Airships Article

TheRubySusan

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Location
Henry, IL
Name
Ruby
Oh, dear. No HTML. Well, theatlantic.com has a cool article dated Oct 11, 2013 under its In Focus section called "Airships" with photos from 1905 to 2013. If grebeman sees this post, I learned from #13 that dirigibles could carry fighter planes named for him, Gloster Grebes.

Is this even the right section to post this?
 
My grandfathers built the big American airships in Akron Ohio in the late 1920's. The hangar is still in use as a research facility.
 
I saw a very interesting TV documentary about World War One Zeppelin raids a few weeks ago.

They were trying to figure out why it was so difficult for contemporary fighter planes to shoot them down. You'd think that a big, slow-moving bag of hydrogen would be just the most vulnerable thing in which to go to war, but it turns out it was surprisingly hard to set them alight. Regular bullets would pass right through the internal gas balloons and the airships would survive the resulting slow leaks. Even specially developed burning bullets didn't work, as they couldn't set light to the hydrogen in the absence of oxygen. The eventual solution was to equip the fighter planes with magazines containing a mixture of burning bullets and exploding bullets. The exploding bullets would tear bigger holes in the gas balloons, so that enough air would mix with the hydrogen for the burning bullets to start a fire.

The other thing which surprised me was that the gas balloons inside the Zeppelins were made out of huge numbers of cows' intestines - about 200,000 of them were needed for every airship. This heavy demand eventually resulted in a national shortage of cow's intestines, so in order that the assembly of Zeppelins wasn't held up, the German authorities banned the production of sausages.

-R
 
^ both of them? That's pretty cool! :)

Here's the place they worked. It doesn't look much different today, except the low flat building in the foreground spoils the perspective on how big the hangar is - about 270 feet tall and nearly 1200 feet long, housing one 'dirigible' airship that was almost 800 foot long. It was the largest building in the world for decades afterward, when Akron Ohio was one of the largest cities in the U.S. (25th largest?), and Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich et al were some of the biggest American corporations.

Akron01_s.jpg
 
I saw a very interesting TV documentary about World War One Zeppelin raids a few weeks ago.

They were trying to figure out why it was so difficult for contemporary fighter planes to shoot them down. You'd think that a big, slow-moving bag of hydrogen would be just the most vulnerable thing in which to go to war, but it turns out it was surprisingly hard to set them alight. Regular bullets would pass right through the internal gas balloons and the airships would survive the resulting slow leaks. Even specially developed burning bullets didn't work, as they couldn't set light to the hydrogen in the absence of oxygen. The eventual solution was to equip the fighter planes with magazines containing a mixture of burning bullets and exploding bullets. The exploding bullets would tear bigger holes in the gas balloons, so that enough air would mix with the hydrogen for the burning bullets to start a fire.

The other thing which surprised me was that the gas balloons inside the Zeppelins were made out of huge numbers of cows' intestines - about 200,000 of them were needed for every airship. This heavy demand eventually resulted in a national shortage of cow's intestines, so in order that the assembly of Zeppelins wasn't held up, the German authorities banned the production of sausages.

-R

That makes sense, but in a very bizarre sort of way! The things I learn on this site!
 
Living as I do not far from Farnborough, in Hampshire, one of the cradles of British avation, I used the skeleton of one of the old airship hangars there as a backdrop for some photos of my friend Nick a couple of years ago:

19666417.4caefe6b.1024.jpg

Nick 14 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

This photo has been christened "Great Exalted President for Life of Nickistan" and has been made into stamps...

27368979.ff58eb37.640.jpg

nick for sale par Lightmancer, on ipernity

...while here is a more dignified long-shot from the same shoot, that actually shows a bit more of the hangar:

27368977.da983358.1024.jpg

Nick 10 par Lightmancer, on ipernity
 
Living as I do not far from Farnborough, in Hampshire, one of the cradles of British avation, I used the skeleton of one of the old airship hangars there as a backdrop for some photos of my friend Nick a couple of years ago:
...

Wow! Are they preserving the hangar as a monument (I hope!), or just waiting for entropy to do its work (I fear!)
 
I grew up about a mile from where the Hindenburg went down at Lakehurst. That hanger is still there. The structure is so large that it actually gets weather inside - as in clouds form near the ceiling/roof.
 
Just got around to looking over that article. Very cool photos. There is a sort of romanticism associated with airships. They frequently show up in popular culture.
If you ever watched Fringe (a JJ Abrams TV show) the characters in a parallel universe were sometimes identified by the modern use of airships.
 
Just got around to looking over that article. Very cool photos. There is a sort of romanticism associated with airships. They frequently show up in popular culture.
If you ever watched Fringe (a JJ Abrams TV show) the characters in a parallel universe were sometimes identified by the modern use of airships.

They pop up in steampunk anime, too. And there was a wonderful bicentennial (oops, I'm dating myself!) parrallel worlds book called "The Whenabouts of Burr" that featured an airship named after the American president Chester A. Arthur in one of it's "threads." After I read the book, I had to go look up Chester A. Arthur to confirm that he was actually an American president!
 
The use of cow's intestines - known as goldbeater's skin - originated with a business in the UK run by the Weinling family that made small toy balloons. One of the first commanders of the British Balloon Factory (the origin of Farnborough as an aviation centre in late 19th Century btw) had the idea of making full-sized balloon covers in the same way.
On the point about shooting down Zeppelins - very early in the war, one suggested method to bring them down involved flying above the Zep, then lobbing a grappling hook over the cockpit side. This was intended to snag hold of the Zeppelin's 'skin'. At the other end of the rope was an explosive charge which you were then expected to chuck over the side before flying away asap. I don't think this was ever tried in practice - fortunately for the pilots.
 
The use of cow's intestines - known as goldbeater's skin - originated with a business in the UK run by the Weinling family that made small toy balloons. One of the first commanders of the British Balloon Factory (the origin of Farnborough as an aviation centre in late 19th Century btw) had the idea of making full-sized balloon covers in the same way. On the point about shooting down Zeppelins - very early in the war, one suggested method to bring them down involved flying above the Zep, then lobbing a grappling hook over the cockpit side. This was intended to snag hold of the Zeppelin's 'skin'. At the other end of the rope was an explosive charge which you were then expected to chuck over the side before flying away asap. I don't think this was ever tried in practice - fortunately for the pilots.

As I read this I couldn't help but think of the SNL skit with Kirk Douglas called What If Spartacus Had A Piper Cub. If you haven't seen it, treat yourself to a good laugh.
 
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