"Sky Titanics" The rise and fall of the airship era

The airship belongs to the class of aircraft and is identical in design to the hot air balloon. Among its distinctive features is a large carrying capacity, the ability to stay in the air for a long time, low cost and mooring at any site. The only disappointment is the low speed km / h, limited to 20 units. With the development of powerful models of air vehicles, in modern society there is increasing interest in who created the first airship and where they can be used. These are very beautiful and powerful machines that are experiencing a rebirth today. In the photo - 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 time, many countries began to create their own airship, the first flight of their miracle vehicles was recorded in history:

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

Airship "France"

• In Germany, the embodiment of the idea belongs to the intelligence officer Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who presented a new development in 1900. Throughout his life, Count Zeppelin improved his projects, and in 1911 he created the Ersatz Deutschland passenger airship, capable of accommodating 20 people on board. Since then, the count's airship has become known as the 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 warmed the souls of more than one generation of people living on earth. Long before 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 a balloon used for military purposes. August 1, 1970 is considered to be the birthday of military aeronautics, however, the first airship in Russia under the name "Krechet" appeared only in 1909. Then the "Hawk", "Falcon" and "Dove" were created. In 1911, the country ranked third in this area.

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

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

Airships of the First World

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

What 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 that caused death of the Hindenburg, flying with passengers across the Atlantic and was considered the largest ship in Germany.

Thanks to the French verb with the meaning "to manage", at least two words appeared in the Russian language. One of them - the word conductor - is called a person who manages a group of musicians. The second word is called a controlled - in contrast to an uncontrolled hot air balloon - a balloon. Meet the airship.

By definition, an airship is a lighter-than-air, powered balloon. The engine and allows the airship to move regardless of the direction of air flow. It is clear that airships appeared only after the advent of engines: before that, mankind dreaming of the sky managed with hot air balloons.

The inventor of the airship is the French mathematician Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meunier. He came up with everything: the shape of an ellipsoid, three propellers for controllability, which had to be manually rotated by as many as 80 people, two shells: to change the volume of gas and, consequently, the flight altitude.

Meunier's ideas were implemented by a completely different person, the French engineer Henri Giffard. He designed the world's first airship with a three-horsepower steam engine. In September 1852, Giffard took it over the Paris Hippodrome and flew about 30 kilometers at an average speed of 10 kilometers per hour. It is from this flight that the era of motor aviation and the era of airships are counted.

Twenty years later, an internal combustion engine was installed on a similar aircraft - this was done by the German engineer Paul Henlein.

Giffard's airship is commonly called a soft airship. In such systems, the fabric casing also serves as a gas envelope. The great Tsiolkovsky noted the shortcomings of such airships: the inability to maintain altitude, the high probability of fires, and poor horizontal controllability.

If you install a metal truss in the lower part of the shell, you get a semi-rigid airship - such was the famous "Italy" by Umberto Nobile.

Tsiolkovsky criticized soft airships not unfounded: back in the 80s of the 19th century, he calculated and proposed a project for a large cargo airship of a rigid structure with metal sheathing.

Early airships contained the entire volume of gas in a single shell, which was a simple oiled cloth. Then the shells began to be created from rubberized materials. This increased the life of the airship. A little later, the gas began to be divided into different cylinders.

Airships differ from each other by:

The type of casing, which can be rigid, soft or semi-rigid;

By power plant (gasoline or diesel engine, electric motor or steam engine)

By purpose (for passenger traffic, military or cargo)

According to the method of controlling Archimedean forces (thermal airships, displacement or combined), etc.

Invented in Russia carried out. On the own funds Count Zeppelin built a rigid airship and personally tested it. By the First World War, the Count's airships, which were named "Zeppelins" in his honor, became a means of transportation.

Back in the days when the first planes were more like flying bookcases, airships were already flying and amazed people with their size, elegant shapes and flight capabilities. And in the first half of the twentieth century, a real competition began between airships and aircraft in their practical use for civil and military purposes.

