid (or semi-rigid) airships are often referred to as "Zeppelins", because of the fame that this company acquired due to the number of airships it produced.


Hybrid airship

Hybrid airships fly with a positive aerostatic contribution, usually equal to the empty weight of the system, and the variable payload is sustained by propulsion or aerodynamic contribution.


Classification

Airships are classified according to their method of construction into rigid, semi-rigid and non-rigid types.


Rigid airships

A rigid airship has a rigid framework covered by an outer skin or envelope. The interior contains one or more gasbags, cells or balloons to provide lift. Rigid airships are typically unpressurised and can be made to virtually any size. Most, but not all, of the German
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 ...
airships have been of this type.


Semi-rigid airships

A semi-rigid airship has some kind of supporting structure but the main envelope is held in shape by the internal pressure of the lifting gas. Typically the airship has an extended, usually articulated keel running along the bottom of the envelope to stop it kinking in the middle by distributing suspension loads into the envelope, while also allowing lower envelope pressures.


Non-rigid airships

Non-rigid airships are often called "blimps". Most, but not all, of the American Goodyear airships have been blimps. A non-rigid airship relies entirely on internal gas pressure to retain its shape during flight. Unlike the rigid design, the non-rigid airship's gas envelope has no compartments. It typically has smaller internal bags or "ballonets". At sea level, these are filled with air. As altitude is increased, the lifting gas expands and air from the ballonets is expelled through valves to maintain the hull's shape. To return to sea level, the process is reversed: air is forced back into the ballonets by scooping air from the engine exhaust and using auxiliary blowers.


Construction


Envelope

The envelope itself is the structure, including textiles that contain the buoyant gas. Internally two ballonets placed in the front part and in the rear part of the hull contains air. The problem of the exact determination of the pressure on an airship envelope is still problematic and has fascinated major scientists such as
Theodor Von Karman Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...
. A few airships have been metal-clad, with rigid and nonrigid examples made. Each kind used a thin gastight metal envelope, rather than the usual rubber-coated fabric envelope. Only four metal-clad ships are known to have been built, and only two actually flew: Schwarz's first aluminum rigid airship of 1893 collapsed, Dooley, A.185-A.186 citing Robinson, pp.2–3 collapsed on inflation while his second flew; the nonrigid ZMC-2 built for the U.S. Navy flew from 1929 to 1941 when it was scrapped as too small for operational use on anti-submarine patrols; while the 1929 nonrigid Slate Aircraft Corporation ''City of Glendale'' collapsed on its first flight attempt.


Lifting gas

Thermal airships use a heated lifting gas, usually air, in a fashion similar to
hot air balloon A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket (in some long-distance or high-altitude balloons, a capsule), which carries ...
s. The first to do so was flown in 1973 by the British company Cameron Balloons.


Gondola


Propulsion and control

Small airships carry their engine(s) in their gondola. Where there were multiple engines on larger airships, these were placed in separate nacelles, termed ''power cars'' or ''engine cars''. To allow asymmetric thrust to be applied for maneuvering, these power cars were mounted towards the sides of the envelope, away from the center line gondola. This also raised them above the ground, reducing the risk of a propeller strike when landing. Widely spaced power cars were also termed ''wing cars'', from the use of "wing" to mean being on the side of something, as in a theater, rather than the aerodynamic device. These engine cars carried a crew during flight who maintained the engines as needed, but who also worked the engine controls, throttle etc., mounted directly on the engine. Instructions were relayed to them from the pilot's station by a telegraph system, as on a ship.


Environmental benefits

The main advantage of airships with respect to any other vehicle is of environmental nature. They require less energy to remain in flight, if compared to any other air vehicle. The proposed Varialift airship, powered by a mixture of solar-powered engines and conventional jet engines, would use only an estimated 8 percent of the fuel required by jet aircraft. Furthermore, utilizing the jet stream could allow for a faster and more energy-efficient cargo transport alternative to maritime shipping. This is one of the reasons why China has embraced their use recently.


History


Early pioneers


17th–18th centuries

In 1670, the Jesuit Father
Francesco Lana de Terzi Francesco Lana de Terzi (1631 in Brescia, Lombardy – 22 February 1687, in Brescia, Lombardy) was an Italian Jesuit priest, mathematician, naturalist and aeronautics pioneer. Having been professor of physics and mathematics at Brescia, he first ...
, sometimes referred to as the "Father of Aeronautics", published a description of an "Aerial Ship" supported by four copper spheres from which the air was evacuated. Although the basic principle is sound, such a craft was unrealizable then and remains so to the present day, since external air pressure would cause the spheres to collapse unless their thickness was such as to make them too heavy to be buoyant. A hypothetical craft constructed using this principle is known as a ''
vacuum airship A vacuum airship, also known as a vacuum balloon, is a hypothetical airship that is evacuated rather than filled with a lighter-than-air gas such as hydrogen or helium. First proposed by Italian Jesuit priest Francesco Lana de Terzi in 1670, the ...
''. In 1709, the Brazilian-Portuguese Jesuit priest
Bartolomeu de Gusmão Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão (December 1685 – 18 November 1724) was a Brazilian-born Portuguese priest and naturalist, who was a pioneer of lighter-than-air airship design. Early life Gusmão was born at Santos, then part of the Portugue ...
made a hot air balloon, the Passarola, ascend to the skies, before an astonished Portuguese court. It would have been on August 8, 1709, when Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão held, in the courtyard of the
Casa da Índia The Casa da Índia (, English: ''India House'' or ''House of India'') was a Portuguese state-run commercial organization during the Age of Discovery. It regulated international trade and the Portuguese Empire's territories, colonies, and factor ...
, in the city of Lisbon, the first Passarola demonstration. The balloon caught fire without leaving the ground, but, in a second demonstration, it rose to 95 meters in height. It was a small balloon of thick brown paper, filled with hot air, produced by the "fire of material contained in a clay bowl embedded in the base of a waxed wooden tray". The event was witnessed by King
John V of Portugal Dom John V ( pt, João Francisco António José Bento Bernardo; 22 October 1689 – 31 July 1750), known as the Magnanimous (''o Magnânimo'') and the Portuguese Sun King (''o Rei-Sol Português''), was King of Portugal from 9 December 17 ...
and the future
Pope Innocent XIII Pope Innocent XIII ( la, Innocentius XIII; it, Innocenzo XIII; 13 May 1655 – 7 March 1724), born as Michelangelo dei Conti, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 May 1721 to his death in March 1724. He is ...
. A more practical dirigible airship was described by Lieutenant
Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meusnier de la Place (Tours, 19 June 1754 — le Pont de Cassel, near Mainz, 13 June 1793) was a French mathematician, engineer and Revolutionary general. He is best known for Meusnier's theorem on the curvature o ...
in a paper entitled "''Mémoire sur l’équilibre des machines aérostatiques''" (Memorandum on the equilibrium of aerostatic machines) presented to the
French Academy French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...
on 3 December 1783. The 16 water-color drawings published the following year depict a streamlined envelope with internal ballonets that could be used for regulating lift: this was attached to a long carriage that could be used as a boat if the vehicle was forced to land in water. The airship was designed to be driven by three propellers and steered with a sail-like aft rudder. In 1784,
Jean-Pierre Blanchard Jean-Pierre rançoisBlanchard (4 July 1753 – 7 March 1809) was a French inventor, best known as a pioneer of gas balloon flight, who distinguished himself in the conquest of the air in a balloon, in particular the first crossing of the Englis ...
fitted a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft. In 1785, he crossed the
English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
in a balloon equipped with flapping wings for propulsion and a birdlike tail for steering.


19th century

The 19th century saw continued attempts to add methods of propulsion to balloons. The Australian
William Bland William Bland (5 November 1789 – 21 July 1868) was a transported convict, medical practitioner and surgeon, politician, farmer and inventor in the Colony of New South Wales, Australia. Early life Bland was born in London on 5 November 1789 ...
sent designs for his "Atomic Airship" to the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, where a model was displayed. This was an elongated balloon with a steam engine driving twin propellers suspended underneath. The lift of the balloon was estimated as 5 tons and the car with the fuel as weighing 3.5 tons, giving a payload of 1.5 tons. Bland believed that the machine could be driven at and could fly from Sydney to London in less than a week. In 1852,
Henri Giffard Baptiste Jules Henri Jacques Giffard (8 February 182514 April 1882) was a French engineer. In 1852 he invented the steam injector and the powered Giffard dirigible airship. Career Giffard was born in Paris in 1825. He invented the injector a ...
became the first person to make an engine-powered flight when he flew in a steam-powered airship. Airships would develop considerably over the next two decades. In 1863, Solomon Andrews flew his aereon design, an unpowered, controllable dirigible in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and offered the device to the U.S. Military during the Civil War. He flew a later design in 1866 around New York City and as far as Oyster Bay, New York. This concept used changes in lift to provide propulsive force, and did not need a powerplant. In 1872, the French naval architect Dupuy de Lome launched a large navigable balloon, which was driven by a large propeller turned by eight men. It was developed during the Franco-Prussian war and was intended as an improvement to the balloons used for communications between Paris and the countryside during the siege of Paris, but was completed only after the end of the war. In 1872, Paul Haenlein flew an airship with an internal combustion engine running on the coal gas used to inflate the envelope, the first use of such an engine to power an aircraft.Bento S. Mattos
Short History of Brazilian Aeronautics
(PDF), 44th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, Reno, Nevada, 9–12 January 2006.
Charles F. Ritchel made a public demonstration flight in 1878 of his hand-powered one-man rigid airship, and went on to build and sell five of his aircraft. In 1874, Micajah Clark Dyer filed U.S. Patent 154,654 "Apparatus for Navigating the Air". It is believed successful trial flights were made between 1872–1874, but detailed dates are not available. The apparatus used a combination of wings and paddle wheels for navigation and propulsion. More details can be found in the book about his life. In 1883, the first electric-powered flight was made by Gaston Tissandier, who fitted a Siemens electric motor to an airship. The first fully controllable free flight was made in 1884 by Charles Renard and
Arthur Constantin Krebs Arthur Constantin Krebs (16 November 1850 in Vesoul, France – 22 March 1935 in Quimperlé, France) was a French officer and pioneer in automotive engineering. Life Collaborating with Charles Renard, he piloted the first fully controll ...
in the
French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed Force ...
airship '' La France''. La France made the first flight of an airship that landed where it took off; the long, airship covered in 23 minutes with the aid of an electric motor, and a battery. It made seven flights in 1884 and 1885. In 1888, the design of the Campbell Air Ship, designed by Professor Peter C. Campbell, was submitted to aeronautic engineer Carl Edgar Myers for examination. After his approval it was built by the Novelty Air Ship Company. It was lost at sea in 1889 while being flown by Professor Hogan during an exhibition flight. From 1888 to 1897, Friedrich Wölfert built three airships powered by
Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (abbreviated as DMG, also known as ''Daimler Motors Corporation'') was a German engineering company and later automobile manufacturer, in operation from 1890 until 1926. Founded by Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900) and ...
-built petrol engines, the last of which caught fire in flight and killed both occupants in 1897. The 1888 version used a single cylinder Daimler engine and flew from
Canstatt Bad Cannstatt, also called Cannstatt (until July 23, 1933) or Kannstadt (until 1900), is one of the outer stadtbezirke, or city boroughs, of Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Bad Cannstatt is the oldest and most populous of Stuttgart's bo ...
to
Kornwestheim Kornwestheim ( Swabian: ) is a town in the district of Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated about north of Stuttgart, and south of Ludwigsburg. History Origins and Development Kornwestheim can look back at a history ...
. In 1897, an airship with an aluminum envelope was built by the Hungarian- Croatian engineer David Schwarz. It made its first flight at Tempelhof field in Berlin after Schwarz had died. His widow, Melanie Schwarz, was paid 15,000 marks by Count
Ferdinand von Zeppelin Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (german: Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin; 8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general and later inventor of the Zeppelin rigid airships. His name soon became synonymous with airships a ...
to release the industrialist Carl Berg from his exclusive contract to supply Schwartz with
aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
. From 1897 to 1899, Konstantin Danilewsky, medical doctor and inventor from
Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, then
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
), built four muscle-powered airships, of gas volume . About 200 ascents were made within a framework of experimental flight program, at two locations, with no significant incidents.


