Airship - this is how the German word Luftschiffbau was literally translated, which the German count Ferdinand von Zeppelin called his first rigid airship, which opened the real era of aeronautics. AT English language, by the way, the airship is denoted by the word airship, which literally in Russian means the same “airship. Subsequently, the name of the designer himself became a household name, and in Russian "zeppelin" is now almost a complete synonym for the French word "airship", as well as "jacuzzi", for example, means a bath with a hydromassage, no longer associated with a person's surname.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Photo: Public Domain

Count Zeppelin, however, was by no means a pioneer in airship building - three years before him, another German aeronautics pioneer had already launched an airship with a rigid structure. And a couple of decades earlier, the French began to develop the airship industry. True, the design of their ships was fundamentally different from what Zeppelin offered.

Aeronautics fanatic

For the first time the idea of ​​​​the ability to travel through the air using a huge sphere with a rigid frame, the different compartments of which are filled with gas, a retired general german army Zeppelin spoke as early as 1874, making a corresponding entry in his diary. Then, however, he was primarily attracted by the opportunity to use airships for military purposes.

He also emphasized military needs later, sending endless letters to the first persons of the state. Those, consulting with other military men, each time answered the enthusiast with a refusal. Another would probably just give up and give up. But the Zeppelin was not like that. He began work on his first "airship" with his own money.

He did not give up even after the first tests, which showed that the inventor's calculations underestimated the air resistance and the interference that an ordinary breeze can introduce into the movement of an airship. The Zeppelin did not give up even here - he began to besiege the leading design bureaus with orders for more and more powerful engines that could compensate for the impact of air.

Gradually, seeing his first successes, the government began to show interest in the developments of the count. He was even given meager grants, which, however, still could not be compared with the amounts allocated for the construction of airships by the inventor himself.

As a result, Zeppelin proved his case on July 2, 1900, demonstrating the first successful flight of the airship LZ-1 (Zeppelin Airship - 1).

Zeppelin Airship - 1. Photo: Public Domain

I would go to heaven

The first Zeppelin airship spent about 20 minutes in the air and, with the help of two engines manufactured by Daimler, managed to reach a speed of just over 21 kilometers per hour. It flew over the lake, landing hard enough to cause minor damage.

The "injuries" of the zeppelin were quickly repaired in order to soon carry out several more test flights. However, the airship did not make a positive impression on the military, and they refused to continue to sponsor the count's project.

But a dream is a dream. Zeppelin decides to improve his first model. To do this, he mortgages his estate, his wife's jewelry and some other expensive things. All possible assistance is provided by the friends of the developer and the founder of Daimler, who sees a prospect in this industry. The Kaiser of Germany also remains on the count's side. He does not give money directly, but allows him to earn about 120 thousand marks by approving the state lottery held by Zeppelin.

Zeppelin models began to improve and grow not only technically, but also in the literal sense. The length of the "belly" of the third airship exceeded 130 meters, and its speed had already reached 50 kilometers per hour. All this forced the military to pay attention to the development of the graph and look at them from a slightly different angle.

As a result, the airships were nevertheless recognized as a promising project. The Ministry of Defense allocated money for further developments, but set tough tasks for the designer. So, his new ship had to be able to stay in motion for 24 days. The flight range in this case should not be less than 700 kilometers, and the speed of the vessel should have been 65 kilometers per hour. As a result, airships rewrote all records of aeronautics. The longest flight took place over 118 hours. The farthest flew more than 11 thousand kilometers, from Frankfurt am Main to Rio de Janeiro. And the maximum speed that the airship managed to develop was 140 kilometers per hour.

Airship building in Germany, which came to the fore in this industry, began to develop at a rapid pace. The developments of Count Zeppelin found their application not only for military purposes. Airships were used to transport goods, transport people, promotions. The size of the airships has increased, and their importance has increased.

Photo: Public Domain

The impact of the airship boom can only be judged by the fact that the tallest building in the world at that time, the Empire State Building, was designed in such a way that its huge spire could act as a mooring mast for giant zeppelins. The architects planned that the landing of people could be carried out at the level of the 102nd floor. True, after the very first tests, it became clear that a strong wind would not allow passengers to calmly descend on a skyscraper, and the idea was quickly recognized as utopian. But she was, and already that says a lot.

It is the airship that owns the first round-the-world travel by air. Moreover, on this journey, the zeppelin (and it was the airship designed by the German count that went on the way) made only three landings for refueling. Airships were the first to fly over the North Pole and many other hard-to-reach natural objects, which no one could see or photograph from the air before.

Airships were actively used during the First World War and often even participated in battles. In some armies, military airships survived until the Second World War, but they were practically not used in hostilities due to high degree its vulnerability associated with navigational difficulties and gigantic size.

