The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread to discuss the "history of airships and balloons"
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Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine: The Great Zeppelin and the Dawn of Air Travel

by Douglas Botting (no photo)

Synopsis:

It wasn't the airplane that first romanced the public's imagination at the dawn of the twentieth century, but the great airships known as dirigibles, or zeppelins. Championing this great leap into the technological future was a visionary German entrepreneur, Dr. Hugo Eckener.

For Eckener, the development of the airship, especially coming in the aftermath of the First World War, represented an opportunity to shrink the world through safe and speedy international travel. Douglas Botting's engrossing story vividly recaptures the spirit of the times, when new technologies in communication, transportation, manufacturing, and other areas were revolutionizing society. The airship reached its apotheosis with the round-the-world flight of the Graf Zeppelin in 1929. They were a source of wonder wherever they flew, and Eckener was likened to Christopher Columbus, hailed around the world as the great explorer of his day.

One of the most famous radio broadcasts in history is that of Herb Morrison who was in Lakehurst, NJ reporting on the docking of the dirigible the Hindenburg when the unthinkable happened. Listen to Morrison trying to keep his head and report what was happening in front of his eyes. "Oh, the humanity".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIexQD...

A book which explains the crash of the world's most famous airship, as shown in comment #6 above.

The Hindenburg

by Patrick O'Brien (no photo)

Synopsis:

A dramatic, vividly illustrated look at the tragic ship whose fiery crash ended the age of the dirigible.Like a fabulous silvery fish, floating quietly in the ocean of air .... it seemed to be coming from another world and to be returning there like a dream.On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg, the largest and fastest airship ever built, exploded in a tremendous ball of fire as it came to land in Lakehurst, New Jersey. It was one of the most spectacular disasters of the twentieth century, and in a single moment ended the era of the majestic dirigible airships.For thirty-seven years before the Hindenburg tragedy, the gigantic airships of the Zeppelin Company captivated the world as they carried thousands of passengers on luxurious transatlantic voyages. Some dreamed that the steerable, gas-filled "zeppelins," invented three years before the airplane, would fill the skies as the unrivaled way to travel over the ocean. That dream ended with the Hindenburg.Readers of all ages will enjoy this fascinating look at the Hindenburg and the magical age of the Zeppelin airships

These beautiful air ships were commonplace in the skies during the late 1920s and early 30s.

Zeppelins: German Airships 1900-1940

by Charles Stephenson (no photo)

Synopsis:

On 2 July 1900 the people of Friedrichshafen, Germany, witnessed a momentous occasion - the first flight of LZ 1, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's first airship. Although deemed a failure, a succession of better craft (LZ2 to 10) enabled the Zeppelin to expand into the consumer market of airship travel, whilst also providing military craft for the German Army and Navy. The years of the Great War saw the Zeppelins undertake strategic bombing missions against Great Britain. This title covers the post-war fate of the Zeppelins, including the crash of the Hindenburg, and their use by the Luftwaffe at the beginning of World War II.

A little known episode in WWI. Thanks to Jerome, one of our moderators, for the recommendation.

The First Blitz 1917-1918: The German Air Campaign Against Britain

by Andrew Hyde (no photo)

Synopsis:

Britain under German bombardment is a topic associated with World War II, but in fact the Germans launched major bombing raids against populated areas of the United Kingdom in World War I, all the more terrifying because they were the first of their kind.Zeppelins launched scattered raids even in the first months of the war. The years 1917-1918 saw a more concerted effort with improved dirigibles and large biplane bombers. Pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service took to the skies for nightmarish battles against the attackers with primitive weapons and navigational aids. This is the most detailed account of this air campaign ever written, containing much previously unknown information.

It is an iconic sight, especially in the sky over football games. Follow this link to find out more about the famous Goodyear blimp.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/31/travel/...

