The airship - the history of development. Who invented the first airship in the world and for what purposes Brief message about the airship

The airship belongs to the class of aircraft and is identical in design to a hot air balloon. Among its distinctive features are its large carrying capacity, the ability to stay in the air for a long time, low cost and berthing at any site. The only disappointment is the low speed of km/h, limited to 20 units. With the development of powerful models of airships, in modern society there is increasing interest in who created the first airship and where they can be used. These are very beautiful and powerful cars that are experiencing a rebirth today. The photo shows a modern domestic airship.

How it all began

As follows from the chronicle, the first airship in the world, piloted by the Frenchman Henri-Jacques-Girard, took to the skies over Versailles in September 1852. The length of the spindle-shaped, equipped with a steam engine, reached 4.4 m. During that period, many countries began to create their own airship; the first flight of their miracle devices was recorded in history:

• Dupont de Laume's airship launched in 1872.
• A mechanic from Germany, Henlein, equipped the aircraft with a gas engine, thanks to which the speed increased to 19 km/h.
• "France" is one of the first airships built in Europe, on which the Tissadier brothers installed batteries.

Airship "France"

• In Germany, the embodiment of the idea belongs to the intelligence officer Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who presented a new development in 1900. Throughout his life, Count Zeppelin improved his designs, and in 1911 he created the Ersatz Deutschland passenger airship, capable of accommodating 20 people on board. From then on, the count's airship began to be called a zeppelin.
• For the first time, an internal combustion engine was installed by Captain Kostovich on the Rossiya airship. The engine itself is in the Monino Museum.

Airship construction in Russia

The daring dream of flying has warmed the souls of more than one generation of people living on earth. Long before the advent of the era of aeronautics, Peter the Great was sure that his grandchildren would conquer the blue dome.

The first airship in Russia “Krechet”

The impetus for the development of aircraft was the Crimean War, after which in 1869 a special commission was created to oversee the invention of the balloon used for military purposes. August 1, 1970 is considered to be the birthday of military aeronautics, however, the first airship in Russia called “Krechet” appeared only in 1909. Then "Hawk", "Falcon" and "Dove" were created. In 1911, the country occupied third position in this area.

Airship construction in the USSR actively developed in the 20-30s; in those years, Osoaviakhim appeared, which was managed by Umberto Nobile himself. Its speed reached 113 km/h, its capacity was 20 people.

With the advent of airplanes, the demand for clumsy models decreased sharply. However, during the Second World War, dozens of them hovered over cities, cutting off the wings of enemy attack aircraft with cables.

Airships of the First World War

The promise of airships for military purposes was so obvious that equipping armies began long before the outbreak of hostilities. Entire flotillas of ships were used as cargo transporters, reconnaissance aircraft and bombers. In this area, Russia was the leader (more than 20 units), followed by Germany (18) and Austria-Hungary (10). At the same time, Russia purchased Astra, Burevestnik and Condor abroad, and built the remaining ships at the Izhora and Baltic shipyards. Domestic engineers believed that an inexpensive soft airship was better than a huge prototype, which was easier to hit from the ground and set on fire.

What were the first airships filled with?

The devices initially ran on hydrogen, which is lighter than air, and was later replaced by helium. It was hydrogen that caused the melting sinking of the Hindenburg, flying with passengers across the Atlantic and considered the largest ship in Germany.

), which creates aerostatic lift. Propellers rotated by engines give the airship a forward speed of 60-150 km/h. The aft part of the hull has stabilizers and . The body of an airship in flight creates additional aerodynamic lift, thus the airship combines the flight performance characteristics of a balloon and an airplane.

The airship is characterized by a large carrying capacity, flight range, the possibility of vertical takeoff and landing, free drift in the atmosphere under the influence of air currents, and long hovering over a given place. Attached to the lower part of the hull (sometimes several gondolas) are the control cabin, rooms for passengers and crew, fuel and various equipment. Airships usually fly at an altitude of up to 3000 m, in some cases - up to 6000 m. The take-off of an airship occurs as a result of the discharge of ballast, and the descent is due to the partial release of lifting gas. At moorings they are attached to special mooring masts or brought in for storage and maintenance.

Airship frames are usually assembled from flat triangular or polyhedral trusses; It can be made of fabric (impregnated for gas-tightness) or made of polymer film, or made of thin metal sheets or plastic panels. The external volume of the airship (hull) is up to 250 thousand m3, length up to 250 m, diameter up to 42 m.

The first project of a controlled balloon was proposed in 1784 by J. Meunier (France). But it was only in 1852 that the Frenchman A. Giffard was the first in the world to fly an airship of his own design with a steam engine that rotated. In 1883, G. Tissandier and his brother built an airship with a 1.1 kW electric motor, which received current from galvanic batteries. From the end 19th century until the early 1990s. airships were built in Germany, France, the USA, Great Britain, and the USSR. The largest airships LZ-129 and LZ-130 were created in Germany in 1936 and 1938. They had a volume of 217 thousand cubic meters, four engines each with a total power of 3240 and 3090 kW, reached speeds of up to 150 km/h and could carry up to 50 passengers over a distance of 16 thousand km.. 2006 .

Encyclopedia "Technology". - M.: Rosman

Airship. Aviation: Encyclopedia. - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia. 1994 .

Synonyms

See what an “airship” is in other dictionaries: AIRSHIP, a lighter-than-air aircraft equipped with an engine and a motion control system. A rigid airship, or zeppelin, has an internal frame of struts on which is attached a shell of fabric or aluminum alloy. Lifting... ...

Scientific and technical encyclopedic dictionary airship Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

Controlled balloon, airship, aircraft (Dirigible) a lighter-than-air aircraft (as opposed to an aircraft, a heavier-than-air apparatus). D. stays in the air due to the fact that its body is filled with gas lighter than air ... Marine Dictionary

- (French controlled). Guided flying projectile. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. airship (French dirigeable lit. controlled) controlled balloon, New Dictionary of Foreign Words. by EdwART,… … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Aerostat, zeppelin, hot air balloon Dictionary of Russian synonyms. airship see balloon Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical guide. M.: Russian language. Z. E. Alexandrova. 2011… Synonym dictionary

Airship- Airship. An aircraft lighter than air, driven by a power plant... Source: Order of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation dated September 12, 2008 N 147 (as amended on December 26, 2011) On approval of the Federal Aviation Rules Requirements for aircraft crew members... ... Official terminology

- (from the French dirigeable controlled) a controlled balloon with an engine. It has a streamlined body, one or more nacelles, and tail. The first flight in a controlled balloon with a steam engine was made by H. Giffard (1852, France). Up to 50… … Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

AIRSHIP, airship, husband. (French dirigeable, lit. controlled) (aviation). A lighter-than-air aeronautical vehicle equipped with engines and propellers, a controlled balloon. Ushakov's explanatory dictionary. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 … Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

AIRSHIP, me, husband. A motorized controlled balloon with a cigar-shaped body. | adj. airship, oh, oh. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

Scientific and technical encyclopedic dictionary- A balloon moving in the atmosphere with the help of a power plant and controlled in altitude, direction, speed, range and duration of flight. [FAP dated March 31, 2002] Topics: aviation regulations... Technical Translator's Guide

AIRSHIP- a lighter-than-air aircraft with an engine and propeller propellers for horizontal movement. Rudders are used for control in the horizontal plane. Movement in the vertical direction is regulated by elevators, and large ... ... Big Polytechnic Encyclopedia

Books

• Martha and the Fantastic Airship, Nikolskaya A.. Imagine that somewhere in the world an amazing creature lives next to us - huge, shaggy, clawed and toothy. Scary? But in vain! After all, this creature is very kind, with the most gentle, sympathetic...

