Early pioneers by Blanchard in 1785 at the
London Science Museum in 1872
17th–18th century In 1670, the
Jesuit Father
Francesco Lana de Terzi, sometimes referred to as the "Father of
Aeronautics", published a description of an "Aerial Ship" supported by four copper spheres from which the air was evacuated. Although the basic principle is sound, such a craft was unrealizable then and remains so to the present day, since external air pressure would cause the spheres to collapse unless their thickness was such as to make them too heavy to be buoyant. A hypothetical craft constructed using this principle is known as a
vacuum airship. 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. It would have been on August 8, 1709, when Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão held, in the courtyard of the
Casa da Índia, in the city of Lisbon, the first Passarola demonstration. The balloon caught fire without leaving the ground, but, in a second demonstration, it rose to 95 meters in height. It was a small balloon of thick brown paper, filled with hot air, produced by the "fire of material contained in a clay bowl embedded in the base of a waxed wooden tray". The event was witnessed by King
John V of Portugal and the future
Pope Innocent XIII. A more practical dirigible airship was described by Lieutenant
Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier in a paper entitled "" (Memorandum on the equilibrium of aerostatic machines) presented to the
French Academy on 3 December 1783. The 16 water-color drawings published the following year depict a streamlined envelope with internal ballonets that could be used for regulating lift: this was attached to a long carriage that could be used as a boat if the vehicle was forced to land in water. The airship was designed to be driven by three propellers and steered with a sail-like aft rudder. In 1784,
Jean-Pierre Blanchard fitted a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft. In 1785, he crossed the
English Channel in a balloon equipped with flapping wings for propulsion and a birdlike tail for steering.
19th century The
19th century saw continued attempts to add methods of propulsion to balloons.
Rufus Porter built and flew scale models of his "Aerial Locomotive", but never a successful full-size implementation. The Australian
William Bland sent designs for his "
Atmotic airship" to the
Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, where a model was displayed. This was an elongated balloon with a steam engine driving twin propellers suspended underneath. The lift of the balloon was estimated as 5 tons and the car with the fuel as weighing 3.5 tons, giving a payload of 1.5 tons. Bland believed that the machine could be driven at and could fly from Sydney to London in less than a week. In 1852,
Henri Giffard became the first person to make an engine-powered flight when he flew in a
steam-powered airship. Airships would develop considerably over the next two decades. In 1863,
Solomon Andrews flew his aereon design, an unpowered, controllable dirigible in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and offered the device to the U.S. Military during the Civil War. He flew a later design in 1866 around New York City and as far as Oyster Bay, New York. This concept used changes in lift to provide propulsive force, and did not need a powerplant. In 1872, the French naval architect
Dupuy de Lome launched a large navigable balloon, which was driven by a large propeller turned by eight men. It was developed during the
Franco-Prussian war and was intended as an improvement to the balloons used for communications between Paris and the countryside during the
siege of Paris, but was completed only after the end of the war. In 1872,
Paul Haenlein flew an airship with an internal combustion engine running on the coal gas used to inflate the envelope, the first use of such an engine to power an aircraft.
Charles F. Ritchel made a public demonstration flight in 1878 of his hand-powered one-man rigid airship, and went on to build and sell five of his aircraft. It is believed successful trial flights were made between 1872 and 1874, but detailed dates are not available. The apparatus used a combination of wings and paddle wheels for navigation and propulsion. More details can be found in the book about his life. In 1883, the first electric-powered flight was made by
Gaston Tissandier, who fitted a
Siemens electric motor to an airship. The first fully controllable free flight was made in 1884 by
Charles Renard and
Arthur Constantin Krebs in the
French Army airship
La France. La France made the first flight of an airship that landed where it took off; the long, airship covered in 23 minutes with the aid of an electric motor, and a battery. It made seven flights in 1884 and 1885. From 1888 to 1897,
Friedrich Wölfert built three airships powered by
Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft-built petrol engines, the last of which,
Deutschland, caught fire in flight and killed both occupants in 1897. The 1888 version used a single cylinder Daimler engine and flew from
Canstatt to
Kornwestheim. rounding the
Eiffel Tower in 1901 In 1897, an airship with an aluminum envelope was built by the
Hungarian-
Croatian engineer
David Schwarz. It made its first flight at
Tempelhof field in Berlin after Schwarz had died. His widow, Melanie Schwarz, was paid 15,000 marks by Count
Ferdinand von Zeppelin to release the industrialist
Carl Berg from his exclusive contract to supply Schwartz with
aluminium. From 1897 to 1899, Konstantin Danilewsky, medical doctor and inventor from
Kharkov, built four muscle-powered airships, of gas volume . About 200 ascents were made within a framework of experimental flight program, at two locations, with no significant incidents.