During the war, zeppelins bombed London, after it ended, they shuttled across the Atlantic, and one even made a round-the-world flight. Summed up zeppelins hydrogen, which was used instead of helium: after the explosion and fire of the airship "Hindenburg", nicknamed "heavenly" Titanic "", zeppelins went down in history.

The first airship was built in 1923. Then, at the main department of Glavvozdukhflot, they created the Dirigiblestroy and invited Nobile to the designers. Nobile coped, and created the semi-rigid Soviet airship "USSR V-5". Then they created the "USSR B-6", and he even set a world record for flight duration.

Germany was especially successful in airship building, whose comfortable vehicles began transporting passengers and cargo over long distances. And who knows what tool would have won this competition if it were not for the war, which rejected airships because of their low speed and easy hitting even with simple weapons. Of course, in combat, aircraft were faster, more maneuverable, better protected, etc., and motor fuel was then relatively cheap.

Despite this, interest in airships did not fade throughout the twentieth century, especially when all sorts of energy crises began, but their mass production did not take place. Firstly, it is difficult to overcome the competition of the aircraft industry, which has become a giant industry, and secondly, technically, the airship industry is far behind both in terms of design and in terms of infrastructure for design, construction and maintenance.

At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century, interest in airships increased again due to a sharp rise in the price of motor fuel and their obvious advantages over aviation. Why is the airship so attractive?

When using helium, it is much safer than an airplane. After all, helium does not completely fill the entire body of the airship, but is in bags. One bag bursts - the rest work. The airship is much more environmentally friendly. For its movement it is not necessary to use hydrocarbon fuel. It is possible to apply nuclear engines, electric motors, including solar panels, etc.

So far, the Russian "aeronautical fleet" has 7 transport ships. But there are already federal and regional programs for the development and construction of airships for various purposes. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation does not lag behind with orders. At the same time, the ideas of K.E. Tsiolkovsky, as well as new developments that allow you to control the airship's lift, make vertical takeoff and landing, hover in the air with almost no energy consumption, land vertically on water and a hard surface, etc.

Hybrids of an airship and an airplane are in domestic development, which can be used in any mode - airplane, helicopter, as a sea vessel on air cushion etc. Unmanned versions of airships are also being developed, controlled from the Earth, for the transport of goods, video surveillance, telecommunications, etc.

Let's talk about some of the airships of the future, developed in different countries. A hydroairship is designed to fly over the surface of the sea to carry cargo and passengers faster than ships and cheaper than airplanes. Of course, its speed characteristics will be lower than those of our ekranoplan, but the level of passenger service is no worse than on a comfortable ocean liner. The military is also interested in this type of airship in order to use it to search for the enemy and coordinate the actions of their means.

It is also planned to use, instead of Earth satellites, stratospheric airships rising to a height of 20-25 km to receive and transmit digital radio signals, organize mobile communications etc. The use of such devices will cost much less than launching satellites. In addition, their equipment is easy to replace, they can be safely disposed of, while satellites cannot be disposed of, and they pose a danger to spacecraft and the environment long after their failure. There are many projects for the private use of airships, such as air bicycles, etc.

In general, it is possible that in the near future we will see annoying advertisements on our TV screens like: “Fly airships of the Russian Airship Fleet - reliable, profitable, convenient!”.

They could withstand only a few people and flew where the wind carried them. But people needed an aircraft with more payload that they could fly. Continuing to work on improving the balloon, the designers created an airship.

During its first flight, the airship Henri Giffard in 1852 flew 27 km. But the craft's steam engine was not powerful enough to turn and fly against the wind.

The first balloon flight was made by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. A few weeks later, another balloon by the French physicist Jacques Charles took off. The balls were named after their designers - hot air balloon and charlier.

Unlike the hot air balloon, the charlier was filled not with heated air, but with hydrogen, which does not lose heat as it cools. lifting force(which cannot be said about air). Hydrogen balloons have become a more common type of aircraft than hot air balloons.