An airship (from the French diriger - “to control”) is a self-propelled one. We will tell you about its history and how to build this aircraft yourself later in the article.

Design elements

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

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

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

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

Rigid airships consist of a lightweight aluminum alloy frame covered with fabric. They are not airtight. Inside this structure are several balloons, each of which can be individually 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 a high carrying capacity. However, it is highly flammable, which has been the cause of many fatal accidents. Helium is not as light, but it is much safer, since 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 hp. s., which was enough to drive a large propeller at a speed of 110 revolutions per minute. In order to raise the weight of the power plant, he filled a 44-meter cylinder 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 Haenlein first installed and used an internal combustion engine on an airship, the fuel for which was gas from a cylinder.

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

The first rigid airship with a hull made of aluminum sheet was built in Germany in 1897.

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

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, was 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 transverse rings, and was driven by two engines, power 16 l. With.

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

During the 1920s and 1930s, airship construction continued in Europe and the United States. In July 1919, the British R-34 made two transatlantic flights.

Conquest of the North Pole

In 1926, the Italian semi-rigid airship (photo provided in the article) "Norway" was successfully used by Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and General Umberto Nobile to explore the North Pole. The next expedition, on a different one, was led by Umberto Nobile.

He planned to make a total of 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 N series, built according to the design and plant of Umberto Nobile in Rome, was named “Italy”.

Heyday

In 1928, German aeronaut Hugo Eckener built the Graf Zeppelin airship. Before being decommissioned nine years later, she completed 590 voyages, including 144 transoceanic crossings. In 1936, Germany opened regular transatlantic passenger services on the Hindenburg.

Despite these achievements, the world's airships virtually ceased to be produced in the late 1930s due to their high cost, low speed, and vulnerability to stormy weather. In addition, a series of disasters, most famously the explosion of the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg in 1937, combined with advances in aircraft manufacturing in the 30s and 40s. made this type of transport commercially obsolete.

Technology progress

The gas cylinders of many early airships were made from so-called “golden skin”: cow intestines were beaten and then stretched. It took two hundred and fifty thousand cows to create one flying machine.

During World War I, Germany and its allies stopped producing sausages so that there would be enough material to make the airships that were used to bomb England. Advances in fabric technology, including the 1839 invention of vulcanized rubber 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", the Akron and the Macon, whose hulls opened to release a fleet of F9C Sparrowhawk fighter aircraft. The ships crashed after being caught in a storm, without having time to prove their combat effectiveness.

The world record for flight duration was set in 1937 by the USSR-V6 Osoaviakhim balloon. The aircraft spent 130 hours 27 minutes in the air. The cities visited during the flight by the airship are 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 captured 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 could comfortably move under a container with this gas instantly became unacceptable. Modern aircraft of this type use only helium, which is not flammable. Airplanes such as Pan American Airways' high-speed "flying boats" became increasingly popular and economical.

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

Modern developments

Eventually, airship designers abandoned the idea of ​​carrying passengers and focused their efforts on cargo transportation, which is currently not efficiently handled by railroads, roads, and ships, and is unattainable in many areas.

The first few such projects are gaining momentum. In the seventies, a former US Navy fighter pilot tested an aerodynamic delta-shaped ship called the Aereon 26 in New Jersey. But Miller ran out of funds after the first test flight. Prototyping a cargo aircraft requires enormous capital investment, and there were not enough potential buyers.

In Germany, Cargolifter A.G. went so far as to construct the world's largest free-standing building, over 300 m 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 championship

A new generation of design engineers, some backed by significant government and private investment, is convinced that, given the availability of new technologies and new materials, society can benefit from building airships. Last March, the US House of Representatives organized a meeting dedicated to this type of 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 blown-up stealth bomber with solar panels placed across the top of its helium-filled wings. Everyone is in a race to be first and monopolize the trucking market, which can be measured in billions of dollars. Three projects are currently attracting the most attention:

• English Airlander 10, produced by Hybrid Air Vehicles - currently the largest airship in the world;
• LMH-1, Lockheed Martin;
• Aeroscraft, a Worldwide Eros Corp company created by Ukrainian immigrant Igor Pasternak.

DIY radio-controlled balloon

To evaluate the problems that arise during the construction of aircraft of this type, you can build a children's airship. It's 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 microreceiver weighing up to 2 g (for example, DelTang Rx33, which, along with 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 necessary.
• Compatible transmitter with three or more channels.
• LiPo battery with a capacity of 70-140 mAh and a suitable charger. To keep the total weight below 10 g, you will need a battery weighing up to 2.5 g. A large battery capacity will ensure a longer flight duration: with 125 mAh, you can easily achieve a flight 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, super glue and scissors.

You need to purchase a latex balloon filled with helium. A standard one or any other one 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 using tape. The front motor is used to move forward, and the rear motor is mounted perpendicularly. The third engine is located at the center of gravity and directed downwards. The propeller is attached to it with the opposite side so that it can push the airship upward. The motors should be glued with superglue.

By attaching a tail stabilizer, forward movement can be significantly improved, since the propeller imparts little lift and the tail rotor is too powerful. It can be made of depron and attached with tape.

The forward movement should be compensated by a slight rise.

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

What else interests readers according to? We will now find out by listening to the topic from luciferushka:

It would be interesting to learn about the origin, formation and decline of the era of airships. And do they have a future? Was there a theme?))))))

I already had a rather interesting topic on my blog , Then we will not dwell on our country in detail here. Read it for anyone interested. Let's look at the global development of this aircraft.

An airship (from the French dirigeable - controlled) is a lighter-than-air aircraft, a balloon with a propulsion device, thanks to which the airship can move regardless of the direction of air currents.

