Bringing back the Zeppelins

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2003-12-29 05:50pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:There utility for ASW would be very limited today given the low speed, they'd also be extremely vulnerable, more then one boat is running around the oceans with anti aircraft missiles attached to the periscope.

I was thinking more along the lines of peacetime patrol. You know, keeping up with the Ruskies. If war were to break out, they'd all bee line straight back home in a hurry.

Communications applications require going very high, something a balloon but not a ridged airship can do.

Exactly, obviousily I should have clarified.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-12-29 05:53pm

Trytostaydead wrote:Weren't they used as coastal spotters in WWII for U-Boats here in the US?

On a limit scale yes, some even carried depth charges. Overall though they didn't work very well. The ocean is a fucking huge place to search (slow speed isn;t good for that) and the advantage of abeing able loiter a long time over over a U-boat was counter balanced by the crafts inability to do anything but loiter if they found one. A sub could generally dive before a 200 knot patrol plane could drop its weapons, a 90 knot airship had no chance at all. And if they didn't dive then the boats guns would easily hack down an airship, while a fixed wing aircraft could often make and survive multiple passes.

jegs2 · Post by **jegs2** » 2003-12-29 06:10pm

Darth_Zod wrote:i simply don't see any practicality to introducing zeppelins as a military weapon. anyone with a high powered rifle could turn it to shreds. though about the most i could see a use for it would be a novelty item for those with money to use as some type of sight-seeing vehicle.

They'd make excellent target practice for modern aircraft. Missing the things would be a great source of embarrassment for rookie pilots.

Andrew J. · Post by **Andrew J.** » 2003-12-29 06:21pm

Lighter-than-air flying machines, soft or rigid, are just too damn slow to be at all useful in war.

Valdemar: it would easy to take down a blimp, if you aimed at the undercarriage part. It's moving just as slowly as the rest of it, and riddling the crew with bullets will stop it faster than putting holes in the ballon.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-12-29 06:27pm

Andrew J. wrote:Lighter-than-air flying machines, soft or rigid, are just too damn slow to be at all useful in war.

Valdemar: it would easy to take down a blimp, if you aimed at the undercarriage part. It's moving just as slowly as the rest of it, and riddling the crew with bullets will stop it faster than putting holes in the ballon.

The gondola is the one bit that could be armoured somewhat, and anyway, we're also talking unmanned craft which can be fully internal systems. The engines would be the best target.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2003-12-29 06:31pm

Of course an airship would be inferior to other aircraft types, but wouldn't they have rather unique and useful applications when air superiority has already been attained? They would make excellent survailance craft. And they would give commanders a good view of the area. I also imagine you could hang enough air defenses from one to make it virtually impossible to approach with an enemy aircraft.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-12-29 06:53pm

You want a feasible application for a zepplin in the military?

Superlifting.

A moment or two of Googlin' produces designs that are semi-rigid and quoted at being able to lift 160 tons. I believe there may be greater, not sure. That's two Abrams tanks, I believe.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-12-29 06:56pm

Lazy Raptor wrote:Of course an airship would be inferior to other aircraft types, but wouldn't they have rather unique and useful applications when air superiority has already been attained? They would make excellent survailance craft. And they would give commanders a good view of the area. I also imagine you could hang enough air defenses from one to make it virtually impossible to approach with an enemy aircraft.

Of course, the problem is most seem to try and fit the craft into roles it simply was not meant to do. It can't fight off armadas of ships or fighters and it's not a single-piece invasion vehicle.

But if you truly wanted to, you could make many unmanned platforms that acted as police units once an area was secured like Iraq is now. It could carry a small sensor suite and high-powered spotlight and maybe a mini-THEL system to target any incoming missiles, though power concerns and weight restrict what this could achieve.

I think transporting is the real benefit, no airfields, little noise and very fuel efficient as well as faster than a ship and able to carry more than a cargo plane.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-12-29 07:07pm

Lazy Raptor wrote:Of course an airship would be inferior to other aircraft types, but wouldn't they have rather unique and useful applications when air superiority has already been attained? They would make excellent survailance craft.

And one that's a huge slow target within range of AAA and MANPADS.

And they would give commanders a good view of the area.

Current UAV aircraft work just fine for that, and there's no way in hell you'd ever actually have a major commander in such a craft

I also imagine you could hang enough air defenses from one to make it virtually impossible to approach with an enemy aircraft.

Defense add weight, a fuckload of it, and massive cost. And in the end the whole thing would still easily be shot out of the sky.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-12-29 07:41pm

Well Bonham's dead, but Page and Plant are still touring, sometime together.....

Catch the wind see you spin
way up high in the sky
where the wind won't blow
we really shouldn't go
it only goes to show.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-12-29 07:58pm

SirNitram wrote:You want a feasible application for a zepplin in the military?

Superlifting.

A moment or two of Googlin' produces designs that are semi-rigid and quoted at being able to lift 160 tons. I believe there may be greater, not sure. That's two Abrams tanks, I believe.

