The beginning of the twentieth century is a time of rapid technological development in almost all technical industries. There was a huge breakthrough: the first tanks, planes, submarines and airships appeared. If, for example, tanks and airplanes were just acquiring the necessary features and were more like children's crafts, then submarines and airships in their appearance have practically not changed over a hundred years. Submarine - this will be a separate interesting investigation, but I'll tell you about airships today.
Here is what is written about airships in the 1935 book “Airship Building Abroad”: “An airship capable of ultra-long-range flights is one of the most formidable weapons of our era, one of the means of struggle against the proletarian revolution. That is why the study of capitalist airship building is an urgent task for us. All this was written in 1935, when serious armed battles on fighters in the sky were already taking place.
Now let's compare the capabilities of two different types of aircraft from the beginning of the last century and see which type of aircraft should have received priority development due to its set of characteristics, such as reliability, cost of flight, cheap manufacturing and the possibility of building a huge number of such aircraft using well-known technologies and factories of the early twentieth century.
To compare the capabilities of an airplane and an airship of the early twentieth century, we have a very interesting historical fact: in 1913, the British newspaper Daily Mail established a special prize of ten thousand pounds for an air flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
The prize aroused great interest. Several aviation engineers began to make plans for its conquest, but the 1914 war forced the postponement of all plans for transatlantic flights. The First World War pushed back the plans for a flight across the ocean, but on the other hand, it was able to bring this flight closer in technical terms. During the First World War, aviation made a qualitative leap, turning from an exotic toy into a real combat force. Rag biplanes evolved into more reliable machines.
At the beginning of the First World War, no one except Russia had specialized bombers. Our engineer Igor Sikorsky did what the aviation community at the beginning of the century considered impossible at all: he placed four motors in one row on the wing of a huge aircraft. This will surprise no one today, but then skeptics argued that if at least one engine fails, a turning moment will arise that will certainly hold the plane. However, Igor Ivanovich not in vain served as the chief designer of the Russian-Baltic plant. He checked everything with calculations and was confident in his idea. As a result, on April 27, 1913, the Grant flew into the air - a huge biplane by the standards of wood-linen aviation, 20 meters long, it was first equipped with two and later four motors of one hundred horsepower each.
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Then a car of this size was associated exclusively with a sea vessel, so no one called it an airplane, but only an airship. After a number of improvements, the device received a new name - "Russian Knight".
On September 11, 1913, a small airplane flew over it, from which the engine came off. The pilot managed to safely plan to the airfield and land his plane, but the ill-fated engine fell on the left wing of the Vityaz, destroying it. To replace the dead giant in December, a new, more advanced military aircraft "Ilya Muromets" was built, which became the first in a series of such four-engine bombers of the Russian army.
The military, according to tradition, first appointed him a scout, and since he and the ship, albeit an air one, were also ranked among the Baltic fleet, having put floats instead of wheels. On December 21, 1914, all "Muromtsev" were brought together into a single unit, which received a completely naval name "squadron of air ships". This squadron became the world's first heavy bomber unit. Among the people, military planes were christened offensively unromantic - "flying whatnots".
During the First World War, 65 "Muromtsev" were built, which had some structural differences.
Machine guns of different systems could be installed on special racks, in addition, a cavalry carbine and light machine guns were often taken in flight to fire at an enemy fighter.
With the appearance of armed airplanes among the Germans and Austrians, attempts were made to shoot down the Muromtsev, which annoyed them, but it was not for nothing that the Kaiser's pilots called the large Russian airplanes "hedgehogs": only one "Muromets" was shot down throughout the war.
In the armies of the countries of the triple alliance, multi-engine bombers appeared only in 1916. They were German twin-engine "Goths". The backward air force of the United States did not manage to use its first twin-engine bomber "Helen Martin" in battle, which took off only in August 1918.
At the beginning of World War I, the backbone of Kaiser Wilhelm's air force was the combat airships of Count Zeppelin. A 140-meter cigar could fly at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour over a huge distance. England, separated by the strait, was quite within reach.
