What airships are filled with. Russian airship. How it all began

The airship belongs to the class of aircraft and is identical in design to a balloon. Among its distinctive features are high carrying capacity, the ability to stay in the air for a long time, low cost and docking at any site. The only disappointment is the low speed km / h, limited to 20 units. With the development of powerful models of aircrafts, in modern society there is growing interest in who created the first airship and where they can be used. These are very beautiful and powerful machines 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, operated by the Frenchman Henri-Jacques-Girard, took to the skies over Versailles in September 1852. The length of the spindle-shaped form, equipped with a steam engine, reached 4.4 m.At that period, many countries began to create their own airship, the first flight of their miraculous devices was recorded in history:

• The Dupont de Lomme airship was launched in 1872.
• A German mechanic 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 implementation of the idea belongs to the scout Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who presented a new development in 1900. Throughout his life, Count Zeppelin improved his projects, and in 1911 he created the Erzatz Deutschland passenger airship, capable of accommodating 20 people on board. Since then, the count's airship was called 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 building in Russia

The daring dream of flying has warmed the souls of more than one generation of people living on earth. Long before the onset of the era of aeronautics, Peter the Great, he 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 aerostat 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 ranked third in this area.

Airship building in the USSR was actively developing in the 20-30s, in those years the "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 bulky models dropped sharply. However, during the Second World War, they hovered dozens over cities, cutting off the wings of enemy attack aircraft with cables.

Airships of the first world

The prospects of airships for military purposes were so obvious that equipping armies began long before the outbreak of hostilities. Whole fleets of ships were used as cargo carriers, reconnaissance aircraft and bombers. In this area, Russia was in the lead (more than 20), followed by Germany (18) and Austria-Hungary (10). At the same time, Russia bought "Astra", "Burevestnik" and "Kondor" abroad, and built the rest of the ships at the Izhora and Baltic shipyards. Domestic engineers believed that an inexpensive soft airship is better than a huge prototype, which is easier to get into from the ground and set on fire.

What filled the first airships

The devices initially worked on hydrogen, which is lighter than air, and later it was replaced by helium. It was hydrogen thawing that caused death of "Hindenburg", who flew with passengers across the Atlantic and was considered the largest ship in Germany.

An airship painted by Albert Robida in steampunk style.

First flights

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

An airship with a steam engine 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. Such a difference between the date of the invention of the balloon and the first flight of the airship is due to the lack of engines for aerostatic aircraft at that time. The next technological breakthrough came in 1884, when Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs made the first fully controlled free flight in a French military airship powered by an electric La France electric engine, La France. The length of the airship was 52 m, its volume was 1900 m³, in 23 minutes a distance of 8 km was covered with the help of an 8.5 hp engine.

However, these devices were short-lived and extremely fragile. Regular controlled flights did not take place 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 on his Santos-Dumont aircraft number 6. Then it was considered an eccentricity, but later the airship within several decades became one of the most advanced Vehicle. 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 aircraft, and this position remained for many decades. The design of such airships and its development are associated with the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

Zeppelins

Zeppelin over the Summer Garden

Construction of the first Zeppelin airships began in 1899 in a floating assembly plant on Lake Constance in Mansell Bay, Friedrichshafen. It was organized on the lake in order to simplify the starting procedure, since the workshop could sail with the wind. Experienced airship "LZ 1" had a length of 128 m and was balanced by moving weight between two gondolas; it was equipped with two Daimler engines with a capacity of 14.2 hp.

The first flight of the Zeppelin took place on July 2, 1900. It lasted only 18 minutes, as the LZ 1 was forced to land on the lake after the weight balance mechanism broke. After the repair of the apparatus, the technology of the rigid airship was successfully tested in subsequent flights, breaking the speed record of the French airship La France by 3 m / s, but this was still not enough to attract significant investments in airship construction. The count received the necessary funding a few years later. Already the first flights of his airships convincingly showed the promise of their use in military affairs.

By 1906, Zeppelin managed to build an improved airship, which interested the military. For military purposes, initially semi-rigid and then soft airships "Parseval" were used, as well as airships "Zeppelin" of a hard type; in 1913 the rigid airship "Schütte-Lanz" was adopted. Comparative tests of these aeronautical vehicles in 1914 showed the superiority of rigid airships. The latter, with a length of 150 m and a shell volume of 22,000 m³, lifted up to 8000 kg of payload, having a maximum lifting height of 2200 m. each of them reached a speed of 21 m / s. The payload consisted of 10-kilogram bombs and 15-centimeter and 21-centimeter grenades, as well as radiotelegraph equipment. In 1910, the first in Europe air passenger line Friedrichshafen-Dusseldorf was opened, along which the airship "Germany" plied. In January 1914, Germany, in terms of the total volume and the combat qualities of its airships, had the most powerful aeronautical fleet in the world.

Tsiolkovsky project

The first technically substantiated project of a large cargo airship was proposed in the 1880s by the great Russian scientist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.

Tsiolkovsky's balloon model

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Tsiolkovsky proposed building a huge, even by today's standards - up to 500,000 m³ - a rigid airship with metal sheathing.

The design studies of Tsiolkovsky's idea, carried out in the 30s by the employees of the "Dirigiblestroy" of the USSR, showed the validity of the proposed concept. However, it was not possible to build an airship: for the most part, work on large airships was curtailed not only in the USSR, but throughout the world due to numerous accidents. Despite the numerous projects to revive the concept of large airships, they still, as a rule, do not leave the drawers of the designers.

German naval zeppelin L 20 after a forced landing off the coast of Norway, 1916

Baptism of fire

View from the gondola of a French airship in 1918.

Airship raid on Calais

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

Unlike airplanes, 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 aircraft, and Germany, which possessed 18 airships. Of all the countries participating in the world war, the Austro-Hungarian air force was one of the weakest. On the eve of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian air fleet consisted of only 10 airships. Military airships were directly subordinate to the main command; sometimes they were attached to fronts or armies. At the beginning of the war, the airships performed combat missions under the leadership of officers of the General Staff commanded on the airships. In this case, the airship commander was assigned the role of a 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 be of great benefit, in particular for deep exploration. German vehicles 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 by one German airship on Antwerp, 60 houses were completely destroyed, another 900 were damaged. However, by September 1914, having lost 4 devices, the German airships switched only to night operations. Huge and clumsy, they were an excellent target for armed enemy airplanes, although a platform with several machine guns was located on the top of their hull to protect against attack from above, and they were also filled with extremely flammable hydrogen. It is obvious that they inevitably had to be replaced by cheaper, maneuverable and resistant to combat damage vehicles.

