59 Fun Facts About Airships

What is a non-rigid airship that keeps its shape purely through internal gas pressure called?

Blimp: with no frame inside, its envelope would sag as the gas expands and shrinks, so air bags called ballonets are pumped up or emptied to keep it taut.

Which lifting gas, used in most early airships, made them so prone to catastrophic fires?

Hydrogen is the lightest element and was cheap and easy to make, so builders accepted the fire risk; the non-flammable alternative was rare and expensive.

The Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937 while trying to land at a naval air station in which US state?

New Jersey: running about twelve hours late, the airship flew over Manhattan's skyscrapers and then cruised the Jersey shore, waiting for thunderstorms to clear before it came in to moor.

A storm wrecked Count Zeppelin's fourth airship in 1908; what then rescued his project from ruin?

Donations from the public: people who had cheered the flight sent in some six million marks unasked, the 'miracle of Echterdingen', and the windfall let the count found his airship company.

Which tyre company operates a famous fleet of advertising airships?

Goodyear launched its first one in 1925; company boss Paul Litchfield thought of them as aerial yachts, so for decades they were named after American yachts that won the America's Cup.

The one Hindenburg disaster victim who was never aboard was part of what?

Ground crew: civilian linesman Allen Hagaman died along with 35 of those on the airship. More surprising is how many lived, since 62 of the 97 people aboard survived.

Which cry by reporter Herbert Morrison at the Hindenburg fire became famous?

"Oh, the humanity!" came from a disc recording for Chicago station WLS, not a live broadcast, and NBC broke its own ban on recorded material to air it the next day.

The Hindenburg's namesake field marshal held which Weimar office from 1925 to 1934?

President: Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor in January 1933, and when the old field marshal died the next year, Hitler merged the two offices and ruled as Führer.

What activity had a pressurised, air-locked room aboard the flammable Hindenburg?

Smoking was confined to one room kept at higher pressure so no leaking lifting gas could seep in; it held the ship's only lighter, and a steward checked that nobody left with a lit cigarette.

What luxury item, specially built of aluminium alloy, flew aboard the Hindenburg in 1936 before being removed?

A grand piano: Blüthner built it of aluminium alloy covered in pigskin, so it weighed just 162 kg. Taken off before the 1937 season, it was destroyed when the piano factory burned in a wartime air raid.

Henri Giffard's 1852 airship, the first powered and controlled flight, used an engine powered by what?

Steam: Giffard's 3-horsepower engine carried him some 27 km from Paris, manoeuvring on the way, but it was too weak to bring him back to his starting point.

Which aviator won 100,000 francs in 1901 by flying his airship around the Eiffel Tower?

Alberto Santos-Dumont finished inside the 30-minute limit, but the judges ruled him late because of a delay in mooring; a public outcry made the Aéro-Club award him the prize anyway.

The French Army airship La France made the first fully controllable free flight in 1884 using what motor?

Electric: Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs flew an 8 km loop in 23 minutes and landed back on the parade ground they had left, though their batteries were too limiting for much more.

The first Zeppelin's floating hangar could swing round to face what?

The wind: the shed was moored at one end only, so LZ 1 could always leave and enter head-on to the breeze instead of being caught side-on. Its first flight came in July 1900.

Count Zeppelin made his first balloon ascent in 1863 while abroad as a military observer of which war?

The American Civil War: after a few months with the Union armies he went off to see the frontier, and in St. Paul, Minnesota, balloonist John Steiner took him up on a tethered ascent.

First World War Zeppelin raids on English towns earned the airships which nickname?

Baby killers: the raids began in January 1915 on Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn and reached London that May. They did little military damage, but anti-aircraft guns were pulled back from France to guard the capital.

What British innovation of 1916 finally made the flammable Zeppelins vulnerable to fighter aircraft?

Incendiary and explosive ammunition: ordinary bullets only left small holes, but with the new mixed rounds William Leefe Robinson set a raider ablaze near London in September 1916, and more soon followed.

Which British fighter flew history's first aircraft-carrier strike, burning two Zeppelins in their shed at Tondern in 1918?

Sopwith Camel: seven took off from HMS Furious, but landing back aboard was judged too dangerous, so the pilots had to ditch beside the fleet or fly on to neutral Denmark.

When British airship R34 crossed the Atlantic in 1919, how did its first crewman reach American soil?

Parachute: Major Pritchard jumped to direct the inexperienced landing party on Long Island, becoming the first person to arrive in America by air from Europe. A stowaway and a kitten were also on board.

The Italian-built airship Norge made the first undisputed flight over which location in May 1926?

The North Pole: Richard Byrd claimed to have flown there three days earlier, but doubts about his plane's speed have never gone away. The Norge carried on to Alaska, the first flight across the whole Arctic Ocean.

Which pet did designer Umberto Nobile take aboard his airship Italia, which crashed on the Arctic ice in 1928?

