Talk:Airship

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[edit] World War Two Bit

The statistics shown prove absolutely nothing. The fact that less ships were sunk near the US coast is presented as a direct consequence of US airships patrolling. The fact that there were remarkable advances in other areas (convoying, fixed wing aircraft, escort numbers, radar and HFDF technology) is completely left out. Furthermore the "fact" that a blimp was responsible for the last u-boat sinking is wrong. First of all, it makes it sound as if this was the "last uboat" left to the Germans, which is untrue. Furthermore, according to www.uboat.net U-881 was sunk my the USS Farquhar, an escort destroyer, not by the vessels mentioned.

I don't know about the "last uboat sinking". But on the other topic, there were many reports from u-boat captains that they would submerge and leave the area whenever a blimp was spotted. Were blimps responsible for all of the improvement, probably not. There should be some strong mention of the other technologies that contributed. If you are knowledgable, please add something appropriate. But remember NPOV and don't dismiss the blimps' contribution completely. Blimpguy 00:03, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Other Stuff

"Modern passenger-carrying airships are, by law, now required to be filled with non-flammable helium." --Whose law? Is there some kind of international accord on this?

The text isn't quite accurate. It's not so much that helium is required, but more that hydrogen is prohibited. The FAA regulations prohibit hydrogen for US standard type certified aircraft in the US. In Europe, the JAR regulations do the same thing. Blimpguy 18:57, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This page is redundant. The page for "dirigible" has all of the same information and is a more formal term. This page also has some information that is duplicated on the "hindenberg disaster" page.

This page should be reduced to just a reference to the "dirigible" entry.

Hi # 24.91.229.111. I saw you did that earlier. Are they exact synonyms? If so, you're right, we should merge. I reverted your edit earlier because the content from here needs to be merged by hand into the other page -- Tarquin 22:15 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

No, they are not exact synonyms. On the contrary, there are several types of airship that are not dirigibles - notably blimps and balloons. This doesn't have to mean that the airship page should not go, however. There used to be a page on airplane/aeroplane (which was frequently renamed back and forth as US English and International English speakers argued the term) and this was reduced to a redirect and the content incorporated in aircraft. Even though a simple redirect to dirigible is inappropriate, I think there is a case for treating this in the same way as we treated airplane/aeroplane. Tannin 22:23 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

<POV mode> yeah but that was just plain wrong </POV mode> Mintguy

-- Hmm. I believe that I merged the content before reducing the "airship" page. That said, I have never heard anyone in the business use the term "airship" to include balloons. The distinction between the propelled and non-propelled craft is pretty standard. Do you have a reference?

-- Ah, I see the confusion now. Tannin is confusing dirigible with rigid airship. In fact, blimps and rigid airships are types of airships. See the dirigible page for details.

I don't know enough about this subject to be sure what's what. However, having a large "tree" of links at the top of several articles is a bad idea. Is there one term which encompases all of these? If so, let's make that a "parent" article, and the others can say "a foo is a type of [ [ bar ] ] ..." -- Tarquin 20:12 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

-- I'm pretty sure of the classifications. So, unless I hear otherwise, I'll consolidate under "airship" since it is the common terms. The term 'dirigible' is a technical term based on a french word. So I'll leave a pointer from "dirigible" to "airship" with an explanation of "dirigible's" french origin.

The "See also" list was there when I first started working on this page. I'll try to make the "airship" page more conforming. Blimpguy Thu Jan 23 21:08:25 GMT 2003

I've looked this up; my dictionary agrees with you, digigible & airship are synonyms. Best to make D. a redirect, merge th econtent, and explain the alternative name here. I've rewritten the opener to explain the terminology, please check for factual accuracy. the rest needs a merge; I've just done a paste -- Tarquin 11:14 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

The Airship Association has long and wide experience of the use of the word 'airship'. It is by far the most commonly used word when talking about powered-lighter-than-air flight. This page should stay and links to other similar words, such as dirigible and blimp should indicate that 'airship' is the best term. Secretary - The Airship Association - 26th January 2004.

Merge with Blimp ? Airships tend to be manned. Blimps tend to be unmanned.--Jondel 07:27, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No. Blimps are a subset of airships -- specifically airship without rigid components. See the article for details. Blimpguy 20:28, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"The greatest number of airships in use during the Second World War were blimps used to form anti-aircraft defences. Thousands were put up tethered to the ground by steel cables to form obstacles to German aircraft flying on bombing missions over England."