250 years BC, the great Archimedes opened the way to balloon flights. But only in the second half of the 17th century was it possible to create a balloon suitable for practical use. A lighter-than-air device moving in the ocean of air at the will of the wind and air currents was called a balloon. It is supported in the air due to the lifting force of the gas contained in its shell.

On June 5, 1783, in the French city of Videlon-les-Annonays, brothers Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier demonstrated the flight of a balloon they had built. The shell has a volume of about 600 cubic meters. m. rested on a lattice frame woven from wicker. The frame was installed on a scaffold, under which a fire of wet straw was lit. Hot, humid air filled the shell. After the ropes holding her were released, she rushed upward. The flight lasted only 10 minutes. During this time, the ball flew a little over two kilometers.

Drawings of aerostatic launches in France

The French Academy of Sciences decided to repeat the experience of the Montgolfier brothers in Paris. The preparation for it was entrusted to the physicist Charles. He used not hot air to fill the balloon, but hydrogen, discovered in 1766, which had a low specific gravity. On August 27, 1783, the launch took place on the Champ de Mars in Paris, the Ball quickly gained altitude and disappeared from view. Having flown 24 kilometers, it fell to the ground due to a shell rupture.

Later, balloons filled with hot air were called hot air balloons, and balloons filled with hydrogen were called charliers.

The flight capability has been proven. It remains to be seen how safe it is for the human body. At that time, many believed that any living creature that rose under the clouds, even to a small height, would certainly suffocate. Therefore, man’s faithful and reliable friends were sent on the first air journey in a hot air balloon. On September 19, 1783, living beings were lifted into the air from the courtyard of the Palace of Versailles for the first time in history. This honor fell to the ram, the rooster and the duck. They landed on the ground in perfect health. Then we began training ascents of people in tethered balloons. And only after thorough preparation, on November 21, 1783, in the suburbs of Paris, a hot air balloon was launched with a crew that included two people - Pilatre de Rozier and d'Arland.

Airship Meunier 1784.

As time passed, balloons improved, making it possible to make increasingly complex flights. At the beginning of January 1785, the Frenchman Blanchard and the Englishman Jeffreys flew from Dover to Calais on a Charlier. Having conquered the Pas de Calais Strait in 2.5 hours, they were the first to travel by air between island England and continental Europe.

The Russian ambassador to France, Prince Baryatinsky, regularly reported to Empress Catherine II about the successes of aeronautics. He included handwritten sketches of what he saw. However, the empress showed no interest in this matter. She did not even allow Blanchard to come to Russia in 1786 for demonstration flights. Catherine II asked him to tell him that “...here they do not engage in this or other similar aeromania, and any experiments with it, as if they are fruitless and unnecessary, are completely difficult for us.” This view of the royal person on aeronautics led to the fact that the Russians saw their first flight in a hot air balloon only in the next century.

On June 20, 1803, in St. Petersburg, in the presence of the imperial family of Alexander I and a large crowd of spectators, a demonstration flight of the Frenchman J. Garnerin took place. In September of the same year, the balloon rose into the Moscow sky.

With the development of science and technology, balloons began to be used to solve a wide range of problems. They were used in military affairs, used to study the atmosphere, carry out meteorological, physical, and astronomical observations.

Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meunier is considered the inventor of the airship. The Meunier airship was to be made in the shape of an ellipsoid. Controllability had to be achieved using three propellers, manually rotated by the efforts of 80 people. By changing the volume of gas in the balloon by using a ballonet, it was possible to adjust the flight altitude of the airship, and therefore he proposed two shells - the outer main one and the inner one.

Giffard's airship, 1852

A steam-powered airship designed by Henri Giffard, who borrowed these ideas from Meunier more than half a century later, made its first flight only on September 24, 1852. This difference between the date of invention of the balloon and the first flight of the airship is explained by the lack of engines for an aerostatic aircraft at that time. The next technological breakthrough came in 1884, when the first fully controlled free flight was carried out on the French military airship with an electric engine, La France, by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs. The length of the airship was 52 m, the volume was 1900 m³, and in 23 minutes a distance of 8 km was covered using an 8.5 hp engine.

It had a volume of 2500 cubic meters. m., was equipped with a 3 hp steam engine. With. and reached a speed of about 10 km/h. Steam engines of those years had low power and a large mass and were unsuitable for practical use on aircraft. On the first flight, Giffard was unable to return to the starting point. The force of the wind exceeded the modest capabilities of its engine! The heyday of airship construction began with the advent of reliable, lightweight and fairly powerful internal combustion engines and occurred at the beginning of our century.

On October 19, 1901, the French aeronaut Alberto Santos-Dumont, after several attempts, flew around the Eiffel Tower at a speed of just over 20 km/h on his Santos-Dumont apparatus number 6. Then this was considered an eccentricity, but later the airship for several decades became one of the most advanced transport funds. At the same time that soft airships began to gain recognition, the development of rigid airships also did not stand still: they were subsequently able to carry more cargo than airplanes, and this situation remained for many decades. The design of such airships and its development are associated with the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

The development of airships followed three design directions: soft, semi-rigid, and rigid.

In soft airships, the body is a shell made of fabric with low gas permeability. The constancy of the shell shape is achieved by excess gas pressure, which fills it and creates lift, as well as by balloons, which are soft air containers located inside the shell. Using a system of valves that allows either air to be pumped into the balloons or released into the atmosphere, a constant excess pressure is maintained inside the housing. If this were not the case, then the gas located inside the shell would change its volume under the influence of external factors - changes in atmospheric pressure during ascent or descent of the airship, ambient air temperature. A decrease in gas volume causes the body to lose its shape. As a rule, this ends in disaster.

Rigid structural elements - stabilizer, keel, nacelle - are attached to the shell using “legs” sewn or glued to it and connecting lines.

Like every engineering design, soft airships have their own advantages and disadvantages. The latter are quite serious: damage to the shell or failure of the fan pumping air into the balloons leads to disasters. The main advantage is the large weight return.

The soft design limits the size of the airship, which, however, determines the relative ease of assembly, disassembly and transport operations.

Soft airships were built by many aeronauts. The most successful was the design of the German major August von Parseval. His airship took off on May 26, 1906. Since then, soft-design airships are sometimes called “parsevals.”

The dependence of the hull shape on atmospheric factors in soft-design airships was reduced by introducing a rigid keel truss into the design, which, passing from bow to stern along the bottom of the hull, significantly increases its rigidity in the longitudinal direction. This is how semi-rigid airships appeared.

In airships of this design, the hull also serves as a shell with low gas permeability. They also need ballonets. The presence of a truss allows you to attach elements of the airship to it and place some equipment inside it. Semi-rigid airships are larger in size.