Early 20th century In July 1900, the Luftschiff
Zeppelin LZ1 made its first flight. This led to the most successful airships of all time: the Zeppelins, named after
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who began working on rigid airship designs in the 1890s, leading to the flawed LZ1 in 1900 and the more successful
LZ2 in 1906. The Zeppelin airships had a framework composed of triangular lattice girders covered with fabric that contained separate gas cells. At first multiplane tail surfaces were used for control and stability: later designs had simpler
cruciform tail surfaces. The engines and crew were accommodated in "gondolas" hung beneath the hull driving propellers attached to the sides of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally, there was a passenger compartment (later a
bomb bay) located halfway between the two engine compartments.
Alberto Santos-Dumont was a wealthy young
Brazilian who lived in France and had a passion for flying. He designed 18 balloons and dirigibles before turning his attention to fixed-winged aircraft. On 19 October 1901 he flew his airship
Number 6, from the
Parc Saint Cloud to and around the
Eiffel Tower and back in under thirty minutes. This feat earned him the
Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000
francs. Many inventors were inspired by Santos-Dumont's small airships. Many airship pioneers, such as the American
Thomas Scott Baldwin, financed their activities through passenger flights and public demonstration flights.
Stanley Spencer built the first British airship with funds from advertising baby food on the sides of the envelope. Others, such as
Walter Wellman and
Melvin Vaniman, set their sights on loftier goals, attempting two polar flights in 1907 and 1909, and two trans-Atlantic flights in 1910 and 1912. No.1 at an air show in 1911 In 1902 the Spanish engineer
Leonardo Torres Quevedo published details of an innovative airship design in Spain and France titled "" ("Improvements in dirigible aerostats"). With a non-rigid body and internal bracing wires, it overcame the flaws of these types of aircraft as regards both rigid structure (zeppelin type) and flexibility, providing the airships with more stability during flight, and the capability of using heavier engines and a greater passenger load. A system called "auto-rigid". In 1905, helped by Captain A. Kindelán, he built the airship "Torres Quevedo" at the
Guadalajara military base. In 1909 he patented an improved design that he offered to the French
Astra company, who started mass-producing it in 1911 as the
Astra-Torres airship. This type of envelope was employed in the United Kingdom in the
Coastal,
C Star, and
North Sea airships. The distinctive three-lobed design was widely used during the Great War by the Entente powers for diverse tasks, principally convoy protection and anti-submarine warfare. The success during the war even drew the attention of the
Imperial Japanese Navy, who acquired a model in 1922. Torres also drew up designs of a 'docking station' and made alterations to airship designs, to find a resolution to the slew of problems faced by airship engineers to dock dirigibles. In 1910, he proposed the idea of attaching an airships nose to a
mooring mast and allowing the airship to weathervane with changes of wind direction. The use of a metal column erected on the ground, the top of which the bow or stem would be directly attached to (by a cable) would allow a dirigible to be moored at any time, in the open, regardless of wind speeds. Additionally, Torres' design called for the improvement and accessibility of temporary landing sites, where airships were to be moored for the purpose of disembarkation of passengers. The final patent was presented in February 1911 in Belgium, and later to France and the United Kingdom in 1912, under the title "Improvements in Mooring Arrangements for Airships". Other airship builders were also active before the war: from 1902 the French company
Lebaudy Frères specialized in semirigid airships such as the
Patrie and the
République, designed by their engineer Henri Julliot, who later worked for the American company
Goodrich; the German firm
Schütte-Lanz built the wooden-framed SL series from 1911, introducing important technical innovations; another German firm
Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft built the
Parseval-Luftschiff (PL) series from 1909, and Italian
Enrico Forlanini's firm had built and flown the first two
Forlanini airships. On May 12, 1902, the inventor and
Brazilian aeronaut
Augusto Severo de Albuquerque Maranhao and his French mechanic, Georges Saché, died when they were flying over
Paris in the airship called Pax. A marble plaque at number 81 of the Avenue du Maine in Paris, commemorates the location of Augusto Severo accident.