The airships had defensive machine-gun armament, and the rigid frame made them not too susceptible to shelling. At the beginning of the war, "zeppelins" were a threat to Europe. On August 14, 1914, only one such airship during the bombing of Antwerp completely destroyed sixty houses and damaged about nine hundred more.
However, in 1915 incendiary bullets were invented, immediately depriving the invulnerability of hydrogen-filled airships. After that, Count Zeppelin, together with a brigade of renowned German engineers, created in 1916 the world's largest wooden plane, the Zeppelin Staachen. The span of the upper wing of the biplane was 42 meters. This is almost 8 meters more than the Boeing 737. And all this was collected from sticks and rags. The aircraft weighed over 7 tons and could carry up to 2 tons of bombs at close range or 1200 kilograms of bombs at a full range of 800 kilometers.
Now let's go back to the first transatlantic flight.
After the first world, the design and production of airplanes ceased to be the lot of eccentric enthusiasts and became a powerful industry with serious engineering teams. In addition to the money - ten thousand pounds - the first transatlantic flight promised developers good advertising, so aircraft companies did not stand aside. In May 1919, pilot Hawker and navigator Gryph Mackenzie took off in the Sockwich Atlantic airplane. The attempt was unsuccessful: the plane fell into the ocean. The pilots were saved.
Around the same time, several US IMF flying boats flew from Newfoundland to Portugal via the Azores. The purpose of the flight was to practice flights over sea spaces. There was no record because the flight lasted 19 days and the planes had a large number of landings. On June 14, 1919, an aircraft built at the Vickers farm took off from a pasture near St. John's on Newfoundland.
The entire plane was made of wood, including the 3m propellers. This is a serial twin-engine bomber that did not have time to take part in the First World War. For the transatlantic flight, the plane was slightly modified: firstly, all military equipment was removed from it, additional fuel tanks were installed, the pilots sat side by side on a narrow wooden bench. The fuel supply for the transatlantic flight was 4000 liters. The next morning, June 15, 1919, a Vickers aircraft reached the coast of Ireland. In 15 hours 57 minutes, the plane covered 3000 kilometers, setting a world record. It was the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
The next most famous flight over the Atlantic was made by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. He took off from New York in a specially designed biplane and landed in Paris thirty-three and a half hours later.
In 1927, humans learned to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean.
It seems to be a huge achievement! Now let's look at the capabilities of airships built around the same period.
The airship LZ-127 "Graf Zeppelin" was built in Germany in 1928. Length 230 meters, diameter 30. The power plant consisted of five maybach motors with a capacity of 530 horsepower each. The engines were running on gas, and gasoline was taken on board as backup fuel. The payload of the airship was 25 tons, the cruising speed was 115 kilometers per hour, the flight range was 10 thousand kilometers, the crew was 40 people. From below, a front gondola was attached directly to the hull, the length of which was 40 meters, the width was 6 meters. In the front part there was a control room, behind it there were service and further passenger rooms. In terms of comfort, the Graf Zeppelin was significantly superior to the planes of those years. Passengers were accommodated in double cabins equipped with berths. In front of the passenger compartment there was a spacious wardroom,which could simultaneously accommodate 28 people. The kitchen was designed to serve more than 50 people for several days.
The Graf Zeppelin was the first airship to open passenger traffic across the Atlantic. The first flight to New York took place on October 11, 1928. The flight lasted one hundred and eleven hours. Onboard there were 40 crew members and 20 passengers. The return flight took only 71 hours 49 minutes.
In August 1929, the airship carried out the first round-the-world flight in the history of aeronautics. Starting at Leith Kirsty, the Graf Zeppelin covered over 30 thousand kilometers in 20 days at an average speed of 115 kilometers per hour, making only three intermediate landings. From May 18 to June 6, 1930, "Graf Zeppelin" made a circular flight to South and North America. In 1931, regular flights to Brazil began. On September 10, 1930, the "Graf Zeppelin" flew to Moscow, and on July 26, 1931, for scientific purposes, he flew over a large part of the Soviet Arctic, while producing detailed aerial photography.