Early 20th century

In July 1900, the Luftschiff
Zeppelin LZ1 The Zeppelin ''LZ 1'' was the first successful experimental rigid airship. It was first flown from a floating hangar on Lake Constance, near Friedrichshafen in southern Germany, on 2 July 1900.Lueger, Otto: Lexikon der gesamten Technik und ihre ...
made its first flight. This led to the most successful airships of all time: the Zeppelins, named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who began working on rigid airship designs in the 1890s, leading to the flawed LZ1 in 1900 and the more successful LZ2 in 1906. The Zeppelin airships had a framework composed of triangular lattice girders covered with fabric that contained separate gas cells. At first multiplane tail surfaces were used for control and stability: later designs had simpler
cruciform tail __NOTOC__ The cruciform tail is an aircraft empennage configuration which, when viewed from the aircraft's front or rear, looks much like a cross. The usual arrangement is to have the horizontal stabilizer intersect the vertical tail somewhere ...
surfaces. The engines and crew were accommodated in "gondolas" hung beneath the hull driving propellers attached to the sides of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally, there was a passenger compartment (later a
bomb bay The bomb bay or weapons bay on some military aircraft is a compartment to carry bombs, usually in the aircraft's fuselage, with "bomb bay doors" which open at the bottom. The bomb bay doors are opened and the bombs are dropped when over t ...
) located halfway between the two engine compartments.
Alberto Santos-Dumont Alberto Santos-Dumont ( Palmira, 20 July 1873 — Guarujá, 23 July 1932) was a Brazilian aeronaut, sportsman, inventor, and one of the few people to have contributed significantly to the early development of both lighter-than-air and heavie ...
was a wealthy young
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
ian who lived in France and had a passion for flying. He designed 18 balloons and dirigibles before turning his attention to fixed-winged aircraft. On 19 October 1901 he flew his airship '' Number 6'', from the Parc Saint Cloud to and around the
Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "' ...
and back in under thirty minutes. This feat earned him the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000
franc The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centu ...
s. Many inventors were inspired by Santos-Dumont's small airships. Many airship pioneers, such as the American
Thomas Scott Baldwin Thomas Scott Baldwin (June 30, 1854 – May 17, 1923) was a pioneer balloonist and U.S. Army major during World War I. He was the first American to descend from a balloon by parachute. Early career Thomas Scott Baldwin was born on June 30, 18 ...
, financed their activities through passenger flights and public demonstration flights. Stanley Spencer built the first British airship with funds from advertising baby food on the sides of the envelope.Papers Past – Christchurch Star, 31 December 1903, ''WAYS OF AIRSHIPS'' (p. 2)
/ref> Others, such as
Walter Wellman Walter E. Wellman (November 3, 1858 – January 31, 1934) was an American journalist, explorer, and aëronaut. Biographical background Walter Wellman was born in Mentor, Ohio, in 1858. He was the sixth son of Alonzo Wellman and the fourth by ...
and
Melvin Vaniman Chester Melvin Vaniman (October 30, 1866 – July 2, 1912) was an American aviator and photographer who specialized in panoramic images. He shot images from gas balloons, ships masts, tall buildings and even a home-made pole. He scaled bui ...
, set their sights on loftier goals, attempting two polar flights in 1907 and 1909, and two trans-Atlantic flights in 1910 and 1912. In 1902 the Spanish engineer
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (; 28 December 1852 – 18 December 1936) was a Spanish civil engineer and mathematician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Torres was a pioneer in the development of the radio control and automated ...
published details of an innovative airship design in Spain and France. With a non-rigid body and internal bracing wires, it overcame the flaws of these types of aircraft as regards both rigid structure (zeppelin type) and flexibility, providing the airships with more stability during flight, and the capability of using heavier engines and a greater passenger load. In 1905, helped by Captain A. Kindelán, he built the airship "España" at the Guadalajara military base. Next year he patented his design without attracting official interest. In 1909 he patented an improved design that he offered to the French Astra company, who started mass-producing it in 1911 as the
Astra-Torres airship The Astra-Torres airships were non-rigid airships built by Société Astra in France between about 1908 and 1922 to a design by the Spaniard Leonardo Torres Quevedo. They had a highly-characteristic tri-lobed cross-section rather than the more usu ...
. The distinctive three-lobed design was widely used during the Great War by the Entente powers. To find a resolution to the slew of problems faced by airship engineers to dock dirigibles, Torres y Quevedo also drew up designs of a ‘docking station’ and made alterations to airship designs. In 1910, Torres y Quevedo proposed the idea of attaching an airships nose to a mooring mast and allowing the airship to weathervane with changes of wind direction. The use of a metal column erected on the ground, the top of which the bow or stem would be directly attached to (by a cable) would allow a dirigible to be moored at any time, in the open, regardless of wind speeds. Additionally, Torres y Quevedo's design called for the improvement and accessibility of temporary landing sites, where airships were to be moored for the purpose of disembarkation of passengers. The final patent was presented in February 1911. Other airship builders were also active before the war: from 1902 the French company Lebaudy Frères specialized in semirigid airships such as the '' Patrie'' and the '' République'', designed by their engineer Henri Julliot, who later worked for the American company Goodrich; the German firm Schütte-Lanz built the wooden-framed SL series from 1911, introducing important technical innovations; another German firm Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft built the '' Parseval-Luftschiff'' (PL) series from 1909, Lueger 1920, pp.404–412
Luftschiff
/ref> and Italian
Enrico Forlanini Enrico Forlanini (13 December 1848 – 9 October 1930) was an Italian engineer, inventor and aeronautical pioneer, known for his works on helicopters, aeroplanes, hydrofoils and dirigibles. He was born in Milan. His older brother Carlo Forlanini ...
's firm had built and flown the first two Forlanini airships. Ligugnana, Sandro On May 12, 1902, the inventor and
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
ian aeronaut
Augusto Severo de Albuquerque Maranhao Augusto is an Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish given name or surname. Notable people with the name include: * Augusto Aníbal * Augusto dos Anjos * Augusto Arbizo *Augusto Barbera (born 1938), Italian law professor, politician and judge *Augusto B ...
and his French mechanic, Georges Saché, died when they were flying over
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
in the airship called Pax. A marble plaque at number 81 of the Avenue du Maine in Paris, commemorates the location of Augusto Severo accident. The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax" is a 1902 short silent film recreation of the catastrophe, directed by Georges Méliès. In Britain, the Army built their first dirigible, the ''Nulli Secundus'', in 1907. The Navy ordered the construction of an experimental rigid in 1908. Officially known as His Majesty's Airship No. 1 and nicknamed the ''Mayfly'', it broke its back in 1911 before making a single flight. Work on a successor did not start until 1913. German airship passenger service known as
DELAG DELAG, acronym for ''Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft'' (German for "German Airship Travel Corporation"), was the world's first airline to use an aircraft in revenue service. It operated a fleet of zeppelin rigid airships manufacture ...
(Deutsche-Luftschiffahrts AG) was established in 1910. In 1910
Walter Wellman Walter E. Wellman (November 3, 1858 – January 31, 1934) was an American journalist, explorer, and aëronaut. Biographical background Walter Wellman was born in Mentor, Ohio, in 1858. He was the sixth son of Alonzo Wellman and the fourth by ...
unsuccessfully attempted an aerial crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...
in the airship '' America''.