Photo: Public Domain

On September 10, 1930, one of the most famous and probably the most successful airship (judging by the number of kilometers traveled and flights made), Graf Zeppelin, named after its 90-year-old creator, visited Moscow, which was a significant event for the Soviet capital Cities.

Air "Titanic"

If the airship industry continued to develop at such a pace as at the beginning of the last century, it is quite possible that we would still use zeppelins everywhere today. These huge flying structures had undeniable advantages (mainly in terms of comfort) even compared to modern aircraft. Losing, of course, in the speed of movement.

But on May 6, 1937, the irreparable happened - the largest airship in the history of mankind, the Hindenburg, crashed. The crowning achievement of Count Zeppelin, who was called the "Air Titanic", took off from Germany on May 3 and after 3 days, having overcome Atlantic Ocean, was supposed to make a successful landing in New York.

Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / CarolSpears

Everything went like clockwork, the 245-meter giant (for comparison, the length of the Titanic was not much more - 269 meters) arrived in the economic capital of the United States on time. The pilot even gave a chic performance to the residents of the Big Apple, navigating his ship at a minimum distance from highest building in the world, the Empire State Building. The passengers of the airship could see those who had gathered on the observation deck, and even waved at them, receiving signs of welcome in return.

After cruising over the city, the airship with 97 passengers on board headed to one of the suburbs of New York to land. However, the commander of the ship did not receive permission to land due to a storm warning. After waiting for the storm front in the air, the zeppelin finally began to descend. Just at that moment, a fire broke out in the front of the airship. Soon the aircraft, all on fire thanks to the flammable hydrogen that filled its sections, crashed to the ground. Either from the fire or from injuries sustained in the fall, 35 of the 97 passengers on board were killed.

Photo: Public Domain

This event ended the era airships. The crash was filmed on photo and video cameras. The footage was scattered all over the world. The crash had such a resonance that soon all passenger flights on airships were canceled. Zeppelins continued to be used for the delivery of goods and some military purposes, but not for long.

A couple of years later, the largest airships were scrapped, although there were technologies that could make flights safer. So, for example, instead of flammable hydrogen, it was quite possible to use helium. True, the United States, the only exporter of this gas on the planet at that time, refused to supply it to Germany. Because of this, the Hindenburg, originally designed for helium, was converted to use hydrogen.

Also not clear are the reasons that led to the fire in front of the Hindenburg. The most popular version is an almost unbelievable coincidence of atmospheric conditions with the design flaws of the airship itself, which led to the ignition of hydrogen in one of the sections. But there is also a conspiracy theory, according to which an explosive device with a clockwork was placed in the bow of the zeppelin. It supposedly had to work at the moment when the airship had already landed and all the passengers had left the deck. However, due to a delay due to a storm front, the clock mechanism allegedly worked while people were still on board, which led to the tragedy.

The true cause has not been established so far and now it is unlikely that they will ever be established. We can only regret that such a beautiful and convenient means of transportation around the planet is a thing of the past.

Airships continue to be used today, but mostly for promotional purposes.

Photo credit: Creative commons/ AngMoKio

On September 10, 1908, the first controlled balloon created in Russia was flown for the first time.

The issues of controlled aeronautics in Russia began to be dealt with in the very early XIX century. So, in 1812, the mechanic Franz Leppich proposed to the Russian government to build a controlled balloon for military use. In July of the same year, the assembly of the apparatus began near Moscow. The balloon had an unusual design. Its soft fish-shaped shell was made of taffeta and around the perimeter in a horizontal plane was girded with a hard hoop. A net was attached to this hoop, covering the upper part of the shell. The most unusual structural element was a rigid keel, mounted on a hoop at some distance from the shell with a series of struts located around the lower part of the shell. The keel also served as a gondola. In the aft part of the shell, a stabilizer was attached to the hoop. On both sides of the apparatus, two wings were hinged to the frame. Through the flapping of these wings, it was supposed to move the balloon. All elements of the rigid frame were made of wood. According to tentative estimates, the volume of the shell of the apparatus was 8000 cubic meters, the length was 57 m, and the maximum diameter was 16 m. But the construction of this unusual balloon of dimensions unprecedented in its time was never completed. The shell, filled with hydrogen, did not hold gas, and it was almost impossible to move the apparatus with the help of propeller wings. For the controlled movement of such a large balloon, a propeller was needed, driven by a fairly light engine with a power of several tens of kilowatts. The creation of such an engine was an unsolvable task at that time.

Nevertheless, one cannot fail to note the originality of the design of this apparatus, which was practically the first prototype of controlled semi-rigid balloons.