"Golden Age" of airships

LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin"

restaurant on the "Hindenburg"

salon on "Hindenburg"

After the end of the First World War, the construction of airships of various systems continued in the USA, France, Italy, Germany 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 in July 1919 with a crew on board flew from East Lothian, Scotland to Long Island, New York, and then returned to Pulham, England. In 1924, a transatlantic flight of the German airship LZ 126 took place.

In 1926, a joint Norwegian-Italian-American expedition led by R. Amundsen aboard the Norway airship designed by Umberto Nobile carried out the first transarctic flight of Fr. Spitsbergen - North Pole - Alaska. By 1929, airship technology had advanced to a very high level; airship Graf Zeppelin in September and October began the first transatlantic flights. In 1929, the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin made its legendary round-the-world flight with three stopovers. In 20 days, he covered more than 34 thousand kilometers with an average flight speed of about 115 km / h.

German zeppelins attracted a lot of interest in the 1920s and 1930s, and in 1930 the US Post Office issued special zeppelin stamps for use on the Graf Zeppelin Pan American flight.

In the summer of 1931, his famous flight 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 much more comfortable than the aircraft of that time. The hull of a passenger airship often had a restaurant with a kitchen and a salon. Of course, they tried to reduce the weight of this equipment, so instead of baths, a shower was offered, and everything that could be made of aluminum, from which the grand piano was also made on the "Hindenburg". The British rigid airship R101 had 50 single, double and quadruple passenger cabins with berths located on two decks, a dining room for 60 people, two promenade decks with windows along the walls. The passengers used mainly the upper deck. At the bottom there were kitchens and toilets, as well as the crew. There was even an asbestos-lined smoking room for 24 people. There was a smoking ban on the Hindenburg. Everyone on board, including passengers, was required to turn in matches, lighters and other devices that could cause a spark before boarding. One of the largest airships in the world - the American "Akron" with a nominal volume of 184 thousand cubic meters - could carry on board up to 5 small aircraft, several tons of cargo and theoretically was able to overcome about 17 thousand km without landing.

Airship "USSR-B6"

In the Soviet Union, the first airship was built in 1923. Later, a special organization "Airship" was created, which built and commissioned more than ten airships of soft and semi-rigid systems. In 1937, the largest Soviet airship "USSR-B6" with a volume of 18,500 m³ set a world record for flight duration - 130 hours 27 minutes. The last Soviet airship was the USSR-B12 bis, built in 1947.

The end of the airship era

It is believed that the era of airships ended in 1937, when the German passenger airship-liner Hindenburg burned down while landing at Lakehurst. The Hindenburg, as well as the earlier Winged Foot Express disaster in Chicago on July 21, 1919, in which 12 civilians were killed, negatively affected the airships' reputation as reliable aircraft. Airships filled with explosive gas rarely burned and suffered accidents, but their disasters caused much more damage than the aircraft of that time. The public outcry from the airship crash was incomparably higher than from the airship crashes, and the active operation of airships was stopped. Perhaps this would not have happened if the Zeppelin Company had access to sufficient helium.

K-class airship gondola

K-class airship

At that time, the United States had the largest reserves of helium, but the German company at that time could hardly count on helium supplies from the United States. However, ambitious soft airships, such as the M and K class soft airships with a nominal volume of 18 thousand m3 and 12 thousand m3, were actively used by the US Navy during the Second World War as a reconnaissance aircraft designed to combat German submarines. ... Their tasks included not only detecting submarines, but also hitting them with depth charges. In this role, they were quite effective and were used until the advent of reliable helicopters. These airships developed speeds of up to 128 km / h and could be in flight for up to 50 hours. The last K-43 class airship was decommissioned in March 1959. The only airship shot down in World War II was the American K-74, which, on the night of July 18-19, 1943, attacked the U-134 submarine on the surface off the northeast coast of Florida. The submarine spotted the airship and opened fire first. The airship, not dropping depth charges due to operator error, fell into the sea and sank a few hours later, 1 out of 10 crew members drowned. During World War II, the following types of airships were used in the US Navy

• ZMC: airship, with a metallized shell
• ZNN-G: Type G airship
• ZNN-J: Type J airship
• ZNN-L: Type L airship
• ZNP-K: Type K airship
• ZNP-M: Type M airship
• ZNP-N: Type N airship
• ZPG-3W: Sentry Airship
• ZR: Rigid airship
• ZRS: Rigid Reconnaissance Airship

Between 1942 and 1944, about 1,400 airship pilots and 3,000 auxiliary crew members were trained at military academies, and the number of personnel serving in airship operations increased from 430 to 12,400. In the United States, airships were manufactured at the Goodyear plant in Akron, Ohio. ... From 1942 to 1945, 154 airships were produced for the US Navy and, in addition, five L-class airships for civilian customers.

ZPG-3W in 1960 Volume: 23648 m³

In the late 1950s, the US Navy received the ZPG-3W, the largest soft airship in history. It was used to fill the radar gap between ground-based radars in the North American early warning network during the Cold War. The ZPG-3W is a rare example of the use of the inner space of an airship - a huge radio antenna was located inside a helium balloon. Four of these airships were delivered to the US Navy. The first flight of the ZPG-3W took place in July 1958. The skin of the airship was used as a fairing for the 12.8 m radar antenna, thus ensuring the aerodynamics of the airship. The airship was over 121.9 m long and almost 36.6 m high. The airship could be in flight for many days. The ZPG-3W was the last airship built for the US Navy, and was decommissioned in November 1962 when the US Navy stopped using airships. It is believed that the AN / APS-70 type radar with its huge antenna is still the best airborne radar system for detecting aircraft, since, due to the use of low frequency radio waves, it did not depend on good weather for optimal performance.

The Soviet Union used only one airship during the war. The B-12 airship was built in 1939 and entered service in 1942 to train paratroopers and transport equipment. Until 1945, he made 1,432 flights. On February 1, 1945, the USSR built the second class B airship - the Pobeda airship - it was used as a minesweeper in the Black Sea. It crashed on January 21, 1947. Another airship of this class, the B-12bis Patriot, was commissioned in 1947 and was mainly used for training crews, parades and propaganda events.

Catastrophes

Wreck of "Hindenburg"

The creators of airships neglected elementary safety measures, filling them with unsafe but cheap hydrogen instead of inert but expensive and inaccessible helium.