World War I

The prospect of airships as bombers had been recognized in Europe well before the airships were up to the task.
H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''
The War in the Air ''The War in the Air: And Particularly How Mr. Bert Smallways Fared While It Lasted'' is a military science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells. The novel was written in four months in 1907, and was serialized and published in 1908 in ''Th ...
'' (1908) described the obliteration of entire fleets and cities by airship attack. The Italian forces became the first to use dirigibles for a military purpose during the
Italo–Turkish War The Italo-Turkish or Turco-Italian War ( tr, Trablusgarp Savaşı, "Tripolitanian War", it, Guerra di Libia, "War of Libya") was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from 29 September 1911, to 18 October 1912. As a result o ...
, the first bombing mission being flown on 10 March 1912.
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 fightin ...
marked the airship's real debut as a weapon. The Germans, French, and Italians all used airships for scouting and tactical bombing roles early in the war, and all learned that the airship was too vulnerable for operations over the front. The decision to end operations in direct support of armies was made by all in 1917. Many in the German military believed they had found the ideal weapon with which to counteract British naval superiority and strike at Britain itself, while more realistic airship advocates believed the zeppelin's value was as a long range scout/attack craft for naval operations. Raids on England began in January 1915 and peaked in 1916: following losses to the British defenses only a few raids were made in 1917–18, the last in August 1918. Zeppelins proved to be terrifying but inaccurate weapons. Navigation, target selection and bomb-aiming proved to be difficult under the best of conditions, and the cloud cover that was frequently encountered by the airships reduced accuracy even further. The physical damage done by airships over the course of the war was insignificant, and the deaths that they caused amounted to a few hundred. Nevertheless, the raid caused a significant diversion of British resources to defense efforts. The airships were initially immune to attack by aircraft and anti-aircraft guns: as the pressure in their envelopes was only just higher than ambient air, holes had little effect. But following the introduction of a combination of incendiary and explosive ammunition in 1916, their flammable hydrogen lifting gas made them vulnerable to the defending aeroplanes. Several were shot down in flames by British defenders, and many others destroyed in accidents. New designs capable of reaching greater altitude were developed, but although this made them immune from attack it made their bombing accuracy even worse. Countermeasures by the British included sound detection equipment, searchlights and anti-aircraft artillery, followed by night fighters in 1915. One tactic used early in the war, when their limited range meant the airships had to fly from forward bases and the only zeppelin production facilities were in
Friedrichshafen Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''K ...
, was the bombing of airship sheds by the British Royal Naval Air Service. Later in the war, the development of the aircraft carrier led to the first successful carrier-based air strike in history: on the morning of 19 July 1918, seven Sopwith 2F.1 Camels were launched from and struck the airship base at Tønder, destroying zeppelins L 54 and L 60. The British Army had abandoned airship development in favour of aeroplanes before the start of the war, but the Royal Navy had recognized the need for small airships to counteract the submarine and mine threat in coastal waters. Beginning in February 1915, they began to develop the SS (Sea Scout) class of blimp. These had a small envelope of and at first used aircraft
fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraf ...
s without the wing and tail surfaces as control cars. Later, more advanced blimps with purpose-built gondolas were used. The NS class (North Sea) were the largest and most effective non-rigid airships in British service, with a gas capacity of , a crew of 10 and an endurance of 24 hours. Six bombs were carried, as well as three to five machine guns. British blimps were used for scouting, mine clearance, and
convoy A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support and can help maintain cohesion within a unit. It may also be used ...
patrol duties. During the war, the British operated over 200 non-rigid airships. Several were sold to Russia, France, the United States, and Italy. The large number of trained crews, low attrition rate and constant experimentation in handling techniques meant that at the war's end Britain was the world leader in non-rigid airship technology. The Royal Navy continued development of rigid airships until the end of the war. Eight rigid airships had been completed by the armistice, ( No. 9r, four 23 Class, two R23X Class and one R31 Class), although several more were in an advanced state of completion by the war's end. Both France and Italy continued to use airships throughout the war. France preferred the non-rigid type, whereas Italy flew 49 semi-rigid airships in both the scouting and bombing roles. Aeroplanes had essentially replaced airships as bombers by the end of the war, and Germany's remaining zeppelins were destroyed by their crews, scrapped or handed over to the Allied powers as war reparations. The British rigid airship program, which had mainly been a reaction to the potential threat of the German airships, was wound down.


The interwar period

Britain, the United States and Germany built rigid airships between the two world wars. Italy and France made limited use of Zeppelins handed over as war reparations. Italy, the Soviet Union, the United States and Japan mainly operated semi-rigid airships. Under the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
, Germany was not allowed to build airships of greater capacity than a million cubic feet. Two small passenger airships, LZ 120 ''Bodensee'' and its sister ship LZ 121 ''Nordstern'', were built immediately after the war but were confiscated following the sabotage of the wartime Zeppelins that were to have been handed over as war reparations: ''Bodensee'' was given to Italy and ''Nordstern'' to France. On May 12, 1926, the Italian built semi-rigid airship ''
Norge Norge is Norwegian (bokmål), Danish and Swedish for Norway. It may also refer to: People * Kaare Norge (born 1963), Danish guitarist * Norge Luis Vera (born 1971), Cuban baseball player Places * 11871 Norge, asteroid Toponyms: * Norge, Okl ...
'' was the first aircraft to fly over the
North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...
. The British R33 and
R34 R34 may refer to: * R34 (New York City Subway car) * R34 (South Africa) * HM Airship ''R.34'', a rigid airship of the Royal Air Force * , a destroyer of the Royal Navy * Nissan Skyline (R34), a mid-size car * Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34), a sports ca ...
were near-identical copies of the German L 33, which had come down almost intact in Yorkshire on 24 September 1916. Despite being almost three years out of date by the time they were launched in 1919, they became two of the most successful airships in British service. The creation of the
Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
(RAF) in early 1918 created a hybrid British airship program. The RAF was not interested in airships while the
Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong *Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral *Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings * Admiralty, Traf ...
was, so a deal was made where the Admiralty would design any future military airships and the RAF would handle manpower, facilities and operations.Higham (1961), p. 176. On 2 July 1919, R34 began the first double crossing of the
Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
by an aircraft. It landed at
Mineola, Long Island Mineola is a Administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in and the county seat of Nassau County, New York, Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 18,799 at the 2010 census. The n ...
on 6 July after 108 hours in the air; the return crossing began on 8 July and took 75 hours. This feat failed to generate enthusiasm for continued airship development, and the British airship program was rapidly wound down. During World War One, the U.S. Navy acquired its first airship, the DH-1, but it was destroyed while being inflated shortly after delivery to the Navy. After the war, the U.S. Navy contracted to buy the R 38, which was being built in Britain, but before it was handed over it was destroyed because of a structural failure during a test flight. America then started constructing the , designed by the
Bureau of Aeronautics The Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) was the U.S. Navy's material-support organization for naval aviation from 1921 to 1959. The bureau had "cognizance" (''i.e.'', responsibility) for the design, procurement, and support of naval aircraft and relate ...
and based on the Zeppelin L 49. Assembled in Hangar No. 1 and first flown on 4 September 1923 at Lakehurst,
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, it was the first airship to be inflated with the
noble gas The noble gases (historically also the inert gases; sometimes referred to as aerogens) make up a class of chemical elements with similar properties; under standard conditions, they are all odorless, colorless, monatomic gases with very low ch ...
helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...
, which was then so scarce that the ''Shenandoah'' contained most of the world's supply. A second airship, , was built by the Zeppelin company as compensation for the airships that should have been handed over as war reparations according to the terms of the Versailles Treaty but had been sabotaged by their crews. This construction order saved the Zeppelin works from the threat of closure. The success of the ''Los Angeles'', which was flown successfully for eight years, encouraged the U.S. Navy to invest in its own, larger airships. When the ''Los Angeles'' was delivered, the two airships had to share the limited supply of helium, and thus alternated operating and overhauls. In 1922, Sir Dennistoun Burney suggested a plan for a subsidised air service throughout the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
using airships (the Burney Scheme). Following the coming to power of Ramsay MacDonald's
Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...
government in 1924, the scheme was transformed into the
Imperial Airship Scheme The British Imperial Airship Scheme was a 1920s project to improve communication between Britain and the distant countries of the British Empire by establishing air routes using airships. The first phase was the construction of two large and t ...
, under which two airships were built, one by a private company and the other by the
Royal Airship Works Cardington Airfield, previously RAF Cardington, is a former Royal Air Force station in Bedfordshire, England, with a long and varied history, particularly in relation to airships and balloons. Most of the former RAF station is in the parish o ...
under Air Ministry control. The two designs were radically different. The "capitalist" ship, the ''
R100 His Majesty's Airship R100 was a privately designed and built British rigid airship made as part of a two-ship competition to develop a commercial airship service for use on British Empire routes as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme. The ot ...
'', was more conventional, while the "socialist" ship, the
R101 R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Mi ...
, had many innovative design features. Construction of both took longer than expected, and the airships did not fly until 1929. Neither airship was capable of the service intended, though the R100 did complete a proving flight to Canada and back in 1930. On 5 October 1930, the R101, which had not been thoroughly tested after major modifications, crashed on its maiden voyage to India at Beauvais in France killing 48 of the 54 people aboard. Among the dead were the craft's chief designer and the Secretary of State for Air. The disaster ended British interest in airships. The Locarno Treaties of 1925 lifted the restrictions on German airship construction, and the Zeppelin company started construction of the ''Graf Zeppelin'' (LZ 127), the largest airship that could be built in the company's existing shed, and intended to stimulate interest in passenger airships. The ''Graf Zeppelin'' burned ''
blau gas Blau gas (german: Blaugas) is an artificial illuminating gas, similar to propane, named after its inventor, Hermann Blau of Augsburg, Germany. Not or rarely used or produced today, it was manufactured by decomposing mineral oils in retorts by ...
'', similar to propane, stored in large gas bags below the hydrogen cells, as fuel. Since its density was similar to that of air, it avoided the weight change as fuel was used, and thus the need to
valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fitting ...
hydrogen. The ''Graf Zeppelin'' had an impressive safety record, flying over (including the first circumnavigation of the globe by airship) without a single passenger injury. The U.S. Navy experimented with the use of airships as
airborne aircraft carrier An airborne aircraft carrier is a type of mother ship aircraft which can carry, launch, retrieve and support other smaller parasite aircraft. The only dedicated examples to have been built were airships, although existing heavier-than-air ai ...
s, developing an idea pioneered by the British. The USS ''Los Angeles'' was used for initial experiments, and the and , the world's largest at the time, were used to test the principle in naval operations. Each carried four F9C Sparrowhawk
fighters Fighter(s) or The Fighter(s) may refer to: Combat and warfare * Combatant, an individual legally entitled to engage in hostilities during an international armed conflict * Fighter aircraft, a warplane designed to destroy or damage enemy warplan ...
in its hangar, and could carry a fifth on the trapeze. The idea had mixed results. By the time the Navy started to develop a sound doctrine for using the ZRS-type airships, the last of the two built, USS ''Macon'', had been wrecked. Meanwhile, the seaplane had become more capable, and was considered a better investment. Eventually, the U.S. Navy lost all three U.S.-built rigid airships to accidents. USS ''Shenandoah'' flew into a
severe thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are somet ...
over
Noble County, Ohio Noble County is a county located in the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,115, making it the fourth-least populous county in Ohio. Its county seat is Caldwell. The county is named for Rep. Warren P. Noble of the ...
while on a poorly planned publicity flight on 3 September 1925. It broke into pieces, killing 14 of its crew. USS ''Akron'' was caught in a severe storm and flown into the surface of the sea off the shore of New Jersey on 3 April 1933. It carried no life boats and few life vests, so 73 of its crew of 76 died from drowning or hypothermia. USS ''Macon'' was lost after suffering a structural failure offshore near
Point Sur Lighthouse Point Sur Lighthouse is a lightstation at Point Sur south of Monterey, California at the peak of the rock at the head of the point. It was established in 1889 and is part of Point Sur State Historic Park. The light house is tall and above ...
on 12 February 1935. The failure caused a loss of gas, which was made much worse when the aircraft was driven over pressure height causing it to lose too much helium to maintain flight. Only two of its crew of 83 died in the crash thanks to the inclusion of life jackets and inflatable rafts after the ''Akron'' disaster. The Empire State Building was completed in 1931 with a dirigible mast, in anticipation of future passenger airship service, but no airship ever used the mast. Various entrepreneurs experimented with commuting and shipping freight via airship. In the 1930s, the German Zeppelins successfully competed with other means of transport. They could carry significantly more passengers than other contemporary aircraft while providing amenities similar to those on ocean liners, such as private cabins, observation decks, and dining rooms. Less importantly, the technology was potentially more energy-efficient than heavier-than-air designs. Zeppelins were also faster than ocean liners. On the other hand, operating airships was quite involved. Often the crew would outnumber passengers, and on the ground large teams were necessary to assist mooring and very large hangars were required at airports. By the mid-1930s, only Germany still pursued airship development. The Zeppelin company continued to operate the ''Graf Zeppelin'' on passenger service between Frankfurt and
Recife That it may shine on all ( Matthew 5:15) , image_map = Brazil Pernambuco Recife location map.svg , mapsize = 250px , map_caption = Location in the state of Pernambuco , pushpin_map = Brazil#South A ...
in Brazil, taking 68 hours. Even with the small ''Graf Zeppelin'', the operation was almost profitable. In the mid-1930s, work began on an airship designed specifically to operate a passenger service across the Atlantic. The ''Hindenburg'' (LZ 129) completed a successful 1936 season, carrying passengers between
Lakehurst, New Jersey Lakehurst is a borough in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 2,654,mooring mast A mooring mast, or mooring tower, is a structure designed to allow for the docking of an airship outside of an airship hangar or similar structure. More specifically, a mooring mast is a mast or tower that contains a fitting on its top that allow ...
minutes before landing on 6 May 1937, the ''Hindenburg'' suddenly burst into flames and crashed to the ground. Of the 97 people aboard, 35 died: 13 passengers, 22 aircrew, along with one American ground-crewman. The disaster happened before a large crowd, was filmed and a radio news reporter was recording the arrival. This was a disaster that theater goers could see and hear in
newsreels A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, inform ...
. The ''Hindenburg'' disaster shattered public confidence in airships, and brought a definitive end to their "golden age". The day after the ''Hindenburg'' disaster, the ''Graf Zeppelin'' landed safely in Germany after its return flight from Brazil. This was the last international passenger airship flight. ''Hindenburg''s identical sister ship, the ''Graf Zeppelin II'' (LZ 130), could not carry commercial passengers without helium, which the United States refused to sell to Germany. The ''Graf Zeppelin'' made several test flights and conducted some electronic espionage until 1939 when it was grounded due to the beginning of the war. The two ''Graf Zeppelins'' were scrapped in April, 1940. Development of airships continued only in the United States, and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had several semi-rigid and non-rigid airships. The semi-rigid dirigible
SSSR-V6 OSOAVIAKhIM SSSR-V6 ''OSOAVIAKhIM'' (russian: СССР-В6 Осоавиахим) was a semi-rigid airship designed by Italian engineer and airship designer Umberto Nobile and constructed as a part of the Soviet airship program. The airship was named after th ...
was among the largest of these craft, and it set the longest endurance flight at the time of over 130 hours. It crashed into a mountain in 1938, killing 13 of the 19 people on board. While this was a severe blow to the Soviet airship program, they continued to operate non-rigid airships until 1950.