These are barrage baloons, or aerostats, not airships Benvenuto 06:22, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

"American construction of airships for civilian purposes was halted in the 1930s by a series of fatal crashes. However, military development of airships was continued in the US."

Goodyear was building civilian blimps all through this period. several were taken over by the USN at the start of the war. What fatal crashes? Benvenuto 06:22, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

This page and the page for the USS Macon have different figures for the crew count on the day of the crash. jdb 20:21, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] back to the airship term

There is one thing to consider, though most users will search for the term airship, dirigible should be a page unto itself because all dirigibles are steerable boyant craft (balloons), where-as airships also include heavier-than-air craft though that isn't common knowledge these days. The 747 is an actual airship and we should maybe note that difference in the two pages. Dirigible is the more acurate term for what we consider airship and though people say it is based on French it actually comes from a Latin term. The Italian, French, English, and Spanish terms are almost the same and derive from the origional term. I should look it up but not tonight (I think it was dirage). Anyway, I feel there should be slightly different pages for both airship and dirigible.

How one comes down on this issue depends upon whether one wishes to use the terms in their technical meaning or informally. Within the aviation field, the terms are (in modern times) always used as described in the article. There is a brief discussion in the article of the informal use of "airship" to mean all aircraft. There is also a discussion of "dirigible". Rather than making an entire "dirigible" article, perhaps you might want to flesh out the existing discussion(s). As for French vs Latin -- sure, the original root was Latin. However, France was the center of work in the field during the 1800's when the term was first applied. Thus, the English usage is usually described as being derived from the French rather than Latin.

Sounds like a good plan. I'll keep it on the stove for awhile.

[edit] Up and down

Does anyone know how airships control thier altitude? The bellman 01:26, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

Quick answer: They control their buoyancy. To go up, they might heat the lifting gas or allow it to expand. To go down, they might release some lifting gas or compress it. Finally, some airships use engines and a wing shaped body to generate lift, which requires that these airships have engines.

Blimps use large bags of lifting gas to stay up, and by compressing these bags they reduce their lifting power. Doesn't the article cover this? -- Ec5618 10:13, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