In the middle of the 19th century, a number of projects for controlled balloons were proposed by A. Snegirev (1841), N. Arkhangelsky (1847), M.I. Ivanin (1850), D. Chernosvitov (1857). In 1849, the original project was put forward by the military engineer Tretessky. The airship was supposed to move by means of the reactive force of the gas jet flowing out of the hole in the aft part of the shell. To improve reliability, the shell was made sectioned.

In 1856, the project of a controlled balloon was developed by the captain of the first rank N. M. Sokovnin. The length, width and height of this apparatus were 50, 25 and 42 m, respectively, the estimated lifting force was estimated at 25,000 N. In order to increase safety, the shell was supposed to be filled with non-combustible ammonia. For the movement of the balloon, Sokovnin designed a kind of jet engine. The air, which was in cylinders under high pressure, was fed into special pipes, from which it flowed out. The pipes were proposed to be made swivel, which would allow, according to the author, to control the apparatus without the help of aerodynamic rudders. In fact, Sokovnin was the first to propose a jet control system for an airship.

The most completed project was proposed in 1880 by Captain O.S. Kostovich. His controlled balloon, named "Russia", was being finalized over several years. In the final version, it was based on a rigid cylindrical frame with conical ends, made of light and quite durable material"arborite" (a type of plywood), the manufacturing technology of which was developed by Kostovich himself. The frame was covered with silk fabric impregnated to reduce gas permeability. special composition. On the sides of the balloon there were bearing surfaces. A horizontal beam passed along its axis, in the aft part of which a four-bladed propeller was installed. The rudder was attached to the beam in front. To control the airship in a vertical plane, a movable load suspended from below served. A vertical tube was located in the midsection of the shell, to the lower part of which a gondola was attached. The volume of the shell was about 5,000 m3, the length was about 60 m, and the maximum diameter was 12 m. For his airship, Kostovich developed an eight-cylinder internal combustion engine, surprisingly light for that time. With a power of 59 kW, its weight was only 240 kg.

In 1889, almost all parts of the balloon, including the engine, were manufactured. However, due to the lack of subsidies from the government, it was never collected. And yet this project of a rigid system airship was a serious step forward in the development of controlled aeronautics, made almost two decades before the appearance of the Schwartz and Zeppelin apparatuses.

It should also be noted the work of the doctor of medicine K. Danilevsky from Kharkov, who built several small balloons in 1897-1898, equipped with a special system of turning planes. The movement of the devices in the vertical plane was carried out by means of horizontally located propellers, set in motion by the muscular strength of a person with the help of pedals. Horizontal movement was provided in the process of ascent and descent by turning the planes in one direction or another. Such devices could not find a real application, however, the technical idea of ​​flight control was original.

Thus, by the end of the 19th century, a controlled balloon had not been built in Russia.

However, the widespread construction of controlled balloons abroad, which began at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular in Germany, France and Italy, and the significant achievements of these airships at that time, which could play an important role in the conduct of hostilities, forced the Russian war ministry seriously address the issue of supplying the army with controlled balloons.

The first attempt to create an airship on their own was made in the Aeronautical Training Park in 1908. The balloon, called "Training", was built according to the project of Captain A. I. Shabsky. The construction of the apparatus was completed in September 1908, and already on the 10th day of the same month, its first launch was carried out over Volkovo Pole near Tsarskoye Selo. The shell of the balloon had a volume of about 1200 cubic meters and was made of two kites of the Parseval system. Its length was 40 m, and the maximum diameter was 6.55 m. An 11.8 kW engine was installed in the wooden gondola, which drove two propellers. The screws were located on both sides of the gondola in front of it. "Training" took three people on board, could climb to a height of 800 m and reach a speed of about 22 km / h. The longest duration of the flight "Training" was about 3 hours. In 1909, the airship was modernized. The volume of the shell was increased to 1500 cubic meters, a more powerful engine (18.4 kW) was installed, the propellers were replaced, and the gondola was rebuilt. However, further flights did not bring great success, and the device was dismantled at the end of the year.

In the same year, the Russian military ministry purchased a semi-rigid airship from the Lebody factory in France, which received the name Lebed in Russia. At the same time, a special commission of the engineering department, led by Professor N. L. Kirpichev, was developing and building the first domestic military airship.