World War II

While Germany determined that airships were obsolete for military purposes in the coming war and concentrated on the development of aeroplanes, the United States pursued a program of military airship construction even though it had not developed a clear military doctrine for airship use. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, bringing the United States into
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, the U.S. Navy had 10 nonrigid airships: *4 ''K''-class: ''K-2'', ''K-3'', ''K-4'' and ''K-5'' designed as patrol ships, all built in 1938. *3 ''L''-class: ''L-1'', ''L-2'' and ''L-3'' as small training ships, produced in 1938. *1 ''G''-class, built in 1936 for training. *2 ''TC''-class that were older patrol airships designed for land forces, built in 1933. The U.S. Navy acquired both from the United States Army in 1938. Only ''K''- and ''TC''-class airships were suitable for combat and they were quickly pressed into service against Japanese and German submarines, which were then sinking American shipping within visual range of the American coast. U.S. Navy command, remembering airship's anti-submarine success in World War I, immediately requested new modern antisubmarine airships and on 2 January 1942 formed the ZP-12 patrol unit based in Lakehurst from the four ''K'' airships. The ZP-32 patrol unit was formed from two ''TC'' and two ''L'' airships a month later, based at
NAS Moffett Field 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, ...
in Sunnyvale, California. An airship training base was created there as well. The status of submarine-hunting Goodyear airships in the early days of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
has created significant confusion. Although various accounts refer to airships ''Resolute'' and ''Volunteer'' as operating as "privateers" under a Letter of Marque, Congress never authorized a commission, nor did the President sign one. In the years 1942–44, approximately 1,400 airship pilots and 3,000 support crew members were trained in the military airship crew training program and the airship military personnel grew from 430 to 12,400. The U.S. airships were produced by the Goodyear factory in
Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...
. From 1942 till 1945, 154 airships were built for the U.S. Navy (133 ''K''-class, 10 ''L''-class, seven ''G''-class, four ''M''-class) and five ''L''-class for civilian customers (serial numbers ''L-4'' to ''L-8''). The primary airship tasks were patrol and
convoy A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support and can help maintain cohesion within a unit. It may also be used ...
escort near the American coastline. They also served as an organization centre for the convoys to direct ship movements, and were used in naval search and rescue operations. Rarer duties of the airships included aerophoto reconnaissance, naval mine-laying and mine-sweeping, parachute unit transport and deployment, cargo and personnel transportation. They were deemed quite successful in their duties with the highest combat readiness factor in the entire U.S. air force (87%). During the war, some 532 ships without airship escort were sunk near the U.S. coast by enemy submarines. Only one ship, the tanker ''Persephone'', of the 89,000 or so in convoys escorted by blimps was sunk by the enemy. Airships engaged submarines with depth charges and, less frequently, with other on-board weapons. They were excellent at driving submarines down, where their limited speed and range prevented them from attacking convoys. The weapons available to airships were so limited that until the advent of the
homing torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...
they had little chance of sinking a submarine.Vaeth, J. Gordon, ''Blimps & U-Boats'', Annapolis, MD, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1992, Only one airship was ever destroyed by
U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare ro ...
: on the night of 18/19 July 1943, the ''K-74'' from ZP-21 division was patrolling the coastline near Florida. Using
radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...
, the airship located a surfaced German submarine. The ''K-74'' made her attack run but the U-boat opened fire first. ''K-74''s depth charges did not release as she crossed the U-boat and the ''K-74'' received serious damage, losing gas pressure and an engine but landing in the water without loss of life. The crew was rescued by patrol boats in the morning, but one crewman, Aviation Machinist's Mate Second Class Isadore Stessel, died from a
shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachi ...
attack. The U-boat, , was slightly damaged and the next day or so was attacked by aircraft, sustaining damage that forced it to return to base. It was finally sunk on 24 August 1943 by a British
Vickers Wellington The Vickers Wellington was a British twin-engined, long-range medium bomber. It was designed during the mid-1930s at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey. Led by Vickers-Armstrongs' chief designer Rex Pierson; a key feature of the aircraft is its ...
near
Vigo, Spain Vigo ( , , , ) is a city and municipality in the province of Pontevedra, within the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. Located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, it sits on the southern shore of an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, the ...
. Fleet Airship Wing One operated from Lakehurst, New Jersey, Glynco, Georgia, Weeksville, North Carolina,
South Weymouth NAS Naval Air Station South Weymouth was an operational United States Navy airfield from 1942 to 1997 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. It was first established as a regular Navy blimp base during World War II. During the postwar era the base became p ...
Massachusetts, Brunswick NAS and Bar Harbor Maine, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Argentia, Newfoundland. Some Navy blimps saw action in the European war theater. In 1944–45, the U.S. Navy moved an entire squadron of eight Goodyear K class blimps (K-89, K-101, K-109, K-112, K-114, K-123, K-130, & K-134) with flight and maintenance crews from Weeksville Naval Air Station in North Carolina to
Naval Air Station Port Lyautey Naval Air Station Port Lyautey is a former United States Navy Naval Air Station in Morocco, about north-northwest of Kenitra and about northeast of Casablanca. The Naval Air Station was turned over to the Royal Moroccan Air Force and the last o ...
, French Morocco. Their mission was to locate and destroy German U-boats in the relatively shallow waters around the Strait of Gibraltar where
magnetic anomaly detection A magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) is an instrument used to detect minute variations in the Earth's magnetic field. The term refers specifically to magnetometers used by military forces to detect submarines (a mass of ferromagnetic material crea ...
(MAD) was viable. PBY aircraft had been searching these waters but MAD required low altitude flying that was dangerous at night for these aircraft. The blimps were considered a perfect solution to establish a
24/7 In commerce and industry, 24/7 or 24-7 service (usually pronounced "twenty-four seven") is service that is available at any time and usually, every day. An alternate orthography for the numerical part includes 24×7 (usually pronounced "twenty ...
MAD barrier (fence) at the Straits of Gibraltar with the PBYs flying the day shift and the blimps flying the night shift. The first two blimps (K-123 & K-130) left
South Weymouth NAS Naval Air Station South Weymouth was an operational United States Navy airfield from 1942 to 1997 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. It was first established as a regular Navy blimp base during World War II. During the postwar era the base became p ...
on 28 May 1944 and flew to
Argentia, Newfoundland Argentia ( ) is a Canadian commercial seaport and industrial park located in the Town of Placentia, Newfoundland and Labrador. It is situated on the southwest coast of the Avalon Peninsula and defined by a triangular shaped headland which r ...
, the
Azores ) , motto =( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace") , anthem= ( en, "Anthem of the Azores") , image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg , map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union , map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...
, and finally to Port Lyautey where they completed the first transatlantic crossing by nonrigid airships on 1 June 1944. The blimps of USN Blimp Squadron ZP-14 (Blimpron 14, aka ''The Africa Squadron'') also conducted mine-spotting and mine-sweeping operations in key Mediterranean ports and various escorts including the convoy carrying United States President
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
to the
Yalta Conference The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the post ...
in 1945. Airships from the ZP-12 unit took part in the sinking of the last U-boat before German capitulation, sinking the ''U-881'' on 6 May 1945 together with destroyers
USS Atherton USS ''Atherton'' (DE-169), a , was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Lieutenant (junior grade), Lt. (jg) John McDougal Atherton, who died when sank near Guadalcanal during World War II. ''Atherton'' (DE-169) was Keel layi ...
and USS Moberly. Other airships patrolled the Caribbean, Fleet Airship Wing Two, Headquartered at NAS Richmond, Florida, covered the
Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...
from Richmond and Key West, Florida, Houma, Louisiana, as well as
Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
and Brownsville, Texas. FAW 2 also patrolled the northern Caribbean from San Julian, the Isle of Pines (now called Isla de la Juventud) and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as well as Vernam Field,
Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
. Navy blimps of Fleet Airship Wing Five, (ZP-51) operated from bases in
Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...
, British Guiana and
Paramaribo Paramaribo (; ; nicknamed Par'bo) is the capital and largest city of Suriname, located on the banks of the Suriname River in the Paramaribo District. Paramaribo has a population of roughly 241,000 people (2012 census), almost half of Suriname' ...
, Suriname. Fleet Airship Wing Four operated along the coast of
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. Two squadrons, VP-41 and VP-42 flew from bases at Amapá,
Igarapé-Açu Igarapé-Açu is a municipality in the state of Pará in the Northern region of Brazil. The population of the municipality is approximately 39,023 inhabitants according to IBGE estimate in 2020 See also *List of municipalities in Pará This is ...
, São Luís Fortaleza,
Fernando de Noronha Fernando de Noronha () is an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, part of the State of Pernambuco, Brazil, and located off the Brazilian coast. It consists of 21 islands and islets, extending over an area of . Only the eponymous main island is in ...
,
Recife That it may shine on all ( Matthew 5:15) , image_map = Brazil Pernambuco Recife location map.svg , mapsize = 250px , map_caption = Location in the state of Pernambuco , pushpin_map = Brazil#South A ...
,
Maceió Maceió (), formerly sometimes Anglicised as Maceio, is the capital and the largest city of the coastal state of Alagoas, Brazil. The name "Maceió" is an Indigenous term for a spring. Most maceiós flow to the sea, but some get trapped and form l ...
, Ipitanga (near Salvador, Bahia),
Caravelas Caravelas is a city of about 20,000 inhabitants in southern Bahia, Brazil, a few miles above the mouth of the Caravelas River. Caravelas was founded in 1581 by Portuguese settlers. It was once the centre of a flourishing whale fishery. It is the ...
, Vitória and the hangar built for the ''Graf Zeppelin'' at
Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro Santa Cruz (''Holy Cross'') is an extensive and populous neighborhood of the high class, lower middle and low in the West Zone of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the farthest from the center of Rio de Janeiro. Cut by the Santa Cruz ex ...
. Fleet Airship Wing Three operated squadrons, ZP-32 from Moffett Field, ZP-31 at NAS Santa Ana, and ZP-33 at NAS Tillamook, Oregon. Auxiliary fields were at
Del Mar Del Mar is Spanish for "of the sea" or "from the sea". It may refer to: Places in the United States * Del Mar, California * Del Mar High School, located in San Jose, California * Del Mar racetrack, located in Del Mar, California * Del Mar Fai ...
,
Lompoc Lompoc ( ; Chumash: ''Lum Poc'') is a city in Santa Barbara County, California. Located on the Central Coast, Lompoc has a population of 43,834 as of July 2021. Lompoc has been inhabited for thousands of years by the Chumash people, who called ...
,
Watsonville Watsonville is a city in Santa Cruz County, California, located in the Monterey Bay Area of the Central Coast of California. The population was 52,590 according to the 2020 census. Predominantly Latino and Democratic, Watsonville is a self- ...
and
Eureka Eureka (often abbreviated as E!, or Σ!) is an intergovernmental organisation for research and development funding and coordination. Eureka is an open platform for international cooperation in innovation. Organisations and companies applying th ...
, California, North Bend and Astoria, Oregon, as well as
Shelton Shelton may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Shelton, North Bedfordshire, in the parish of Dean and Shelton, Bedfordshire * Lower Shelton, in the parish of Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire * Upper Shelton, in the parish of Marston Moretaine, Bed ...
and Quillayute in Washington. From 2 January 1942 until the end of war airship operations in the Atlantic, the blimps of the Atlantic fleet made 37,554 flights and flew 378,237 hours. Of the over 70,000 ships in convoys protected by blimps, only one was sunk by a submarine while under blimp escort. The
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
flew a single airship during the war. The ''W-12'', built in 1939, entered service in 1942 for paratrooper training and equipment transport. It made 1432 flights with 300  metric tons of cargo until 1945. On 1 February 1945, the Soviets constructed a second airship, a ''Pobeda''-class (''Victory''-class) unit (used for mine-sweeping and wreckage clearing in the Black Sea) that crashed on 21 January 1947. Another ''W''-class – W-12bis ''Patriot'' – was commissioned in 1947 and was mostly used until the mid 1950s for crew training, parades and propaganda.