In March 1936, the successor to the aging "Count Zeppelin" was created - the airship LZ 129 "Hindenburg", designed to use safe helium. However, the required amounts of helium were at that time only in the United States, which imposed an embargo on the export of military materials to Hitler's Germany. I had to fill the Hindenburg cylinders with available hydrogen.

The incessant series of accidents and disasters seriously undermined faith in the reliability and expediency of using airships. On May 6, 1937, in front of the audience, the Hindenburg burned down, killing 35 people on board and one on the ground. In peacetime, the American rigid airships "Shenandoah", "Akron" and "Macon", the British "R.38" and "R.101", the French "Dixmünde" were killed in disasters that claimed many lives. While dealing with the causes of disasters, the further progress of aviation left the era of airships behind.

Among the experts who studied the causes of the death of large airships, in particular, Akron and Hindenburg, an opinion was expressed about the destruction of the shell or containers with gas that led to the catastrophe, which occurred during a maneuver with a small circulation radius.

Russia, USSR

On the territory of large countries there are many places where it is extremely problematic to carry out the delivery of goods by land or using other types of aircraft. Airships can be useful, for example, in the exploration of the Arctic, in geo-exploration in Siberia and the Arctic. The Arctic has long attracted the attention of bold naturalists who have studied it especially intensively since the end of the 19th century. Important oceanological observations were made by the expedition of the Norwegian polar explorers F. Nansen on the sailing ship "Fram" and R. Amundsen on the ship "Mod". The latter also directed in 1926 the first flight in the airship "Norway" across the North Pole from Svalbard to America. The airship was commanded by the Italian engineer U. Nobile. In 1928, U. Nobile headed an Italian expedition to the North Pole aboard the Italia airship, which suffered an accident.

“… There is at least one other country in the world where airships could develop and be widely used with benefit. This is the Soviet Union with its vast territory, mostly flat. Here, especially in the north of Siberia, huge distances separate one settlement from another. This complicates the construction of highways and railways. But the meteorological conditions are very favorable for airship flights. "
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Commemorative coin of the Bank of Russia dedicated to the research of the Russian Arctic. Above left - an airplane, to the right - an airship, in the center - a sailing ship in ice, to the right of it - a portrait of R. Amundsen, below - dates in two lines: "1918 1926".

In the second half of the 19th century, aeronautics gradually took its place in the Russian army - balloons were in service. At the end of the century, a separate aeronautical park operated, which was at the disposal of the Aeronautics Commission, pigeon mail and watchtowers. At the 1902-1903 maneuvers in Krasnoe Selo, Brest and Vilna, methods of using balloons in artillery and for aerial reconnaissance were tested. Convinced of the feasibility of using tethered balloons, the War Ministry decided to create special units at fortresses in Warsaw, Novgorod, Brest, Kovno, Osovets and in the Far East, which included 65 balloons. The manufacture of airships in Russia began in 1908.

At the end of 1931 at the Main Directorate of Glavvozdukhflot, the organization "Dirigiblestroy" was created. The airship was supposed to design, manufacture and operate airships, as well as improve the methods of their operation. In April 1932, the territory of the Osoaviakhim Central Aeronautical Base in the area of \u200b\u200bDolgoprudnaya station was transferred to "Dirigiblestroy", where the construction of a wooden boathouse, a hydrogen production plant and other buildings began.

The enterprise began operating on May 5, 1932 under the name "Airship". In May 1932, the airship received three soft-type airships from Leningrad: USSR V-1, USSR V-2 and USSR V-3. They were intended for training and propaganda flights and testing their application in the national economy. On November 7, 1932, four Soviet airships passed over Red Square: V-1, V-2, V-3 and V-4. By 1933, the USSR had mastered the design, construction and operation of soft airships. The airship was tasked with organizing the production of semi-rigid airships. For this, the Italian designer of airships Umberto Nobile was invited to the USSR. Nobile, together with a group of Italian specialists, arrived in Dolgoprudny in May 1932. At the end of February 1933, Nobile, together with Soviet engineers, created the first Soviet semi-rigid airship of the USSR, the B-5. On April 27, 1933, the B-5 made its first flight, lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes. In 1933, the B-5 made more than 100 flights.

In 1940, the factory "Dirigiblestroy USSR", which existed before the war, was mothballed. During the war, at its base, some work was carried out to prepare barrage balloons, as well as modifications to existing aeronautical equipment, including soft airships. From 1940 to 1956, all work related to the creation and construction of aeronautical equipment was supervised by the 13th TsAGI Laboratory from the city of Zhukovsky. In 1956, massive penetrations of unmanned reconnaissance balloons into the airspace of the USSR were recorded, which, in the mode of permanent drift at altitude, carried out aerial photography of Soviet objects. By a special decision of the Government of the USSR, it was decided to recreate the industrial potential for the development and creation of various aeronautical equipment. The basic enterprise OKB-424 was formed on the territory of the former "Dirizhablestroy" in the city of Dolgoprudny. M.I. was appointed the head of OKB-424. Gudkov. In the post-war period, airships were created on the basis of the DKBA as prototypes and experimental models. In 1958, this design bureau created a large prospectus for testing equipment and training pilots for SS-Volga space flights. On November 1, 1962, Andreev and Dolgov's record parachute jumps were made on it. In the late 1970s, by order of the Air Force, a lenticular airship was developed at the DKBA. As part of this project, a 15-meter prototype of a lens-shaped airship was created, which even passed a number of tests.

In the early 1980s, the airship was calculated for the needs of the Navy, but due to funding problems that began during the perestroika reforms, the project was mothballed.

After the collapse of the USSR, the state-owned enterprise "DKBA" received the status of a "federal unitary state enterprise" and headed the Russian industry of aeronautical technologies, or rather, became the core enterprise of the emerging industry.

In the 1990s, DKBA develops a draft airship of soft design 2DP with a carrying capacity of about 3 tons, and after revising the terms of reference and indicating the need to create an apparatus with a higher carrying capacity, the project continues under the name "DS-3 airship". In 2007, a preliminary draft of this apparatus was prepared.

Today, on the basis of FSUE DKBA, airships with a carrying capacity of 20, 30, 55, 70, 200 tons are being developed. A significant part of the work has been carried out on the project of the "lenticular" airship DP-70T, which is intended for the transportation of goods with no-pillar operation throughout the year in all climatic zones. On the constructive basis of this airship, variants of an airship with a carrying capacity of 200-400 tons have been worked out.