This semi-rigid airship, named "Krechet", was built in July 1909. Engineers Nemchenko and Antonov took a great part in the development of the apparatus. Compared with its prototype - the French airship "Patrie", significant improvements were made to the "Krechet". On the "Krechet" there was no cloth front cutter and the lower support pylon of the gondola, the plumage with a rigid frame was replaced by two teardrop-shaped horizontal stabilizers made of rubberized fabric, which communicated with the main gas shell. In addition, the dimensions of the gondola were increased and the propellers were located higher. All this made it possible to significantly improve the controllability of the airship and unload its aft part. The first flight of the Krechet took place on July 30, 1910, that is, a year after construction. After conducting test flights, in which a speed of 43 km / h was achieved and good controllability of the airship was demonstrated both in the vertical and in the horizontal plane, the Krechet was handed over to the army.

In the same 1910, the operation of the Lebed began. In the autumn of 1910, two more Russian military airships of the soft system "Dove" and "Yastreb" ("Duks") were built, the first at the Izhora plant in Kolpino near Petrograd, and the second joint stock company"Dux" in Moscow. The Dove was built according to the project of professors Boklevsky, Van der Fleet and engineer V.F. Naydenov with the participation of Captain B.V. Golubov, the author of the Hawk was A.I. Shabsky.

In 1910, Russia acquired four more airships abroad: three in France - "Clement Bayard", named "Berkut", "Zodiac VII" and "Zodiac IX" ("Kite" and "Seagull") - and one in Germany - " Parseval VII", called "Vulture".

By the beginning of 1911, Russia had nine controlled balloons, four of them domestically built, and ranked third in the world in terms of the number of airships after Germany and France. Domestic airships were practically not inferior to those purchased foreign devices. However, one should not forget that far from the best airships were purchased abroad. As for the German rigid airships of that time, which had a volume of up to 19,300 cubic meters, a speed of up to 60 km / h and a flight range of about 1600 km, domestic controlled balloons could not compete with them.

In 1912, in Petrograd, according to the project of S. A. Nemchenko, a small semi-rigid airship "Kobchik" with a volume of 2400 cubic meters was built and at the Izhora plant - "Sokol" of the type "Dove". The Falcon, compared to its predecessors, had better contours, more developed elevators and was equipped with a more powerful engine (59 kW), which drove two propellers through a chain drive. The successful flights of the Golub and Sokol, which showed that their flight characteristics corresponded to the calculations, were the basis for laying in 1911 at the Izhora plant a large airship with a volume of 9600 cubic meters, called the Albatross. Its construction was completed in the autumn of 1913. It was the most advanced airship ever built at Russian factories. It had a length of 77 m, a height of 22 m and a width of 15.5 m, with a speed of up to 68 km/h. The maximum ascent height reached 2400 m, and the flight duration was 20 hours. Two balloonets were provided in the shell, each with a volume of 1200 cubic meters. The power plant consisted of two engines with a capacity of 118 kW. The authors of the Albatross project were B. V. Golubov and D. S. Sukhorzhevsky.

In 1913, three more large volume airships were purchased abroad: Astra Torres (10,000 m3), Clement Bayard (9,600 m3) in France, and Parseval XIV (9,600 m3) in Germany. They received in Russia the names, respectively, "Astra", "Condor" and "Petrel". best performance possessed "Petrel", which developed a speed of up to 67 km / h.

In 1914, large airships with a volume of approximately 20,000 m3 were ordered to three factories - Izhora, Baltic and Clément Bayard in France.

By the beginning of World War I, there were 14 airships in Russia, but of these, only four Albatross, Astra, Condor and Burevestnik could, according to their flight performance, be considered suitable for participation in hostilities with certain reservations. As a result, Russian controlled balloons were practically not used in combat operations. Only the airship "Astra" in May - June 1915 performed three night flights with bombing at the location of the German troops. In these flights, the airship received a lot of damage and was hardly operated in the future. In the second half of June 1915, the Astra was dismantled.

The absence in Russia during the First World War of airships with the necessary flight performance was due to a number of objective reasons. These include the government's lack of confidence in domestic developments and the associated too little funding, as well as the lack of a sufficient number of qualified personnel familiar with the device of the airship, its properties and operation features. An important role was also played by the fact that none of the domestic plants produced powerful reliable engines with mass characteristics that met the requirements for installing them on airships. Engines also had to be purchased abroad.

Nevertheless, in the projects and designs of domestically built airships of that time there were many original technical solutions, proposed and implemented much earlier than on foreign controlled balloons, and widely used at later stages of the development of airship construction.

An airship is an aircraft lighter than air, a balloon with an engine, thanks to which the airship can move regardless of the direction of air currents.
The very first airships were driven by a steam engine or human muscle power, and since 1900 internal combustion engines have become widely used.

Airship Meunier, 1784

The inventor of the airship is Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meunier. Meunier's airship was to be made in the shape of an ellipsoid. Handling was to be carried out with the help of three propellers, manually rotated by the efforts of 80 people.