Postwar period

Although airships are no longer used for major cargo and passenger transport, they are still used for other purposes such as
advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
, sightseeing, surveillance, research and advocacy. There were several studies and proposals for nuclear-powered airships, starting with a 1954 study by F.W. Locke Jr for US Navy. In 1957 Edwin J. Kirschner published the book ''The Zeppelin in the Atomic Age'', which promoted the use of atomic airships. In 1959 Goodyear presented a plan for nuclear-powered airship for both military and commercial use. Several other proposals and papers were published during the next decades. In the 1980s, Per Lindstrand and his team introduced the ''GA-42'' airship, the first airship to use fly-by-wire flight control, which considerably reduced the pilot's workload. An airship was prominently featured in the James Bond film ''
A View to a Kill ''A View to a Kill'' is a 1985 spy film and the fourteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and is the seventh and final appearance of Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Although the title is adapted ...
'', released in 1985. The Skyship 500 had the livery of Zorin Industries. The world's largest thermal airship () was constructed by the Per Lindstrand company for French botanists in 1993. The ''AS-300'' carried an underslung raft, which was positioned by the airship on top of tree canopies in the rain forest, allowing the botanists to carry out their treetop research without significant damage to the rainforest. When research was finished at a given location, the airship returned to pick up and relocate the raft. In June 1987, the U.S. Navy awarded a US$168.9 million contract to
Westinghouse Electric The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in ...
and
Airship Industries Airship Industries was a British manufacturers of modern non-rigid airships (blimps) active under that name from 1980 to 1990 and controlled for part of that time by Alan Bond. The first company, Aerospace Developments, was founded in 1970, and ...
of the UK to find out whether an airship could be used as an airborne platform to detect the threat of sea-skimming missiles, such as the
Exocet The Exocet () is a French-built anti-ship missile whose various versions can be launched from surface vessels, submarines, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Etymology The missile's name was given by M. Guillot, then the technical director ...
. At 2.5 million cubic feet, the Westinghouse/Airship Industries Sentinel 5000 (Redesignated YEZ-2A by the U. S. Navy) prototype design was to have been the largest blimp ever constructed. Additional funding for the Naval Airship Program was killed in 1995 and development was discontinued. The SVAM CA-80 airship, which was produced in 2000 by Shanghai Vantage Airship Manufacture Co., Ltd., had a successful trial flight in September 2001. This was designed for advertisement and propagation, air-photo, scientific test, tour and surveillance duties. It was certified as a grade-A Hi-Tech introduction program (No. 20000186) in Shanghai. The CAAC authority granted a type design approval and certificate of airworthiness for the airship. In the 1990s the Zeppelin company returned to the airship business. Their new model, designated the
Zeppelin NT The Zeppelin NT (''"Neue Technologie"'', German for ''new technology'') is a class of helium-filled airships being manufactured since the 1990s by the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) in Friedrichshafen. The initial model i ...
, made its maiden flight on 18 September 1997. there were four NT aircraft flying, a fifth was completed in March 2009 and an expanded NT-14 (14,000 cubic meters of helium, capable of carrying 19 passengers) was under construction. One was sold to a Japanese company, and was planned to be flown to Japan in the summer of 2004. Due to delays getting permission from the Russian government, the company decided to transport the airship to Japan by sea. One of the four NT craft is in South Africa carrying diamond detection equipment from De Beers, an application at which the very stable low vibration NT platform excels. The project included design adaptations for high temperature operation and desert climate, as well as a separate
mooring mast A mooring mast, or mooring tower, is a structure designed to allow for the docking of an airship outside of an airship hangar or similar structure. More specifically, a mooring mast is a mast or tower that contains a fitting on its top that allow ...
and a very heavy mooring truck. NT-4 belonged to
Airship Ventures Airship Ventures Inc. was a private company that offered sight-seeing rides (which the company called "flightseeing") in a 12-passenger Zeppelin NT out of a World War II United States Navy hangar at Moffett Federal Airfield near Mountain View, Ca ...
of Moffett Field, Mountain View in the San Francisco Bay Area, and provided sight-seeing tours.
Blimp A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas (usually helium, rather than hy ...
s are used for advertising and as TV camera platforms at major sporting events. The most iconic of these are the Goodyear Blimps. Goodyear operates three blimps in the United States, and The Lightship Group, now The AirSign Airship Group, operates up to 19 advertising blimps around the world.
Airship Management Services Airship Management Services, Inc. (AMS) builds, owns and operates Airship Industries Skyship and Sentinel type airships. AMS, run by George Spyrou, and through associated companies in the U.S., Europe and Japan, provides technical and operatio ...
owns and operates three
Skyship 600 The Airship Industries Skyship 600 is a modern airship, originally designed by British company Airship Industries, further developed by a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Corporation the type certificate holder is now Skyship Services of O ...
blimps. Two operate as advertising and security ships in North America and the Caribbean.
Airship Ventures Airship Ventures Inc. was a private company that offered sight-seeing rides (which the company called "flightseeing") in a 12-passenger Zeppelin NT out of a World War II United States Navy hangar at Moffett Federal Airfield near Mountain View, Ca ...
operated a Zeppelin NT for advertising, passenger service and special mission projects. They were the only airship operator in the U.S. authorized to fly commercial passengers, until closing their doors in 2012. Skycruise Switzerland AG owns and operates two
Skyship 600 The Airship Industries Skyship 600 is a modern airship, originally designed by British company Airship Industries, further developed by a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Corporation the type certificate holder is now Skyship Services of O ...
blimps. One operates regularly over Switzerland used on sightseeing tours. The Switzerland-based Skyship 600 has also played other roles over the years. For example, it was flown over
Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
during the 2004 Summer Olympics as a security measure. In November 2006, it carried advertising calling it ''The Spirit of Dubai'' as it began a publicity tour from London to Dubai, UAE on behalf of The Palm Islands, the world's largest man-made islands created as a residential complex. Los Angeles-based
Worldwide Aeros Corp. Worldwide Aeros Corp is an American manufacturer of airships based in Montebello, California. It was founded in 1993 by the current CEO and Chief Engineer, Igor Pasternak, who was born in Soviet Kazakhstan, raised in Soviet Ukraine, and moved to ...
produces FAA Type Certified
Aeros 40D Sky Dragon Aeros is a Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer founded by a group of ex-Antonov engineers in the early 1990s to build hang gliders. It is located in Kyiv.Bertrand, Noel; Rene Coulon; et al: ''World Directory of Leisure Aviation 2003-04'', page 41. Pag ...
airships. In May 2006, the U.S. Navy began to fly airships again after a hiatus of nearly 44 years. The program uses a single American Blimp Company A-170 nonrigid airship, with designation
MZ-3A The American Blimp MZ-3A is a blimp owned by the United States Navy from 2006 to 2017. It is a modified American Blimp Corporation A-170 series commercial blimp and given the USN type/model/series (T/M/S) designation MZ-3A and Bureau Number (B ...
. Operations focus on crew training and research, and the platform integrator is
Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...
. The program is directed by the
Naval Air Systems Command The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) provides materiel support for aircraft and airborne weapon systems for the United States Navy. It is one of the Echelon II Navy systems commands (SYSCOM), and was established in 1966 as the successor to the ...
and is being carried out at NAES Lakehurst, the original centre of U.S. Navy lighter-than-air operations in previous decades. In November 2006 the U.S. Army bought an A380+ airship from
American Blimp Corporation American Blimp Corporation (ABC) is an American privately owned Hillsboro, Oregon-based company that is the largest manufacturer of blimps in the United States. It manufactures the hardware and rigging for the Lightship and Spector brands of air ...
through a Systems level contract with
Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...
and
Booz Allen Hamilton Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation (informally Booz Allen) is the parent of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., an American management and information technology consulting firm, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in Greater Washington, D.C., with 8 ...
. The airship started flight tests in late 2007, with a primary goal of carrying of payload to an altitude of under
remote control In electronics, a remote control (also known as a remote or clicker) is an electronic device used to operate another device from a distance, usually wirelessly. In consumer electronics, a remote control can be used to operate devices such a ...
and autonomous waypoint navigation. The program will also demonstrate carrying of payload to The platform could be used for Multi-Intelligence collections. In 2008, the ''CA-150'' airship was launched by Vantage Airship. This is an improved modification of model ''CA-120'' and completed manufacturing in 2008. With larger volume and increased passenger capacity, it is the largest manned nonrigid airship in China at present. In late June 2014 the Electronic Frontier Foundation flew the GEFA-FLUG AS 105 GD/4 blimp AE Bates (owned by, and in conjunction with, Greenpeace) over the
NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
's Bluffdale
Utah Data Center The Utah Data Center (UDC), also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, is a data storage facility for the United States Intelligence Community that is designed to store data estimated to b ...
in protest.