The "quick answer" above is wrong. It is a common misconception, but Helium-based airships do not change altitude by controlling bouyancy. Typically they fly a bit "heavy" and actually drive around using aerodynamic lift created by pitching the nose of the aircraft upward. When they want to come down, they just reduce power. The ballonettes inside the envelope are used only to compensate for changes in ambient pressure as well as internal temperature in order to maintain the Helium pressure within a very small range. Compressing Helium to change bouyancy is an very power hungry process (15 hp-minutes for 1 lb change in bouyancy) -- so nobody does it. The total lack of bouyancy control is what makes piloting an airship so difficult. In particular, if the ship takes off on a cool morning with full fuel and lands in the sunlight (heating the gas inside the envelope) and little fuel, the ship will often be "light". In this case the pilot needs to drive the ship at the ground and the ground crew needs to quickly attach sandbags or other ballast in order to keep the ship from floating away. An exciting event indeed. It is true that airships do carry some ballast and (particularly the "big rigids" of the last century) would adjust their bouyancy at the time of landing to reduce the excitement level. In fact, today the FAA requires that all airships carry suffient ballast so as to allow for "free ballooning" the ship to a safe landing should there be a total loss of enging power. However I believe that no operational airship ever adjusted altitude by means of ballast either (except Solomon Andrews and his Aereon back in the 1800's) Thermal airships (i.e. those using hot air rather than Helium) do control altitude by controlling bouyancy in the same way that a hot air balloon does. I guess I should add this stuff to the article at some point. Blimpguy 12:07, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You should definitely add your excellent explanation. It makes total sense. The gas only provides part of the lift, the engines and wings have to provide the balance of it along with the control (such as it is). Being almost-lighter-than-air sometimes, and actually-lighter-than-air at other times makes for inherent instability. That's probably why most of the famous airships ultimately crashed. Wahkeenah 12:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My sense is that the early airships crashed for basically the same reason that many early airplanes crashed. They were experimental craft in an era when there was much less known about aviation. Unfortunately, airships were so large that every accident made the papers. Early airplane crashes usually killed only one or two people and were thus less newsworthy. By WWII airships had evolved into robust, reliable machines. But it was too late. The early mishaps were deeply ingrained in the public perception and the technology was essentially abandoned after the war. Blimpguy 15:02, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's a good point. Even one of the Wright Brothers eventually died from a plane crash, as I recall. But planes, at least the big ones, almost never crash nowadays, whereas the lasting image in the public mind, whenever the term "airship", "dirigible" or "zeppelin" is used, is of the Hindenburg disaster. Wahkeenah 17:12, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, Wilbur worried himself to death over patent suits trying to stop everybody else (particularly Glen Curtis) from building aircraft and Orville died of natural causes as an old man. Orville did manage to kill one of his first passengers, an army captain he was training, in 1908. Lots and lots of pilots of early Wright flyers, as well as other early airplanes, also died largely because the aircraft were aerodynamically unstable. But again, the deaths were 1 and 2 at a time and so were never charactarized in the press as "catastrophes" the way that every early airship mishap seems to have been. The other issue at play is that it is easy to build a small airplane (anybody can make one out of a piece of paper or balsa wood) but hard to build a big airplane. The reverse is true with airships, big is easy -- small is hard. As a result, the first airships were hundreds of feet long and when something went wrong, the price was high in both gold and blood. Understandably, people quickly grew tired of paying that price and focused instead on airplanes that presented less dramatic risks. Blimpguy 15:46, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There was a famous incident caught on newsreel film, sometime in the 1920s I think, when a group was trying to tether an airship (maybe the Akron or the Macon), a gust of wind caught it, and three guys held onto the ropes too long. Two of them fell to their deaths because the balloon was too high by then, the third managed to hang on long enough for the ship to land again. I saw that clip on TV when I was in single-digits, and it made a strong impression, as you can tell. :) Wahkeenah 12:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Controlling altitude on an airship could also be done by carrying ballast, such as water. To go up you drop ballast out of the ship, and to go down you release lifting gas.--Rob01

Some very early airships did indeed use this method of altitude control. However dynamic lift (point the nose up or down and using engine power to drive the ship in the desired direction) has been adopted by all modern airships (except thermal ships) as the preferred means of altitude control. Blimpguy 20:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Russian and Italian Zeppelins

"Airships using the Zeppelin construction method are sometimes referred to as zeppelins even if they had no connection to the Zeppelin business. Several airships of this kind were built in the USA, Britain, Italy, and the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly imitating original Zeppelin design derived from crashed or captured German World War I airships"

As far as I know... Italy never built rigid airships, only semi-rigids. They did take delivery of three zeppelins as war spoils. The first two were wrecked due to incompetant ground handling, the third "Esperia" (LZ120-Bodensee) operated sporadically until 1925. Russia never recieved or bult any zeppelins and built up to 12 semi-rigids based on the designs of Umberto Nobile in the 1930's and 1940's Benvenuto 09:29, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

The US-rigids USS Akron and USS Macon werde build by the Goodyear Zeppelin-Coorporation. So they could be partially called "real Zeppelins". UK build several rigids (many copied from german Zeppelin and Schütte-Lanz-airships) and the German firm Schütte-Lanz too. In de:Liste der Starrluftschiffe (List of the rigids) should most rigids be mentioned. Hadhuey 09:54, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

All of this is true. But I think it probably belongs on a separate "rigid airship" article. The general airship article is getting pretty long and complicated. Similarly the "Airships in WWII" could also reasonably be moved to a separate article. Blimpguy 14:19, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to split up article

This article has grown quite large. It seems appropriate at this point to consider breaking it into some pieces. I suggest taking the detailed historical information and moving it to a separate article or articles on History of Airships and/or History of Airships in WWII. There would still be a paragraph or two of history in this article but most of the details would be elsewere. Thoughts? Blimpguy 14:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The article is not very long, 1/3 of it are references. I think a special article about the military airships would be useful. WW1 has seen many more Airships than WW2. Hadhuey 23:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is long. Some of the detail could be moved to new articles on a nation by nation basis. there is a lot of detail missing at the moment which doesn't sit comfortably in the existing catagoriesBenvenuto 06:18, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Helium in Eary non US Blimps

This article states that "In the early days of airships, the primary lifting gas was hydrogen", but the Hindenburg_disaster article states that "The Hindenburg was originally intended to be filled with helium", might sugest that the use of helium was not limited to the US .