In 1852, the French engineer Henri Giffar improved the design of the ball: instead of a round shell, he made a cigar-shaped one, replaced the basket with a long gondola, added a steering wheel and a 3-liter steam engine. With. The vehicle was named "airship", which means "controlled" in French. The average speed of the airship was 8 km/h. However, this aircraft could not withstand even a light breeze. A more powerful engine, such as an electric one, was required. It was he who was used by military engineers Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs for their airship "La France" ("France") in 1884. The flight speed of "France" was 20 km / h, and the battery energy was only enough for an hour of work.

All of these were non-rigid airships, that is, those in which the invariability of the shape of the shell is achieved by the excess pressure of the gas inside it. The rigid airship appeared in 1897. It was built by the Austrian inventor David Schwartz. The shell of a new type of airship held its shape thanks to an internal metal frame made of aluminum. A year later, a semi-rigid airship was constructed: metal frames at the bow and stern were connected by a wooden keel.

In 1901, the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont received a prize of 100,000 francs for flying an airship around the Eiffel Tower. Around the same time, the German engineer Ferdinand von Zeppelin began experimenting with the creation of his later famous Zeppelins. Only the fourth model (LZ-4) was successful.

Gradually, the airships increased in size and began to be equipped with not one, but two, three, and even four motors. Designers began to use internal combustion engines.

This cartoon depicts Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont. He solved the problem of controlling a large airship by designing a large rudder and a huge propeller.

Spotlights illuminate a Zeppelin bombarding London in 1916 during the First World War. German airships were the first bombers capable of carrying a large enough supply of bombs to cause significant destruction.

The first air passenger transportation was carried out in 1910 by the 148-meter Deutschland airship, followed by the 235-meter Graf Zeppelin, which carried passengers across the Atlantic Ocean at a speed of 130 km / h.

In the 30s. there were two serious accidents, as a result of which many passengers died. First there was the crash of the British airship R-101. A few years later, the Hindenburg zeppelin suffered the same fate when, as it approached the landing site, the hydrogen filling the Hindenburg shell ignited and exploded. These events marked the end of the era of hydrogen airships.

After World War II, there was a brief resurgence of interest in airships filled with non-flammable helium. The US Army used them to patrol coastal waters. There were plans for cargo airships, but that role was taken over by helicopters.

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

The airship is characterized by a large carrying capacity, flight range, the possibility of vertical takeoff and landing, free drift in the atmosphere under the influence of air currents, and a long hover over a given place. It is attached to the lower part of the hull (sometimes several gondolas), in which the control cabin, rooms for passengers and crew, fuel and various equipment are located. Airships usually fly at an altitude of up to 3000 m, in individual cases- up to 6000 m. The takeoff of the airship occurs as a result of the release of ballast, and the descent - due to the partial release of lifting gas. In parking lots, they are attached to special mooring masts or driven into for storage and maintenance. Airship frames are usually assembled from flat triangular or polyhedral trusses; it can be fabric (impregnated for gas tightness) or from a polymer film, or typed from thin metal sheets or plastic panels. The external volume of the airship (body) is up to 250 thousand m3, the length is up to 250 m, the diameter is up to 42 m.

The first draft of a controlled balloon was proposed in 1784 by J. Meunier (France). But only in 1852, the Frenchman A. Giffard, for the first time in the world, made on an airship of his own design with a steam engine that rotated. In 1883, G. Tissandier and his brother built an airship with a 1.1 kW electric motor, which received current from galvanic batteries. From con. 19th century up until the early 1990s. airships were built in Germany, France, USA, Great Britain, USSR. The largest airships LZ-129 and LZ-130 were created in Germany in 1936 and 1938. They had a volume of 217 thousand m³, four engines with a total capacity of 3240 and 3090 kW, developed a speed of up to 150 km / h and could carry up to 50 passengers over a distance of 16 thousand km.

Encyclopedia "Technology". - M.: Rosman. 2006 .

