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That's a story in itself. The Germans used airships to bomb Holland and the UK during WW I. Early in the war, before superchargers, the airships flew higher t
by gozur88 11y ago
That's a story in itself.
The Germans used airships to bomb Holland and the UK during WW I. Early in the war, before superchargers, the airships flew higher than the airplanes the allies sent to stop them. But with improvements in allied airplane engines, Germany started to take heavy losses.
So they started to build a series of airships they called "height climbers". The idea was they'd drop their bombs, drop their ballast, and fly home far above allied aircraft. It worked, too, though they lost a lot of people to hypothermia and oxygen deprivation.
Fast forward to the end of the war. As part of the Treaty of Versailles, the remaining German airships were divvied up among the victorious countries. What the US (and others ) got were the stripped-down airships that were never intended for normal use. These were ships designed right to the edge of simply falling apart, because otherwise they would have been destroyed by airplanes.
And that's what the US used as a template to produce domestic airships. It's no surprise they broke apart in a strong wind.
Zeppelin knew how to build airships, though. By 1937 the Graf Zeppelin had flown over a million miles without incident.
- mannykannot 11y agoThere is a further twist in that the only US rigid airship that did not crash, the Los Angeles, was built by the Zeppelin company specifically for the US Navy after WW1, in an agreement to pay down reparations. The Shenandoah may have been based on the wartime height-climbers, but I don't think the Akron and Macon were. You are right about the Graf Zeppelin being a great success, but I have wondered how much that depended on Hugo Eckener's good judgment about when and where to fly.
- gozur88 11y agoThe Akron and Macon may not have been copied from height climbers, but they were certainly influenced by them in the sense that the US didn't know how to build anything else. Regarding Graf Zeppelin, I have no idea how much Eckener's judgement came into play. But surely it must have braved a storm or two over that many miles.
- mannykannot 11y agoSome non-zeppelin airship designers thought for themselves. Barnes Wallis did proper stress analysis for the R100, and invented a superior gas-bag restraining harness based on geodesic curves.
- gozur88 11y agoWell, that's true. Britain could make airships, too, and had used them during the war. And eventually the US would have been able to do that as well. But we were far behind at the close of the war. We had a huge advantage, too. In those days if you wanted helium you had to deal with the US.