The semi-rigid scheme was developed by the French engineer Juillot, who managed the Lebaudi brothers' sugar factories. The construction of the airship was financed by the owners of the factories. Therefore, it is not entirely fair that such an airship design is called “swan”. The first flight of the airship took place on November 13, 1902.

In rigid airships, the hull is made up of transverse (frames) and longitudinal (stringers) strength elements, covered on the outside with fabric, which is intended only to give the airship the proper aerodynamic shape. Therefore, no requirements for gas permeability are imposed on it. Ballonets are not needed in this scheme, since the constant shape is ensured by the load-bearing frame. The carrier gas is placed in separate containers inside the housing. Almost all the ship’s units are installed there, for the maintenance of which “service passages are provided.

The only drawback of this design is that the metal frame structure reduces the weight of the payload. It was the rigid design that made the airship a real ship, capable of sailing in the ocean of air like sea liners. The creator of such airships was the outstanding German engineer and organizer of their production, General Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. His first airship took off on July 2, 1900. Since then, the name “Zeppelin” has been assigned to airships of a rigid design.

A German aristocrat and career military man took up the massive construction and varied use of airships Ferdinand von Zeppelin. While in the United States during the Civil War, he became interested in reconnaissance balloons, which were used by both sides, and, returning to his homeland, began to promote the idea of ​​an aeronautical fleet in the German army. His developments, however, did not find understanding among the command, and in 1890 the count, whose rationalization enthusiasm had become rather tired of the higher ranks for many years, was dismissed from the army with the rank of lieutenant general upon reaching retirement age.

But Zeppelin did not even think of giving up. Returning to the places of his childhood - on the shores of Lake Constance - he eagerly began to spend his family's money on creating the production of airships. Eight years of work culminated in the launch of a floating assembly shop right on the surface of the lake, the creation of a team of young talented engineers and receiving the nickname Count the Fool from the neighbors.

First flight of the prototype airship LZ1 (LZ - Luftschiff Zeppelin) took place on June 2, 1900. The device had a length of 128 m, a rigid structure (a metal frame covered with fabric, inside of which gas was placed in gas-tight cylinders) and was driven by two Daimler engines with a power of 14.5 hp. The airship was piloted personally by the Count. After much modification and improvement, by 1906 he managed to create a fully functional model of the airship LZ2, and in 1908 the LZ4, on which the seventy-year-old aristocrat stayed in the air for 8 hours, flying to neighboring Switzerland.

Unfortunately, the device was completely destroyed during a thunderstorm, and here the history of the Zeppelins could have been put to an end, since their creator by that time had lost a lot of money. But a miracle happened: fellow citizens suddenly began to help the inventor financially, and Wilhelm II of Württemberg ordered to allocate 500,000 marks for airships. So, after the creation of the company Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH, Count the Fool, according to the same Kaiser Wilhelm II, became “the greatest German of the 20th century.”

In 1909, Ferdinand von Zeppelin founded the world's first transport airline, Deutsche Luftschiffahrt AG, and within a year four airships were making regular flights within Germany, for which an appropriate infrastructure with hangars and mooring masts was created.

Since the beginning of the First World War, the airship fleet was actively used by the Germans for reconnaissance, propaganda and even bombing cities, including London and Calais. On August 14, 1914, as a result of a raid on Antwerp by a German airship, 60 houses were completely destroyed and another 900 were damaged. Yes, the ability to slowly, at a speed of 80-90 km/h, cover a couple of thousand kilometers at a height unattainable for aviation and artillery and rain down tons of bombs on the enemy is a powerful deterrent.

But, in addition to the advantages, the glaring disadvantages of the air giants also appeared. The hydrogen that filled the zeppelins was a fire hazard, maneuverability left much to be desired, and dependence on weather conditions did not improve survivability either.

It is interesting to note that Zeppelin himself, well aware of the advantages of a rigid design, paid tribute to airships and other designs. He said that "one type of vessel does not exclude another. It is only important that they are designed as best as possible, and that defects are corrected in the interests of all humanity and culture." The further development of airship construction confirmed the truth of his words.

As often happens, a new achievement in engineering did not serve, first of all, the flourishing of culture, but directly opposite goals. For the first time in combat, airships were used by the Italians in 1911 - 1912. during the war with Turkey. With their help, reconnaissance operations were carried out and bombing attacks were carried out. During the First World War, Germany was the undisputed leader in the field of airship construction. During the war years, 10 airships were built in Great Britain, 7 in Italy, 1 in France, 6 in the USA. Kaiser Germany built about 76 airships, of which 63 were Zeppelins and 9 were designed by Professor Schütte-Lanz with a wooden frame. Russia used three English-made Chernomor aircraft. Germany entered the war with three airships: L3, L4, L5.

In total, 1,210 combat missions were flown on German Zeppelins. Of the 75 warships, 52 were lost during the war as a result of hostilities: 19 were destroyed with their crew, 33 were captured by the British after landing due to shelling or accidents. By the end of the war, Germany had only 7 airships left. The Germans made extensive use of Zeppelins to bomb England. The first raid took place on January 15, 1915. According to the command directive, the airships should begin bombing from Buckingham Palace and government residences, then it was the turn of military factories and residential areas. In one of the night raids, the L-22 airship (volume 36,000 m³) took on board 24 bombs of 50 kg, 2 bombs of 100 kg and 2 of 300 kg. On approach to York, a huge cigar was caught in the beams of searchlights and was shot down by anti-aircraft guns. Fighter aircraft began to pose a greater danger to airships. So on January 31, 1916, British planes shot down 9 Zeppelins over the sea at once. To escape from fighters and anti-aircraft guns, airships rose to altitudes of up to 5 km, where the crew suffered from low temperatures and lack of oxygen.

The airship accompanies a squadron of German warships

Due to the ever-increasing defensive measures of the enemy, zeppelins for the front were built in two sizes, the "L 50" and "L 70" types.

The main distinguishing features of the L 50 were: five engines, each 260 hp, which could reach sufficient speed even in thin, high atmospheric layers; four propellers (two rear engines were attached to one propeller); central passage, vessel length 196.5 m; width 23.9 m; gas volume 55,000 cubic meters m; speed 30 m/s (approximately 110 km/h); take-off weight 38 tons. Type “L 70”: seven engines, each 260 hp; six propellers; central passage, vessel length 211.5 m; largest diameter 23.9 m; gas volume 62,000 cubic meters. m; speed, 35 m/s (130 km/h); take-off weight 43 tons.

“L 50” had a crew of 21 people, and “L 70” of 25. The crew consisted of: 1 commander, 1 observer officer, 1 quartermaster, 1 chief engineer, 2 riggers (signalman foreman), 2 people on balancing mechanisms (boatswains), 2 mechanics (junior officers) for each engine, 1 helmsman, 1 telegraph operator, and 1 telegraph operator for wireless telegraphy. The job titles are not accidental; airships were part of the Kaiser's navy.