Dirigible Dreams: The Age of the Airship

by C. Michael Hiam (no photo)

Synopsis:

Here is the story of airships—manmade flying machines without wings—from their earliest beginnings to the modern era of blimps. In postcards and advertisements, the sleek, silver, cigar-shaped airships, or dirigibles, were the embodiment of futuristic visions of air travel. They immediately captivated the imaginations of people worldwide, but in less than fifty years dirigible became a byword for doomed futurism, an Icarian figure of industrial hubris. Dirigible Dreams looks back on this bygone era, when the future of exploration, commercial travel, and warfare largely involved the prospect of wingless flight.

In Dirigible Dreams C. Michael Hiam celebrates the legendary figures of this promising technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—the pioneering aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, the doomed polar explorers S. A. Andrée and Walter Wellman, and the great Prussian inventor and promoter Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, among other pivotal figures—and recounts fascinating stories of exploration, transatlantic journeys, and floating armadas that rained death during World War I. While there were triumphs, such as the polar flight of the Norge, most of these tales are of disaster and woe, culminating in perhaps the most famous disaster of all time, the crash of the Hindenburg.

This story of daring men and their flying machines, dreamers and adventurers who pushed modern technology to—and often beyond—its limitations, is an informative and exciting mix of history, technology, awe-inspiring exploits, and warfare that will captivate readers with its depiction of a lost golden age of air travel. Readable and authoritative, enlivened by colorful characters and nail-biting drama, Dirigible Dreams will appeal to a new generation of general readers and scholars interested in the origins of modern aviation.

A joy to behold.....a group of hot air balloons quietly floating overhead.

Images of Hot Air Balloons: Flights of Fancy and Fantasy

by Ailsa Spindler(no photo)

Synopsis:

From that famous day in June 1783, when the Montgolfier brothers launched their first balloon over Paris, until the present day, people have continued to marvel at the grace and ease with which man can ascend aloft and float through the sky. This volume is a tribute to all balloonists past and present, both for their courage and daring and for the joy they give the rest of us.

Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air: An Unconventional History of Ballooning

by Richard Holmes

Synopsis:

In a dazzling fusion of history, art, science, and biography, Falling Upwards resurrects the daring men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air in balloons.

Richard Holmes gives us another of his unforgettable portraits of human endeavor, recklessness, and vision, weaving together exhilarating accounts of early balloon rivalries, pioneering ascents over Victorian cities, and astonishing long-distance voyages. The terrifying high-altitude flights of James Glaisher helped to establish the science of meteorology as well as the notion of a fragile planet, while balloons were also used to observe the horrors of modern battle during the American Civil War.

Here too are the many writers—Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, and more—who felt the imaginative impact of flight and allowed it to soar in their work. Holmes tells the history of ballooning from every angle—scientific to poetic—through the adventurers and entrepreneurs, scientists and escapists, heroes and fools who were possessed by the longing to be airborne.

The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America

by Tom D. Crouch (no photo)

Synopsis:

This book is a comprehensive history of the balloon in the United Stated, filled with new information gathered from a variety of primary sources. Handsomely illustrated, it is fully annotated and offers a full bibliography of the subject. The crowd-pleasing exhibition balloonists of the 19th century, long-distance aerial voyagers, Civil War ballooning, balloon racing, and scientific ballooning are all covered in detail.

Thank you Jerome and Jill for all of your adds.

A history of the zeppelin as a war machine and its eventual failure in that role.

Zeppelins Over England

by Kenneth Poolman(no photo)

Synopsis:

This saga of the most daring aerial campaign of the Great War begins with Peter Strasser, the brilliant naval officer who saw in Count Zeppelin's slow-moving aircraft a vehicle to break England's will to fight. With Strasser's urging and direction the German high command built a fleet of super zeppelins that could fly well beyond the reach of fighter planes and anti-aircraft guns to drop tons of bombs on the cities of Britain's industrial heartland. By 1915 Londoners slept fitfully under a cold blanket of fear, straining to hear the distant drone of the zeppelins' Mayback engines.