Airship

Aviation: Encyclopedia. - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia. Chief Editor G.P. Svishchev. 1994 .

See what "airship" is in other dictionaries:

AIRSHIP A lighter-than-air aircraft equipped with an engine and a motion control system. A rigid airship, or zeppelin, has an internal frame of struts on which a fabric or aluminum alloy shell is fixed. lifting… … Scientific and technical encyclopedic dictionary

airship- I, m. dirigeable m. 1. air. An aeronautical apparatus lighter than air, equipped with engines and propellers, a controlled balloon. Ush. 1934. The first aeronate, which managed to be controlled in the air, received the title of an airship .., not at all due to ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

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

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

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

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

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

AIRSHIP, airship, husband. (French dirigeable, lit. controlled) (aviation). An aeronautical apparatus lighter than air, equipped with engines and propellers, a controlled balloon. Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

AIRSHIP, me, husband. A cigar-shaped controlled balloon equipped with engines. | adj. dirigible, oh, oh. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

airship- A balloon moving in the atmosphere with the help of power plant and controlled in altitude, direction, speed, range and flight duration. [FAR dated March 31, 2002] Aviation regulations topics… Technical Translator's Handbook

Then we will not dwell on our country in detail here. Read it to anyone who is interested. Let's take a look at world development this aircraft.

An airship (from 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 flow.

250 years before our era, the great Archimedes opened the way to flying on balloons. But only in the second half of the 17th century was it possible to create a balloon suitable for practical use. An apparatus lighter than air, moving in the air ocean at the behest of the wind and air currents, was called a balloon. It is maintained in the air due to the lifting force of the gas enclosed in its shell.

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

Drawings of aerostatic launches in France

The French Academy of Sciences decided to repeat the experience of the Montgolfier brothers in Paris. The preparation for it was entrusted to the physicist Charles. He did not use hot air to fill the balloon, but hydrogen discovered in 1766, which had a low specific gravity. On August 27, 1783, the launch took place on the Champ de Mars in Paris, the Ball quickly gained altitude and disappeared from sight. After flying 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 - charliers.

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

Airship Meunier 1784.

As time went on, balloons improved, allowing more and more complex flights to be made. In early January 1785, the Frenchman Blanchard and the Englishman Jeffreys flew from Dover to Calais on a charter. Having conquered the Pas de Calais in 2.5 hours, they were the first to make an air journey between island England and continental Europe.

The Russian ambassador to France, Prince Baryatinsky, regularly informed Empress Catherine II about 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 me to tell him that "...here they do not do this or other similar aeronautics, and all sorts of experiments like that, as if fruitless and unnecessary, are completely difficult for us." Such a view of the royal person on aeronautics led to the fact that the Russians first saw a flight in a balloon only in the next century.

On June 20, 1803, 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 St. Petersburg. 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, and astronomical observations.

The inventor of the airship is Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meunier. Meunier's airship was to be made in the shape of an ellipsoid. Handling was to be carried out with the help of three propellers, manually rotated by the efforts of 80 people. By changing the volume of gas in the balloon by using a balloonet, it was possible to adjust the flight altitude of the airship, and therefore he proposed two shells - the outer main and the inner.

Giffard's airship, 1852

The steam-powered airship designed by Henri Giffard, who borrowed these ideas from Meunier more than half a century later, did not make its first flight until 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 absence at that time of engines for an aerostatic aircraft. The next technological breakthrough came in 1884, when the first fully controlled free flight was made in the electric-powered French military airship La France by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs. The length of the airship was 52 m, the volume was 1900 m³, in 23 minutes a distance of 8 km was covered using an 8.5 hp engine.

It had a volume of 2500 cubic meters. m., was equipped with a 3 hp steam engine. With. and developed a speed of about 10 km / h. The steam engines of those years had low power with a large mass and were unsuitable for practical use on aircraft. On the first flight, Giffard was unable to return to the launch site. The strength of the wind exceeded the modest capabilities of its engine! The heyday of the airship industry began with the advent of reliable, light and sufficiently powerful internal combustion engines and fell on the beginning of our century.