The airships carried two heavy machine guns, and later a 20 mm cannon. The ammunition consisted of incendiary bombs weighing 11.4 kg, and high-explosive fragmentation bombs weighing 50, 100, and 300 kg.

Airships were used by the German army for maritime reconnaissance. At the beginning of the war, seaplanes did not yet exist. Later, airships were able to rise to a height of 6,000 meters, which was inaccessible to airplanes.

Airship bases were located as close to the coast as possible, and had sufficient area for takeoff and landing; but they had to be deep enough on land to eliminate the danger of surprise attack from the sea. The fleet had the following airship bases on the North Sea coast: Nordholz near Cuxhaven, Ahlhorn near Oldenburg, Wittmundshaven (East Friesland), Tondern (Schleswig-Holstein). The Hage base, south of Norderney, was abandoned.

In January 1918, when one of the airships at Ahlhorn spontaneously combusted, the fire exploded into neighboring hangars and four Zeppelins and one Schutte-Lanz were lost. All hangars, except one, were rendered unusable. After this, the German fleet had only 9 airships at its disposal. From the autumn of 1917, the construction of airships was limited, because the material required for the construction of airships was needed for more promising airplanes. From this date, only one airship was ordered per month.

In peacetime, the achievements of airship construction continued to amaze the world. In 1928, the Zeppelin LZ-127 flew to the United States across the Atlantic, and the following year it circled the globe with three landings. These successes attracted the attention of the Soviet public to issues of airship construction. The "airship boom" reached Moscow with the arrival of LZ-127 in the capital. In September 1930, it landed at the Central Airfield. Regarding this event, N. Alliluyeva wrote to I. Stalin, who was on vacation in the south: “All of us in Moscow were entertained by the arrival of the zeppelin, the spectacle was truly worthy of attention. All of Moscow looked at this wonderful machine.” The arrival of LZ-127 left such a deep mark on our society that in 1991, on the 50th anniversary of this event, the USSR Ministry of Communications issued a series of postage stamps dedicated to the airships. One of them depicts “Count Zeppelin” against the backdrop of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin died in 1917, and his company was headed by its former press attaché, Hugo Eckener. Although, according to post-war agreements, Germany was prohibited from having dual-use aircraft, Eckener managed to persuade the authorities to build a transatlantic giant rigid airship using helium. By 1924 the LZ126 appeared. It is curious that it was transferred to the United States as part of reparations and, under the name “Los Angeles,” was in service with the American Navy.

By that time, the English airship R-34 had already flown across the Atlantic (in 1919), and the rapid growth of airship construction began in industrialized countries. used as a mooring mast. The 102nd floor of this building was originally a berthing platform with a gangway for boarding the airship. The popularity of airships was even reflected in one of Steven Spielberg's films about the adventures of Indiana Jones, in one of which the hero Harrison Ford and his father played by Sean O'Connery fly on a zeppelin. But the giants of the giants were the creations of the same Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH The first of them, the airship “Graf Zeppelin” (LZ127), built for the 90th anniversary of its “father”, began transatlantic flights in September 1929. In the same year, LZ127 with three intermediate landings made a legendary flight around the world, covering it in 20 years. days more than 34,000 km with an average flight speed of about 115 km/h It made regular flights until 1936, was awarded an image on a postage stamp during a Pan-American tour and ended its “life” in 1940, being destroyed by order of Hitler’s Minister of Aviation. Germany Hermann Goering.

The largest creation of the Zeppelin company was the LZ129 “Hindenburg”: 245 m in length, maximum diameter - 41.2 m, 200,000 cubic meters of gas in cylinders, 4 Daimler-Benz engines with 1200 hp. each, up to 100 tons of payload and speed up to 35 km/h. The Hindenburg began flying passengers, including to North and South America, in May 1936. In the same year, 1936, it made the fastest, only 43-hour, flight across the North Atlantic. By May 1937, the zeppelin had made 37 flights across the Atlantic Ocean, transporting about 3,000 people.

For about $400, the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg offered their passengers very comfortable conditions. Travelers were entitled to a separate cabin with a shower. It was possible to while away the time during the flight by walking around the spacious glass-enclosed cabin; passengers had access to a restaurant with real tables, chairs, the obligatory silverware and a grand piano (though slightly reduced in size). A special room, lined with asbestos, was equipped for smokers, where up to 24 people could smoke at the same time, using the only lighter on board. The rest of the flammable items were confiscated upon boarding, and this was the only serious restriction for travelers.

This flying airship was created and named after the Reich President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg. Its construction was completed in 1936, and a year later, the largest airship in the world at that time crashed.

Construction of the LZ 129 Hindenburg zeppelin took about five years.

The first flight and test flight took place on March 4, 1936.

The giant waterfowl was stunning in its scale: 245 meters in length and 41.2 meters in diameter.

At the same time, the volume of gas in the cylinders was 200 thousand cubic meters!

The speed of the airship with zero wind could reach 135 km/h.

For passengers on board there were equipped: a restaurant with a kitchen, an observation deck, 25 bedrooms, showers, a relaxation room, a reading room and a smoking room.

Most of the metal elements were made of aluminum. Even a piano.

At that time, the Hindenburg became a record holder, having covered the path from Europe to America in 43 hours.

The last flight for the zeppelin was the 38th.

Having safely crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 77 hours, the airship crashed.

This happened during landing at the American military base Lakehurst on May 6, 1937.

He set off on his last voyage on May 3, 1937. By the morning of May 6, he had already arrived in New York. After several circles over the city and flying over a crowd of journalists on the top deck of the Empire State Building, the Hindenburg headed towards the Lakehurst base, where it was supposed to land. Since a thunderstorm was raging in the city, permission to land was received only in the evening. Already when the landing cables were dropped, an explosion occurred in the area of ​​the 4th gas compartment and the airship instantly caught fire. Through the efforts of Captain Max Pruss, the burning Hindenburg was nevertheless able to land, thanks to which 62 of the 97 passengers on board were saved.

The causes of the disaster have not been fully determined. There are several versions.

This catastrophe did not become the largest in the history of airships, and the zeppelin itself did not remain the largest in history. However, the story of its existence and death is one of the most famous in the history of waterfowl.

It was also a disaster for the entire airship industry. In 1938, LZ130, the second Graf Zeppelin, was built, but almost immediately a law was passed in Germany prohibiting passenger flights of airships powered by hydrogen, and it never managed to fly. However, during World War II, the US Navy used small K-class airships, which could stay in the air for up to 50 hours, to detect German submarines. One of them, on the night of July 18-19, 1943, attacked the U-134 submarine moving on the surface and was shot down as a result of the ensuing battle. This is the only engagement in World War II involving an airship.

