Rigid Airships

Early airships were all nonrigid, which meant that their balloons collapsed without gas inside. An all-metal airship, called Metallballon, was tried in Germany in 1897, but it flew only once.

The next big step forward in airship design came in 1900. German engineer Ferdinand von Zeppelin built a rigid air­ship that kept its shape with or without gas inside it. It had a strong internal frame, or skeleton, made of metal gird­ers and wires. A fabric skin stretched over the frame. Inside were gas bags, known as ballonets, that were filled with hydrogen gas to lift the airships, which soon became known as Zeppelins, into the air.

BLIMPS

The 1884 La France was not rigid; it was simply a bag of gas, like a balloon, with a cabin and engine fastened beneath. Without gas to inflate it, the airship became limp. In 1917, American sailors gave the nickname blimp, short for "B-limp," to the U. S. Navy’s B-class, nonrigid airships. The blimps were 160 feet (48.8 meters) long and had a speed of 45 miles per hour (72.4 kilometers per hour). The U. S. Navy continued to use blimps until the 1960s. Non­rigid airships are still called blimps. Modern blimps, usually carrying advertising logos, are sometimes seen flying over cities. These aircraft, because they can remain fairly still, also make useful platforms in the sky for television and film cameras. Blimps are popular, too, for tourist flights over city landmarks.

Zeppelin’s first rigid Luftschiff Zeppelin, LZ-1, flew well, and the Germans went on to build bigger rigid airships to carry passengers on regular flights. The Zeppelin Deutschland began the world’s first commercial airship pas­senger flights in 1909. It seemed that airships might dominate aviation.