In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers first tested balloons. And soon their pilots began to notice the most obvious shortcomings of these aircraft. The main drawback was complete uncontrollability - after all, the balloons flew only in the direction in which the wind carried them. It is not surprising that almost immediately after the first experiments in aeronautics, other inventors appeared who sought to correct this imperfection. As a result, a few years after the balloons, airships appeared in the skies over Europe (from the French word dirigeable - "controlled").
Eighty soldier forces
The officer of the French Rhineland Army Jean Baptiste Meunier was familiar with the invention of the Montgolfier brothers and understood its importance for military affairs. During 1792, at the suggestion of Meunier, a balloon was built in the location of the army, in the design of which he made significant improvements. In particular, three propellers were installed in the hot air balloon basket, which were set in motion by the forces of soldiers. After the balloon took off over the field, and the "living engine" set the propellers in action, the aeronautical apparatus began to move quite briskly in the air in different directions above the crowd of enthusiastic spectators. Subsequently, the inventor introduced horizontal rudders and a double shell in new designs, thanks to which the device could change the flight altitude. For his services to the French army in May 1793, Meunier was promoted to divisional general, but during the siege of Mainz he was seriously wounded and soon died. At that time no one continued Meunier's experiments in aeronautics.
Steam and electric apparatus
The main difference between an airship and a balloon is the presence of a power plant, which directs the device in the desired direction. Although the steam engines of James Watt and Oliver Evans already existed at the end of the 18th century, at that time they were bulky, multi-ton machines, unsuitable for installation on aircraft. Only in 1852, another Frenchman, Henri Giffard, managed to create such a compact design of a steam engine that with its help they were able to lift a fully operational airship into the air. However, the era of steam in the air was short-lived: in 1884, inventors Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs installed an electric motor on a lighter-than-air apparatus and managed to fly 8 kilometers on it in just 23 minutes. But even this design turned out to be ineffective, since electric batteries weighed the same as a steam engine. Therefore, regular controlled flights on motorized aircraft became possible only after the advent of the internal combustion engine. It was on such an airship that on October 19, 1901, the French balloonist Alberto Santos-Dumont at a speed of just over 20 km / h for the first time managed to fly around the Eiffel Tower.
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War is like war
The real military use of airships began in Germany, when Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin interested the government of the country with devices of his own design. Zeppelin's first experiments in the construction of airships date back to 1899, and on November 16, 1909, on the basis of the airships he created, the world's first airline DELAG (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft, or the German joint-stock company Aircraft Flights) was formed.). The payload of the military zeppelin included 10-kilogram bombs and grenades with a total weight of 500 kilograms, as well as radiotelegraph equipment. 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. During the First World War, zeppelins at a speed of 80-90 km / h easily covered long distances in order to drop several tons of bombs on a target. So, on August 14, 1914, as a result of the raid of just one German airship on Antwerp, 60 houses were completely destroyed, and another 900 were damaged. However, the airships were filled with extremely flammable hydrogen, and therefore, when the airplanes attacked, they instantly turned into huge flaming torches. By September 1914, the Germans had lost four zeppelins and were forced to almost completely abandon their use in combat conditions. However, the airships were filled with extremely flammable hydrogen, and therefore, when the airplanes attacked, they instantly turned into huge flaming torches. By September 1914, the Germans had lost four zeppelins and were forced to almost completely abandon their use in combat conditions. However, the airships were filled with extremely flammable hydrogen, and therefore, when the airplanes attacked, they instantly turned into huge flaming torches. By September 1914, the Germans had lost four zeppelins and were forced to almost completely abandon their use in combat conditions.
A stone's throw across the ocean
The golden age of airships came shortly after the end of the First World War, when their construction for transcontinental transport began in the USA, France, Italy, Germany and other countries. The first lighter-than-air vehicle to cross the Atlantic was the British airship R34, which flew from the north of Scotland to New York and back in July 1919.
In 1926, a joint Norwegian-Italian-American expedition led by Roald Amundsen aboard the Norway airship, designed by Umberto Nobile, made the first transarctic flight from the Spitsbergen Islands across the North Pole to Alaska. And in 1929, the improved apparatus of the indefatigable Count Zeppelin with three intermediate landings made the world's first round-the-world flight. In just 20 days with an average flight speed of about 115 km / h, he managed to overcome more than 34 thousand kilometers.
The Soviet Union did not lag behind world trends, where in 1923 a specialized organization "Dirigiblestroy" was created. In 1937, the largest Soviet lighter-than-air vehicle "USSR-B6" with a volume of 18,500 cubic meters, created by her, set a world record for flight duration - 130 hours 27 minutes.
Aeronauts on an ice floe
But at the end of the 1930s, the era of airships came to an end. However, the first alarm bell sounded back on July 21, 1919 in Chicago, when 12 civilians were killed in a sudden fire of an aircraft filled with hydrogen. Then in 1928, the whole world plunged into mourning in connection with the disaster of the airship "Italia", which was flown by the famous polar explorer Umberto Nobile. The aircraft took off on May 23 from West Spitsbergen towards the North Pole, which, with a favorable wind, it reached at midnight. But on the way back, the apparatus became heavy due to icing and eventually hit the ice. Of the 16 people on board the "Italia" at the time of the crash, only six survived, including Umberto Nobile. The aeronauts on the ice were able to turn on the radio and broadcast distress signals. On June 3, one of them was caught by a radio amateur from the village of Vokhma, Kostroma region, Nikolai Schmidt, and sent a message about this to the USSR government.
Several groups from different countries went to rescue Nobile's expedition, including the famous polar explorer Roald Amundsen. However, he went missing on June 18, after flying from Svalbard by seaplane. And the aeronauts in distress were taken from the polar ice floe by the Soviet icebreaker "Krasin", which approached the site of the tragedy on July 12.
The death of "Hindenburg"
But the biggest disaster happened on May 6, 1937 in New Jersey, USA, when the German airship Hindenburg, then the largest in the world, crashed. The aircraft was commissioned just a year before the tragedy and immediately became a symbol of Nazi Germany.
On that sad day, 97 people were on board the Hindenburg: 36 crew members and 61 passengers. According to the official version, at this time, due to damage to the cylinders, a leak of hydrogen occurred in the fourth and fifth gas compartments, and due to atmospheric electrification, a spark slipped between the parts of the body and the shell, which ignited the air-hydrogen mixture. The huge airship completely burned up in just 34 seconds. The explosion was heard at a distance of 15 miles. As a result of the tragedy, 35 people on board the airship (13 passengers and 22 crew members) and one worker on the ground were killed, but 62 people still managed to escape.
The Hindenburg disaster marked the beginning of the end of the era of airships and forced engineers from all countries to completely abandon the use of lighter-than-air aircraft in the coming decades. In particular, the last Soviet airship was the USSR V-12 bis, built in 1947.
The airship is still alive
Despite the current dominance in the sky of aircraft heavier than air, the construction of airships in different parts of the world continues today. Such projects are being carried out in a number of European countries, in the USA, China, and also in Russia. Interest in these devices was renewed after the process of producing inert helium became relatively cheap, and this gas is now used in aeronautics instead of explosive hydrogen. But the sphere of modern use of airships is very limited: these are advertising and entertainment flights, traffic monitoring, and in some cases they are acquired by geological and navigation services.
Valery EROFEEV