The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax" is a 1902 short silent film recreation of the catastrophe, directed by
Georges Méliès. In Britain, the Army built their first dirigible, the
Nulli Secundus, in 1907. The Navy ordered the construction of an experimental rigid in 1908. Officially known as
His Majesty's Airship No. 1 and nicknamed the
Mayfly, it broke its back in 1911 before making a single flight. Work on a successor did not start until 1913. German airship passenger service known as
DELAG (Deutsche-Luftschiffahrts AG) was established in 1910. In 1910
Walter Wellman unsuccessfully attempted an aerial crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean in the airship
America.
World War I bombing Warsaw in 1914 The prospect of airships as bombers had been recognized in Europe well before the airships were up to the task.
H. G. Wells'
The War in the Air (1908) described the obliteration of entire fleets and cities by airship attack. The Italian forces became the first to use dirigibles for a military purpose during the
Italo–Turkish War, the first bombing mission being flown on 10 March 1912.
World War I marked the airship's real debut as a weapon. The Germans, French, and Italians all used airships for scouting and tactical bombing roles early in the war, and all learned that the airship was too vulnerable for operations over the front. The decision to end operations in direct support of armies was made by all in 1917. Many in the German military believed they had found the ideal weapon with which to counteract British naval superiority and strike at Britain itself, while more realistic airship advocates believed the zeppelin's value was as a long range scout/attack craft for naval operations. Raids on England began in January 1915 and peaked in 1916: following losses to the British defenses only a few raids were made in 1917–18, the last in August 1918. Zeppelins proved to be terrifying but inaccurate weapons. Navigation, target selection and bomb-aiming proved to be difficult under the best of conditions, and the cloud cover that was frequently encountered by the airships reduced accuracy even further. The physical damage done by airships over the course of the war was insignificant, and the deaths that they caused amounted to a few hundred. Nevertheless, the raids caused a significant diversion of British resources to defense efforts. The airships were initially immune to attack by aircraft and anti-aircraft guns: as the pressure in their envelopes was only just higher than ambient air, holes had little effect. But following the introduction of a combination of
incendiary and
explosive ammunition in 1916, their flammable hydrogen lifting gas made them vulnerable to the defending aeroplanes. Several were shot down in flames by British defenders, and many others destroyed in accidents. New designs capable of reaching greater altitude were developed, but although this made them immune from attack it made their bombing accuracy even worse. Countermeasures by the British included sound detection equipment, searchlights and anti-aircraft artillery, followed by night fighters in 1915. One tactic used early in the war, when their limited range meant the airships had to fly from forward bases and the only zeppelin production facilities were in
Friedrichshafen, was the bombing of airship sheds by the British
Royal Naval Air Service. Later in the war, the development of the
aircraft carrier led to the first successful carrier-based air strike in history: on the morning of 19 July 1918, seven
Sopwith 2F.1 Camels were launched from and
struck the airship base at Tønder, destroying zeppelins L 54 and L 60. or
L32 shot down over England, 23 September 1916 The British Army had abandoned airship development in favour of aeroplanes before the start of the war, but the Royal Navy had recognized the need for small airships to counteract the submarine and mine threat in coastal waters. Beginning in February 1915, they began to develop the
SS (Sea Scout) class of blimp. These had a small envelope of and at first used aircraft
fuselages without the wing and tail surfaces as control cars. Later, more advanced blimps with purpose-built gondolas were used. The
NS class (North Sea) were the largest and most effective non-rigid airships in British service, with a gas capacity of , a crew of 10 and an endurance of 24 hours. Six bombs were carried, as well as three to five machine guns. British blimps were used for scouting, mine clearance, and
convoy patrol duties. During the war, the British operated over 200 non-rigid airships. Several were sold to Russia, France, the United States, and Italy. The large number of trained crews, low attrition rate and constant experimentation in handling techniques meant that at the war's end Britain was the world leader in non-rigid airship technology. The Royal Navy continued development of rigid airships until the end of the war. Eight rigid airships had been completed by the armistice, (
No. 9r, four
23 Class, two
R23X Class and one
R31 Class), although several more were in an advanced state of completion by the war's end. Both France and Italy continued to use airships throughout the war. France preferred the non-rigid type, whereas Italy flew 49 semi-rigid airships in both the scouting and bombing roles. Aeroplanes had almost entirely replaced airships as bombers by the end of the war, and Germany's remaining zeppelins were destroyed by their crews, scrapped or handed over to the Allied powers as war reparations. The British rigid airship program, which had mainly been a reaction to the potential threat of the German airships, was wound down.