Giffard's airship, 1852

Designer Giffard borrowed ideas from Meunier back in 1780, but his airship made its first flight after Giffard's death - 70 years later! It took so long for mankind to invent the first steam engine.

The next first fully controlled free flight in a French electric-powered military airship was in 1884. The length of the airship was 52 m, in 23 minutes it flew a distance of 8 km.

These devices were short-lived and extremely fragile. Airships of steel public transport only twenty years later, when they invented an internal combustion engine, such as those used in modern cars.

On October 19, 1901, the French aeronaut Alberto Santos-Dumont flew around the Eiffel Tower at a speed of just over 20 km / h on his Santos-Dumont No. .

The heyday of airships fell on the 20-30s of the XX century. Airships were equipped with aviation and, less commonly, diesel engines.

By design, airships are divided into three main types: soft, semi-rigid and rigid.

F rigid airships. A metal frame was assembled (like a bird cage) and covered with fabric on the outside.

soft airships, Basically, they look like balloons.

Semi-rigid airships have a metal shell at the bottom.

The design of all airships is simple: a huge cigar-shaped tank filled with hydrogen or helium, a cabin and two rotary engines. To lift the balloon into the sky, hydrogen was used, stored inside a rigid frame in numerous compartments or cylinders. Climbing and descending is done by tilting the airship with elevators - the engines then pull it up or down.
Inside the airship or under it was a cabin with a crew, passengers were also located here.

Soft airship (Parseval PL25), 1910

Semi-rigid airship "Norway", 1920

Rigid airship (USS Macon), 1930

Control room. (USS Macon)

Rigid airships could carry more cargo than early aircraft, and this was the case for many decades.
The design of such airships and their development are associated with the name of the German count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

German officer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, having visited America during civil war in the United States, became interested in balloons, which the opponents used to conduct aerial reconnaissance. Having risen into the air, conquered by flight over the Mississippi River, he forever connected his life with aeronautics. Since then, the words "airship" and "zeppelin" have become synonymous.

Zeppelin LZ 1902

Count von Zeppelin dreamed of making airships the transport of the future - comfortable air liners, powerful cargo carriers. He believed that huge airships could also contribute to the achievement of German military power.
Zeppelin spent twenty years to make a decent model of an airship. And in 1906, he built an improved airship that interested the military.

Zeppelin on Lake Constance

From that moment on, Count Zeppelin retired and took up the development and design of airships. Having created a company for the construction of airships, the count gained fame, he was called the "Greatest German of the 20th century."

"Zeppelins" were huge and shaped like a cigar.

During the flights of airships, mail was carried. Envelopes were usually stamped with special postmarks, and a number of states even issued postage stamps designed specifically to pay for mail carried by airships.

View from the gondola of a French airship in 1918

The first air passenger line in Europe, Friedrichshafen - Düsseldorf, along which the airship "Germany" ran, was opened in 1910.

During the First World War, the German armed forces used "zeppelins" for reconnaissance in enemy territory and bombardment. Unlike airplanes (the role of bombers was performed by light reconnaissance aircraft, the pilots of which took several small bombs with them), airships were already a formidable force at the beginning of the world war.

Airship raid on Calais

The most powerful aeronautical powers were Russia, which had more than two dozen devices in St. Petersburg, and Germany, which had 18 airships.

In 1926, a joint Norwegian-Italian-American expedition led by R. Amundsen on the airship "Norway" designed by Umberto Nobile made the first transarctic flight along the route: the island of Svalbard - the North Pole - Alaska.

By 1929, airship technology had advanced to a very high level; The airship "Graf Zeppelin" began the first transatlantic flights - flights to America.

LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin

In 1929, the airship LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin made its legendary round-the-world flight with three intermediate landings. In 20 days, he covered more than 34 thousand kilometers with an average flight speed of about 115 km / h!

Traveling in an airship was different from flying in a modern airplane.
Imagine yourself aboard the Hindenburg airship, which is three times the length of a modern airbus and the height of a 13-story building.
You are given not a chair, but a whole cabin with a bed and a toilet. There is no need to fasten seat belts during takeoff. You can stand in the cabin, walk around the saloon or deck, look out the windows. The restaurant has tables set with silverware and chinaware. There was even a small piano in the cabin.

Restaurant on the Hindenburg

Salon at the Hindenburg

All these rooms were located in the huge "belly" of the airship, designed for 50 passengers.

Moving at a speed of 130 kilometers per hour at an altitude of 200 meters above sea level, the Hindenburg in 1936 made its fastest flight across the North Atlantic in 43 hours.

The engine of the airship "Hindenburg"

One of the Zeppelins' biggest enemies was bad weather.
Of the twenty-four airships built, eight failed due to bad weather. However, in Germany they still believed in the reliability of the Zeppelins and continued their production.