Two with about 20 tons left over. However we already have transport aircraft, which can do that, and fly six times faster to a landing in bad weather. A great deal more aircraft can haul a single M1A2 at the same massively superior speed.

jenat-lai · Post by **jenat-lai** » 2003-12-29 08:24pm

as a war craft? no. Something doing 40 knots airspeed going up against a jet doing 600+ knots aint gonna be pretty. one small burst from a radar assisted 30mm aircraft guns gonna make it turn into a ball of flame. an AAMRAM or similars just gonna destroy it... not to mention SAM's and Flack as well...

As a civilian 'airborne cruiseship' or heavy/medium slow traveling transport it might have some work... currently all we see zepplins doing these days is floating around with cameras advertising good year

as a blimp, not quite a zepplin for sure.

Lets face it, the zepplin is slow and delicate. I wouldn't want to fly one through a thunderstorm, or at 35,000ft in a jetstream with a 85 knot tailwind. I'll stick to the 747-400 doing 480 knots, Mach 0.86 on the H airways. Flying from New York to London in 5 hours, instead of 5 days!

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-12-29 08:35pm

jenat-lai wrote:as a war craft? no. Something doing 40 knots airspeed going up against a jet doing 600+ knots aint gonna be pretty. one small burst from a radar assisted 30mm aircraft guns gonna make it turn into a ball of flame. an AAMRAM or similars just gonna destroy it... not to mention SAM's and Flack as well...

As a civilian 'airborne cruiseship' or heavy/medium slow traveling transport it might have some work... currently all we see zepplins doing these days is floating around with cameras advertising good year as a blimp, not quite a zepplin for sure.

Lets face it, the zepplin is slow and delicate. I wouldn't want to fly one through a thunderstorm, or at 35,000ft in a jetstream with a 85 knot tailwind. I'll stick to the 747-400 doing 480 knots, Mach 0.86 on the H airways. Flying from New York to London in 5 hours, instead of 5 days!

Whoever fills their military airship with hydrogen is asking to be blown up and rigid ships can't exceed more than 20,000ft or so.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-12-29 08:49pm

First things first:
Zeppelins are only built by the Zeppelin Company, anything else is just a rigid airship.

Rigids could have a future in specialised civilian applications, like airlifting heavy loads to areas where there are no airfields, for instance the middle of a city.
But, they have no future in military applications, they were obsolescent even in 1914. Count Zeppelin's idea was ahead of technology by about ten years.

Non-rigid blimps were used into the 1950's by the US as radar pickets, their last military service.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2003-12-29 09:22pm

a german company called cargolifterAG tried to bring them back as civilian vessels to transport large and heavy stuff even to places very hard to reach. sadly the project was a giant flop and by now they´re out of business.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/cargolifter.htm

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2003-12-29 09:32pm

I remember seeing something about them being used to supply outposts in Antarctica.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2003-12-29 11:51pm

People have the strangest tendency to assume that pure hydrogen is flammable. The reason the Hindenburg went down is that the covering caught fire, not the hydrogen. To put it quite simply, you'd need a Star Trek transporter to get enough air in to make it burn. This can be proven using the colorized Hindenburg footage. Hydrogen burns blue, the flames coming off were orange and red.

That is also the reason why incindiaries worked versus the Zepplins. They caused the covering to catch fire.

A better quote would be that whoever covers their military airship with rocket fuel is asking to be blown up.

Jadeite · Post by **Jadeite** » 2003-12-30 12:08am

The Kernel wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote: They are not that easy to shoot down. Some people seem to think you pop a few 7.62mm rounds into it and it's sunk. That simply isn't the case. You'd need missiles (a tad wasteful) or large calibre HE rounds to take it down for good quickly enough. A few guys with rifles won't do jack before it's done the job, whatever that is.
You're kidding right? I could down a Zepplin with a 20mm anti-personal rifle from long range.

Except you couldn't. It wasn't until the Brits started using incendiary bullets that they had any luck taking them out. They aren't a fucking balloon that pops if it gets shot you idiots. Inside is a compartmentalized gasbag thats supported by an aluminum framework. One built with modern technology would laugh at a puny handheld firearm.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-12-30 01:33am

The landing sites for large airships would require land that is often very pricey and better put to other use.

There is a big hanger 5 miles from my house that used to house a US Navy airship. If it were not located on a gov't land, it would have long ago been turned into housing and business'. Land cheap enough for such a structure is nowhere within 50 miles on the Bay Area center. At some point the ships are too far from their clients to be viable. At least when it comes to serving city regions.

Techno_Union · Post by **Techno_Union** » 2004-01-07 07:17pm

It would be expensive to try and bring them back. But I have always loved them and I just wanted to know if you guys even thought it was possible.

jenat-lai · Post by **jenat-lai** » 2004-01-08 05:05am

They have no military use in any warzone on earth. They are fragile and slow. if something is slow it needs to be built like a tank... if it's fragile it has to be fast like a plane. or be able to hide like a helicopter at least. A rigid airship has none of these qualities. It's ONLY possible future use is in Civilian service, and even then it is limited to specialized jobs such as heavy lift into remote areas or areas with no airport abilities. It's slow speed is the major factor working against it in the civilian role, however it can lift far more than a helicopter, go further distances, and doesn't even have to become groundborne (in effect it Can't land really) to unload. However the reason we havn't seen it become so common in this role is because the role of the Truck/Semi-trailer/Lorry etc (road vehicles) can mostly do this, and very cheaply too.