Postwar projects

Hybrid designs such as the Heli-Stat airship/helicopter, the Aereon aerostatic/aerodynamic craft, and the CycloCrane (a hybrid aerostatic/rotorcraft), struggled to take flight. The Cyclocrane was also interesting in that the airship's envelope rotated along its longitudinal axis. In 2005, a short-lived project of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was
Walrus HULA The Walrus HULA (Hybrid Ultra Large Aircraft) project was a DARPA-funded experiment to create an airship capable of traveling up to 12,000 nautical miles (about 22,000 km) in range, while carrying 500-1000 tons of air cargo. In distinct contras ...
, which explored the potential for using airships as long-distance, heavy lift craft. The primary goal of the research program was to determine the feasibility of building an airship capable of carrying of payload a distance of and land on an unimproved location without the use of external
ballast Ballast is material that is used to provide stability to a vehicle or structure. Ballast, other than cargo, may be placed in a vehicle, often a ship or the gondola of a balloon or airship, to provide stability. A compartment within a boat, ship ...
or ground equipment (such as masts). In 2005, two contractors, Lockheed Martin and US Aeros Airships were each awarded approximately $3 million to do feasibility studies of designs for WALRUS. Congress removed funding for Walrus HULA in 2006.


Modern airships


Military airships

In 2010, the U.S. Army awarded a $517 million (£350.6 million) contract to
Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...
and partner
Hybrid Air Vehicles Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) Limited is a British limited company and a British manufacturer of hybrid airships, though none have been built since the crash of its last demonstrator. These aircraft use both aerodynamics and lighter-than-air (LTA) ...
to develop a
Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle The Hybrid Air Vehicles Airlander 10, originally developed as the HAV 304, is a hybrid airship designed and built by British manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV). Comprising a helium airship with auxiliary wing and tail surfaces, it flies usi ...
(LEMV) system, in the form of three HAV 304s. The project was cancelled in February 2012 due to it being behind schedule and over budget; also the forthcoming U.S. withdrawal from
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
where it was intended to be deployed. Following this the
Hybrid Air Vehicles HAV 304 Airlander 10 The Hybrid Air Vehicles Airlander 10, originally developed as the HAV 304, is a hybrid airship designed and built by British manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV). Comprising a helium airship with auxiliary wing and tail surfaces, it flies usi ...
was repurchased by
Hybrid Air Vehicles Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) Limited is a British limited company and a British manufacturer of hybrid airships, though none have been built since the crash of its last demonstrator. These aircraft use both aerodynamics and lighter-than-air (LTA) ...
then modified and reassembled in
Bedford Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population of the Bedford built-up area (including Biddenham and Kempston) was 106,940, making it the second-largest settlement in Bedfordshire, behind Luton, whilst ...
, UK, and renamed the Airlander 10. As of 2018, it was being tested in readiness for its UK flight test programme. , a French company, manufactures and operates airships and aerostats. For 2 years, A-NSE has been testing its airships for the French Army. Airships and aerostats are operated to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) support. Their airships include many innovative features such as water ballast take-off and landing systems, variable geometry envelopes and thrust–vectoring systems. The U.S. government has funded two major projects in the high altitude arena. The
Composite Hull High Altitude Powered Platform Composite or compositing may refer to: Materials * Composite material, a material that is made from several different substances ** Metal matrix composite, composed of metal and other parts ** Cermet, a composite of ceramic and metallic materials ...
(CHHAPP) is sponsored by
U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command The United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) is an Army Service Component Command (ASCC) of the United States Army. The command was established in 1997. The current USASMDC commander is Lieutenant General Daniel L. Karbler ...
. This aircraft is also sometimes called ''HiSentinel High-Altitude Airship''. This prototype ship made a five-hour test flight in September 2005. The second project, the
high-altitude airship Atmospheric satellite (United States usage, abbreviated atmosat) or pseudo-satellite (British usage) is a marketing term for an aircraft that operates in the atmosphere at high altitudes for extended periods of time, in order to provide servic ...
(HAA), is sponsored by DARPA. In 2005, DARPA awarded a contract for nearly $150 million to Lockheed Martin for prototype development. First flight of the HAA was planned for 2008 but suffered programmatic and funding delays. The HAA project evolved into the High Altitude Long Endurance-Demonstrator (HALE-D). The U.S. Army and Lockheed Martin launched the first-of-its kind HALE-D on July 27, 2011. After attaining an altitude of , due to an anomaly, the company decided to abort the mission. The airship made a controlled descent in an unpopulated area of southwest Pennsylvania. On 31 January 2006 Lockheed Martin made the first flight of their secretly built
hybrid airship A hybrid airship or plimp is a powered aircraft that obtains some of its lift as a lighter-than-air (LTA) airship and some from aerodynamic lift as a heavier-than-air aerodyne. A ''dynastat'' is a hybrid airship with fixed wings and/or a liftin ...
designated the
P-791 The Lockheed Martin P-791 is an experimental aerostatic and aerodynamic hybrid airship developed by Lockheed Martin. The first flight of the P-791 took place on 31 January 2006 at the company's flight test facility at United States Air Force Plant ...
. The design is very similar to the
SkyCat SkyCat (a portmanteau of "Sky Catamaran") is a class of proposed heavy-lift hybrid airships which derive more than half of their lift by helium buoyancy and the balance via aerodynamic lift produced by aerodynamic shaping. The SkyCat design incorp ...
, unsuccessfully promoted for many years by the British company Advanced Technologies Group (ATG). Dirigibles have been used in the
War in Afghanistan War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to: *Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC) * Muslim conquests of Afghanistan (637–709) *Conquest of Afghanistan by the Mongol Empire (13th century), see al ...
for
reconnaissance In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...
purposes, as they allow for constant monitoring of a specific area through cameras mounted on the airships.


Passenger transport

In the 1990s, the successor of the original Zeppelin company in
Friedrichshafen Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''K ...
, the ''Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH'', reengaged in airship construction. The first experimental craft (later christened ''Friedrichshafen'') of the type "
Zeppelin NT The Zeppelin NT (''"Neue Technologie"'', German for ''new technology'') is a class of helium-filled airships being manufactured since the 1990s by the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) in Friedrichshafen. The initial model i ...
" flew in September 1997. Though larger than common blimps, the ''Neue Technologie'' (New Technology) zeppelins are much smaller than their giant ancestors and not actually Zeppelin-types in the classical sense. They are sophisticated semirigids. Apart from the greater payload, their main advantages compared to blimps are higher speed and excellent maneuverability. Meanwhile, several ''Zeppelin NT'' have been produced and operated profitably in joyrides, research flights and similar applications. In June 2004, a Zeppelin NT was sold for the first time to a Japanese company, Nippon Airship Corporation, for tourism and advertising mainly around Tokyo. It was also given a role at the 2005 Expo in
Aichi is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Aichi Prefecture has a population of 7,552,873 () and a geographic area of with a population density of . Aichi Prefecture borders Mie Prefecture to the west, Gifu Prefecture ...
. The aircraft began a flight from Friedrichshafen to Japan, stopping at
Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
, Paris,
Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...
,
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
, Berlin, Stockholm and other European cities to carry passengers on short legs of the flight. Russian authorities denied overflight permission, so the airship had to be dismantled and shipped to Japan rather than following the historic ''Graf Zeppelin'' flight from Germany to Japan. In 2008, Airship Ventures Inc. began operations from
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 ...
near
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...
and until November 2012 offered tours of the
San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
for up to 12 passengers.