The development of a multipurpose airship of semi-rigid construction DP-4 with a carrying capacity of 4-5 tons is also underway. For greater competitiveness, FSUE DKBA is developing airship projects using standard aviation components and assemblies, including chassis, engines, avionics, which ensures high quality products with a significant reduction in production costs.

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

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

I already had a pretty interesting topic on my blog , then we will not dwell here in detail on our country. Read who is interested there. Let's take a look at the worldwide development of this aircraft.

A dirigable (from the French dirigeable - controlled) is an aircraft lighter than air, a balloon with a propeller, thanks to which the airship can move regardless of the direction of air flows.

For 250 years BC the great Archimedes opened the way to hot air ballooning. But only in the second half of the 17th century was it possible to create a balloon suitable for practical use. A device lighter than air, moving in the air ocean at the behest of 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, brothers Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier demonstrated the flight of the balloon they had built in the French city of Videlon-les-Annon. A casing with a volume of about 600 cubic meters m. rested on a lattice frame, woven from a vine. The frame was installed on a platform, under which a wet straw fire was made. Hot, humid air filled the shell. After letting go of the ropes holding her, she rushed up. The flight lasted only 10 minutes. During this time, the balloon 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. Physicist Charles was entrusted with preparation for it. He used to fill the ball not hot air, but hydrogen discovered in 1766, which had a low specific gravity. On August 27, 1783, a start took place on the Champ de Mars of Paris, the Ball quickly gained height and disappeared from sight. Having flown 24 kilometers, he fell to the ground due to a rupture of the shell.

In the future, balloons filled with hot air were called hot air balloons, and hydrogen - charlier.

Flight capability has been proven. It remained to find out how safe it is for the human body. At that time, many believed that any living creature that climbed under the clouds, even to a small height, would certainly suffocate. Therefore, on the first air trip on a hot air balloon, they sent man's loyal and reliable friends. September 19, 1783 from the courtyard of the Palace of Versailles for the first time in history, living beings were lifted into the air. This honor fell to the lot of the ram, rooster and duck. They sank to the ground in perfect health. Then they began to train people on tethered balloons. And only after thorough preparation on November 21, 1783, in the suburbs of Paris, a hot air balloon with a crew, which consisted of two people - Pilatre de Rozier and d "Arland", was launched.

Airship Meunier 1784.

As time went on, balloons were improved, making it possible to make more and more complex flights. In early January 1785, the Frenchman Blanchard and the Englishman Jeffries flew in a charlier from Dover to Calais. Having conquered the Pas-de-Calais in 2.5 hours, they were the first to fly between the island of England and continental Europe.

The Russian ambassador to France, Prince Baryatinsky, regularly informed Empress Catherine II of the successes of aeronautics. To them, he attached his own 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 to convey to him that "... here they are not engaged in sowing or other similar aeromania, and any experiments of this kind are, as it were, fruitless and unnecessary in our country, completely difficult." This view of the tsar's person on aeronautics led to the fact that the Russians first saw hot air ballooning 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, were used to study the atmosphere, to conduct meteorological, physical, astronomical observations.

But all the same, balloons did not meet the main purpose of aeronautics - they could not serve as a means of communication. This required a controlled balloon, or airship. Attempts to control the flight of a balloon with the help of oars and sails, as was the case with ships in the open sea, did not bring success. It became obvious that for a controlled flight the balloon must be equipped with a propulsion device of a different kind.

Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meunier is considered to be the inventor of the airship. The Meunier airship was to be made in the form of an ellipsoid. Controllability was to be carried out 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 - an external main shell and an internal one.

Airship Giffard, 1852

An airship with a steam engine 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. Such a difference between the date of the invention of the balloon and the first flight of the airship is due to the lack of engines for aerostatic aircraft at that time. The next technological breakthrough came in 1884, when Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs made the first fully controlled free flight in a French military airship powered by an electric La France electric motor. The length of the airship was 52 m, its volume was 1900 m³, in 23 minutes a distance of 8 km was covered with the help of an 8.5 hp engine.

It had a volume of 2500 cubic meters. m., was equipped with a steam engine with a capacity of 3 liters. from. and developed a speed of about 10 km / h. Steam engines of those years had low power with a large mass and were unsuitable for practical use on aircraft. In the first flight, Giffard could not return to the starting point. The wind force exceeded the modest capabilities of its engine! The heyday of airship construction began with the advent of reliable, lightweight and sufficiently powerful internal combustion engines and fell on 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 device number 6. Then it was considered an eccentricity, but later the airship became one of the most advanced transport vehicles for several decades. funds. At the same time that soft airships began to gain recognition, the development of rigid airships also did not stand still: subsequently, it was they who were able to carry more cargo than aircraft, and this position 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 went along three constructive directions: soft, semi-rigid, 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 the excessive pressure of the gas filling it and creating a lifting force, as well as by ballonets, which are soft air containers located inside the body. With the help of a system of valves, which allows either to pump air into the ballonets or to release it into the atmosphere, a constant overpressure is maintained inside the body. If this were not the case, then the gas inside the envelope under the influence of external factors - changes in atmospheric pressure during the ascent or descent of the airship, the temperature of the surrounding air - would change its volume. A decrease in the volume of gas causes the body to lose its shape. This usually ends in disaster.

Rigid structural elements - stabilizer, keel, gondola - are attached to the shell by means of "paws" sewn or glued to it and connecting slings.

Like every engineering design, soft-type airships have their own advantages and disadvantages. The latter are quite serious: damage to the shell or failure of the fan, which blows air into the ballonets, lead to catastrophes, while the main advantage is the large weight return.

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

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

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

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

The semi-rigid scheme was developed by the French engineer Juillot, who runs the Lebody brothers' sugar factories. The construction of the airship was financed by the owners of the factories. Therefore, it is not entirely fair that such a scheme of airships is called "swans". 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) load-bearing elements, wrapped on the outside with fabric, which is intended only to give the airship a proper aerodynamic shape. Therefore, no requirements for gas permeability are imposed on it. Ballonets are not needed in this scheme, since the shape invariability is ensured by the power frame. The carrier gas is placed in separate containers inside the housing. Practically all of the ship's units are also installed there, for the maintenance of which service aisles are provided.

The only drawback of this arrangement is that the metal frame structure reduces the weight of the payload. It was the rigid scheme that made the airship a real ship, capable of sailing in the airy ocean like sea liners. The creator of such airships was an 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 rigid airships.