A dog: his fox terrier Titina went everywhere with him, and when the crash tore the control cabin open she was thrown onto the ice alongside Nobile and nine of his men, and survived.

Which movie hero throws a Nazi officer out of a Zeppelin window, then tells the passengers 'No ticket'?

Indiana Jones does it in The Last Crusade (1989): on the run with his father, he borrows a steward's hat and jacket, asks an SS colonel for his ticket and pitches him out onto the tarmac.

The 1930s US Navy airships Akron and Macon were built to carry what inside their hulls?

Fighter planes: each ship could stow up to five Sparrowhawk biplanes, which flew off and hooked back onto a trapeze in mid-air, making the airship a flying aircraft carrier for its scouts.

Why did the airship USS Akron's 1933 crash at sea kill 73 of the 76 men aboard?

They had no life jackets: none had been issued, so most of the men drowned or died of cold in the stormy Atlantic. Sister ship Macon was given jackets and rafts, and lost only two men when it came down at sea.

USS Macon was lost in 1935 after a structural failure off the coast of which US state?

California: a storm off Point Sur tore away Macon's upper fin, the one fin still unrepaired after damage over Texas ten months earlier; the ship settled onto the sea and all but two of the men aboard were rescued.

The US Navy's giant 1930s airships Akron and Macon were filled with which gas?

Helium: America held nearly all the world's supply and restricted its export, which is why the great German airships of the same years, the Hindenburg among them, still flew on flammable gas.

The British airship R101 crashed in France in 1930, hours into its maiden voyage to which destination?

India: bound for Karachi, R101 came down near Beauvais in northern France on its first night out, and 48 of the 54 aboard died, a heavier toll than the Hindenburg fire seven years later.

Which member of the British government died aboard the airship R101 in 1930?

The Air Minister: Lord Thomson had launched the airship scheme himself, and the flight was timed to coincide with the Imperial Conference in London.

Barnes Wallis, who headed the R100 airship's design team, later became famous for which invention?

The bouncing bomb: on R100, Wallis's chief calculator was Nevil Shute Norway, later famous as the novelist Nevil Shute, who told the airship's story in his memoir Slide Rule.

R100 successfully flew to and from which country in 1930 before the whole scheme was abandoned?

Canada: R100 flew to Montreal and back that summer, yet when its government-built rival crashed in October the sound ship was grounded for good and never flew again.

Why did the Graf Zeppelin's engines mainly burn Blau gas, not petrol?

Weight stayed constant: burning petrol makes an airship lighter, forcing it to vent precious lifting gas, but Blau gas weighed about the same as the air that replaced it, so nothing had to be released.

Which American newspaper magnate paid about half the cost of the Graf Zeppelin's 1929 round-the-world flight?

William Randolph Hearst bought exclusive rights to the story and insisted the flight begin and end in America, so the German airship had to cross the Atlantic before its lap of the world officially started.

In the 1930s the Graf Zeppelin flew a regular passenger and mail service between Germany and which country?

Brazil: it had a large German community and only slow sea links to Europe, so the Graf Zeppelin's run to Recife and Rio de Janeiro became the first scheduled passenger air service across the Atlantic.

After a million miles of safe flying, how did the Graf Zeppelin end?

Scrapped: withdrawn after the Hindenburg fire, the Graf Zeppelin sat deflated on show in Frankfurt until Hermann Göring's Luftwaffe ordered it broken up in 1940. It had made 590 flights.

Which Zeppelin company chief commanded the Graf Zeppelin on its 1929 flight around the world?

Hugo Eckener came to airships as a newspaper reporter with a doctorate in psychology, sent to cover Count Zeppelin's first ship; he stayed, rose to run the company and became a national hero.

In 1939 the Graf Zeppelin II flew along the British coast to spy on which secret new technology?

Radar: Luftwaffe signals chief Wolfgang Martini suspected Britain's tall coastal masts were an aircraft-warning system, so he packed the airship with receivers and flew up the North Sea coast, yet came home without proof.

Which New York skyscraper, completed in 1931, was topped with a mooring mast for transatlantic airships?

Empire State Building: passengers were meant to step from the airship onto an open-air gangplank more than 100 floors up, but the winds at the top made mooring unworkable and the plan was dropped.

In 1944 six US Navy airships crossed the Atlantic to set up an anti-submarine barrier across which strait?

Strait of Gibraltar: flying low with magnetic detectors, they hunted U-boats slipping into the Mediterranean. Over the whole war, of some 89,000 ships that sailed under airship escort, at most one was sunk.

The US Navy airship K-74, the only one ever shot down by a U-boat, was lost in 1943 near which state?

Florida: K-74 attacked the surfaced U-134 in the Florida Straits by night and was shot down into the sea. All but one of the crew were rescued; he was attacked by a shark minutes before help arrived.

A View to a Kill (1985) featured an airship in the livery of which villain's company?