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 apparatus number 6. Then this was considered an eccentricity, but later the airship became one of the most advanced for several decades Vehicle. At the same time that soft airships began to gain popularity, the development of rigid airships also did not stand still: later they were able to carry more cargo than airplanes, and this situation remained for many decades. The design of such airships and its development are associated with the German count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

The development of airships went in three constructive directions: soft, semi-rigid, rigid.

In soft airships, the hull is a shell made of fabric with low gas permeability. The constancy of the shape of the shell is achieved by the excess pressure of the gas that fills it and creates lift, as well as ballonets, which are soft air containers located inside the case. With the help of a system of valves that allow either to pump air into the balloonets or bleed it into the atmosphere, a constant overpressure is maintained inside the case. If this were not the case, then the gas inside the shell under the influence of external factors - changes in atmospheric pressure during the ascent or descent of the airship, ambient temperature - would change its volume. A decrease in the volume of gas leads to the fact that the body loses its shape. It usually ends in disaster.

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

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

The soft scheme limits the size of the airship, which, however, makes assembly, disassembly and transport operations relatively easy.

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

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

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

The semi-rigid scheme was developed by the French engineer Juyo, the manager of the sugar factories of the Lebody brothers. 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 a "swan". The first flight of the airship took place on November 13, 1902.

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

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

The mass construction and diverse use of airships was taken up by a German aristocrat and a professional military man. Ferdinand von Zeppelin. While in the United States during the Civil War, he became interested in reconnaissance balloons used by both sides, and, returning to his homeland, began to promote the idea of ​​​​a balloon fleet in the German army. However, his developments did not find understanding among the command, and in 1890 the count, whose rationalization enthusiasm for many years had tired the higher ranks, was dismissed from the army with the rank of lieutenant general upon reaching retirement age.

But Zeppelin did not even think of giving up. Returning to the places of his childhood - on the shores of Lake Constance - he eagerly began to spend the family's money on the creation of the production of airships. Eight years of work were crowned with 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 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 gas was placed in gas-tight cylinders) and was driven by two Daimler engines with a power of 14.5 hp. The airship was piloted personally by the count. After many improvements and improvements by 1906, he managed to create a completely functional model airship LZ2, and in 1908 and LZ4, on which the seventy-year-old aristocrat stayed in the air for 8 hours, flying to neighboring Switzerland.

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

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

From the beginning of the First World War, the airship fleet was actively used by the Germans for reconnaissance, propaganda, and even for the bombing of 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 a height inaccessible to aviation and artillery and unleash tons of bombs on the enemy is a powerful deterrent factor.

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

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

As it often happens, the new achievement of engineering thought did not primarily serve the flourishing of culture, but directly opposite goals. For the first time in combat, airships were used by the Italians in 1911-1912. during the war with Turkey. With their help, reconnaissance operations were carried out and bombing strikes were carried out. During the First World War, Germany was the undisputed leader in the field of airship building. 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 were zeppelins 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 German zeppelins. Of the 75 warships lost during the war years as a result of hostilities, 52 were destroyed with a crew of 19, 33 due to shelling or accidents were captured by the British after landing. By the end of the war, Germany had only 7 airships left. The Germans made extensive use of zeppelins to bomb England. The first raid took place on January 15, 1915. According to the directive of the command, the airships should start bombing from Buckingham Palace and government residences, then there was a turn 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 50 kg bombs, 2 100 kg bombs and 2 300 kg bombs. 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 English planes over the sea at once. 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 ever-increasing defensive measures of the enemy, zeppelins for the front were built in two sizes, such as "L 50" and "L 70".

Main distinctive features"L 50" were: five engines, each 260 hp, which could develop sufficient speed even in rarefied high atmospheric layers; four propellers (two rear engines 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 team of 21 people, 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 20 mm cannons. The ammunition consisted of incendiary bombs weighing 11.4 kg, and high-explosive fragmentation bombs weighing 50, 100, and 300 kg each.