In time the British counterattacked with ingenuity and gallantry--developing higher-flying planes and reliable incendiary bullets to engage the zeppelins. By 1918 the use of these airships as a means of destruction had come to a fiery end.

Zeppelins of World War I details the German naval Airship Division's (Luftschiffe) history, the psychological horrors of its bombing attacks on London, and the zeppelin's ultimate failure to remain a wartime vehicle or peacetime transport. With riveting first-person accounts and archival photographs, Wilbur Cross depicts the aerial battles between brave German airmen and British fighter pilots. Action from both sides of the war is presented including the determined efforts of Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson of the Royal Flying Corps, the first pilot to shoot down a zeppelin; the launching and aftermath of the greatest airship raid in history; and the spectacular death of Zeppelin L-48 (including the miraculous survival of a young German officer) that foreshadowed the ultimate demise of the Luftshiffe and Strasser's own violent death.

Despite the zeppelins' inability to save the Kaiser's forces from defeat, they did change the nature of attack and defense in all future wars. Indeed, had the German airships used inert helium instead of flammable hydrogen, the outcome of World War I might have been very different. Wilbur Cross' re-creation of this little-known yet important episode of aviation history offers fascinating reading for military buffs and anyone who enjoys high adventure in unique settings.

Although not used for transportation, the barrage balloon is certainly worth mentioning as it played a large part if both of the World Wars.

Barrage Balloon

A barrage balloon, sometimes called a "blimp",[1] is a large balloon tethered with metal cables, used to defend against aircraft attack by damaging the aircraft on collision with the cables, or at least making the attacker's approach more difficult. Commonly the designs were kite balloons, having a shape and cable bridling which stabilise the balloon in windy conditions, allowing operation in higher winds than a spherical balloon. Some examples carried small explosive charges that would be pulled up against the aircraft to ensure its destruction. Barrage balloons are not practical against very high-flying aircraft, due to the weight of a very long cable.

For more information about the use of the barrage balloon, visit the address below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_...



(Photo source: Wikipedia)

How Does It Fly - Blimp

by Sharon Nittinger(no photo)

Synopsis:

Blimps were once a popular form of transportation. Find out how they work and why they are not so common anymore.
NOTE: This may be a YA read although it is not identified as such.

Say goodbye to the Goodyear blimp.....well, not really.

The Goodyear Blimp — technically called The Spirit of Goodyear — has been retired and will be replaced by another set of airships, although they technically won’t be blimps. That’s because they will include a fixed structure that holds the gas-filled balloon in place.

“It’s a brand new design. It is a much larger airship. It’s a semi-rigid dirigible,” Goodyear’s Priscilla Tasker told the AP. (Source: Fortune)


(Source: Wikimedia)

The Golden Age of the Great passenger Airships: Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg

by Harold G. Dick (no photo)

Synopsis:

Drawing on the extensive photographs, notes, diaries, reports, recorded data, and manuals he collected during his five years at the Zeppelin Company in Germany, from 1934 through 1938, Harold G. Dick tells the story of the two great passenger Zeppelins.

Against the background of German secretiveness, especially during the Nazi period, Dick's accumulation of material and pictures is extraordinary.

His original photographs and detailed observations on the handling and flying of the two big rigids constitute the essential data on this phase of aviation history.

The Complete Book of Airships: Dirigibles, Blimps & Hot Air Balloons

by Don Dwiggins (no photo)

Synopsis:

This book is easy to read but very informative at the same time. Mr. Dwiggins not only discusses the complete history of Dirigibles, Blimps and Hot Air Balloons with great authority but he makes it very enjoyable -- Amazon Review

Zeppelin!: Germany and the Airship, 1900–1939 (Hardcover)

by Guillaume de Syon (no photo)

Synopsis:

"Whenever the airship flew over a village, or whenever she flew over a lonely field on which some peasants were working, a tremendous shout of joy rose up in the air towards Count Zeppelin's miracle ship which, in the imagination of all who saw her, suggested some supernatural creature."

