Flight

Part 7 - Airships

Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838 – 1917) first flew as a balloon passenger with the Union Army of the Potomac in 1863 during the American Civil War. After his resignation from the German army in 1891 at age 52, Zeppelin hired engineers and raised capital to finance the construction of airships. 

Zeppelin had developed the idea of a rigid aluminum framework covered in a fabric envelope with multiple internal, hydrogen-filled gas cells, each free to expand and contract, with a rigidly attached gondola but he needed powerful, light weight engines.

Zeppelin invested 441,000 German Marks, to build a rigid airship and on July 2, 1900, the LZ 1 made its first flight powered by two 10.6 kW (14.2 hp) Daimler engines. The flight lasted only 18 minutes but the airship reached a speed of 9 m/s (metres per second) (20 mph). The French airship, La France, had previously reached a speed of only 6 m/s (13 mph).The King of Württemberg authorized a state lottery to finance the construction of Zeppelin's second airship. The LZ 2 was completed by November 30, but it was severely damaged by high winds and had to be dismantled.

Meanwhile in France, On October 19, 1901, Alberto Santos-Dumont flew his airship from the Parc Saint Cloud around the Eiffel Tower and back in under thirty minutes winning a prize of 100,000 francs.

Zeppelin's third airship, LZ 3, finished at the end of 1906, it made two successful flights at a speed of 30 miles per hour (48 km/h), and later reached a speed of 36 miles per hour (58 km/h). The success of LZ 3 induced the German government (not wanting to fall behind the French) to provide 500,000 marks to build a larger airship. The LZ 4 first flew on June 20, 1908 but was destroyed by fire during a storm.

LZ 5 was accepted into Army service, but when it was wrecked on April 25, 1910, Zeppelin's business director, Alfred Colsman, suggested establishing a passenger-carrying business. And, until 1914, Zeppelins of the German Aviation Association transported 37,250 people on over 1,600 flights without an incident.

During WW-1, German airships were used to bomb London, England, until they proved vulnerable to incendiary bullets fired from aircraft.

The British Royal Navy developed small airships, to counteract submarines and mine laying in coastal waters, from February 1915. The NS class non rigid airships, with a crew of 10, six 230 lb bombs and three to five machine guns, had an endurance of 24 hours. During WW-1, the British operated over 200 airships and, at the end of the war, Britain was the world leader in non-rigid airship technology.

The USS Shenandoah, based on the Zeppelin L 49, first flew on 4 September 1923. It was the first airship to be inflated with the inert gas helium, which was then so rare that the Shenandoah contained most of the world's supply. A second airship, USS Los Angeles, was built by the Zeppelin company and flown successfully for eight years, by the U.S. Navy. When the Los Angeles was delivered, the two airships had to share the limited supply of helium, and thus operated alternately.

Ramsay MacDonald's British Labour government, elected in 1924, financed two airships, the R100 and R101. On 5 October 1930, the R101, crashed on its maiden voyage at Beauvais in France killing 48 of the 54 people aboard and ending British interest in airships.

After the Locarno Treaties of 1925 lifted restriction, Zeppelin built the Graf Zeppelin (LZ 127). It was powered by a fuel gas, similar to propane, that was stored in large gas bags below the hydrogen cells. As the density of the gas was similar to air, it avoided the weight change as fuel was used up, and thus the need to release hydrogen to maintain height. The Graf Zeppelin had an impressive safety record, flying over 1,600,000 km (990,000 mi) (including the first circumnavigation of the globe by airship) without a single passenger injury. Work began in the mid-1930s on the Hindenburg (LZ 129), which completed a successful 1936 season, carrying passengers between Lakehurst, New Jersey and Germany.