A German aristocrat and a career military man took up the massive construction and diverse use of airships Ferdinand background Zeppelin... While in the United States during the Civil War, he became interested in reconnaissance balloons used by both sides, and, upon returning to his homeland, began to promote the idea of \u200b\u200ban aeronautic fleet in the German army. His developments, however, were not understood by the command, and in 1890 the count, whose rationalizing enthusiasm had bored the higher ranks for many years, was dismissed from the army with the rank of lieutenant general upon reaching retirement age.

But Zeppelin never thought to give up. Returning to the place of his childhood - on the shores of Lake Constance - he eagerly began to spend the 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 water surface of the lake, the creation of a team of young talented engineers and the nickname of Count the Fool from the neighbors.

The first flight of a 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 which was placed gas in gas-tight cylinders) and was driven by two Daimler engines with a power of 14.5 hp. The count personally piloted the airship. After long modifications and improvements, by 1906 he managed to create a completely functional model of the LZ2 airship, and in 1908 and LZ4, on which the seventy-year-old aristocrat held out in the air for 8 hours, having flown to neighboring Switzerland.

Unfortunately, the device was completely destroyed during a thunderstorm, and here an end could be put in the history of the zeppelin, since their creator by that time had run out 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 Graf-Fool, according to the same Kaiser Wilhelm II, became "the greatest German of the XX 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 a corresponding 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 for bombing cities, including London and Calais. On August 14, 1914, as a result of a raid by one German airship on Antwerp, 60 houses were completely destroyed, another 900 were damaged. Yes, the ability to slowly, at a speed of 80-90 km / h, overcome a couple of thousand kilometers at an altitude unattainable for aviation and artillery and bombard the enemy with tons of bombs is a powerful deterrent.

But, in addition to the advantages, the glaring disadvantages of the air giants also appeared. The hydrogen filling the Zeppelins was fire hazardous, the maneuverability left much to be desired, and the dependence on weather conditions also did not increase survivability.

It is interesting to note that Zeppelin himself, perfectly understanding the advantages of a rigid scheme, paid tribute to airships and other designs. He said that "one type of vessel does not exclude the other. It is only important that they are developed as best as possible, and defects are corrected in the interests of all mankind and culture." Further development of airship construction confirmed the truth of his words.

As it often happens, the new achievement of engineering thought served, first of all, not 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 and bombing strikes were carried out. During the First World War, Germany was the undisputed leader in the field of airship construction. During the war years, it was built: in Great Britain - 10 airships, in Italy - 7, in France - 1, in the USA - 6. Kaiser Germany built about 76 airships, of which 63 zeppelin and 9 were designed by Professor Schütte-Lanz with a wooden frame. Russia used three British-made Chernomor aircraft. Germany entered the war with three airships: L3, L4, L5.

In total, 1210 sorties were made on the German zeppelins. Of the 75 warships, 52 were lost during the war years as a result of hostilities: 19 were destroyed with a crew, 33 were destroyed by shelling or accidents, captured by the British after landing. By the end of the war, Germany had only 7 airships. The Germans made extensive use of zeppelins for bombing England. The first raid took place on January 15, 1915. According to the directive of the command, the airships should start bombing from Buckingham Palace and government residences, then there was a line of military factories and residential areas. In one of the night raids, the L-22 airship (with a volume of 36,000 m³) took on board 24 bombs of 50 kg, 2 bombs of 100 kg and 2 bombs of 300 kg. On approaching York, a huge cigar fell into the beams of searchlights and was shot down by anti-aircraft guns. Fighter aircraft began to pose a great danger to airships. So on January 31, 1916, 9 zeppelins were shot down by British aircraft over the sea. To escape from fighters and anti-aircraft guns, airships climbed to heights 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 constantly increasing protective measures of the enemy, zeppelins for the front were built in two sizes, type "L 50" and "L 70".

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

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

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

The airships were used by the German army for naval 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.

Aircraft 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 a 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). Hage base, south of Norderney, was abandoned.

In January 1918, when, as a result of the spontaneous combustion of one of the airships in Ahlhorn, the explosion spread to the neighboring hangars, and four Zeppelin and one Schütte-Lanz were lost. All but one hangars were rendered unusable. After that, the German fleet had only 9 air ships at its disposal. From the fall of 1917, the construction of airships was limited because the material needed to build airships was needed for more advanced airplanes. Since that date, only one airship has been ordered per month.

In peacetime, the achievements of airship construction continued to amaze the world. In 1928, the LZ-127 zeppelin flew to the United States through the Antlantic, and the following year, with three landings, it circled the globe. These successes also attracted the attention of the Soviet public to the issues of airship construction. The "airship building boom" reached Moscow with the arrival of the LZ-127 in the capital. In September 1930, he landed at the Central Airfield. About 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, it was a spectacle, really worthy of attention. All Moscow was looking 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 airships. One of them depicts "Count Zeppelin" against the background of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin died in 1917 and his firm was headed by her former press attaché Hugo Eckener. Although, under post-war agreements, Germany was prohibited from having dual-use aircraft, Eckener managed to persuade the authorities to build a giant transatlantic airship of rigid construction on helium. By 1924, the LZ126 appeared. It is curious that it was transferred to the United States on account 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 over the Atlantic (in 1919), and the industrialized powers began a rapid growth in airship building. used as a mooring mast. The 102nd floor of this building was originally a mooring platform with a gangway for climbing the airship. The popularity of airships is reflected even in one of Steven Spielberg's films about the adventures of Indiana Jones, in one of which the hero of Harrison Ford and his father, played by Sean O "Connery, fly on a zeppelin. But the giants from 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, the LZ127 made the legendary round-the-world flight with three intermediate landings, making it in 20 days more than 34,000 km with an average flight speed of about 115 km / h. He made regular flights until 1936, was awarded an image on a postage stamp during a Pan American tour and ended his "life" in 1940, being destroyed by order of the Minister of Aviation of Hitler Germany by 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. Flights with passengers, including to North and South America, "Hindenburg" began in May 1936. In the same 1936, he made the fastest, only 43-hour, flight across the North Atlantic. By May 1937, the Zeppelin had 37 flights across the Atlantic Ocean, carrying about 3,000 people.