In the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, according to some sources, four airships were used to support combat operations - “USSR V-1”, “USSR V-12”, “Malysh” and “Pobeda”. One of their most important tasks was transporting hydrogen to refuel barrage balloons. One flight of the airship with accompanying cargo was enough to refuel 3-4 balloons. The airships carried 194,580 cubic meters of hydrogen and 319,190 kg of various cargo. In total, during the Second World War, Soviet airships performed more than 1,500 flights. And in the Soviet Union in 1945, a special aeronautical detachment was organized on the Black Sea to search for mines and sunken ships. For this purpose, in September 1945, the same Pobeda flew from Moscow to Sevastopol, with which observers happened to find mines even after repeated trawling of the bay.

Projects using airships still appear periodically in different countries. For example, NASA's Aerocraft is an airship that can float on the surface of water. It is assumed that Aerocraft will fly mainly over the ocean, transporting cargo and passengers faster than ships and cheaper than airplanes. British engineer and inventor Roger Munk has been proposing several interesting ideas for the last twenty years. Among them, for example, is the SkyCat, presented in three modifications with a carrying capacity of 15, 200 and even 1000 tons. There are also developments by the Swiss Prospective Concepts AG. The case of Count von Zeppelin lives on. Although he is not winning yet.

Clickable 1600 px

Aviation company Eros, based in Montebello, California, USA, has unveiled the first images of a fully finished Aeroscraft aircraft. This is not an airplane, not a helicopter or an airship, but something in between - a real revolution in industry for a hundred years to come, as the CEO of the company Igor Pasternak assures. Over the next two months, Aeroscraft will be tested in flight mode. ...

End of the article about modern airships . Well, he doesn’t want to fit into the framework of a LJ post,

Let me remind you now of some aviation topic, for example, it was a long time ago or

Airship!

Airship is a lighter-than-air aircraft, which is a combination of a balloon with a power plant (usually an internal combustion engine with a propeller) and an attitude control system (rudders), thanks to which the airship can move in any direction, regardless of the direction of air currents.

The term "airship" comes from the French word "dirigeable" - controllable.

The first flights of airships!

The idea of ​​​​creating an airship was proposed and formulated in 1783 by the inventor Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meunier. He proposed the design of an airship with an ellipsoid-shaped shell. The airship was supposed to be controlled using three propellers, manually rotated by the efforts of 80 people. By changing the volume of gas in the balloon by using a ballonet, it was supposed to regulate the flight altitude of the airship, and therefore he proposed two shells - the outer main one and the inner one.

The practical flight of the airship took place only on September 24, 1852. It was a steam-powered airship designed by Henri Giffard, who borrowed many ideas from Meunier.

The next technological breakthrough came in 1884, when the first fully controlled free flight was carried out on the French military airship with an electric engine, La France, by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs. The length of the airship was 52 m, volume - 1900 m³. In 23 minutes, the airship flew a distance of 8 km using an 8.5 hp engine. With.

All the first airships were short-lived and extremely fragile. Regular controlled airship flights did not occur until the advent of the internal combustion engine.

On October 19, 1901, the French balloonist Alberto Santos-Dumont, after several attempts, flew around the Eiffel Tower at a speed of just over 20 km/h in his Santos-Dumont number 6 apparatus.

Santos Dumont airship number 6, 1901.

In parallel with the development of soft airships, the development of rigid airships also began. Subsequently, it was rigid airships that were able to carry more cargo than airplanes, and this situation remained for many decades. A German count, whose name was Ferdinand von Zeppelin, did a lot to create rigid airships and develop their design.

Construction of the first Zeppelin airships began in 1899 at a floating assembly plant on Lake Constance in the Munzell Bay, Friedrichshafen. It was organized on the lake because Count von Zeppelin, the founder of the plant, spent all his fortune on this project and did not have the funds to rent land for the plant.

The experimental airship "LZ 1" (LZ stood for "Luftschiff Zeppelin") had a length of 128 m and was balanced by moving the weight between two gondolas; it was equipped with two Daimler engines with a power of 14.2 hp. (10.6 kW).

The first flight of Zeppelin LZ 1 took place on July 2, 1900. Zeppelin LZ 1's flight lasted only 18 minutes as the airship was forced to land on a lake after the weight balancing mechanism broke down. After the Zeppelin LZ 1 was repaired, the rigid airship technology was successfully tested on subsequent flights. The speed record of the French airship La France (6 m/s) was broken by 3 m/s, but this was still not enough to attract significant investment in airship construction. Ferdinand von Zeppelin received the necessary funding a few years later. And the very first flights of his airships convincingly showed the prospects of their use in military affairs.

By 1906, Ferdinand von Zeppelin managed to build an improved rigid airship, which interested the military.

For military purposes, first semi-rigid and then soft Parseval airships, as well as rigid Zeppelin airships, were used.

In 1913, the Schütte-Lanz rigid airship was put into service. Comparative tests of these aeronautics in 1914 showed the superiority of rigid-type airships.

In 1910, Europe's first air passenger line Friedrichshafen-Dusseldorf was opened, along which the airship "Germany" plied.

In January 1914, Germany had the most powerful aeronautical fleet in the world in terms of total volume (244,000 m³) and the combat qualities of its airships.

In the Russian Empire, the first technically sound design for a large cargo airship was proposed in the 1880s by the Russian scientist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.

At the end of the 19th century, the Russian army operated a separate aeronautical park, which was at the disposal of the Commission for Aeronautics, Pigeon Post and Watchtowers. At the maneuvers of 1902-1903 in Krasnoe Selo, Brest and Vilna, methods of using balloons in artillery and for aerial reconnaissance (surveillance) were tested. Convinced of the feasibility of using tethered balls, the War Ministry decided to create special units at fortresses in Warsaw, Novgorod, Brest, Kovno, Osovets and the Far East, which included 65 balls. The production of airships in Russia began in 1908.

Military use of airships!

The prospect of using airships as bombers was realized in Europe long before airships were used in this role. H.G. Wells, in his book “War in the Air” (1908), described the destruction of entire fleets and cities by combat airships.

Unlike airplanes (the role of bombers was performed by light reconnaissance aircraft, whose pilots took several small bombs with them), airships were already a formidable force at the beginning of the World War.

The most powerful aeronautical powers were Russia, which had a large “Aeronautical Park” in St. Petersburg with more than two dozen devices, and Germany, which had 18 airships. The Austro-Hungarian air force on the eve of the First World War included 10 airships.