What be the thoughts?

The folks at Zeppelin, in particular Eckener, lobbied hard to get Helium for the Hindenburg. At the time, the US had a near monopoly on Helium (which was a biproduct of some natural gas wells in the Oklahoma/Texas area.) But the federal government, in particular Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, were concerned about the potential military use of airships and were thus reluctant to provide the Helium. Eckener, et al went ahead with the construction of a helium-based design even though the weren't sure that they would be able to get Helium in the end. As it happened, they didn't. So, both articles are right. Blimpguy 16:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dupuy du Lome

In the article, it says that Dupuy du Lome's balloon was used in the Franco-Prussian War. I couldn't find anything about that in the article on the war. Maybe I just missed it, but could someone give me some verification on that, and maybe a link to some info? Scourgeofsmallishinsects 15:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I double-checked. It was developed during the war, but only launched after, in 1872. I modified the article accordingly. Regards. PHG 07:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Turtle Airships and Half High Mile Club

This is about the "half mile high club" [1] that is linked from the article under as "Turtle Airships". I have browsed through the few pages that comprised the site and I found absolutely nothing credible about it. At best it's a commersial site (and those get tossed too)... at worse - and this is what I suspect - it is a scam site. user:Blimpguy vouces for the site but I remain sceptical. After Googling for "Turtle Airships" I found nothing other than a hotmail address and an empty webpage.

Befire this turns into a revert war, I want to hear opinions from others. My opinion is that the paragraphs that link to www.halfmilehighclub.com under the name "Turtle Airships" should be removed because the site 1) does not contain any informtion that is of value to Wikipedia 2) is not credible 3) is commersial, possibly fradulent.

What's you opinon? --J-Star 18:03, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you have good cause to be skeptical. And I appreciate you're starting a discussion before reverting. As for the topic at hand, while I agree that the Turtle airships site is a bit over the top, I don't believe that it can reasonably be characterized as fraudulent. I've met the prime mover behind this site, a chap named Darrell Campbell, once or twice at airship conferences. And, in my opinion, he's anything but a con man. He's a professional baker with a passion for airships. For many years he had a site at www.turtleairships.com. I don't know why he switched domains. (If you care, you can check out the old site at the WayBack machine at www.archive.org ) If the concern is that the site is commercial, then by that standard, we should remove the links to all of the manufacturers and operators as well as nearly all of the prototype designs. I think that would be a serious loss to the article. If the concern is that it is non-credible, then question becomes "credible to whom?" I could find you one airship "expert" or another who could make an strong argument that every single design listed in the article lacked credibility. I don't see any particular reason to pick on Turtle Airships just because their site is a bit more goofy than the others listed under "proposed designs". Like the other folks listed in that section, these folks have an idea and have given it some thought. Just because there is a link to his site doesn't mean that anybody is endorsing their work. But if there is a consensus to remove the link, of course I'll go along. No revert war from me. Lastly, to be clear, I have no connection with these folks other than as an observer of the field. Blimpguy 21:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Well... I have found as much: there is something called "Turtle Airships" and there is indeed someone named Darrel Campbell behind it... as evidenced by this DARPA document. However I can find no connection between Turtle Airships and "Half Mile High Club", can you? I don't think this guy Campbell is behind that site. www.halfmilehighclub.com is not credible is because it:

Begs us for money.
Has no real Contact Info.
Has no verifyable facts.
Has extremely poor design. It looks like something someone made up in the course of an hour with stolen pics and miniscule knowledge in HTML.