German naval zeppelin L 20 after a forced landing near the coast of Norway, 1916

It is often thought that the airships of the 1930s could land vertically, like a helicopter. But this could only be done in the complete absence of wind.

In real conditions, landing an airship requires that people on the ground pick up the ropes dropped from different points of the airship and tie them to suitable ground objects, then the airship can be pulled to the ground.

The most convenient and safe way of landing (especially for large airships) is mooring to special masts. A rope was dropped from the top of the mooring mast, which was laid along the ground in the direction of the wind. The airship approached the mast from the leeward side, and a rope was also dropped from its bow. People on the ground tied these two ropes, and then the airship was pulled up to the mast with a winch - its nose was fixed in the docking socket.

Rigid airship ZR 1 "Shenandoah" on the mooring mast

Rigid airship ZR 3" Los Angeles"(German airship LZ 126) on a cable pier on an aircraft carrier, 1928.

The moored airship can rotate freely around the mast, like a weather vane. The docking station could move up and down the mast - this made it possible to lower the airship closer to the ground for loading and unloading and boarding and disembarking passengers.

The berthing masts are the only suitable parking place for airships. After all, airships are huge, and a special hangar-garage for them will not only be colossal in size, but also very expensive! By the way, in order to get a relatively small airship into the hangar with a strong wind, the efforts of up to 200 people were required.

Attempts to create aircraft carriers began from the moment the first zeppelins appeared, suggesting by their size that they could well be based on aircraft that at that time had small dimensions and an insignificant flight range, which limited their use.

In 1930, experiments began to create them, and even several flying aircraft carriers were put into operation.

Flying aircraft carrier USS Akron (ZRS-4)

When taking off from an aircraft carrier, the biplane descended on a special crane from the open hatch of the airship, which was in full swing, after which it unhooked and flew independently.

Fighter at the time of landing on the USS Akron airship (ZRS-4)

When landing, the same actions took place in the reverse order: the biplane, equalizing its speed with the speed of the airship, clung to the hook of a special crane, after which it was pulled inside the hatch.

The creators of airships, neglecting elementary safety measures, filled them with unsafe, but cheap hydrogen instead of inert, but expensive and inaccessible helium. In May 1937, a catastrophe occurred that shook the whole world.
The Hindenburg had already docked at the mast at Lakehurst, when suddenly small flames appeared in the tail section. From them, the hydrogen in the compartments exploded, and the airship was engulfed in fire. 25 people died.

September 24, 1852 in the suburbs of Paris, Versailles, took to the skies first airship- controlled balloon Girard I. Length first airship was 44 m, it had a spindle shape and was equipped with a steam engine. Its designer, Henri-Jacques Girard, a former railway worker with a passion for building hot air balloons, flew over 31 km on his giant brainchild, reaching a speed of 10 km / h in the sky over Paris. Thus began the era of airships! Airships were distinguished from balloons by an elongated, spindle-shaped balloon. The balloon was filled with hydrogen - a gas that was much lighter than air, moved thanks to a steam engine that rotated the screw, and was controlled using a rudder. In the second half of the XIX century. the steam engine was replaced by an internal combustion engine designed by Alberto Santos-Dumont. At the beginning of the XX century. thanks to the support of the German official Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the heyday of giant airships began.

They were used for the transport of goods, as well as for military purposes: during the First World War, London was bombed from airships. The Zeppelin introduced many innovations: its first cylinder had a rigid aluminum structure that was stretched with fabric, then covered with paint. All this increased the strength of the structure. In addition, there were gondolas for passengers and crew, and the length of the airship reached 126 m. and covered 6 km in 17 minutes. In 1920, very expensive flights across the Atlantic in airships became fashionable among the rich and aristocrats, and airships were even nicknamed flying hotels. Unfortunately, due to the frequent air crashes associated with the use of flammable hydrogen, in the 1930s. the fashion for airships came to naught.

Around the world in 21 days

In 1929, the airship Graf Zeppelin (1.2127) flew around the world in 21 days, landing only in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Lakehurst (New Jersey). In nine years of flying, he crossed the Atlantic 139 times!

The largest airship

the biggest ever built airships became the "Hindenburg" (1.2129), its length reached 245 m, it was built in Germany, at the Zeppelin plant. But what about fate most big airship ended in disaster.

Hindenburg disaster

Hindenburg disaster one of the most embarrassing events in the history of the world. On May 6, 1937, after completing its 63rd ocean flight, the Hindenburg burst into flames as it landed (left photo). The flames killed 35 people and 62 were seriously injured. Since then, no more passenger airships have been built.