The interwar period '' 1919 '' 1920 airship in flight 1926 , 24 August 1921. Britain, the United States and Germany built rigid airships between the two world wars. Italy and France made limited use of Zeppelins handed over as war reparations. Italy, the Soviet Union, the United States and Japan mainly operated semi-rigid airships. Under the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles, Germany was not allowed to build airships of greater capacity than a million cubic feet. Two small passenger airships,
LZ 120 Bodensee and its sister ship LZ 121
Nordstern, were built immediately after the war but were confiscated following the sabotage of the wartime Zeppelins that were to have been handed over as war reparations:
Bodensee was given to Italy and
Nordstern to France. On May 12, 1926, the Italian built semi-rigid airship
Norge was the first aircraft to fly over the
North Pole. The British
R33 and
R34 were improved versions of the German L 33, which had come down almost intact in Yorkshire on 24 September 1916. Despite being almost three years out of date by the time they were launched in 1919, they became two of the most successful airships in British service. The creation of the
Royal Air Force (RAF) in early 1918 created a hybrid British airship program. The RAF was not interested in airships while the
Admiralty was, so a deal was made where the Admiralty would design any future military airships and the RAF would handle manpower, facilities and operations. On 2 July 1919, R34 began the first crossing of the
Atlantic by a passenger aircraft. It landed at
Mineola, Long Island on 6 July after 108 hours in the air; the return crossing began on 8 July and took 75 hours. This feat failed to generate enthusiasm for continued airship development, and the British airship program was rapidly wound down. During World War I, the U.S. Navy acquired its first airship, the DH-1, but it was destroyed while being inflated shortly after delivery to the Navy. After the war, the U.S. Navy contracted to buy the
R 38, which was being built in Britain, but before it was handed over it was destroyed because of a structural failure during a test flight. February 1931 America then started constructing the , designed by the
Bureau of Aeronautics and based on the
Zeppelin L 49. Assembled in
Hangar No. 1 and first flown on 4 September 1923 at
Lakehurst, New Jersey, it was the first airship to be inflated with the
noble gas helium, which was then so scarce that the
Shenandoah contained most of the world's supply. A second airship, , was built by the Zeppelin company as compensation for the airships that should have been handed over as war reparations according to the terms of the Versailles Treaty but had been sabotaged by their crews. This construction order saved the Zeppelin works from the threat of closure. The success of the
Los Angeles, which was flown successfully for eight years, encouraged the U.S. Navy to invest in its own, larger airships. When the
Los Angeles was delivered, the two airships had to share the limited supply of helium, and thus alternated operating and overhauls. In 1922,
Sir Dennistoun Burney suggested a plan for a subsidised air service throughout the
British Empire using airships (the Burney Scheme). On 5 October 1930, the R101, which had not been thoroughly tested after major modifications, crashed on its maiden voyage to India at Beauvais in France killing 48 of the 54 people aboard. Among the dead were the craft's chief designer and the Secretary of State for Air. The disaster ended British interest in airships. In 1925 the Zeppelin company started construction of the
Graf Zeppelin (LZ 127), the largest airship that could be built in the company's existing shed, and intended to stimulate interest in passenger airships. The
Graf Zeppelin burned
blau gas, similar to
propane, stored in large gas bags below the hydrogen cells, as fuel. Since its density was similar to that of air, it avoided the weight change as fuel was used, and thus the need to
valve hydrogen. The