Military airships were directly subordinate to the main command. Sometimes they were assigned to fronts or armies. At the beginning of the war, airships carried out combat missions under the leadership of General Staff officers sent to the airships. In this case, the airship commander was assigned the role of watch officer. Thanks to the success of the design solutions of Count Zeppelin and the Schütte-Lanz company, Germany had a significant superiority in this area over all other countries of the world, which, if used correctly, could bring great benefits, in particular for deep reconnaissance. German military airships could cover a distance of 2-4 thousand km at a speed of 80-90 km/h and drop several tons of bombs on the target. For example, on August 14, 1914, as a result of a raid on Antwerp by a German airship, 60 houses were completely destroyed and another 900 were damaged.

For a covert approach to the target, the airships tried to use cloud cover. At the same time, due to the imperfection of the navigation equipment of those times and the need for visual observation of the surface to achieve an accurate target, the equipment of military airships included observation gondolas: inconspicuous capsules equipped with telephone or radio communications with an observer, which were lowered from the airships down on cables up to 915 m long. .

However, by September 1914, having lost 4 devices, German airships switched to night operations only. Huge and clumsy, they were an excellent target for armed enemy airplanes, and they were also filled with extremely flammable hydrogen. It is obvious that they inevitably had to be replaced by cheaper, more maneuverable and resistant to combat damage devices.

"Golden Age" of airships!

After the end of the First World War, the construction of airships of various systems continued in the USA, France, Italy, Germany, the USSR and other countries.

The years between the First and Second World Wars were marked by significant advances in airship technology.

The first lighter-than-air craft to cross the Atlantic was the British airship R34, which flew with its crew from East Lothian, Scotland to Long Island, New York, in July 1919, and then returned to Pulham, England.

In 1924, the transatlantic flight of the German-built airship LZ 126 (named ZR-3 “Los Angeles” in the USA) took place.

In 1926, a joint Norwegian-Italian-American expedition led by R. Amundsen on the airship “Norway” (N-1 “Norge”) designed by Umberto Nobile carried out the first trans-Arctic flight of the island. Spitsbergen - North Pole - Alaska.

By the end of the 1920s, airship technology had advanced to a very high level.

For example, the German rigid airship LZ-127 "Graf Zeppelin". Length 237 m, diameter 30 m, 5 engines, speed 135 km/h, load capacity 60 tons, shell volume 105,000 cubic meters, built at Zeppelin shipyards in 1928.

The German airship "Graf Zeppelin" undergoing testing.

In September and October 1929, the airship LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" carried out its first transatlantic flights.

In the same year, 1929, the airship “Graf Zeppelin” made its legendary flight around the world with three intermediate landings. In 20 days, he covered more than 34 thousand kilometers with an average flight speed of about 115 km/h.

In the summer of 1931, the famous flight of the airship "Graf Zeppelin" to the Arctic took place, and soon the airship began operating relatively regular passenger flights to South America, which continued until 1937.

Traveling in an airship of this era was significantly superior in comfort to airplanes of that time (and in some respects, modern ones). The hull of a passenger airship often had a restaurant with a kitchen and a lounge.

For example, the British rigid airship R101 had 50 one-, two- and four-person passenger cabins with sleeping places located on two decks, a dining room for 60 people, two promenade decks with windows along the walls. The upper deck was mainly used by passengers. The lower deck contained kitchens and toilets, and also housed the crew. There was even an asbestos-lined smoking room for 24 people.

Passengers of the airship R101 on the promenade deck.

There was a smoking ban on the Hindenburg airship. Everyone on board, including passengers, was required to hand over matches, lighters and other devices that could cause a spark before boarding.

German airship "Hindenburg" in flight.

One of the largest airships in the world - the American military airship "Akron" with a nominal volume of 184 thousand m³ - could carry on board up to 5 small aircraft, several tons of cargo and was theoretically capable of flying about 17 thousand km without landing.

Assembly of the Akron airship at the plant.

The airship "Akron" on the pier.

American airship "Akron" in flight.

Airships in the USSR!

In the USSR, a lot of attention was paid to airships, even a special organization “Dirizhablestroy” was created, which built and put into operation more than ten airships of soft and semi-rigid systems.

In 1937, the largest Soviet airship "SSSR-V6" with a volume of 18,500 m³ set a world record for flight duration - 130 hours 27 minutes.

After the war, the USSR built several semi-rigid coast guard airships, primarily for use in the Arctic regions.

The last Soviet airship was the USSR-V12 bis, built in 1947.

Airship USSR-B12.

In the early 1980s, calculations were carried out for an airship for the needs of the Navy, but due to problems with financing during perestroika reforms, the project was mothballed.

After the collapse of the USSR, the state-owned enterprise DKBA, which was engaged in the design of air bunks, balloons and airships, headed the Russian aeronautical technology industry and became the core enterprise of the nascent industry.

In the 1990s, DKBA developed a project for a soft-design airship 2DP with a payload capacity of about 3 tons, and after revising the technical specifications and indicating the need to create an apparatus with a greater payload capacity, the project continues under the name “airship DS-3”. In 2007, a preliminary design of this device was prepared.

Russian airship DS-3.

Today in Russia, the development of airships with a carrying capacity of 20, 30, 55, 70, 200 tons is underway. A significant part of the work has been carried out on the project of the “lens-shaped” airship DP-70T, which is intended for transporting cargo with non-boating year-round operation in all climatic zones. Based on the design basis of this airship, variants of the airship with a carrying capacity of 200-400 tons have been developed.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the “Thermoplane” project appeared in the USSR, a distinctive feature of which was the use to create lift in addition to the helium section of the airship and the section with air heated by the engines (an idea expressed by K. E. Tsiolkovsky in 1890s). Thanks to this, it was possible to reduce the weight of unproductive ballast by 70-75% in comparison with airships of other designs and, therefore, increase efficiency (up to 28.125 grams per ton-kilometer for a design load capacity of 2000 tons). In addition, such an airship does not require closed slipways and mooring masts, which sharply reduces the cost of the service infrastructure. The disc-shaped body allows flight in side and head winds of 20 m/s.

Airship "Thermoplane".Thermoplane

Perhaps the tests of disc-shaped airships became the reason for many legends about flying saucers.

Airships in the USA!

The development of airships in the USA, by the Pentagon, is carried out in two directions. On the one hand, small cheap balloons and airships for tactical purposes are being created, on the other hand, work is underway to design stratospheric airships for strategic purposes.

Thus, at the beginning of 2005, the US military announced tests at a test site in Arizona of the Combat SkySat Phase 1 mini-balloon, which made it possible to communicate with ground services at a distance of 320 km. The mini-balloon weighs about 2 kg; in mass production, the cost can be about 2000 USD.

American military airships will also find use in the Future Combat Systems program being developed. It is with the help of high-capacity airships that the United States plans to transfer equipment to places of military conflicts.