Exploration

In November 2005, De Beers, a diamond mining company, launched an airship exploration program over the remote
Kalahari desert The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savanna in Southern Africa extending for , covering much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. It is not to be confused with the Angolan, Namibian, and South African Namib coastal d ...
. A
Zeppelin NT The Zeppelin NT (''"Neue Technologie"'', German for ''new technology'') is a class of helium-filled airships being manufactured since the 1990s by the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) in Friedrichshafen. The initial model i ...
, equipped with a Bell Geospace gravity gradiometer, was used to find potential diamond mines by scanning the local geography for low-density rock formations, known as kimberlite pipes. On 21 September 2007, the airship was severely damaged by a whirlwind while in
Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalaha ...
. One crew member, who was on watch aboard the moored craft, was slightly injured but released after overnight observation in hospital.


Thermal airships

Several companies, such as Cameron Balloons in
Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...
, United Kingdom, build hot-air airships. These combine the structures of both hot-air balloons and small airships. The envelope is the normal cigar shape, complete with tail fins, but is inflated with hot air instead of helium to provide the lifting force. A small gondola, carrying the pilot and passengers, a small engine, and the burners to provide the hot air are suspended below the envelope, beneath an opening through which the burners protrude. Hot-air airships typically cost less to buy and maintain than modern helium-based
blimp A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas (usually helium, rather than hy ...
s, and can be quickly deflated after flights. This makes them easy to carry in trailers or trucks and inexpensive to store. They are usually very slow moving, with a typical top speed of 25–30 km/h (15–20 mph, 6.7–8.9 m/s). They are mainly used for advertising, but at least one has been used in rainforests for wildlife observation, as they can be easily transported to remote areas.


Unmanned remotes

Remote-controlled (RC) airships, a type of
unmanned aerial system An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controlle ...
(UAS), are sometimes used for commercial purposes such as advertising and aerial video and photography as well as recreational purposes. They are particularly common as an advertising mechanism at indoor stadiums. While RC airships are sometimes flown outdoors, doing so for commercial purposes is illegal in the US. Commercial use of an unmanned airship must be certified under part 121.


Adventures

In 2008, French adventurer Stephane Rousson attempted to cross the English Channel with a muscular pedal powered airship. Stephane Rousson also flies the Aérosail, a sky sailing yacht. File:Aerosail.jpg, Aerosail File:Mlle Louise ballon dirigeable à propulsion humaine.jpg, Mlle Louise pedal Airship by Stephane Rousson File:Zeppy Piloté par Stephane Belgrand Rousson à Villefranche sur Mer.jpg, Zeppy 3 by Stephane Rousson File:Zeppy Base Nature Frejus.jpg, Zeppy One


Current design projects

Today, with large, fast, and more cost-efficient fixed-wing aircraft and
helicopters A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
, it is unknown whether huge airships can operate profitably in regular passenger transport though, as energy costs rise, attention is once again returning to these lighter-than-air vessels as a possible alternative. At the very least, the idea of comparatively slow, "majestic" cruising at relatively low altitudes and in comfortable atmosphere certainly has retained some appeal. There have been some niches for airships in and after World War II, such as long-duration observations,
antisubmarine An anti-submarine weapon (ASW) is any one of a number of devices that are intended to act against a submarine and its crew, to destroy (sink) the vessel or reduce its capability as a weapon of war. In its simplest sense, an anti-submarine weapo ...
patrol, platforms for TV camera crews, and
advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
; these generally require only small and flexible craft, and have thus generally been better fitted for cheaper (non-passenger) blimps.


Heavy lifting

It has periodically been suggested that airships could be employed for cargo transport, especially delivering extremely heavy loads to areas with poor infrastructure over great distances. This has also been called roadless trucking. Also, airships could be used for heavy lifting over short distances (e.g. on construction sites); this is described as heavy-lift, short-haul. In both cases, the airships are
heavy hauler A heavy hauler is a very large transporter for moving oversize loads too large for road travel without an escort and special permit. A heavy hauler typically consists of a Ballast Tractor and hydraulic modular trailer. Some trailers may have ...
s. One recent enterprise of this sort was the ''
Cargolifter Cargolifter AG was a German company founded in 1996 to offer logistical services through point-to point transport of heavy and outsized loads. This service was based on the development of a heavy lift airship, the CL160, a vessel designed to ca ...
'' project, in which a hybrid (thus not entirely Zeppelin-type) airship even larger than ''Hindenburg'' was projected. Around 2000, CargoLifter AG built the world's largest self-supporting hall, measuring long, wide and high about south of Berlin. In May 2002, the project was stopped for financial reasons; the company had to file bankruptcy. The enormous CargoLifter hangar was later converted to house the
Tropical Islands Resort Tropical Islands Resort is a tropical water park located in the former Brand-Briesen Airfield in Halbe, a municipality in the district of Dahme-Spreewald in Brandenburg, Germany, 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the southern boundary of Berlin ...
. Although no rigid airships are currently used for heavy lifting,
hybrid airship A hybrid airship or plimp is a powered aircraft that obtains some of its lift as a lighter-than-air (LTA) airship and some from aerodynamic lift as a heavier-than-air aerodyne. A ''dynastat'' is a hybrid airship with fixed wings and/or a liftin ...
s are being developed for such purposes. AEREON 26, tested in 1971, was described in
John McPhee John Angus McPhee (born March 8, 1931) is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the four ...
's ''The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed''. An impediment to the large-scale development of airships as heavy haulers has been figuring out how they can be used in a cost-efficient way. In order to have a significant economic advantage over ocean transport, cargo airships must be able to deliver their payload faster than ocean carriers but more cheaply than airplanes. William Crowder, a fellow at the
Logistics Management Institute The Logistics Management Institute (more commonly referred to as LMI) is a consulting firm. Established as a private, not-for-profit organization in 1961, LMI is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia, near McLean, in the Greater Washington, D.C. are ...
, has calculated that cargo airships are only economical when they can transport 500 to 1,000 tons, approximately the same as a super-jumbo aircraft. The large initial investment required to build such a large airship has been a hindrance to production, especially given the risk inherent in a new technology. The chief commercial officer of the company hoping to sell the LMH-1, a cargo airship currently being developed by Lockheed Martin, believes that airships can be economical in hard-to-reach locations such as mining operations in northern Canada that currently require
ice road An ice road or ice bridge is a human-made structure that runs on a frozen water surface (a river, a lake or a sea water expanse).Masterson, D. and Løset, S., 2011, ISO 19906: Bearing capacity of ice and ice roads, Proceedings of the 21st Inte ...
s.


Metal-clad airships

A metal-clad airship has a very thin metal envelope, rather than the usual fabric. The shell may be either internally braced or
monocoque Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell". First used for boats, ...
as in the ZMC-2, which flew many times in the 1920s, the only example ever to do so. The shell may be gas-tight as in a non-rigid blimp, or the design may employ internal gas bags as in a rigid airship. Compared to a fabric envelope the metal cladding is expected to be more durable.


Hybrid airships

A
hybrid airship A hybrid airship or plimp is a powered aircraft that obtains some of its lift as a lighter-than-air (LTA) airship and some from aerodynamic lift as a heavier-than-air aerodyne. A ''dynastat'' is a hybrid airship with fixed wings and/or a liftin ...
is a general term for an aircraft that combines characteristics of heavier-than-air (aeroplane or helicopter) and lighter-than-air technology. Examples include helicopter/airship hybrids intended for heavy lift applications and dynamic lift airships intended for long-range cruising. Most airships, when fully loaded with cargo and fuel, are usually ballasted to be heavier than air, and thus must use their propulsion system and shape to create aerodynamic lift, necessary to stay aloft. All airships can be operated to be slightly heavier than air at periods during flight (
descent Descent may refer to: As a noun Genealogy and inheritance * Common descent, concept in evolutionary biology * Kinship, one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology **Pedigree chart or family tree ** Ancestry ** Lineal descendant **Heritag ...
). Accordingly, the term "hybrid airship" refers to craft that obtain a significant portion of their lift from aerodynamic lift or other kinetic means. For example, the
Aeroscraft Worldwide Aeros Corp is an American manufacturer of airships based in Montebello, California. It was founded in 1993 by the current CEO and Chief Engineer, Igor Pasternak, who was born in Soviet Kazakhstan, raised in Soviet Ukraine, and moved to ...
is a buoyancy assisted air vehicle that generates lift through a combination of aerodynamics, thrust vectoring and gas buoyancy generation and management, and for much of the time will fly heavier than air. Aeroscraft is Worldwide Aeros Corporation's continuation of
DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...
's now cancelled
Walrus HULA The Walrus HULA (Hybrid Ultra Large Aircraft) project was a DARPA-funded experiment to create an airship capable of traveling up to 12,000 nautical miles (about 22,000 km) in range, while carrying 500-1000 tons of air cargo. In distinct contras ...
(Hybrid Ultra Large Aircraft) project. The Patroller P3 hybrid airship developed by Advanced Hybrid Aircraft Ltd, BC, Canada, is a relatively small (85,000 feet3 = 2,400 m3) buoyant craft, manned by the crew of 5 and with the endurance of up to 72 hours. The flight-tests with the 40% RC scale model proved that such a craft can be launched and landed without a large team of strong ground-handlers. Design features a special “winglet” for aerodynamic lift control.


Airships in space exploration

Airships have been proposed as a potential cheap alternative to surface rocket launches for achieving Earth orbit.
JP Aerospace JP Aerospace is an American company that aims to achieve affordable access to space. Their main activities include high-atmospheric lighter-than-air flights carrying cameras or miniature experiments called PongSats and minicubes. They are also eng ...
have proposed the Airship to Orbit project, which intends to float a multi-stage airship up to mesospheric altitudes of 55 km (180,000 ft) and then use
ion propulsion An ion thruster, ion drive, or ion engine is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion. It creates thrust by accelerating ions using electricity. An ion thruster ionizes a neutral gas by extracting some electrons out of ...
to accelerate to
orbital speed In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter or, if one body is much more mas ...
. At these heights, air resistance would not be a significant problem for achieving such speeds. The company has not yet built any of the three stages.
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
has proposed the
High Altitude Venus Operational Concept High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) is a set of crewed NASA mission concepts to the planet Venus. All human portions of the missions would be conducted from lighter-than-air craft or from orbit. Background Venus is a planet with a ru ...
, which comprises a series of five missions including manned missions to the atmosphere of
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...
in airships. Pressures on the surface of the planet are too high for human habitation, but at a specific altitude the pressure is equal to that found on Earth and this makes Venus a potential target for human colonization. Hypothetically, there could be an airship lifted by a vacuum—that is, by material that can contain nothing at all inside but withstand the atmospheric pressure from the outside. It is, at this point, science fiction, although NASA has posited that some kind of vacuum airship could eventually be used to explore the surface of Mars.