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.

Airship bases were placed as close as possible to the coast, 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). The Hage base, south of Norderney, was abandoned.

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

In peacetime, the achievements of airship building continued to amaze the world. In 1928, the LZ-127 zeppelin flew to the USA via the Atlantic, and in next year with three landings, he circled the globe. These successes attracted the attention of the Soviet public to the issues of airship building. "Airship building boom" reached Moscow with the arrival of LZ-127 to the capital. In September 1930, he landed at the Central Airfield. Regarding this event, N. Alliluyeva wrote to I. Stalin, who was on vacation in the south: "All of us in Moscow were entertained by the arrival of a zeppelin, the spectacle was really worthy of attention. All of Moscow looked at this wonderful machine." The arrival of the LZ-127 left such a deep impression on our society that in 1991, on the occasion of 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 backdrop of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin died in 1917, and Hugo Eckener, former press officer, took over his firm. Although, under post-war agreements, Germany was forbidden to have aircrafts dual-purpose, Eckener managed to persuade the authorities to build a transatlantic giant rigid airship on helium. By 1924, the LZ126 had arrived. It is curious that it was transferred to the United States as reparations and under the name "Los Angeles" was in service with the US Navy.

By that time, the British airship R-34 had already flown over the Atlantic (in 1919), and the industrialized powers began to rapidly grow in airship building. used as a mooring mast. The 102nd floor of this building was originally a mooring platform with a gangway for climbing to the airship. The popularity of airships was even reflected in one of Steven Spielberg's films about the adventures of Indiana Jones, in one of which the hero of Harrison Ford and his father, performed by Sean O'Connery, fly on a zeppelin. But the giants of the giants were the creations of the same Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH The first of them, the Graf Zeppelin airship (LZ127), built for the 90th anniversary of its “father”, began transatlantic flights in September 1929. In the same year, LZ127, with three intermediate landings, made the legendary round-the-world flight, overcoming 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 honored with 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 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 for 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 flown 37 flights across the Atlantic Ocean, carrying about 3,000 people.

For about $400, Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg offered their passengers very comfortable conditions. Travelers were entitled to a separate cabin with a shower. It was possible to pass the time in flight by walking around the spacious glazed cabin, at the service of passengers - a restaurant with real tables, chairs, obligatory silver appliances and a piano (though slightly reduced in size). For smokers, a special room was equipped, finished with asbestos, where up to 24 people could smoke at the same time, using the only lighter on board. The rest of the flammable items were confiscated at the entrance to the board, 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 LZ 129 Hindenburg zeppelin took about five years.

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

The giant waterfowl was staggering in its scale: 245 meters long and 41.2 meters in diameter.

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

The speed of the airship at 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 lounge, a reading room and a smoking room.

Most of the metal elements were made of aluminium. Even the piano.

At that time, "Hindenburg" became the champion, having overcome the path from Europe to America in 43 hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War According to some sources, four airships were used in support of hostilities - "USSR V-1", "USSR V-12", "Kid" and "Victory". One of their most important tasks was the transportation of hydrogen for refueling barrage balloons. One departure of an 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 cargoes. In total, during the years of World War II, Soviet airships performed more than 1,500 flights. And in the Soviet Union in 1945, a special aeronautical detachment was organized on the Black Sea to search for mines and sunken ships. For this purpose, in September 1945, the same Pobeda flew from Moscow to Sevastopol, with which observers happened to find mines even after repeated sweeping of the bay.

Projects using airships periodically appear in different countries so far. For example, Aerocraft from NASA is an airship that can float on the surface of the water. It is assumed that Aerocraft will fly mainly over the ocean, carrying cargo and passengers faster than ships 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, presented in three modifications of SkyCat with a carrying capacity of 15, 200 and even 1000 tons. There are also developments of the Swiss Prospective Concepts AG. The case of Count von Zeppelin lives on. Even though he hasn't won yet.