Airships Trivia
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59 free Airships trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This airships trivia quiz covers the whole lighter-than-air story, from Henri Giffard's steam-powered dirigible of 1852 to the semi-rigid Zeppelins that Goodyear still flies over stadiums today. The easy questions ask what a blimp actually is, which gas made early airships so dangerous, where the Hindenburg burned and which company's name became a synonym for rigid airships. From there it moves through the pioneers, the First World War raids on England, the interwar giants and the string of disasters that ended the airship era. The hard end is for people who know their R100 from their R101: the newspaper magnate who paid for the Graf Zeppelin's world flight, the airship that carried its own fighter planes, the count who took his first balloon ride in Minnesota, the pressurised smoking room aboard a hydrogen ship, the only blimp ever shot down by a U-boat and the metal-clad ship that outlasted them all. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on airships, the Zeppelin company, the Hindenburg disaster, the Graf Zeppelin, USS Akron, R100, R101, the Norge and the Goodyear Blimp before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our aviation, World War I and inventions quizzes are natural next stops.
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Q 01What is a non-rigid airship that keeps its shape purely through internal gas pressure called?
Blimp
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.
Q 02Which lifting gas, used in most early airships, made them so prone to catastrophic fires?
Hydrogen
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.
Q 03The Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937 while trying to land at a naval air station in which US state?
New Jersey
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.
Q 04A storm wrecked Count Zeppelin's fourth airship in 1908; what then rescued his project from ruin?
Donations from the public
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.
Q 05Which tyre company operates a famous fleet of advertising airships?
Goodyear
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.
Q 06The one Hindenburg disaster victim who was never aboard was part of what?
Ground crew
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.
Q 07Which cry by reporter Herbert Morrison at the Hindenburg fire became famous?
Oh, the humanity!
"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.
Q 08The Hindenburg's namesake field marshal held which Weimar office from 1925 to 1934?
President
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.
Q 09What activity had a pressurised, air-locked room aboard the flammable Hindenburg?
Smoking
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.
Q 10What luxury item, specially built of aluminium alloy, flew aboard the Hindenburg in 1936 before being removed?
A grand piano
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.
Q 11Henri Giffard's 1852 airship, the first powered and controlled flight, used an engine powered by what?
Steam
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.
Q 12Which aviator won 100,000 francs in 1901 by flying his airship around the Eiffel Tower?
Alberto Santos-Dumont
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.
Q 13The French Army airship La France made the first fully controllable free flight in 1884 using what motor?
Electric
Q 21Which pet did designer Umberto Nobile take aboard his airship Italia, which crashed on the Arctic ice in 1928?
A dog
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.
Q 22Which movie hero throws a Nazi officer out of a Zeppelin window, then tells the passengers 'No ticket'?
Indiana Jones
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.
Q 23The 1930s US Navy airships Akron and Macon were built to carry what inside their hulls?
Fighter planes
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.
Q 14The first Zeppelin's floating hangar could swing round to face what?
The wind
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.
Q 15Count Zeppelin made his first balloon ascent in 1863 while abroad as a military observer of which war?
The American Civil 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.
Q 16First World War Zeppelin raids on English towns earned the airships which nickname?
Baby killers
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.
Q 17What British innovation of 1916 finally made the flammable Zeppelins vulnerable to fighter aircraft?
Incendiary and explosive ammunition
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.
Q 18Which British fighter flew history's first aircraft-carrier strike, burning two Zeppelins in their shed at Tondern in 1918?
Sopwith Camel
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.
Q 19When British airship R34 crossed the Atlantic in 1919, how did its first crewman reach American soil?
Parachute
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.
Q 20The Italian-built airship Norge made the first undisputed flight over which location in May 1926?
The North Pole
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.
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.
Q 24Why did the airship USS Akron's 1933 crash at sea kill 73 of the 76 men aboard?
They had no life jackets
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.
Q 25USS Macon was lost in 1935 after a structural failure off the coast of which US state?
California
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.
Q 26The US Navy's giant 1930s airships Akron and Macon were filled with which gas?
Helium
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.
Q 27The British airship R101 crashed in France in 1930, hours into its maiden voyage to which destination?
India
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.
Q 28Which member of the British government died aboard the airship R101 in 1930?
The Air Minister
The Air Minister: Lord Thomson had launched the airship scheme himself, and the flight was timed to coincide with the Imperial Conference in London.
Q 29Barnes Wallis, who headed the R100 airship's design team, later became famous for which invention?
The bouncing bomb
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.
Q 30R100 successfully flew to and from which country in 1930 before the whole scheme was abandoned?
Canada
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.