My (revised) opinion is that "Turtle Airships" can stay but that the link has to go or be replaced by a credible link. --J-Star 10:23, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I think the connection between Turtle Airships and the halfmilehighclub.com was made by the person who added the link and text initially. So I just assumed it was Mr. Cambpell. So I'm convinced. I'd remove both the reference to "Turtle Airships" since we don't know if this the same people as well as the link and text re halfmilehighclub.com pending more concrete info about a possible connection. Blimpguy 16:36, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. --J-Star 17:29, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Airship&curid=58005&diff=42132997&oldid=42049891

Called sounds right to me. David R. Ingham 08:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Either with or without "called" works I think. Blimpguy 15:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WW2

Are there any stats on how many U-boats were sunk or damaged by airships? Scourgeofsmallishinsects 14:52, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe that no U-boats were sunk or damaged by direct fire from airship. I believe there was only one direct engagement. However, many U-boats were sunk indirectly when spotted by airships who then directed fire from cruisers and destroyers in the area. It was in their role as spotters that airships made their greatest contribution. Blimpguy 12:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

In WW2 I dont know any sunk u-boat by airship, but there were several situations where airships also threw water bombs or fired on the submarine (e.g. K-16 and K-58 with U 853; 6. May 1945). One airship (K-74) was sunk (shot down and sunk after emergency landing on the ocean) by the submarine U 143 (18.06.1943).

In WW 1 there were several fights between german submarines and british airships too. Hadhuey 20:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

And one ship (Norweigan, I think) was captured by a German airship, also in World War I. I don't have a reference for this at present. Willy Logan 22:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Airships in fiction

The Airships in fiction category of this article is getting disproportionately large. I suggest we break it off into a new article, Airships in fiction or Airships in culture. Any thoughts? Willy Logan 00:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. A separate section seems appropriate at this point. I'd also consider a separate section for Airships in WWII. Blimpguy 12:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Done. I chose Airships in culture so I could also include Led Zeppelin, etc. Willy Logan 22:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nagy Airships

The Nagy Airships page has pretty bad spelling/grammar. (ex:"Cruz ships). Are you sure it is real?

I'm not sure I can say that it is measurably less real as any of the other "proposed designs". Blimpguy 16:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mooring?

Anyone know where these were moored in the alps?

[edit] Imperial Measurements?

Some of the measurements in this article are only in the Imperial System. Can someone please add metric conversions to these?

[edit] Difference?

What's the difference between a derigable, a zeppelin and a blimp?

These terms are described in detail in the "Terminology" and "Types" sections of the article. Blimpguy 17:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inline citations

The GA criteria has recently been changed, and you may need to convert your references to internal citations. Because they all seem to be books, if nobody can actually find them and figure out whether they actually back up the information in the article, then i'm afraid there's no way to confirm whether or not most of this article has actually been verified, so this article may have to be delisted. Homestarmy 14:16, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Worldwide Aeros Corp.?

I know that the Aeros Corp. deserves mention in the article, because of Aeroscraft (which has its own article, natürlich,) and WALRUS, but do the appearance / placement of the various hyperlinks just added to the end of the article by User talk:24.199.11.182 strike anyone else (as they do me) as just a bit too "commercial"? --Eliyahu S ^Talk 23:37, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible early radical design?

In John Toland's fascinating The Great Dirigibles: Their triumphs and disasters (1972, Dover, ISBN 0-486-21397-8), a lightly-edited newer edition of his 1950's Ships in the Sky, The Story of the Great Dirigibles, he recounts the story of a US inventor circa 1860 whose airship was propelled by up/down tacking using its buoyancy -- even into the wind, without machine power! This airship was supposedly flown.

I would give more details but the book is not now available to me. --Wfaxon 08:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

You are no doubt referring to the Aereon invented by Solomon Andrews. It was also described in some detail by John McPhee in his excellent book "The Deltoid Pumpkinseed." I agree it should be added to the noteworthy experiments section. Blimpguy 15:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] proposed merge of non-rigid airship into airship

I think this is a bad idea. If anything, the airship article is too larger already. Merging in information from the non-rigid article, such as the discussion of the origin of the term 'blimp' will only make the problem worse. However, the non-rigid article is fairly small. The better approach would be to move some of the non-rigid specific information that is currently in the airship article to the non-rigid article. The non-rigid article could also use some clean-up and fleshing out of its text. Blimpguy 21:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] should create a new section on operations

The mention of ground crew in the opening paragraph raises in my mind the topic of operation in general. There should probably be a section on operation including discussion of ballast, superheat, ground operations, etc. I've left the point about ground crew in the opening paragraph until such a section is created (I don't have time now - others are invited to take the lead.) at which point it should be moved. Blimpguy 17:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

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