For 9 years of operation, the "Graf Zeppelin" spent 17,200 hours in the air, having made 590 flights to different countries of the world, having covered almost one million seven hundred thousand kilometers, transported 13,110 passengers, while crossing the Atlantic Ocean 143 times and once - the Pacific Ocean.
In 1937, after the Hindenburg airship disaster, the regular flights of the Graf Zeppelin were discontinued. The end of German airship construction came at the beginning of the Second World War, when in the spring of 1940, by order of the German command, the Graf Zeppelin and Graf Zeppelin-2 airships, built in 1938, were dismantled.
On the example of Celleline-type airships, we see that the technologies that allowed transporting thousands of people and tens of tons of cargo for some reason stopped developing after 1937. When planes built of wood were just beginning to cross the Atlantic Ocean at great risk, the airship, based on technology from 1913, carried passengers across the Atlantic with ease.
Airships make almost non-stop round-the-world travel, the first intercontinental air passenger traffic is opened on airships. It was almost the ideal form of air travel. The first airships were filled with hydrogen, a seemingly highly explosive gas. But the "Graf Zeppelin" made 590 flights, and after that it did not burn, but was simply dismantled. At the same time, the airship Hindenburg, which took off in 1936, was designed to use helium as a carrier gas. But due to the US embargo, helium had to be replaced with hydrogen. It turns out that already in 1936, a completely safe airship was designed and built, which could make round-the-world travel, an ideal aircraft that was abandoned only because of one disaster. Planes crashed in the hundreds that year,but the world governments for some reason did not abandon the production of aircraft.
So why did they abandon the airships - practically the best aircraft of that time? We will not consider military action, since during the First World War it became clear that airships filled with hydrogen could not withstand incendiary bullets. I think that an airship filled with helium will be safer than an airplane under fire from incendiary shells.
Let's say airships are less effective during military operations. Why abandon the use of airships in peacetime? After all, this is a unique form of transport that does not require expensive runways. The airship can take off somewhere in the African desert and land somewhere in the Siberian tundra. No other form of air transport can do this. An airliner can fly the same distance, but for take-off and landing, it needs an equipped airfield. A modern helicopter can take off and land in any terrain, but it is limited in range.
So why did they abandon the very best air vehicle? There are many versions. The most common is that world governments are promoting gasoline technologies, and in order for the world to consume more gasoline, they abandoned electric cars at the beginning of the century, and then from airships, since airplanes consume more fuel and therefore bring more profit to oil companies. … But I totally disagree with that. The huge airship also consumes a very large amount of fuel. If tens of thousands of airships were flying in the sky, the demand for fuel would be the same as it is now. The ban on airships is not related to the policy of the oil lobby; airships are beneficial to it just like modern airliners. This means that the ban is connected with something else, and this is different - our freedom of movement.
If the development of airships had not been forcibly stopped in the forties, now any more or less wealthy person could buy an airship for the price of modern yachts and travel the world, regardless of the borders and the presence of modern airports. You can, of course, buy a private jet now, but it will not give the freedom of travel that an airship will give. A modern jet plane can be transported from one continent to another, but you will have to take off from an equipped airport and land at the airport too. You can buy a small or medium helicopter and land anywhere, but here we have another problem: a limitation on the travel distance.
Probably, in the forties of the last century, the authorities for some reason were afraid that people would be able to inspect distant territories on their own and uncontrollably. They probably had something to hide.
Perhaps the world that we see on maps is not quite the same as in reality. I am not saying that the earth is flat, I don’t know what it is. But even on a round land, the authorities are hiding something from us. Take the same Australian fences, which stretch for thousands of kilometers and, according to the official version, prevent the migration of rabbits. Or, for example, the territory near the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. Antarctica is also very interesting. If the development of airships had not been banned, tens of thousands of people could have visited these lands in the middle of the twentieth century. After all, then there were no such powerful border cordons equipped with modern radars. Now, even on an airship, they will not be allowed to inspect the shores of Antarctica, but in the 40s there was still a chance for this. I think that in the forties, they deliberately limited the ability of ordinary people to explore certain territories. Now,when the world is under the sight of thousands of radars, airships begin to build again, because anyway any object in the sky is controlled by the authorities, and even the best airship will not get away from the rocket!