As this paean to the Zeppelin from an early-20th-century issue of the German newspaper Thüringer Zeitung makes clear, the airship inspired a unique sense of awe. These phenomenal rigid, lighter-than-air craft—the invention of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin (1838-1917)—approached the size of a small village.

Although they moved slowly, there was no mistaking their exciting—or ominous—potential. Friends of the machine believed that it would revolutionize commerce, carry scientists to otherwise inaccessible places, and deliver bombs with great accuracy.

Before the airplane proved its reliability and superior practicality—and before the fiery crash of the Hindenburg in 1937—Zeppelins made a deep impression on the minds of Europeans, especially in Germany.

In Zeppelin! Guillaume de Syon offers a captivating history of this technological wonder, from development and production to its impact on German culture and society.

De Syon chronicles the various ways in which the airships were used—transport, war, exploration, and propaganda—and details the attempts by successive German governments—autocratic, democratic, fascist— to co-opt Count Zeppelin's invention.

Between 1900 and 1939, Germans saw the Zeppelin as a symbol of national progress, and de Syon uses the airship to better understand the dynamics of German society and the place of technology within it.

Though few people actually flew in any of the 119 Zeppelins built, the rigid airship made one of the strongest impressions of any flying machine on Europe's collective memory. Six decades later, there is still a mystique surrounding these technological leviathans, one that Zeppelin! addresses with insight and wit.

An upcoming book:
Release date: April 1, 2022

When Giants Ruled the Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship

by John Geoghegan (no photo)

Synopsis::

Nearly everything people think they know about airships is wrong. Few realize that prior to the Hindenburg disaster airships transported passengers without a single casualty for more than 20 years, a record unmatched by any other form of transportation. When Giants Ruled the Sky tells the true but little-known story of the USS Macon (ZRS-5), the world’s largest, most expensive and most technologically advanced airship of her day, and the four men responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and flying her. In doing so it reveals how the airship came within a hair’s breadth of replacing planes, trains, and ocean liners as the dominant form of long-distance transportation, and exactly what went wrong, a tale of physical courage, engineering acumen, ugly politicking and two egregious disasters.

Another:
Release date: May 2, 2023

His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine

by S. C. Gwynne (no photo)

Synopsis:

The tragic story of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, historian S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.

Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the twentieth century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world’s most advanced engineering—she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this. R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea.

Gwynne’s chronicle features a cast of remarkable—and often tragically flawed—characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and Herbert Scott, a national hero who had made the first double crossing of the Atlantic in any aircraft in 1919—eight years before Lindbergh’s famous flight—but who devolved into drink and ruin. These historical figures—and the ship they built, flew, and crashed—come together in a grand tale that details the rocky road to commercial aviation written by one of the best popular historians writing today.

Another:
Release date: April 28, 2023

101 Hours in a Zeppelin: Ernst August Lehmann and the Dream of Transatlantic Flight, 1917

by Robert S. Pohl (no photo)

Synopsis:

Based on the original letters of physics professor Robert Wichard Pohl, who spent several years flying on zeppelins during the First World War, this book tells the story of the first flight to exceed 100 hours in the air. Along the way, it tells the story of those men responsible for the flight, as well as the history of both airship development and the continuing interest in transatlantic flight. The particular flight described in Pohl's account was captained by Ernst August Lehmann, Germany's foremost airship captain, who was killed on the Hindenburg in 1937. It shows how this flight put into operation the lessons learned, both in the development of airships and their use in the First World War, to prove that these fragile giants were capable of flying across the Atlantic. In doing so, the book fills a gap between the two great areas of interest in airships. This is a book for aviation history enthusiasts that tells the full story of a well-known but little-described chapter in aviation history.

Thank you, Jerome.

Ditto