For about $ 400, Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg offered their passengers very comfortable conditions. The travelers were supposed to have a separate cabin with a shower. It was possible to while away the time in flight, walking around the spacious glazed cabin, at the services of passengers - a restaurant with real tables, chairs, obligatory silverware and a grand piano (albeit slightly reduced in size). For smokers, a special room decorated with asbestos was equipped, where up to 24 people could be lifted 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.

The construction of the Zeppelin LZ 129 "Hindenburg" took about five years.

The first lift into the air and a test flight took place on the 4th of March 1936.

The giant waterfowl was astonishing 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 were equipped: a restaurant with a kitchen, an observation deck, 25 bedrooms, showers, a recreation 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 the record holder, having covered the path from Europe to America in 43 hours.

The last flight for the Zeppelin was the 38th in a row.

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

This happened during the 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 laps over the city and flying over the crowd of journalists on the upper platform of the Empire State Building, the Hindenburg headed towards 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 ropes were dropped, an explosion occurred in the area of \u200b\u200bthe 4th gas compartment and the airship instantly caught fire. Thanks to the efforts of Captain Max Pruss, the burning Hindenburg was still planted, thanks to which 62 of the 97 passengers on board were saved.

The causes of the disaster were never 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 history of its existence and death is one of the most famous waterfowl in the history.

It was also a disaster for the entire airship. In 1938, the LZ130, the second "Graf Zeppelin", was built, but almost immediately a law was passed in Germany prohibiting passenger flights by airships on hydrogen, and he never managed to fly. However, during World War II, the US Navy used small K-class airships, which could stay aloft 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 on the surface and was shot down as a result of the ensuing battle. This is the only clash 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 the transportation of hydrogen for refueling barrage balloons. One departure of the airship with a passing 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 on the Black Sea a special aeronautical detachment was organized to search for mines and sunken ships. For this purpose, in September 1945, the same Pobeda made a flight from Moscow to Sevastopol, with which observers happened to find mines after repeated trawling of the bay.

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

Clickable 1600 px

Aviation company Eros, based in Montebello, California, USA, has unveiled the first footage 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 the industry for a hundred years ahead, as the CEO of the company Igor Pasternak assures. The Aeroscraft will be tested in flight mode over the next two months. ...

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

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

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

Engines. The earliest airships were driven by a steam engine or muscular force; in the 1880s, electric motors were used, and from the 1890s, internal combustion engines were widely used. Throughout the 20th century, airships were equipped almost exclusively with internal combustion engines - aviation and, much less often, diesel (on some zeppelins and some modern airships). Propellers are used as propellers. It is also worth noting the extremely rare cases of using turboprop engines - in the GZ-22 "The Spirit of Akron" airship and the Soviet project "D-1". Basically, such systems, as well as reactive ones, remain only on paper. In theory, depending on the design, some of the energy of such an engine can be used to create jet thrust.

Flight. Climb and descent is done by tilting the airship with elevators - the engines then pull it up or down. Dropping of ballast and release of gas in flight is performed rarely: for example, release of gas during fuel production. Because of this feature, the arrows on the Kaiser's "Zeppelins" had to get permission from the commander to fire from heavy machine guns, so as not to inadvertently ignite the released hydrogen.

Mooring. It is often thought that the 1930s airship. could land vertically, like a helicopter - in reality, this is feasible only in the complete absence of wind. In real conditions, landing an airship requires that people on the ground pick up ropes dropped from different points of the airship and tie them to suitable ground objects; then the airship can be pulled to the ground. The most convenient and safest way of landing (especially for large airships) is by mooring to special masts.

From the top of the mooring mast, a rope was dropped, which was laid along the ground in the wind. The airship approached the mast from the leeward side, and a rope was also dropped from its nose. People on the ground tied these two ropes, and then the airship was pulled up to the mast with a winch - its nose was fixed in the docking socket. The moored airship can rotate freely around the mast like a weather vane. The docking station could move up and down the mast - this made it possible to lower the airship closer to the ground for loading / unloading and embarking / disembarking passengers.

It took up to 200 people to get the airship into the hangar in strong winds.

Types of airships

By design. By design, airships are divided into three main types: soft, semi-rigid, and rigid.

In soft and semi-rigid systems, the fabric casing also serves as a gas sheath. Semi-rigid airships are distinguished by the presence in the lower (usually) part of the shell of a metal (in most cases) truss, which prevents deformation of the shell. An example of a semi-rigid airship is the Italia airship. The keel truss consisted of triangular steel frames connected by steel longitudinal stringers. A nasal reinforcement was attached to the front of the keel truss, which consisted of steel tubular trusses, fastened with transverse rings, in the back - a stern development. Also, gondolas were suspended from the keel truss: one housed the control room and passenger rooms, and three-nacelles - engines. In airships of soft and semi-rigid systems, the invariability of the external shape is achieved by the excess pressure of the carrier gas, which is constantly supported by ballonets - soft containers located inside the envelope, into which air is forced.

In rigid airships, the invariability of the external shape was provided by a metal frame covered with fabric, and the gas was inside the rigid frame in bags (cylinders) of gas-tight material. Rigid airships had a number of drawbacks arising from their design features: for example, descent to an unprepared site without the help of people on the ground was extremely difficult, and the parking of a rigid airship on such a site, as a rule, ended in an accident, since the fragile frame with a more or less strong wind inevitably collapsed, repairing the frame and replacing its individual parts required considerable time and experienced personnel, so the cost of rigid airships was very high.

Monocoque frameless airships - metal-skinned airship designs - originated in the 1890s with the aim of reducing air resistance. In the 1920s, the use of aluminum alloy cladding began. In the entire history of airship construction, only four such airships were built, and of them only one - the experimental American ZMC-2 - successfully (albeit infrequently) flew for several years.

Based on the principle of obtaining lift. Hybrid airships are heavier than air and are a combination of aerostat and aerodynamic aircraft. Presumably, they can have better aerodynamic characteristics than airships as such. The German-made Zeppelin NT airship is often mistakenly called a hybrid airship because it is slightly heavier than air. However, only aircraft that take at least 40% of the lift from engine thrust can be considered hybrid.

By form. By shape, airships are divided into:

Cigar-shaped with reduced drag (most of them)

All other airships whose tasks include hovering above the ground or slow flight:

§ ellipsoidal - in the form of an ellipsoid (with reduced resistance to crosswind);

§ disk - in the form of a disk;

§ lenticular - in the form of a biconvex lens;

§ toroidal - in the form of a torus, intended for use as an air valve;

§ V-shaped;

§ "vertical airships" resembling flying skyscrapers - designed for flights over cities, where the streets create conditions for strong winds blowing along the buildings, which leads to turbulent air currents.

