A Brief History of Airships
A history of airship economics and design, the challenges of relying on lighter-than-air flight, and how it can all be overcome in the future.
Written December 2023
I have been obsessed with airship history for years at this point. This is legitimately one of my favorite topics to talk about.
To start, I’ve always resonated with the idea that the future should look like what we think the future is. Humans should do things that inspire, where everyone can see the incredible potential of human innovation on display. Airships are a good example of this idea. They have always captured our imagination. They are in many science fiction novels, comics and movies, and are often a key aspect in how those future worlds operate.
A world where lighter than air travel is something we all wish would come into reality, my obsession is just further aspect of that.
So, let's go over bit of airship history, shall we?
The idea of lighter-than-air dirigibles began in principle. Throughout the 13-17th centuries, humans fully figured out the principles of buoyancy, thanks in part to thinkers like Francesco Lana de Terzi, The Montgolfier brothers, Jacques Charles, even Leonardo da Vinci, and began experimenting and developing lighter than air technology.
We realized that displacing water is similar to displacing air. We began experimenting, building balloons out of hydrogen and silk in the late 18th century. Overtime, we built bigger balloons and attached animals to them, including sheep and birds to these balloons, before working up the courage to get on one and fly around. The hobby of ballooning soon quickly spread around Europe, mainly in France, England, and Germany.
Over time, the idea of controlling these balloons became more popular, and we built various spheroid balloons with rudders and a structure, later called dirigibles.
The 19th century came around, and a design (rigid structure with an attached undercarriage) became more refined. Steam engines with wooden propellers were rigged to the airships, then eventually lighter combustion engines were rigged up.
The airship industry began picking up in the late 19th century, still mainly in France and Germany, where it began. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin drove this industry in large part by going all-in, draining his personal funds and mortgaging his house, but also by getting money from public donations and later funding from the German government for developing war airships. His grand vision for the industry before the war was fast passenger and mail transport throughout Europe and overseas to the Americas.
The first German passenger airship company, DELAG, had a few operational ships, but they were very unreliable and high maintenance. When the war started, Germany repurposed them for military exercises. When the war was over, Airships were banned in Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.
The Italians and French built rudimentary airships for the war as well, mainly for scouting and communication.
The bombing capabilities of these airships were awful. They were hard to navigate, and bombs were hand-pushed out of the storage area. They were slow, vulnerable, and easy targets for anti-aircraft fire.
There were actually a couple bombing campaigns where airships were involved. During World War I, hydrogen airships crossed the English Channel and lobbed bombs at Britain, causing minimal damage. Many ships either crashed or were destroyed by ground anti-aircraft fire.
The lack of good military use cases resulted in a drop in funding from all governments involved, which contributed heavily to the airship’s demise.
In the end, the three main reasons airships failed was they were too unreliable, too expensive, and too unsafe. I’ll give a brief summary of each one.
Too Unreliable
Wrecking airships is way too easy. All you need is an unusual rough patch of air to cause insane turbulence. If caught in a storm, the airship becomes totally uncontrollable. Mooring airships required a massive field, where the airship had 360 degrees of maneuverability because it needs to face whichever way the wind was blowing. Even a mild breeze would severely affect the ship's ability to take off.
By contrast, planes could take off in pretty nasty weather. They could handle very rough patches of air and were much more maneuverable.
Airships could easily be blown off course, and colliding with any object was often catastrophic. They couldn't even rest on their own frame.
Too Expensive
The operating expense of these airships was way too high, mainly because of lifting gas, but also building and constantly maintaining the ship.
There are just two lifting gases viable for any pressurized airship: hydrogen or helium.
Hydrogen was initially used because it was relatively inexpensive and easy to produce. The problem, of course, is that hydrogen gas is extremely flammable. Just one static electric spark could equal disaster.
