What is a generation of air supremacy?

After the hot air balloon successfully took off, people began to try to install power for the balloon, because animals like humans are too weak to be used as an "engine" for propulsion. It was based on this idea that the airship that dominated the sky for a while was born.

An airship is a maneuverable aircraft that is lighter than the air. It consists of a huge streamlined hull, a pod located under the hull, a tail surface that plays a stabilizing control role, and a propulsion device. The airbag in the hull is filled with buoyant gases that are less dense than air, such as hydrogen or helium, to create buoyancy and lift the airship into the air. Generally speaking, airships can be roughly divided into three categories according to their airbags: the first is a soft airship; the second is a rigid airship; and the third is a semi-rigid airship.

Many airship model ideas of different shapes were born one after another, but they were not realized due to one or another reasons. The earliest airship was first successfully built by French engineer Giffard. Although it could rise into the air, its power performance was quite disappointing because the original steam engine was still quite imperfect. The airbags of early blimps relied on inflation pressure to maintain their shape. Furthermore, it flies slow and low.

In 1890, German Army Lieutenant General Count Zeppelin began work on developing a new type of airship as soon as he retired. He used aluminum as the frame of the airship to keep the airbag in a certain shape. There are many separate small airbags in the airbag, which improved the safety of the airship. The airship is cigar-shaped, 129 meters long and 11.6 meters in diameter. The frame is composed of a longitudinal keel, 24 wooden bridge bars, and a large number of longitudinal and radial tension lines. The outside of the frame is covered with a tarpaulin, divided into two parts: front and rear. cabins, each equipped with a 16-horsepower engine. There are 16 airbags in the boat with a volume of 22,500 cubic meters, a load capacity of 8,700 kilograms, a total lift of 13 tons, and a ceiling of 2,500 meters. The interior is filled with hydrogen and gas. This is the world's first rigid airship.

It was not until the emergence of rigid airships that airships entered the practical stage.

In 1901, Santos Dimond, a Brazilian living in France, was the first to install a car engine on an airship. Then he drove the airship he designed and built from the suburbs of Paris, and in less than In 30 minutes, he successfully flew 11 kilometers around the Eiffel Tower. At this point, the power performance of the airship has been greatly enhanced.

The invention of the airship attracted the attention of Germany and was quickly introduced to the battlefield. The airship has since become the earliest aircraft used in war. In 1915, Germany dispatched the LZ-38 Zeppelin airship to conduct its first air raid on Britain. For a time, it caused great panic among the British people. Throughout the war, German airships carried out 208 air raids on Britain, dropping more than 200 tons of explosives.

Although airplanes were born at that time, airplanes did not pose a threat to airships in terms of flight altitude or airborne weapons. However, Germany was forced to abandon the airship war in 1917, mainly due to the serious losses of airships participating in the war. Although aircraft were unable to intercept the powerful airships at the time, the changeable weather at sea was able to prevent these German aerial giants from visiting Britain. Shortly after the Zeppelin air raid on London, a British Royal Navy fighter plane intercepted a German airship over Belgium, climbed onto the airship, and shot it down with a bomb, creating the Zeppelin's first defeat.

After 1916, the success rate of aircraft defeating airships increased greatly, thanks to the advent of several new aviation machine gun bullets and incendiary bombs. Of the Zeppelins deployed in air raids, 80 were destroyed by artillery fire or bad weather.

Before and after World War I was a period of rapid development of airships. Britain and France used small soft airships to perform anti-submarine patrol missions. Germany has established a fleet of Zeppelins for military activities such as maritime patrols, long-range bombing, and airlift.

Airships are large, slow, inflexible, and vulnerable to attack. At the same time, due to the continuous improvement of aircraft performance, military airships are gradually being replaced by aircraft, but commercial flights of airships are still developing.

The Hindenburg, a large airship made in Germany in 1929, is 245 meters long, more than 41 meters in diameter, and weighs 206 tons. It has flown between the United States and Germany 10 times, transporting passengers. More than 1,000 people.

The United Kingdom and France also successively built their own large airships "R-100" and "Akron" based on the Zeppelin airship. At this time, most airships used hydrogen as the levitation gas, which was flammable and explosive and very unsafe. In 1937, the Hindenburg exploded due to hydrogen gas caused by static sparks during landing, killing 35 people. Many large airships in Britain and the United States also crashed one after another. Since then, the development of airships has come to a standstill.

Since the 1970s, due to the advancement of science and technology, airships have switched to safe helium, and their development has been active again. The new airship using a variety of new technologies is used for aerial photography, patrolling, etc. It can be seen in the sky above the venues of the Los Angeles, Seoul and Barcelona Olympic Games and the Beijing Asian Games.

In the late 1880s, people began to use gasoline engines to power experimental airships.

While airships gradually dominated the vast sky, the birth of airplanes began to challenge this dominance of the air.

By the 1930s, while airplanes were gradually being perfected and put into practical use, airships had suffered several disasters involving crashes and fatalities. This caused the airship to be replaced by airplanes less than a century after its birth.