Zorin Industries: Christopher Walken's villain flees in the airship until Bond ties its mooring rope to the Golden Gate Bridge. The real craft was a Skyship 500, a type that also starred at the 1984 Olympics opening ceremony.

In 2005 a Zeppelin NT was sent to southern Africa to hunt for buried diamond deposits for which mining company?

De Beers flew the airship slowly over Botswana by night because its smooth, vibration-free ride let a gravity sensor pick out buried diamond pipes; a whirlwind wrecked the ship at its mooring mast in 2007.

In which Pixar film does explorer Charles Muntz live aboard his dirigible, the Spirit of Adventure?

Up: the disgraced explorer has spent decades in his airship beside Paradise Falls, hunting a rare bird to clear his name, until Carl arrives in a house carried there by thousands of balloons.

Despite the sound of it, 'dirigible' has no link to 'rigid'; it comes from a French word meaning what?

To steer: the word is short for 'dirigible balloon', one that can be directed instead of drifting on the wind, so even a soft airship with no frame at all is a dirigible.

The US Navy's ZMC-2 was the only successful airship clad in what?

Thin metal: two earlier metal-skinned airships had collapsed, one as it was being inflated and one at the end of its only flight, but the Navy's ZMC-2 went on to fly for more than 2,250 hours.

Francesco Lana de Terzi's 1670 design for a flying ship hung it from thin copper spheres containing what?

A vacuum: with the air pumped out, each sphere would weigh less than the air it pushed aside, he reasoned. In practice air pressure would crush any shell that thin, and the idea has never flown.

Leonardo Torres Quevedo, designer of the three-lobed Astra-Torres airships of the First World War, came from which country?

Spain: he also built a machine, finished in 1912, that played a chess endgame with no human hidden inside, and he designed the cable car that opened over Niagara's whirlpool in 1916.

The Graf Zeppelin's long flights were paid for in large part by which group of hobbyists?

Stamp collectors: they paid well to have letters carried on famous flights, and in 1931 the airship even set down on the Arctic Ocean to swap mailbags with a Soviet icebreaker.

1930s airships, with private cabins and dining rooms, were compared to which transport?

Ocean liners took five days or more to cross the Atlantic, while the Hindenburg did it in about two and a half; the price of that speed was a crew that often outnumbered the passengers.

The Hindenburg was built by its Friedrichshafen makers on the shores of which body of water?

Lake Constance: Count Zeppelin was born beside the lake and built his first airship in a wooden shed floating on its waters, near the town where the Hindenburg later took shape.

What symbol was painted on the Hindenburg's hull during its 1936 trial flights, alongside its registration?

The five Olympic rings advertised that summer's Berlin Games, and on opening day the Hindenburg itself flew over the Olympic stadium, flying the Olympic flag.

The Hindenburg's planned length was cut so it would fit in a hangar where?

Lakehurst: the Navy base was the airship's American terminus, and American Airlines ran connecting flights from the field so that passengers could travel on by air.

The German-built airship USS Los Angeles was delivered to the US Navy in 1924 as what?

War reparations: German crews had wrecked the Zeppelins due to the Allies in 1919, so the Zeppelin company built America a new one instead, and the order kept the firm alive.

What is the nickname of Britain's Airlander 10 hybrid airship?

The Flying Bum: the prototype began as a US Army surveillance ship that was never used. Back in England it broke free of its mooring mast in 2017, deflated itself as designed, and was formally retired.

Which polar explorer vanished in 1928 en route to help rescue survivors of Nobile's airship Italia?

Roald Amundsen had quarrelled bitterly with Nobile over credit for an earlier flight, yet he joined the search at once; his French flying boat vanished over the Barents Sea, while Nobile was rescued alive.

Why did Zeppelin L 59 turn back over Sudan on its 1917 supply run?

A radio recall: Berlin had decided the German troops waiting in East Africa could no longer be reached, though they fought on until 1918. The ship flew back to Bulgaria after 95 hours in the air without landing.

The giant hangar of bankrupt German airship firm CargoLifter became what in 2004?

An indoor tropical resort: Tropical Islands filled the 360-metre hall with a rainforest, a sandy beach and a lagoon, while the giant cargo airship the hall was meant to house was never built.

Unlike the rigid Zeppelins of old, the modern Zeppelin NT belongs to which class of airship?

Semi-rigid: gas pressure keeps the envelope taut, but a light inner frame of carbon fibre and aluminium carries the engines, and their swivelling propellers let the airship lift off straight up, hover and even fly backwards.

In March 1936 the new Hindenburg toured Germany to do what?

Drop election leaflets: Goebbels wanted both Zeppelins over German cities before a vote on the Rhineland. Sent up in bad weather, the new ship damaged its tail fin on take-off, to the fury of the Zeppelin company's chief.

Which heavyweight boxer crossed the Atlantic in triumph aboard the Hindenburg in June 1936?

Max Schmeling had just knocked out Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium; four days later he boarded the Hindenburg and flew home to a hero's welcome that Nazi propaganda made the most of.