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The downs and ups of airships

by Catherine Bailey

From ancient times, mankind has dreamt of flying, cave paintings have been discovered depicting human flight and many myths and legends feature those who have tried to conquer the skies. Although for centuries it was believed that human flight was impossible, by the 18th century, various inventors had made the impossible, possible.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the genius inventor Leonardo da Vinci had a lifelong fascination with flight but with great caution he advised anyone who did want to experiment with flying to do so near a lake, in order to avoid injury. There followed many attempts to be airborne and in 1670, the Jesuit Father Francesco Lana de Terzi, sometimes referred to as the “Father of Aeronautics published his description of an “Aerial Ship”. His idea was unrealizable then and remains so to the present day. In 1709, the Brazilian-Portuguese Jesuit priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão made a hot air balloon, the Passarola, ascend to the skies, before an astonished Portuguese court. The balloon caught fire without leaving the ground, but in a second demonstration, it rose to a height of 95 metres.

Just before the French Revolution, two brothers achieved something remarkable in France. The Montgolfiers, Joseph and Étienne, had observed the fact that lighting a fire under a bag would cause the bag to rise. This led the Montgolfiers to build the first hot air balloons. Their large paper-lined silk balloon (called a Montgolfiere) was demonstrated on June 4, 1783 in Annonay and lifted more than 6,000 feet into the air. In 1784, a huge Montgolfiere hot air balloon carried seven passengers to a height of 3,000 feet over the city of Lyon. At the time, the brothers believed they had discovered a new gas (they called it Montgolfier gas) that was lighter than air and caused the inflated balloons to rise. In fact, the gas was merely air which became more buoyant as it was heated.

Soon after, in 1785, French inventor Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American Dr. John Jeffries distinguished themselves as the first humans to cross the channel by air. Their hydrogen balloon was fitted with a hand-powered propeller, flapping wings for propulsion and a birdlike tail for steering. Enthusiasts of airship design took note.

1852 saw the first steam-powered hydrogen balloon airship. The milestone event also marked the first time a dirigible airship took to the air, where controlled flight by steering was achieved. A more sophisticated navigable balloon, the Dupuy de Lôme airship, was launched in 1872 and was capable of carrying 14 passengers in a gondola suspended below the envelope.

By the late 19th century, airship design developments had really taken off. In October 1883, the first electric-powered flight took place followed by the creation of the Zeppelin airship in 1885. Invented by Ferdinand von Zeppelin, for which it is named, the rigid airship was patented by the German general and built by Hungarian aviation pioneer David Schwarz. It would become the name synonymous with the dirigibles story.

Nothing could beat the Zeppelin’s superior design and engineering. Its long, thin streamlined body with toughened skin was powered by two 15-horsepower engines and it could keep pace with an express train. Small crew and passenger compartments were suspended under the elongated envelope, which was shaped for speed

and durability. The vessels were mainly used for scenic sightseeing flights but with the First World War looming, the airship was about to make its debut as a weapon.

Twenty Zeppelins were built to carry out bombing raids on Allied targets with raids on England from January 1915 peaking in 1916. After initial successes — always dependent on fine weather conditions — the Zeppelins became increasingly vulnerable to attack by the faster, more manoeuvrable British aircraft. The airships’ highly flammable hydrogen gas led to several Zeppelins being shot down in flames by increasingly accurate defensive fire.

The ending of hostilities in 1918 saw airships mostly revert to civilian use. In 1925, the first flight of the American-built Goodyear Pilgrim, a compact helium airship powered by an 80-horsepower engine, took place. Airship flights afforded passengers spectacular aerial views and New York proved a favourite destination. Meanwhile in Germany, Zeppelin had resumed production of its airships and offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service between Europe and the North and South American continents. Air travel was not without its danger as the major European nations competed with each other to build larger and larger airships in order to gain control over the fledgling air-travel industry.