Graf Zeppelin had an impressive safety record, flying over (including the first circumnavigation of the globe by airship) without a single passenger injury. , 1933 The U.S. Navy experimented with the use of airships as
airborne aircraft carriers, developing an idea pioneered by the British. The USS
Los Angeles was used for initial experiments, and the and , the world's largest at the time, were used to test the principle in naval operations. Each carried four
F9C Sparrowhawk fighters in its hangar, and could carry a fifth on the trapeze. The idea had mixed results. By the time the Navy started to develop a sound doctrine for using the ZRS-type airships, the last of the two built, USS
Macon, had been wrecked. Meanwhile, the seaplane had become more capable, and was considered a better investment. Eventually, the U.S. Navy lost all three U.S.-built rigid airships to accidents. Only two of its crew of 83 died in the crash thanks to the inclusion of life jackets and inflatable rafts after the
Akron disaster. The
Empire State Building was completed in 1931 with a dirigible mast, in anticipation of future passenger airship service, but no airship ever used the mast. Various entrepreneurs experimented with commuting and shipping freight via airship. In the 1930s, the German Zeppelins successfully competed with other means of transport. They could carry significantly more passengers than other contemporary aircraft while providing amenities similar to those on ocean liners, such as private cabins, observation decks, and dining rooms. Less importantly, the technology was potentially more energy-efficient than heavier-than-air designs. Zeppelins were also faster than ocean liners. On the other hand, operating airships was quite involved. Often the crew would outnumber passengers, and on the ground large teams were necessary to assist mooring and very large hangars were required at airports. '' catches fire, 6 May 1937 By the mid-1930s, only Germany still pursued airship development. The Zeppelin company continued to operate the
Graf Zeppelin on passenger service between Frankfurt and
Recife in Brazil, taking 68 hours. Even with the small
Graf Zeppelin, the operation was almost profitable. In the mid-1930s, work began on an airship designed specifically to operate a passenger service across the Atlantic. The
Hindenburg (LZ 129) completed a successful 1936 season, carrying passengers between
Lakehurst, New Jersey and Germany. The year 1937 started with the most spectacular and widely remembered airship accident. Approaching the Lakehurst
mooring mast minutes before landing on 6 May 1937, the
Hindenburg suddenly burst into flames and crashed to the ground. Of the 97 people aboard, 35 died: 13 passengers, 22 aircrew, along with one American ground-crewman. The disaster happened before a large crowd, was filmed and a
radio news reporter was recording the arrival. This was a disaster that theater goers could see and hear in
newsreels. The
Hindenburg disaster shattered public confidence in airships, and brought a definitive end to their "golden age". The day after the
Hindenburg disaster, the
Graf Zeppelin landed safely in Germany after its return flight from Brazil. This was the last international passenger airship flight.
Hindenburgs identical sister ship, the
Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130), could not carry commercial passengers without helium, which the United States refused to sell to Germany. The
Graf Zeppelin made several test flights and conducted some electronic espionage until 1939 when it was grounded due to the beginning of the war. The two
Graf Zeppelins were scrapped in April, 1940. Development of airships continued only in the United States, and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had several semi-rigid and non-rigid airships. The semi-rigid dirigible
SSSR-V6 OSOAVIAKhIM was among the largest of these craft, and it set the longest endurance flight at the time of over 130 hours. It crashed into a mountain in 1938, killing 13 of the 19 people on board. While this was a severe blow to the Soviet airship program, they continued to operate non-rigid airships until 1950.