In February 2005, in Iraq, the Pentagon tested the MARTS (Marine Airborne Re-Transmission Systems) airship, which is equipped with equipment that allows it to maintain communications with units within a radius of 180 km. It can withstand winds of up to 90 km/h and hover in the air for two weeks without ground support.

The American company JP Aerospace is preparing for testing the 53-meter V-shaped airship Ascender. The first flight involves climbing to an altitude of about 30 km and returning to the ground. In case of successful tests, the Pentagon suggests the possibility of opening funding for the construction of a large three-kilometer V-shaped airship for stratospheric purposes.

Airship! Features of airship construction!

Since an airship is a lighter-than-air aircraft, it will “float” in the air due to buoyancy if its average density is equal to or less than the density of the atmosphere. Typically, a lighter-than-air gas (hydrogen, helium) is pumped into the shell of a classic airship, and the carrying capacity of the airship is proportional to the internal volume of the shell, taking into account the mass of the structure.

In early airships, all the gas was contained in a single-volume shell with simple walls made of oiled or varnished fabric. Subsequently, shells began to be made of rubberized fabric or other (synthetic) materials, single-layer or multi-layer, to prevent gas leaks and increase their service life, and the volume of gas inside the shell began to be divided into compartments - cylinders.

In modern airship construction, the use of durable fiberglass and metal plastics is considered promising for the manufacture of the airship shell.

Modern airships can be equipped with a lift control system, which can use the aerodynamic lift of the shell, which occurs by increasing the angle of attack, as well as by compressing atmospheric air and storing it in ballonets inside the shell or releasing it from the balloons. In addition, the shell necessarily includes gas (for the carrier gas) safety valves (to prevent shell rupture due to an increase in tensile forces of the shell with increasing flight altitude and with an increase in its temperature), as well as safety air valves on air balloons. The gas valves open only after the air cylinders are completely empty.

On the first airships, the payload, crew and power plant with a supply of fuel were placed in a gondola. Subsequently, the engines were moved to engine nacelles, and a passenger nacelle began to be allocated for the crew and passengers.

In addition to the shell, nacelles and propulsion, the design of a classic airship usually provides for the simplest gravitational and aerodynamic system for controlling the orientation and stabilization of the device. The gravitational system can be either passive or active. Passive gravitational stabilization is carried out in pitch and roll even at zero airspeed if the nacelle(s) are installed below (at the bottom) of the shell (see Figures 2 and 3). Moreover, the greater the distance between the shell and the nacelle, the greater the resistance of the apparatus to disturbances. Active gravitational stabilization and orientation was usually carried out in pitch by moving forward or backward (along the longitudinal axis of the vehicle) some cargo or ballast, and the more rigid the design of the vehicle, the better the controllability. Aerodynamic stabilization and orientation of the vehicle is carried out in pitch and heading (yaw) using the tail (aerodynamic stabilizers and rudders) only at a significant flight speed. At low flight speeds, the efficiency of aerodynamic control surfaces is insufficient to ensure good maneuverability of the aircraft. On modern airships, an active automatic orientation and stabilization system is increasingly used along its three construction axes, where rotary screw propulsors are used as the executive bodies of the system.

The mooring devices on the first vehicles were hydraulic ropes - cables 228 or more meters long, hanging freely from the shell. When the airship was lowered to the required height, a large berth crew grabbed onto these cables, pulling the airship to the landing point. Subsequently, mooring masts began to be built to moor airships, and the devices themselves were equipped with an automatic mooring unit.

Airships! Types of airships!

Airships, manufactured and operated at different times and to this day, differ in the following types, purposes and methods.

By shell type: soft, semi-hard, hard.

By type of power plant: with a steam engine, with a gasoline engine, with an electric motor, with diesel engines, with a gas turbine engine.

By type of propulsion: wing, with propeller, with impeller, jet.

By purpose: passenger, cargo, military.

According to the method of creating Archimedean force: filling the shell with gas lighter than air, heating the air in the shell (thermal airships), vacuuming the shell, combined.

According to the method of lift control: bleeding of lifting gas, changing the temperature of lifting gas, injection/bleeding of ballast air, variable thrust vector of the power plant, aerodynamic.

Airships! Airship flight!

In flight, a classic airship is usually controlled by one or two pilots, with the first pilot mainly maintaining the given course of the device, and the second pilot continuously monitoring the change in the pitch angle of the device and manually using the steering wheel either stabilizes its position or changes the pitch angle at the command of the commander. Climbing and descending is carried out by tilting the airship with elevators or turning the engine nacelles - the propulsors then pull it up or down.

Airships! Airship mooring!

When the airship moored, people on the ground picked up ropes dropped from different points of the airship and tied them to suitable ground objects.

Large classic airships of the 1930s were practically not adapted to landing on an unequipped site, as, for example, a helicopter can do. These operational limitations are caused by the incommensurability of control actions and wind disturbances, that is, due to insufficient maneuverability.

A guiderop 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 guiderop was also dropped from its bow. People on the ground connected these two airships, and then the airship was winched to the mast - its nose was fixed in the docking socket. A moored airship can rotate freely around the mast, like a weather vane.

Mooring tower with an airship.

When airships interacted with the fleet, special mother ships equipped with mooring masts were used.

Advantages and disadvantages of airships!

Advantages:

Large payload and non-stop flight range.

In principle, higher reliability and safety than airplanes and helicopters are achievable by design. Even in major disasters, airships have shown high survival rates.

Lower specific fuel consumption than helicopters and, as a consequence, lower flight cost per passenger-kilometer or unit of mass of cargo transported.

The dimensions of the interior spaces can be very large.

The duration of stay in the air can be measured in weeks.

The airship does not require a runway (but it does require a mooring mast) - moreover, it may not land at all, but simply “hover” above the ground (which, however, is only possible in the absence of a strong side wind).

Flaws:

Relatively low speed compared to airplanes and helicopters (usually up to 160 km/h) and low maneuverability - primarily due to the low efficiency of aerodynamic rudders in the heading channel at low flight speeds and due to the low longitudinal rigidity of the shell.

Difficulty landing due to low maneuverability.

Dependence on weather conditions (especially in strong winds).

The required hangars (boathouses) are very large in size and difficult to store and maintain on the ground.

The relatively high cost of maintaining an airship, especially large ones. As a rule, modern small airships require a so-called berthing and launch team of 2 to 6 people. American military airships of the 1950s and 1960s required the efforts of about 50 sailors to land safely, and therefore, after the advent of reliable helicopters, they were withdrawn from service.

Relatively low reliability and durability of the shell.

Modern airship construction!

Modern technologies make it possible to create models of airships, reducing many of their previously inherent disadvantages!

This allows modern airships to solve important and complex problems!

And of course, the airships of the future will expand the existing horizons in the field of airship construction!

Airships and airship building! The airship is controllable!