The airship (from the French diriger - “to manage”) is self-propelled. We will tell about its history and how to build this aircraft ourselves later in the article.

Structural elements

There are three main types of airships: soft, semi-rigid and rigid. All of them consist of four main parts:

• a cigar-shaped shell or a balloon filled with a gas whose density is less than that of air;
• cabin or gondola, suspended under the shell, which serves to transport the crew and passengers;
• engines that drive the propellers;
• horizontal and vertical rudders to help guide the airship.

What is a soft airship? This is a balloon with a cabin attached to it with ropes. If the gas is released, the shell will lose its shape.

The semi-rigid airship (pictured in the article) also depends on internal pressure to maintain its shape, but it still has a structural metal keel that runs longitudinally along the base of the balloon and supports the cabin.

Rigid airships consist of a lightweight aluminum alloy frame covered in fabric. They are not sealed. Inside this structure are several balloons, each of which can be separately filled with gas. Aircraft of this type retain their shape, regardless of the degree of filling of the cylinders.

What gases are used?

Typically, hydrogen and helium are used to lift airships. Hydrogen is the lightest known gas and thus has the highest carrying capacity. However, it is highly flammable, which has caused many fatal accidents. Helium is not as light, but much safer because it does not burn.

History of creation

The first successful airship was built in 1852 in France by Henri Giffard. He created a 160-kilogram steam engine capable of developing a power of 3 liters. s., which was enough to drive a large propeller at a speed of 110 revolutions per minute. To lift the weight power plant, he filled a 44-meter balloon with hydrogen and, starting from the Parisian hippodrome, flew at a speed of 10 km / h, covering a distance of about 30 km.

In 1872, the German engineer Paul Hahenlein first installed and used an internal combustion engine on an airship, fueled by gas from a cylinder.

In 1883, Frenchmen Albert and Gaston Tissandier were the first to successfully fly a balloon powered by an electric motor.

The first rigid airship with an aluminum sheet hull was built in Germany in 1897.

Alberto Santos-Dumont, a native of Brazil who lived in Paris, set a number of records in a series of 14 non-rigid airships built by him from 1898 to 1905, powered by internal combustion engines.

Count von Zeppelin

The most successful operator of motorized rigid balloons was the German Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, who built his first LZ-1 in 1900? The Luftschiff Zeppelin, or Zeppelin Aircraft, is a technically sophisticated ship, 128 m long and 11.6 m in diameter, which was made of an aluminum frame consisting of 24 longitudinal beams connected by 16 cross rings, and was driven by two engines, power 16 l. with.

The aircraft could reach speeds of up to 32 km / h. The Count continued to refine the design during World War I, when many of his airships (called Zeppelins) were used to bombard Paris and London. Aircraft of this type were also used by the Allies during World War II, mainly for anti-submarine patrols.

In the 20s and 30s of the last century, in Europe and the United States, the construction of airships continued. In July 1919, a British R-34 made two transatlantic flights.

Conquest of the North Pole

In 1926, the Italian semi-rigid airship (photo is given in the article) "Norway" was successfully used by Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and General Umberto Nobile for research North Pole. The next expedition, already on another, was led by Umberto Nobile.

In total, he planned to make 5 flights, but the airship, built in 1924, crashed in 1928. The operation to return the polar explorers took more than 49 days, during which 9 rescuers died, including Amundsen.

What was the name of the 1924 airship? The fourth series N, built according to the project and at the Umberto Nobile factory in Rome, was named "Italy".

Heyday

In 1928, the German balloonist Hugo Eckener built the Graf Zeppelin airship. Before decommissioning, nine years later, he made 590 flights, including 144 transoceanic crossings. In 1936, Germany opened regular transatlantic passenger traffic on the Hindenburg.

Despite these advances, the airships of the world virtually ceased production in the late 1930s due to their high cost, slow speed, and vulnerability to stormy weather. In addition, a series of disasters, the most famous of which was the explosion of the Hindenburg filled with hydrogen in 1937, combined with advances in aircraft construction in the 30s and 40s. made this mode of transport commercially obsolete.

Technology Progress

The gas cylinders of many early airships were made from so-called "gold digger's skin": cow intestines were beaten off and then stretched. The creation of one aircraft required two hundred and fifty thousand cows.

During the First World War, Germany and its allies stopped the production of sausages so that there was enough material to produce airships that were used to bombard England. Advances in textile technology, including the invention of vulcanized rubber in 1839 by American merchant Charles Goodyear, sparked an explosion of innovation in airship construction. In the early thirties, the US Navy built two "flying aircraft carriers" Akron and Macon, whose hulls were opened to release a fleet of F9C Sparrowhawk fighter aircraft. The ships crashed after falling into a storm, without having time to prove their combat capability.