The other option is helium. Helium is a noble gas, so it is not reactive at all and poses virtually zero risk of fire. The trade-off is the expense. Helium is only found in certain natural gas deposits and was very hard (and expensive) to obtain in large quantities. The U.S. monopolized helium production at the time and forced Germany to use hydrogen, but it was still expensive to produce either way.
The Famous Hindenburg was originally built to be a helium powered airship, but because of the ban on helium, they were forced to use hydrogen instead.
Airships require a constant supply of lifting gas. In order to raise and lower their altitude, airships need to either dump ballast (water) to go up, or vent lifting gas (hydrogen or helium) to go down. Changes in temperature, weather, altitude, fuel consumption, and any other change in the mass of the ship requires constant adjustment by either dumping ballast or venting gas.
In a typical flight over the Atlantic, passenger airships like the Hindenburg might vent upwards of 1.4 million cubic feet of hydrogen during an ocean crossing.
Airships like the USS Los Angeles would vent up to 400,000 cubic feet of helium on a long flight, which significantly added to the cost of each flight.
The other expense, of course, was that the ships themselves were very expensive to build, and they required constant maintenance. Operating costs were always too high for a profitable, reliable business.
Too Unsafe
The biggest problem of all was safety.
Airships crashed. A lot. Weight is the most important thing on an airship, and that heavily affected the design quality of these ships. The structure was simply way too weak.
People mistakenly claim that the Hindenburg crash was what killed the airship industry. This is not the case. Although it was dramatic, and one of the later crashes, it was by far not the worst airship crash.
(Side note: There is an actual live radio recording of the crash, with the host crying and saying, "Oh, the humanity!" It's quite something. See link.)
I've put together a list of airship crashes in order of the number of fatalities so you can get a sense of the fatality numbers.
USS Akron (ZRS-4) – 73 fatalities
R101 – 48 fatalities
R38/ZR-2 – 44 fatalities
Hindenburg (LZ 129) – 36 fatalities
LZ 18 (L 2) – 28 fatalities
LZ 104 (L 59) – 23 fatalities
LZ 54 (L 19) – 16 fatalities
LZ 14 (L 1) – 14 fatalities
USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) – 14 fatalities
While I'm at it, I might as well list all the notable airships that crashed.
LZ means it's a German ship, R means British, and USS means American.
The reasons they crashed are always pretty interesting.
Pay attention to the circumstances of each crash, and see if you notice a pattern.
1. LZ 4
Year: 1908
Date: August 5, 1908
Circumstances: After a long endurance flight, LZ 4 was forced to land due to engine trouble. While moored for repairs, a storm tore it from its moorings, and it was destroyed in a fire after the hydrogen ignited. No fatalities.
(Side note: When LZ 4 burned, a very inspiring public fundraising event resulted in over 6 million marks donated to Zeppelin to continue his airship development. If this movement to support his work hadn't happened, Zeppelin likely would have run out of money to build another ship.)
2. LZ 5
Year: 1910
Date: April 25, 1910
Circumstances: Crashed due to strong winds near Weilburg, Germany, while returning from a military exercise. One crew member died, making it one of the first airship fatalities.
3. LZ 7 (Deutschland)
Year: 1910
Date: June 28, 1910
Circumstances: Crashed into the Teutoburg Forest due to strong winds while on a passenger flight. All 23 onboard survived, but the crash damaged public confidence in airship safety.
4. LZ 14 (L 1)
Year: 1913
Date: September 9, 1913
Circumstances: Caught in a storm and crashed into the North Sea. Most of the crew drowned after the airship was forced to ditch. 14 fatalities.
5. LZ 18 (L 2)
Year: 1913
Date: October 17, 1913
Circumstances: Exploded during a test flight near Johannisthal, Germany, due to a hydrogen fire. All 28 onboard were killed.
6. LZ 54 (L 19)
Year: 1916
Date: January 31, 1916
Circumstances: Damaged by anti-aircraft fire during a bombing raid over the UK in World War I, the airship ditched in the North Sea. The crew survived the crash but were left to die by a passing British ship. 16 fatalities.