World War II While Germany determined that airships were obsolete for military purposes in the coming war and concentrated on the development of aeroplanes, the United States pursued a program of military airship construction even though it had not developed a clear
military doctrine for airship use. When the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, bringing the United States into
World War II, the U.S. Navy had 10 nonrigid airships: • 4
K-class:
K-2,
K-3,
K-4 and
K-5 designed as patrol ships, all built in 1938. • 3
L-class:
L-1,
L-2 and
L-3 as small training ships, produced in 1938. • 1
G-class, built in 1936 for training. • 2
TC-class that were older patrol airships designed for land forces, built in 1933. The U.S. Navy acquired both from the United States Army in 1938. Only
K- and
TC-class airships were suitable for combat and they were quickly pressed into service against Japanese and German
submarines, which were then sinking American shipping within visual range of the American coast. U.S. Navy command, remembering airship's anti-submarine success in World War I, immediately requested new modern antisubmarine airships and on 2 January 1942 formed the ZP-12 patrol unit based in
Lakehurst from the four
K airships. The ZP-32 patrol unit was formed from two
TC and two
L airships a month later, based at
NAS Moffett Field in
Sunnyvale, California. An airship training base was created there as well. The status of submarine-hunting Goodyear airships in the early days of
World War II has created significant confusion. Although various accounts refer to airships
Resolute and
Volunteer as operating as "privateers" under a
Letter of Marque, Congress never authorized a commission, nor did the President sign one. s located at
NAS Santa Ana, during World War II In the years 1942–44, approximately 1,400 airship pilots and 3,000 support crew members were trained in the military airship crew training program and the airship military personnel grew from 430 to 12,400. The U.S. airships were produced by the
Goodyear factory in
Akron, Ohio. From 1942 till 1945, 154 airships were built for the U.S. Navy (133
K-class, 10
L-class, seven
G-class, four
M-class) and five
L-class for civilian customers (serial numbers
L-4 to
L-8). The primary airship tasks were patrol and
convoy escort near the American coastline. They also served as an organization centre for the convoys to direct ship movements, and were used in naval search and rescue operations. Rarer duties of the airships included aerophoto reconnaissance, naval mine-laying and mine-sweeping, parachute unit transport and deployment, cargo and personnel transportation. They were deemed quite successful in their duties with the highest combat readiness factor in the entire U.S. air force (87%). During the war, some 532 ships without airship escort were sunk near the U.S. coast by enemy submarines. Only one ship, the tanker
Persephone, of the 89,000 or so in convoys escorted by blimps was sunk by the enemy. Airships engaged submarines with
depth charges and, less frequently, with other on-board weapons. They were excellent at driving submarines down, where their limited speed and range prevented them from attacking convoys. The weapons available to airships were so limited that until the advent of the
homing torpedo they had little chance of sinking a submarine. Only one airship was ever destroyed by
U-boat: on the night of 18/19 July 1943, the
K-74 from ZP-21 division was patrolling the coastline near Florida. Using
radar, the airship located a surfaced German submarine. The
K-74 made her attack run but the U-boat opened fire first.
K-74s
depth charges did not release as she crossed the U-boat and the
K-74 received serious damage, losing gas pressure and an engine but landing in the water without loss of life. The crew was rescued by patrol boats in the morning, but one crewman, Aviation Machinist's Mate Second Class Isadore Stessel, died from a
shark attack. The U-boat, , was slightly damaged and the next day or so was attacked by aircraft, sustaining damage that forced it to return to base. It was finally sunk on 24 August 1943 by a British
Vickers Wellington near
Vigo, Spain. Fleet Airship Wing One operated from Lakehurst, New Jersey, Glynco, Georgia, Weeksville, North Carolina,
South Weymouth NAS Massachusetts,
Brunswick NAS and Bar Harbor Maine, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Argentia, Newfoundland. Some Navy blimps saw action in the European war theater. In 1944–45, the U.S. Navy moved an entire squadron of eight Goodyear
K class blimps (K-89, K-101, K-109, K-112, K-114, K-123, K-130, & K-134) with flight and maintenance crews from
Weeksville Naval Air Station in North Carolina to
Naval Air Station Port Lyautey,
French Morocco. Their mission was to locate and destroy German U-boats in the relatively shallow waters around the
Strait of Gibraltar where
magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) was viable. PBY aircraft had been searching these waters but MAD required low altitude flying that was dangerous at night for these aircraft. The blimps were considered a perfect solution to establish a
24/7 MAD barrier (fence) at the Straits of Gibraltar with the PBYs flying the day shift and the blimps flying the night shift. The first two blimps (K-123 & K-130) left
South Weymouth NAS on 28 May 1944 and flew to
Argentia, Newfoundland, the
Azores, and finally to
Port Lyautey where they completed the first transatlantic crossing by nonrigid airships on 1 June 1944. The blimps of USN Blimp Squadron ZP-14 (Blimpron 14, aka