The world record for the duration of the flight was set in 1937 by the balloon "USSR-B6 Osoaviakhim". The aircraft spent 130 hours 27 minutes in the air. The cities that the airship visited during the flight were Nizhny Novgorod, Belozersk, Rostov, Kursk, Voronezh, Penza, Dolgoprudny and Novgorod.

Sunset balloons

Then the airships disappeared. So, on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg exploded over Lakehurst in New Jersey - 36 passengers and crew members died in a ball of fire. The tragedy was caught on film, and the world saw how the German airship exploded.

What hydrogen is and how dangerous it is became clear to everyone, and the idea that people can comfortably move under a container with this gas became unacceptable in an instant. Modern aircraft of this type use only helium, which is non-flammable. Increasingly popular and economical were aircraft such as Pan American Airways' high-speed "flying boats".

Modern engineers doing design aircraft of this type, lament that until 1999, when a collection of papers on how to build an airship called Airship Technology was published, the only textbook available was Aircraft Design by Charles Burgess, published in 1927.

Modern developments

In the end, airship designers abandoned the idea of ​​transporting passengers and focused on cargo transportation, which today is not effectively carried out. railways, road and sea transport, and out of reach in many areas.

The first few such projects are gaining momentum. In the seventies, a former fighter pilot navy USA, in New Jersey, tested an aerodynamic delta-shaped ship called Aereon 26. But Miller's funds ran out after the first test flight. Creating a prototype cargo aircraft requires a huge investment, and potential buyers was not enough.

In Germany, Cargolifter A.G. went so far as to build the world's largest freestanding building, over 300m long, in which the company planned to build a helium semi-rigid cargo airship. What it means to be a pioneer in this field of aeronautics became clear in 2002, when the company, faced with technical difficulties and limited funding, filed for bankruptcy. The hangar, located near Berlin, was later turned into the largest indoor water park in Europe, Tropical Islands.

In pursuit of dominance

A new generation of design engineers, some of whom are backed by significant government and private investment, are convinced that, given the availability of new technologies and new materials, society will be able to benefit from the construction of airships. Last March, the US House of Representatives held a meeting on this species air transport, the purpose of which was to accelerate the process of their development.

Aerospace heavyweights Boeing and Northrop Grumman have been developing airships in recent years. Russia, Brazil and China have built or are developing their own prototypes. Canada has created designs for several aircraft, including the Solar Ship, which looks like a bloated stealth bomber with solar panels placed all over the top of its helium-filled wings. Everyone is in a race to be number one and monopolize the multi-billion dollar trucking market. Currently, three projects are attracting the most attention:

• the English Airlander 10, by Hybrid Air Vehicles, is currently the largest airship in the world;
• LMH-1, Lockheed Martin;
• Aeroscraft, Worldwide Eros Corp, created by Igor Pasternak, an immigrant from Ukraine.

Do-it-yourself radio-controlled balloon

To assess the problems that arise during the construction of aircraft of this type, you can build a children's airship. It is smaller than any model you can buy and has the best combination of stability and maneuverability.

To create a miniature airship, you will need the following materials:

• Three miniature motors weighing 2.5g or less.
• A micro receiver weighing up to 2 g (for example, DelTang Rx33, which, among other parts, can be purchased from specialized online stores such as Micron Radio Control, Aether Sciences RC or Plantraco), powered by a single lithium polymer cell. Make sure the motor and receiver connectors are compatible, otherwise soldering will be required.
• Compatible transmitter with three or more channels.
• 70-140mAh LiPo battery and suitable Charger. To total weight did not exceed 10 g, a battery weighing up to 2.5 g is required. The large capacity of the battery will provide a long flight time: with 125 mAh, you can easily achieve a duration of 30 minutes.
• Wires connecting the battery to the receiver.
• Three small propellers.
• Carbon rod (1 mm), 30 cm long.
• A piece of depron 10 x 10 cm.
• Cellophane, tape, superglue and scissors.

Need to purchase balloon latex filled with helium. A standard one or any other with a load capacity of at least 10 g will do. To achieve the desired weight, ballast is added, which is removed as helium leaks.

The components are attached to the rod with adhesive tape. The front motor is used to move forward, and the rear is mounted perpendicularly. The third engine is located at the center of gravity and is directed downwards. The propeller is attached to it on the opposite side so that it can push the airship up. Motors should be glued with superglue.

By attaching a tail stabilizer, forward movement can be greatly improved, as the lift propeller provides little and the tail rotor is too powerful. It can be made of their deprona and attached with adhesive tape.

Forward movement should be compensated by a slight rise.

In addition, an inexpensive camera, such as used in key fobs, can be mounted on the airship.