7. LZ 85
Year: 1916
Date: April 4, 1916
Circumstances: Shot down by British forces over Salonika, Greece, during World War I. The crew survived, but the airship was lost.
8. LZ 76 (L 33)
Year: 1916
Date: July 1916
Circumstances: Shot down over Essex, United Kingdom, during World War I. The crew survived and were captured, but the airship was lost.
9. LZ 104 (L 59)
Year: 1917
Date: November 23, 1917
Circumstances: Disappeared during a mission to supply German troops in Africa. Likely lost in a storm over the Mediterranean Sea. All 23 crew members died.
10. R38/ZR-2
Year: 1921
Date: August 24, 1921
Circumstances: The airship suffered a structural failure during a test flight over the Humber Estuary, UK. It broke apart in mid-air, resulting in a hydrogen fire. 44 fatalities.
11. R34
Year: 1921
Date: January 1921
Circumstances: Damaged in a storm while moored in Howden, UK. Although there were no fatalities, the damage was so severe that the airship was scrapped.
12. USS Shenandoah (ZR-1)
Year: 1925
Date: September 3, 1925
Circumstances: Torn apart by a violent thunderstorm over Ohio, USA. The airship broke into multiple sections, causing 14 fatalities. Some crew members survived by riding parts of the wreckage to the ground.
13. R101
Year: 1930
Date: October 5, 1930
Circumstances: Crashed near Beauvais, France, due to bad weather and structural weaknesses on its maiden voyage to India. The airship caught fire on impact, killing 48 of the 54 onboard.
14. USS Akron (ZRS-4)
Year: 1933
Date: April 4, 1933
Circumstances: Caught in a severe storm off the coast of New Jersey, USA. The helium-filled airship was blown into the sea, resulting in 73 fatalities, the deadliest airship disaster in history.
15. Hindenburg (LZ 129)
Year: 1937
Date: May 6, 1937
Circumstances: The hydrogen-filled Hindenburg caught fire while attempting to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey. The cause of the fire is debated, but the airship was destroyed in just 34 seconds. 36 people died, including passengers, crew, and one ground worker.
16. LZ 104 (Graf Zeppelin)
Year: 1931
Date: July 1931
Circumstances: Disappeared during a military mission over the Mediterranean Sea. All 23 crew members perished.
If you haven't noticed by now, the primary reasons most airships were destroyed were weather-related incidents, followed by hydrogen explosions, then gear or structure failure, or shot down in war.
It's important to understand that when considering the future of the lighter-than-air industry, all of these failure points need to be addressed in order to make airships viable again.
Now that we've covered a brief history, I will list some questions that need to be addressed to revitalize the airship industry. I still don’t know the answers to some of these, although I believe they all have answers. Solving these problems is integral to starting any kind of airship business, that is reliably profitable.
Weather-Related Questions:
How do you construct an airship that is manageable both in flight and while stationary on the ground?
How do you make storm pressure differences and turbulence manageable?
How do you avoid bad storms?
How do you prevent ice or sleet from building up?
How do you solve the ballast and venting problem while in a storm?
How do you make an emergency landing if needed? (Past airships literally couldn't land without infrastructure and a ground crew ready.)
Safety-Related Questions:
What backups are present for when something goes wrong?
Should hydrogen be used?
How can you make the structure stronger so it doesn't crumple with a minor bump on the ground?
How do you make every ship completely reliable?
Cost-Related Questions:
How do you build reliable airships at a low cost?
What materials are viable to use?
What material should be used for the outer skin?
What material should be used for the inner gas bags?
What kind of engines should be used?
Will you use helium (high cost) or hydrogen (low cost)?
How do you eliminate the need to vent gas and dump ballast?
How do you make the ships good enough that no landing infrastructure is needed at all?