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Why the airship failed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

Peter W. Brooks
Peter W. Brooks*
Affiliation:
British Aircraft Corporation Ltd
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Extract

During the past few years there has been a surprising amount of discussion about the possibility of reviving airships. A number of schemes for new designs of rigid airship have been canvassed, all of them postulating important advances in lighter-than-air technology as compared with the ‘state-of-the-art’ at the time rigid airship development was abandoned just before the Second World War. Consideration of the factors responsible for the airship's failure may throw useful light on the validity of some of the assumptions made in recent proposals.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 79 , Issue 778 , October 1975 , pp. 439 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1975 

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References

Note

* Estimates suggest that rigids are between 25% and 35% structurally more efficient than equivalent pressure airships. Certainly, at least for capacities above about 25 000 m 3 and judging by the published empty weights of the large post Second World War blimps of the US Navy, the disposable load of a rigid is likely to be some 80% greater than that of a pressure airship of similar capacity.

With current “banana republic” inflation in UK and associated rapid decay in the value of the pound, sterling has become an unsatisfactory yardstick of historical costs. Values quoted in this paper have been left at the mid-1974 levels at which they were originally computed. They should be increased by about a third to bring them to late 1975 levels.

This paper–under the title “Airships–An Historical Appraisal”– was read to the Historical Group on 26th November, 1974. The discussion is partly based on information from the author's book Historic Airships published by Hugh Evelyn Ltd. in 1973. Paper No. 275.

* P. F. Myers: ‘Parametric Study of Dynamic Lift Aerostats for Future Naval Missions’. (See Wingfoot Lighter-than-Air Society Bulletin, Vol 15, No 9, pp 7, July/August, 1968.)