For the most part, oddly shaped airships exist only as designs. In addition, there are options for conventional hot air balloons with a nacelle borrowed from a paramotor.

By filling gas. By the type of filler, airships are divided into:

· Using gas with a density less than the density of the surrounding air at equal temperature and pressure, which, according to Archimedes' law, means that the airship will "float" in the air. Nowadays, it is usually inert helium, despite its relative high cost; in the past, flammable hydrogen was used.

· Thermal airships using heated air.

· Combined options (so-called rosier balloons). The idea of \u200b\u200busing hot air in this case is to regulate the buoyancy of the airship without releasing the carrier gas into the atmosphere - it is enough to stop heating the hot air after the airship is lightened to make the airship heavier. The Thermoplane and the Canopy-Glider research airship are examples of these rather rare designs.

The interior of the airship can also be used to carry gaseous fuel. For example, one of the fundamental differences of the Graf Zeppelin airship from other zeppelin was the use of blau-gas for engine operation, the density of which was close to the density of air, and the calorific value was much higher than that of gasoline. This made it possible to significantly increase the flight range and eliminate the need to tighten the airship as the fuel was depleted (The fuel consumption for the Maybach engines was: gasoline - 210 g and oil - 8 g per 1 hp / h, that is, the engine consumed about 115 kg of gasoline per hour.)

The airships were tightened by releasing part of the carrier gas, which created a number of economic and aerobatic inconveniences; in addition, the use of blau-gas led to a lower load on the frame than in the case of installing numerous heavy tanks with gasoline. The blau-gas was located in 12 compartments in the lower third of the airship frame, the volume of which could be increased to 30,000 m³ (for hydrogen, in this case, 105,000 m³-30,000 m³ \u003d 75,000 m³ remained). Gasoline was taken on board as additional fuel.

Theoretically, there is also the possibility of the existence of a vacuum airship, but in practice this is impracticable, and all projects of such an apparatus remain speculative.

Airship!

Airship is an aircraft lighter than air, 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), so that the airship can move in any direction regardless of the direction of the air flow.

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

The first flights of airships!

The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating an airship was proposed and formulated in 1783 by the inventor Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meunier. He proposed an ellipsoid-shaped airship design. The airship was to be controlled by 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 - an external main shell and an internal one.

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

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

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

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 in his Santos-Dumont number 6 aircraft.

Airship Santos-Dumont number 6, 1901.

In parallel with the development of soft airships, the development of hard airships was started. Subsequently, it was rigid airships that were able to carry more cargo than aircraft, and this position remained for many decades. Much for the creation of rigid airships, and the development of their design, made a German count, whose name was Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

Construction of the first Zeppelin airships began in 1899 in a floating assembly plant on Lake Constance in Mansell Bay, Friedrichshafen. It was organized on the lake because Graf 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.

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

The first flight of the Zeppelin "LZ 1" took place on July 2, 1900. The Zeppelin LZ 1 flight lasted only 18 minutes as the airship was forced to land on the lake after the weight-balancing mechanism broke. After the repair of the Zeppelin "LZ 1", the rigid airship technology was successfully tested in 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 investments 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 promise of their use in military affairs.

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

For military purposes, initially semi-rigid and then soft airships "Parseval" were used, as well as airships "Zeppelin" of the rigid type.

In 1913, the rigid airship "Schütte-Lanz" was adopted. Comparative tests of these aeronautical vehicles in 1914 showed the superiority of rigid airships.

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

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

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

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

Military use of airships!

The prospect of using airships as bombers was understood in Europe long before airships were used in this role. HG 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, the pilots of which took several small bombs with them), airships at the beginning of the world war were already a formidable force.

The most powerful aeronautical powers were Russia, which had a large Aeronautical Park in St. Petersburg with more than two dozen aircraft, and Germany, which possessed 18 airships. The Austro-Hungarian Air Force consisted of 10 airships on the eve of the First World War.

Military airships were directly subordinate to the main command. Sometimes they were attached to fronts or armies. At the beginning of the war, the airships performed combat missions under the leadership of officers of the General Staff commanded on the airships. In this case, the airship commander was assigned the role of a 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 be of great benefit, in particular for deep exploration. German military airships could cover a distance of 2-4 thousand km at a speed of 80-90 km / h and bombard the target with several tons. For example, on August 14, 1914, as a result of the raid of one German airship on Antwerp, 60 houses were completely destroyed, and another 900 were damaged.

For a stealthy 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 exit to the target, the equipment of military airships included observation gondolas: inconspicuous capsules equipped with telephone or radio communication with an observer, which descended from the airships down on cables up to 915 m long. ...

However, by September 1914, having lost 4 devices, the German airships switched only to night operations. Huge and cumbersome, they were a perfect 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, maneuverable and resistant to combat damage vehicles.

"Golden Age" of airships!

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

The years between World War I and World War II were marked by significant advances in airship technology.

The first lighter-than-air craft to cross the Atlantic was the British R34 airship, which flew with a crew on board 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 LZ 126 airship (named in the USA ZR-3 "Los Angeles") took place.

In 1926, a joint Norwegian-Italian-American expedition led by R. Amundsen aboard the airship "Norway" (N-1 "Norge") designed by Umberto Nobile carried out the first transarctic flight of about. 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, carrying capacity 60 t, shell volume 105,000 cubic meters, built at the Zeppelin shipyards in 1928.

German airship "Graf Zeppelin" on trial.

In September and October 1929 the airship LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" performed the first transatlantic flights.

In the same year, 1929, the airship "Graf Zeppelin" with three intermediate landings made its legendary round-the-world flight. 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 Graf Zeppelin airship 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 much more comfortable than the then (and in some respects, modern) aircraft. The hull of a passenger airship often had a restaurant with a kitchen and a salon.

For example, the British rigid airship R101 had 50 one-, two- and four-passenger cabins with berths located on two decks, a dining room for 60 people, two promenade decks with windows along the walls. The passengers mainly used the upper deck. On the lower deck there were kitchens and toilets, as well as 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 turn in 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 cubic meters - could carry on board up to 5 small aircraft, several tons of cargo and theoretically was able to fly about 17 thousand km without landing.

Assembling the Akron airship at the plant.

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 "Airship" was created, which built and commissioned more than ten airships of soft and semi-rigid systems.