The Africa Squadron) also conducted mine-spotting and mine-sweeping operations in key Mediterranean ports and various escorts including the convoy carrying United States President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill to the
Yalta Conference in 1945. Airships from the ZP-12 unit took part in the sinking of the last U-boat before German capitulation, sinking the
U-881 on 6 May 1945 together with destroyers
USS Atherton and
USS Moberly. Other airships patrolled the
Caribbean, Fleet Airship Wing Two, Headquartered at
Naval Air Station Richmond, covered the
Gulf of Mexico from Richmond and
Key West, Florida,
Houma, Louisiana, as well as
Hitchcock and
Brownsville, Texas. FAW 2 also patrolled the northern Caribbean from San Julian, the Isle of Pines (now called
Isla de la Juventud) and
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as well as
Vernam Field, Jamaica. LTA hangar built by African American
Seabees of the 80th Naval Construction in 1943 Navy blimps of Fleet Airship Wing Five, (ZP-51) operated from bases in
Trinidad,
British Guiana and
Paramaribo,
Suriname. Fleet Airship Wing Four operated along the coast of
Brazil. Two squadrons, VP-41 and VP-42 flew from bases at
Amapá,
Igarapé-Açu,
São Luís Fortaleza,
Fernando de Noronha,
Recife,
Maceió,
Ipitanga (near
Salvador, Bahia),
Caravelas,
Vitória and the hangar built for the
Graf Zeppelin at
Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro. Fleet Airship Wing Three operated squadrons, ZP-32 from Moffett Field, ZP-31 at NAS Santa Ana, and ZP-33 at
NAS Tillamook, Oregon. Auxiliary fields were at
Del Mar,
Lompoc,
Watsonville and
Eureka, California,
North Bend and
Astoria, Oregon, as well as
Shelton and
Quillayute in Washington. From 2 January 1942 until the end of war airship operations in the Atlantic, the blimps of the Atlantic fleet made 37,554 flights and flew 378,237 hours. Of the over 70,000 ships in convoys protected by blimps, only one was sunk by a submarine while under blimp escort. and rebuilt in 1942 as the
USSR-V12. The V12 entered service in 1942 for hydrogen delivery, paratrooper training, and equipment transport. It made 1432 flights with 300
metric tons of cargo until 1945. In 1947, the V12 crashed into shed doors and caught fire. It was re-built and re-commissioned, as the
USSR-V12bis Patriot, in the same year. On 1 February 1945, the Soviets commissioned a second airship,
Pobyeda (
Victory). The Pobyeda was used for mine-sweeping and wreckage clearing in the Black Sea, crashing on 29 January 1947. In 1957 Edwin J. Kirschner published the book
The Zeppelin in the Atomic Age, which promoted the use of atomic airships. In 1959
Goodyear presented a plan for nuclear-powered airship for both military and commercial use. Several other proposals and papers were published during the next decades. In the 1980s,
Per Lindstrand and his team introduced the
GA-42 airship, the first airship to use
fly-by-wire flight control, which considerably reduced the pilot's workload. An airship was prominently featured in the
James Bond film A View to a Kill, released in 1985. The Skyship 500 had the livery of Zorin Industries. The world's largest
thermal airship () was constructed by the
Per Lindstrand company for French botanists in 1993. The
AS-300 carried an underslung raft, which was positioned by the airship on top of tree canopies in the rain forest, allowing the botanists to carry out their treetop research without significant damage to the rainforest. When research was finished at a given location, the airship returned to pick up and relocate the raft. In June 1987, the U.S. Navy awarded a US$168.9 million contract to
Westinghouse Electric and
Airship Industries of the UK to find out whether an airship could be used as an airborne platform to detect the threat of sea-skimming missiles, such as the
Exocet. At 2.5 million cubic feet, the Westinghouse/Airship Industries Sentinel 5000 (Redesignated YEZ-2A by the U.S. Navy) prototype design was to have been the largest blimp ever constructed. Additional funding for the Naval Airship Program was killed in 1995 and development was discontinued. The SVAM CA-80 airship, which was produced in 2000 by Shanghai Vantage Airship Manufacture Co., Ltd., had a successful trial flight in September 2001. This was designed for advertisement and propagation, air-photo, scientific test, tour and surveillance duties. It was certified as a grade-A Hi-Tech introduction program (No. 20000186) in Shanghai. The CAAC authority granted a type design approval and certificate of airworthiness for the airship. In the 1990s the Zeppelin company returned to the airship business. Their new model, designated the
Zeppelin NT, made its maiden flight on 18 September 1997. there were four NT aircraft flying, a fifth was completed in March 2009 and an expanded NT-14 (14,000 cubic meters of helium, capable of carrying 19 passengers) was under construction. One was sold to a Japanese company, and was planned to be flown to Japan in the summer of 2004. Due to delays getting permission from the Russian government, the company decided to transport the airship to Japan by sea. One of the four NT craft is in South Africa carrying diamond detection equipment from De Beers, an application at which the very stable low vibration NT platform excels. The project included design adaptations for high temperature operation and desert climate, as well as a separate
mooring mast and a very heavy mooring truck. NT-4 belonged to
Airship Ventures of Moffett Field, Mountain View in the San Francisco Bay Area, and provided sight-seeing tours.
