Airships

[podmm]

Is it true that airships were used in the Second world war

[sft42]

Yes, mostly tethered, static ones for defence in and around heavily bombed cities to try and stop bombers having a clear path.

[sddsddean]

Sft is talking about barrage balloons, which technically are not airships. An airship is a dirigible. That is, it has a solid frame with internal gasbags. The British airship programme effectively ended with the crashing of the R101 in Beauvais in the 30's http://www.aht.ndirect.co.uk/airships/r101/Crash/R
101_Crash.htm and Hitlers German airship programme ended with the Hindenburg. The Americans did use airships, mainly for long range reconnaissance,although they did experiment with a system to launch fighter biplanes. The planes hung from a hook attached to the top wing and were dropped (with engine running) and were recovered by the pilot hooking on to a 'trapeze' before being winched back inside the airship. Just as an aside, the Goodyear airship hangar at Akron, Ohio is the largest in the world. It is so big, clouds form in the roofspace and it rains indoors (or so they say!).

[answerbok]

and airships were also known as blimps, Halfpenny Green Airport, near Wolverhampton, is the home base for two of the world-famous Goodyear airships; Spirit of Europe I and II.. saw one flying over Glastonbury, last year.

[podmm]

Thanks to you all

[Merthyr Imp]

The word 'dirigible' technically means 'steerable'. A dirigible airship is one that can be steered, unlike a balloon which can only go up and down and drift with the wind. Small 'non-rigid' dirigible airships (that is basically like very large barrage balloons as they had no frames) were used by the Americans during the WW2 on such duties as anti-submarine convoy escorts. A total of 168 were built during the war. No convoy escorted by a 'blimp' (as they were known) lost a ship to submarine action, and only one blimp was shot down. They continued to be used by the USA during the 1950s as early warning radar platforms to warn of nuclear attack from the USSR. Regards the German airship programme, to be strictly accurate it was only commercial operations that ceased with the Hindenburg disaster. Its sister airship ('Graf Zeppelin 2') was completed and went on to be used on pre-World War 2 spying missions. When war broke out it did not find favour with Goering who had it broken up to be used as scrap to build conventional bomber aircraft. This information is taken from the book 'Hindenburg, An Illustrated History' by Rick Archbold. The British airship sheds at Cardington in Bedfordshire where the R101 was based are still in existence and are pretty big!