In 1937, the largest Soviet airship "USSR-B6" with a volume of 18,500 m³ set a world record for flight duration - 130 hours 27 minutes.

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

The last Soviet airship was the USSR-B12 bis, built in 1947.

Airship USSR-B12.

In the early 1980s, the calculations of the airship were carried out for the needs of the Navy, but due to funding problems that began during the 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 beds, balloons and airships, headed the Russian industry of aeronautical technologies, and became a pivotal enterprise of the emerging industry.

In the 1990s, DKBA develops a draft airship of soft design 2DP with a carrying capacity of about 3 tons, and after revising the technical specifications and indicating the need to create an apparatus with a higher carrying capacity, the project continues under the name "DS-3 airship". In 2007, a preliminary draft of this apparatus was prepared.

Russian airship DS-3.

Today, Russia is developing airships with a carrying capacity of 20, 30, 55, 70, 200 tons. A significant part of the work has been carried out on the project of the "lenticular" airship DP-70T, which is intended for the transportation of goods with no-pillar operation throughout the year in all climatic zones. On the constructive basis of this airship, variants of an airship with a carrying capacity of 200-400 tons have been worked out.

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

Airship "Thermoplane". Thermoplane

Perhaps the testing of disc-shaped airships was the cause of many legends about flying saucers.

Airships in the USA!

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

So, in early 2005, the US military announced tests at the Arizona range of the Combat SkySat Phase 1 mini-balloon, which made it possible to contact ground services at a distance of 320 km. The mass of the mini-balloon is about 2 kg; in case of mass production, the cost can be about 2000 USD.

Military American airships will also find application 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 the places of military conflicts.

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

The American company JP Aerospace is preparing a 53-meter V-shaped airship "Ascender" for testing. The first flight provides for ascent to an altitude of about 30 km and return 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 the airship is an aircraft lighter than air, it will "float" in the air due to the buoyancy force if its average density is equal to or less than the density of the atmosphere. Usually, a gas lighter than air (hydrogen, helium) is pumped into the shell of a classic airship, while the airship's carrying capacity is proportional to the inner volume of the shell, taking into account the mass of the structure.

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

In modern airship construction, the use of durable fiberglass and metal-plastic materials 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 lifting force of the shell, which occurs when the angle of attack increases, as well as by compressing atmospheric air and storing it in ballonets inside the shell or releasing it from ballonets. In addition, the shell must include gas (for carrier gas) safety valves (to prevent rupture of the shell due to an increase in tensile forces on the shell with an increase in flight altitude and with an increase in temperature in it), as well as safety air valves on air balloons. The gas valves do not open until the air balloons are completely empty.

On the first airships, the payload, crew and power plant with a supply of fuel were placed in a nacelle. Subsequently, the engines were transferred to engine nacelles, and a passenger gondola 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 control system for attitude control and stabilization of the vehicle. The gravitational system can be either passive or active. Passive gravity stabilization is carried out in pitch and roll even at zero flight speed, if the nacelle (s) is installed below (in the lower part) 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 disturbing influences. Active gravitational stabilization and orientation was usually carried out in pitch by moving forward or backward (along the longitudinal axis of the vehicle) some load or ballast, and the more rigid the structure of the vehicle, the better the controllability. Aerodynamic stabilization and orientation of the vehicle is carried out in pitch and course (yaw) with the help of the tail unit (aerodynamic stabilizers and rudders) only at a significant flight speed. At low flight speeds, the efficiency of aerodynamic rudders is insufficient to ensure good maneuverability of the vehicle. On modern airships, an active automatic orientation and stabilization system along its three building axes is increasingly used, where rotary screw propellers are used as the executive bodies of the system.

The mooring devices on the first vehicles were guiderops - cables of 228 or more meters in length, hanging freely from the shell. When the airship was lowered to the required height, a large mooring crew grabbed these cables, pulling the airship to the landing point. Subsequently, for the mooring of airships, they began to build mooring masts, and the devices themselves were supplied with an automatic mooring unit.

Airships! Types of airships!

Airships manufactured and operated at different times and up to the present time differ in the following types, purpose 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 the type of mover: wing, with propeller, with impeller, jet.

By appointment: passenger, cargo, military.

By the method of creating Archimedean force: filling the shell with a gas lighter than air, heating the air in the shell (thermowells), evacuating the shell, combined.

By the way of controlling the lifting force: lifting gas bleed, lifting gas temperature change, ballast air injection / bleeding, variable thrust vector of the power plant, aerodynamic.

Airships! Airship flight!

In flight, a classic airship is usually controlled by one or two pilots, and the first pilot basically maintains a given course of the apparatus, and the co-pilot continuously monitors the change in the pitch angle of the apparatus and manually using the steering wheel either stabilizes its position or changes the pitch angle at the command of the commander. Climb and descent is performed by tilting the airship with elevators or by turning the nacelles - the propellers then pull it up or down.

Airships! Airship mooring!

When the airship moored, the people on the ground picked up the 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 for landing on an un-equipped platform, 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.

From the top of the mooring mast, a guiderope was dropped, which was laid along the ground in the wind. The airship approached the mast from the leeward side, and a guiderope was also dropped from its nose. People on the ground tied these two guides, and then the airship was pulled up to the mast with a winch - its nose was fixed in the docking socket. The 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.

The advantages and disadvantages of airships!

Benefits:

Large carrying capacity and range of non-stop flights.

In principle, structurally higher reliability and safety is achievable than that of airplanes and helicopters. Even in major disasters, airships have shown a high survival rate of people.

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

Indoor spaces can be very large.

The duration of being 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 feasible only in the absence of a strong crosswind).

Disadvantages:

Relatively low speed in comparison with airplanes and helicopters (usually up to 160 km / h) and low maneuverability - primarily due to the low efficiency of aerodynamic control surfaces in the course channel at low flight speeds and because of the low longitudinal stiffness of the shell.

Difficulty landing due to low maneuverability.

Dependence on weather conditions (especially with strong winds).

Very large sizes of the required hangars (sheds), the complexity of storage and maintenance on the ground.

Relatively high cost of airship maintenance, especially of large dimensions. As a rule, modern small airships require a so-called mooring and launching crew of 2 to 6 people. American military airships of the 1950s and 1960s required the efforts of about 50 sailors to land reliably, and therefore, after the advent of reliable helicopters, they were removed from service.

Relatively low reliability and durability of the shell.

Modern airship building!

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 tasks!

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 controlled!

 

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