Cruiser feeder transport airship

EU FP7 MAAT Project has studied an innovative cruiser/feeder airship system, for the stratosphere with a cruiser remaining airborne for a long time and feeders connecting it to the ground and flying as piloted balloons.


Comparison with heavier-than-air aircraft

The advantage of airships over aeroplanes is that static lift sufficient for flight is generated by the lifting gas and requires no engine power. This was an immense advantage before the middle of
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 fightin ...
and remained an advantage for long-distance or long-duration operations until
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. Modern concepts for high-altitude airships include
photovoltaic cells A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.
to reduce the need to land to refuel, thus they can remain in the air until consumables expire. This similarly reduces or eliminates the need to consider variable fuel weight in buoyancy calculations. The disadvantages are that an airship has a very large reference area and comparatively large
drag coefficient In fluid dynamics, the drag coefficient (commonly denoted as: c_\mathrm, c_x or c_) is a dimensionless quantity that is used to quantify the drag or resistance of an object in a fluid environment, such as air or water. It is used in the drag e ...
, thus a larger drag force compared to that of aeroplanes and even helicopters. Given the large frontal area and wetted surface of an airship, a practical limit is reached around . Thus airships are used where speed is not critical. The lift capability of an airship is equal to the buoyant force minus the weight of the airship. This assumes standard air-temperature and pressure conditions. Corrections are usually made for water vapor and impurity of lifting gas, as well as percentage of inflation of the gas cells at liftoff. Based on specific lift (lifting force per unit volume of gas), the greatest static lift is provided by hydrogen (11.15 N/m3 or 71 lbf/1000 cu ft) with helium (10.37 N/m3 or 66 lbf/1000 cu ft) a close second. In addition to static lift, an airship can obtain a certain amount of dynamic lift from its engines. Dynamic lift in past airships has been about 10% of the static lift. Dynamic lift allows an airship to "take off heavy" from a runway similar to fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. This requires additional weight in engines, fuel, and landing gear, negating some of the static lift capacity. The altitude at which an airship can fly largely depends on how much lifting gas it can lose due to expansion before stasis is reached. The ultimate altitude record for a rigid airship was set in 1917 by the L-55 under the command of Hans-Kurt Flemming when he forced the airship to attempting to cross France after the "Silent Raid" on London. The L-55 lost lift during the descent to lower altitudes over Germany and crashed due to loss of lift. While such waste of gas was necessary for the survival of airships in the later years of World War I, it was impractical for commercial operations, or operations of helium-filled military airships. The highest flight made by a hydrogen-filled passenger airship was on the ''Graf Zeppelin's'' around-the-world flight. The greatest disadvantage of the airship is size, which is essential to increasing performance. As size increases, the problems of ground handling increase geometrically. As the German Navy changed from the P class of 1915 with a volume of over to the larger Q class of 1916, the R class of 1917, and finally the W class of 1918, at almost ground handling problems reduced the number of days the Zeppelins were able to make patrol flights. This availability declined from 34% in 1915, to 24.3% in 1916 and finally 17.5% in 1918. So long as the power-to-weight ratios of aircraft engines remained low and specific fuel consumption high, the airship had an edge for long-range or -duration operations. As those figures changed, the balance shifted rapidly in the aeroplane's favour. By mid-1917, the airship could no longer survive in a combat situation where the threat was aeroplanes. By the late 1930s, the airship barely had an advantage over the aeroplane on intercontinental over-water flights, and that advantage had vanished by the end of World War II. This is in face-to-face tactical situations. Currently, a
high-altitude airship Atmospheric satellite (United States usage, abbreviated atmosat) or pseudo-satellite (British usage) is a marketing term for an aircraft that operates in the atmosphere at high altitudes for extended periods of time, in order to provide servic ...
project is planned to survey hundreds of kilometres as their operation radius, often much farther than the normal engagement range of a military aeroplane. For example, a
radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...
mounted on a vessel platform high has radio horizon at range, while a radar at altitude has radio horizon at range. This is significantly important for detecting low-flying cruise missiles or fighter-bombers.


Safety

The most commonly used lifting gas, helium, is inert and therefore presents no fire risk.Stwertka, Albert, ''Guide to the Elements: Revised Edition''. New York; Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 24. A series of vulnerability tests were done by the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency DERA on a
Skyship 600 The Airship Industries Skyship 600 is a modern airship, originally designed by British company Airship Industries, further developed by a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Corporation the type certificate holder is now Skyship Services of O ...
. Since the internal gas pressure was maintained at only 1–2% above the surrounding air pressure, the vehicle proved highly tolerant to physical damage or to attack by small-arms fire or missiles. Several hundred high-velocity bullets were fired through the hull, and even two hours later the vehicle would have been able to return to base. Ordnance passed through the envelope without causing critical helium loss. The results and related mathematical model have presented in the hypothesis of considering a Zeppelin NT size airship. In all instances of light armament fire evaluated under both test and live conditions, the airship was able to complete its mission and return to base.High Safety Level (page 5) and Structural Vulnerability Tests (page 7)
World Skycat. Retrieved 25 April 2008.


See also

*
Airborne aircraft carrier An airborne aircraft carrier is a type of mother ship aircraft which can carry, launch, retrieve and support other smaller parasite aircraft. The only dedicated examples to have been built were airships, although existing heavier-than-air ai ...
* Aircruise *
Airship hangar Airship hangars (also known as airship sheds) are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a ...
* Barrage balloon * Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement *
High-altitude platform station Atmospheric satellite (United States usage, abbreviated atmosat) or pseudo-satellite (British usage) is a marketing term for an aircraft that operates in the atmosphere at high altitudes for extended periods of time, in order to provide servic ...
* Hyperion, fictional airship type. *
List of airship accidents The following is a partial list of airship accidents. It should be stated that rigid airships operate differently than blimps which have no rigid structure. See also * List of ballooning accidents References {{DEFAULTSORT:List of Ai ...
*
List of British airships Airship development in the United Kingdom lagged behind that of Germany and France. The first British designed and built airship was constructed by Stanley Spencer, and on 22 September 1902 was flown from Crystal Palace, London to Ruislip, carr ...
*
List of current airships in the United States This is a list of airships with a current unexpired Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) registration. In 2021, ''Reader's Digest'' said that "consensus is that there are about 25 blimps still in existence and only about half of them are still ...
*
List of Zeppelins This is a complete list of Zeppelins constructed by the German Zeppelin companies from 1900 until 1938. Other rigid airships that are also sometimes referred to as zeppelins but not built by Zeppelin are not included. The Zeppelin company base ...
*
Mystery airship Mystery airships or phantom airships are a class of unidentified flying objects best known from a series of newspaper reports originating in the western United States and spreading east during late 1896 and early 1897.. According to researcher ...
* Stratellite * SVAM CA-80 *
Worldwide Aeros Corp Worldwide Aeros Corp is an American manufacturer of airships based in Montebello, California. It was founded in 1993 by the current CEO and Chief Engineer, Igor Pasternak, who was born in Soviet Kazakhstan, raised in Soviet Ukraine, and moved to ...
*
Zeppelin mail Zeppelin mail was mail carried on zeppelins, the Germany, German airships that saw civilian use from 1908 to 1939. Almost every zeppelin flight carried mail, sometimes in large quantities; the Cover (philately), covers usually received special post ...


Notes


References


Citations


Bibliography

*Althoff, William F.
''USS Los Angeles: The Navy's Venerable Airship and Aviation Technology''
2003, *Ausrotas, R. A., "Basic Relationships for LTA Technical Analysis," ''Proceedings of the Interagency Workshop on Lighter-Than-Air Vehicles'', Massachusetts Institute of Technology Flight Transportation Library, 1975 *Archbold, Rich and Ken Marshall, ''Hindenburg, an Illustrated History'', 1994 *Bailey, D. B., and Rappoport, H. K., ''Maritime Patrol Airship Study'', Naval Air Development Center, 1980 *Botting, Douglas, ''Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine''. New York Henry Hold and Company, 2001, * * *Burgess, Charles P., ''Airship Design'', (1927) 2004 * Cross, Wilbur, ''Disaster at the Pole'', 2002 *Dick, Harold G., with Robinson, Douglas H., ''Graf Zeppelin & Hindenburg'', Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985, ISBN * *Ege, L.; ''Balloons and Airships'', Blandford (1973). *Frederick, Arthur, et al., ''Airship saga: The history of airships seen through the eyes of the men who designed, built, and flew them'', 1982, *Griehl, Manfred and Joachim Dressel, ''Zeppelin! The German Airship Story'', 1990, *Higham, Robin, ''The British Rigid Airship, 1908–1931: A study in weapons policy'', London, G. T. Foulis, 1961, *Keirns, Aaron J, "America's Forgotten Airship Disaster: The Crash of the USS Shenandoah", Howard, Little River Publishing, 1998, . *Khoury, Gabriel Alexander (Editor), ''Airship Technology (Cambridge Aerospace Series)'', 2004, * * * *McKee, Alexander, ''Ice crash'', 1980, * *Morgala, Andrzej, ''Sterowce w II Wojnie Światowej'' (Airships in the Second World War), Lotnictwo, 1992 *Mowthorpe, Ces, ''Battlebags: British Airships of the First World War'', 1995 * *Robinson, Douglas H., ''Giants in the Sky'', University of Washington Press, 1973, *Robinson, Douglas H., ''The Zeppelin in Combat: A history of the German Naval Airship Division, 1912–1918'', Atglen, PA, Shiffer Publications, 1994, *Smith, Richard K. ''The Airships Akron & Macon: flying aircraft carriers of the United States Navy'', Annapolis MD, US Naval Institute Press, 1965, *Shock, James R., Smith, David R., ''The Goodyear Airships'', Bloomington, Illinois, Airship International Press, 2002, *Sprigg, C., ''The Airship: Its design, history, operation and future'', London 1931, Samson Low, Marston and Company. * *Toland, John, ''Ships in the Sky'', New York, Henry Hold; London, Muller, 1957, *Vaeth, J. Gordon, ''Blimps & U-Boats'', Annapolis, Maryland, US Naval Institute Press, 1992, *Ventry, Lord; Kolesnik, Eugene, ''Jane's Pocket Book 7: Airship Development'', 1976 *Ventry, Lord; Koesnik, Eugene M., ''Airship Saga'', Poole, Dorset, Blandford Press, 1982, p. 97 *Winter, Lumen; Degner, Glenn, ''Minute Epics of Flight'', New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1933. *US War Department, ''Airship Aerodynamics: Technical Manual'', (1941) 2003,


External links

* {{Authority control Aeronautics Gases Vehicles introduced in 1899