As the decade came to an end, the R-101 was Great Britain’s latest model. It was 777 feet long, weighed 150 tons, was powered by six Rolls-Royce engines and could carry 100 passengers. The maiden voyage on October 14, 1929, was marred by engine troubles causing it to be grounded for almost a year. Finally, it was brought back into service the following October. The trip was problematic from the start. First, the crew accidentally released four tons of water ballast needed to control altitude at the outset of the trip. They also took off straight into a storm hovering over the English Channel, even though dirigibles were known to be dangerous in bad weather. It was not able to hold a level altitude and was flying only 250 feet above the town of Poix, although the pilots were unaware of the problem because of the dark night. Eventually it hit a small ridge and the impact ignited the airship’s hydrogen supply. All forty-eight people on board died and the crash ended Britain’s development of airships.

The Akron was the largest airship built in the United States when it took its first flight in August 1931. In its short life, of less than two years, it was involved in two fatal accidents. In 1932, the Akron made a flight from New Jersey to a military base near San Diego. It attempted to land in high winds, with three groups of 30 men each assigned to help pull in the airship and secure it to the ground with ropes. But the airship, which was filled with helium, began to rise again after the sailors had begun to secure it. Two of the three men holding the ropes fell from 200 feet and were killed. The third man managed to hold on at the end of the rope for two hours as he dangled 2,000 feet above the ground. Finally, the crew managed to pull him up into the airship through a porthole. The second accident occurred on April 4, 1933, while being used by the U.S. Navy to obtain some technical data over New Jersey. Despite the violent thunderstorms in the area that day, the Akron was not grounded. While in the air over the Atlantic Ocean, a miscommunication over directions by crew members sent the Akron directly into the storm instead of around it. The winds caused the ship to plunge nearly 1,000 feet in just a few seconds. The crew then made its second mistake by dumping the dirigible’s water ballast in an attempt to make the flying ship rise. However, the ballast dump thrust the Akron up too far, too fast. Critical devices and cables were destroyed and all control was lost and it plunged into the ocean. The rescue airship that was sent to help the Akron crew also crashed in the

GRAF-ZEPPELIN D-LZ127 OVER THE ALPS

storm, killing two of the seven crew members on board. Only three of the Akron‘s 76 crew members survived the disaster. One of the survivors was the commander who had ordered the fateful ballast dump. This was the deadliest air disaster since the crash of the first rigid airship built in the United States, the Shenandoah, which killed 14 people on September 3, 1925.

In March 1936, the world’s largest passenger Zeppelin, the LZ 129 Hindenburg, was launched on its maiden flight. The Hindenburg quickly became a byword for luxury air travel. Its functional but attractive interior contained modest double-berth passenger quarters and spacious public areas. Long slanted and hinged windows provided some truly impressive views. The airship’s hold even provided cargo space for the transportation of automobiles. But on May 6, 1937, as the Hindenburg approached Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, the airship suddenly burst into flames and crashed to the ground. The mighty vessel was immediately consumed by an inferno. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew aboard, 13 passengers and 22 crew lost their lives. One member of the ground crew also perished in the fire. The tragedy was caught on camera by dozens of still photographers and television crews. Radio commentary by Herbert Morrison broadcast live as the incident unfolded has become a classic of audio history. The Hindenburg disaster effectively ended passenger airship flight.

Airships were seen as increasingly obsolete in the run up to the Second World War but were still used by the US military for reconnaissance purposes, but by the 1950s airships were little used other than for military applications. Eventually, the vessels were repurposed for use in advertising and promotional campaigns. The 1980s were the heyday of modern airships, as Goodyear built its famous blimps that floated above stadiums and major events across the world, employed as filming platforms, advertising space and for occasional passenger pleasure flights. The events of 9/11 brought this role to an end in the USA as blimp flights over stadiums were banned. The advent of drones, which are now more commonly used to film aerial shots, dealt the final death blow.

Space travel may open up a new opportunity as airships have been proposed as a potential cheap alternative to surface rocket launches for achieving Earth orbit. JP Aerospace have proposed the Airship to Orbit project, which intends to float a multi-stage airship up to altitudes of 55 km (180,000 ft) and then use ion propulsion to accelerate to orbital speed. 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 has proposed the High-Altitude Venus Operational Concept, which comprises a series of five missions including manned missions to the atmosphere of Venus in airships. Hypothetically, an airship could be 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 but NASA has speculated that some kind of vacuum airship could eventually be used to explore the surface of Mars.