When Giants Ruled the Sky

When Giants Ruled the Sky

Author: John J. Geoghegan

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2021-10-29

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 0750999071

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Almost everything you know about airships is wrong. Between 1917 and 1935, the US Navy poured tens of millions of dollars into their airship programme, building a series of dirigibles each one more enormous than the last. These flying behemoths were to be the future of long-distance transport, competing with trains and ocean liners to carry people, post and cargo from country to country, and even across the sea. But by 1936 all these ambitious plans had been scrapped. What happened? When Giants Ruled the Sky is the story of how the American rigid airship came within a hair's breadth of dominating long-distance transportation. It is also the story of four men whose courage and determination kept the programme going despite the obstacles thrown in their way – until the Navy deliberately ignored a fatal design flaw, bringing the programme crashing back to earth. The subsequent cover-up prevented the truth from being told for more than eighty years. Now, for the first time, what really happened can be revealed.


Giants in the Sky

Giants in the Sky

Author: Douglas Hill Robinson

Publisher: Seattle : University of Washington Press

Published: 1973

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780295952499

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Sky Ships

Sky Ships

Author: William F Althoff

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2016-02-15

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1612519016

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Originally published in 1990, Sky Ships is easily the most comprehensive history of U.S. Navy airships ever written. The Naval Institute Press is releasing this new edition— complete with two hundred new photographs—to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the book’s publication. Impressed by Germany’s commercial and military Zeppelins, the United States initiated its own airship program in 1915. Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey was homeport for several of the largest machines ever to navigate the air. The success of the commercial rigid airship peaked in 1936 with transatlantic round trips between Central Europe and the Americas by Hindenburg and by Graf Zeppelin— ending with the infamous fire in 1937. That setback, the onset of war, and the accelerated progress of heavier-than-air technology ended rigid airship development. The Navy continued to use blimps to protect Allied shipping during World War II. Following the war, the Navy persisted with efforts to integrate the airships, but the program was finally discontinued in the early 1960s.


Fatal Flight

Fatal Flight

Author: Bill Hammack

Publisher:

Published: 2017-12-16

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9781945441035

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Fatal Flight brings vividly to life the year of operation of R.101, the last great British airship--a luxury liner three and a half times the length of a 747 jet, with a spacious lounge, a dining room that seated fifty, glass-walled promenade decks, and a smoking room. The British expected R.101 to spearhead a fleet of imperial airships that would dominate the skies as British naval ships, a century earlier, had ruled the seas. The dream ended when, on its demonstration flight to India, R.101 crashed in France, tragically killing nearly all aboard. Combining meticulous research with superb storytelling, Fatal Flight guides us from the moment the great airship emerged from its giant shed--nearly the largest building in the British Empire--to soar on its first flight, to its last fateful voyage. The full story behind R.101 shows that, although it was a failure, it was nevertheless a supremely imaginative human creation. The technical achievement of creating R.101 reveals the beauty, majesty, and, of course, the sorrow of the human experience. The narrative follows First Officer Noel Atherstone and his crew from the ship's first test flight in 1929 to its fiery crash on October 5, 1930. It reveals in graphic detail the heroic actions of Atherstone as he battled tremendous obstacles. He fought political pressures to hurry the ship into the air, fended off Britain's most feted airship pilot, who used his influence to take command of the ship and nearly crashed it, and, a scant two months before departing for India, guided the rebuilding of the ship to correct its faulty design. After this tragic accident, Britain abandoned airships, but R.101 flew again, its scrap melted down and sold to the Zeppelin Company, who used it to create LZ 129, an airship even more mighty than R.101--and better known as the Hindenburg. Set against the backdrop of the British Empire at the height of its power in the early twentieth century, Fatal Flight portrays an extraordinary age in technology, fueled by humankind's obsession with flight


Empires of the Sky

Empires of the Sky

Author: Alexander Rose

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 0812989996

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The Golden Age of Aviation is brought to life in this story of the giant Zeppelin airships that once roamed the sky—a story that ended with the fiery destruction of the Hindenburg. “Genius . . . a definitive tale of an incredible time when mere mortals learned to fly.”—Keith O’Brien, The New York Times At the dawn of the twentieth century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany’s Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world’s first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the remarkable airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades, in the quest to control one of humanity’s most inspiring achievements. And it was the airship—not the airplane—that led the way. In the glittery 1920s, the count’s brilliant protégé, Hugo Eckener, achieved undreamed-of feats of daring and skill, including the extraordinary Round-the-World voyage of the Graf Zeppelin. At a time when America’s airplanes—rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luck—could barely make it from New York to Washington, D.C., Eckener’s airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury. What Charles Lindbergh almost died doing—crossing the Atlantic in 1927—Eckener had effortlessly accomplished three years before the Spirit of St. Louis even took off. Even as the Nazis sought to exploit Zeppelins for their own nefarious purposes, Eckener built his masterwork, the behemoth Hindenburg—a marvel of design and engineering. Determined to forge an airline empire under the new flagship, Eckener met his match in Juan Trippe, the ruthlessly ambitious king of Pan American Airways, who believed his fleet of next-generation planes would vanquish Eckener’s coming airship armada. It was a fight only one man—and one technology—could win. Countering each other’s moves on the global chessboard, each seeking to wrest the advantage from his rival, the struggle for mastery of the air was a clash not only of technologies but of business, diplomacy, politics, personalities, and the two men’s vastly different dreams of the future. Empires of the Sky is the sweeping, untold tale of the duel that transfixed the world and helped create our modern age.


The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed

Author: John McPhee

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1973

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0374137811

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This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the airplane and rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. Its early and secrect experimenta; development took twelve years' time and one and a half million dollars. McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft's successive progenitors and makes it seem as momentous as the first trip to the moon.


The Story of the Airship

The Story of the Airship

Author: Hugh Allen

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2008-09

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1935327062

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Originally published by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. as a promotional, The Story of the Airship chronicles the history and development of these great ¿silver cruisers of the sky.¿ Filled with photos and authoritative text, the book springs from an era when dirigibles, balloons and blimps competed against airplanes for public attention.


Airship Technology

Airship Technology

Author: G. A. Khoury

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-08-19

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9780521607537

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A unique and indispensable guide to modern airship design and operation, for researchers and professionals working in mechanical and aerospace engineering.


Surviving the Hindenburg

Surviving the Hindenburg

Author: Larry Verstraete

Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press

Published: 2012-02-02

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 1410310043

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On May 6, 1937, the giant German airship the Hindenburg was destroyed by fire as it attempted to land at Lakehurst Naval Base in New Jersey. Of the 93 people on board, a remarkable 62 survived, including Werner Franz, the ship's 14-year-old cabin boy. In Surviving the Hindenburg, writer Larry Verstraete recounts young Werner's story of the airship's final voyage. Through Werner's memories young readers will explore the inner workings of the giant airship, marvel at the breathtaking vistas from its observation windows, and hold their breath during Werner's terrifying escape from the fiery devastation. "My mind didn't start working again until I was on the ground," Werner said later. "Then I started running." Captured in detailed, dramatic artwork, the story of the doomed airship comes alive for readers and history buffs of all ages. Larry Verstraete's book, S is for Scientists: A Discovery Alphabet, was named a 2011 Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students by the National Science Teachers Association. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. David Geister's work has been featured in The History Channel Magazine. His books include B is for Battle Cry: A Civil War Alphabet. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.