Blimps are used for advertising and as TV camera platforms at major sporting events. The most iconic of these are the
Goodyear Blimps. Goodyear operates three blimps in the United States, and
The Lightship Group, now The AirSign Airship Group, operates up to 19 advertising blimps around the world.
Airship Management Services owns and operates three
Skyship 600 blimps. Two operate as advertising and security ships in North America and the Caribbean.
Airship Ventures operated a Zeppelin NT for advertising, passenger service and special mission projects. They were the only airship operator in the U.S. authorized to fly commercial passengers, until closing their doors in 2012.
Skycruise Switzerland AG owns and operates two
Skyship 600 blimps. One operates regularly over Switzerland used on sightseeing tours. approaches its motorized
mooring mast The Switzerland-based Skyship 600 has also played other roles over the years. For example, it was flown over
Athens during the
2004 Summer Olympics as a security measure. In November 2006, it carried advertising calling it
The Spirit of Dubai as it began a publicity tour from London to Dubai, UAE on behalf of
The Palm Islands, the world's largest man-made islands created as a residential complex. Los Angeles-based
Worldwide Aeros Corp. produces FAA Type Certified
Aeros 40D Sky Dragon airships. In May 2006, the U.S. Navy began to fly airships again after a hiatus of nearly 44 years. The program uses a single
American Blimp Company A-170 nonrigid airship, with designation
MZ-3A. Operations focus on crew training and research, and the platform integrator is
Northrop Grumman. The program is directed by the
Naval Air Systems Command and is being carried out at
NAES Lakehurst, the original centre of U.S. Navy lighter-than-air operations in previous decades. In November 2006 the U.S. Army bought an A380+ airship from
American Blimp Corporation through a Systems level contract with
Northrop Grumman and
Booz Allen Hamilton. The airship started flight tests in late 2007, with a primary goal of carrying of payload to an altitude of under
remote control and
autonomous waypoint navigation. The program will also demonstrate carrying of payload to The platform could be used for intelligence collection. In 2008, the
CA-150 airship was launched by Vantage Airship. This is an improved modification of model
CA-120 and completed manufacturing in 2008. With larger volume and increased passenger capacity, it is the largest manned nonrigid airship in China at present. In late June 2014 the
Electronic Frontier Foundation flew the GEFA-FLUG AS 105 GD/4 blimp AE Bates (owned by, and in conjunction with,
Greenpeace) over the
NSA's
Bluffdale Utah Data Center in protest.
Postwar projects Hybrid designs such as the
Heli-Stat airship/helicopter, the
Aereon aerostatic/aerodynamic craft, and the
CycloCrane (a hybrid aerostatic/rotorcraft), struggled to take flight. The Cyclocrane was also interesting in that the airship's envelope rotated along its longitudinal axis. In 2005, a short-lived project of the U.S.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was
Walrus HULA, which explored the potential for using airships as long-distance, heavy lift craft. The primary goal of the research program was to determine the feasibility of building an airship capable of carrying of payload a distance of and land on an unimproved location without the use of external
ballast or ground equipment (such as masts). In 2005, two contractors,
Lockheed Martin and
US Aeros Airships were each awarded approximately $3 million to do feasibility studies of designs for WALRUS. Congress removed funding for Walrus HULA in 2006. ==Modern airships==