Feasibility of airships in ww2?

[wuzak]

The only value I could see is a ultra high altitude recon platform or a one way high altitude unmanned strategic bomber. Not sure either one would offer more benefit than it costs. I could see Japan using them in place of their balloon bombs to the US/Canada Northwest. I would think 20 tons of small incendiaries dropped at the same time could cause some serious fires in those forests.

How practical would a high altitude air ship be?

The "balloon" section would have to be much bigger, or the payload smaller, to get the air ship to high altitudes.

 

[Peter Gunn]

Also operated out of North Africa for Atlantic approaches to the Gib straits and also into the Med as well.

Didn't the USN use them in the Pacific as well? Do I remember reading where a Navy blimp delivered spare parts to USS Hornet while she had the Doolittle Raiders embarked or am I tripping again?

 

[swampyankee]

Post-war, USN LTA continued operations in weather that grounded just about everything else.

 

[R Leonard]

Didn't the USN use them in the Pacific as well? Do I remember reading where a Navy blimp delivered spare parts to USS Hornet while she had the Doolittle Raiders embarked or am I tripping again?

They were used off the west coast of the US and venturing over the waters off Baja Mexico. There was a late plan, early 1945. to move ZP squadrons to the south Pacific as an expedient to allow the VP and VS squadrons in that theater to move some of their activities northward closer to Japan, but logistically it was a non starter. They could not do what they did get ZPs to north Africa, fly them, to get ZPs to the south Pacific . . . winds were wrong, distance too far. Movement would have to be by ship and there would be a major blimp support facilities problem.

 

[Dimlee]

It must have been something to travel by zeppelin. Looking out the windows, down at earth, while slowly flying by...

My dream. Good book, good music in headphones, a glass of... something good.

 

[Dimlee]

They're slower than rail transport and barely, if any, faster than road transport, are certainly less fuel-efficient than the former, and are probably more labor intensive than either. Against ships, they have severely limited payloads (a single ship can easily carry tens of thousands of tons of cargo), are more labor intensive, and aren't enough faster. Against airplanes, they're simply too slow.

Yes. But.
They are slower than trucks and trains if they fly along the roads/railroads. But they can fly straight from A to B (subject the weather permits) so there is a transit time advantage in many regions of the world.
Airship vs ocean vessel. The speed advantage is small in transatlantic but significant on the Europe-Asia route, for example.
Slower compared to aircraft, but cargo air traffic moves via hubs. In the pre-COVID-19 era, you could reach Bejing from Istanbul in 10 hours. And your 10 cbm cargo would travel for 3-4 days, probably.
I see an airship in the future (very distant, probably) as a vehicle for dry light expensive cargo carried across the distances of 2,000 km and longer over the areas with a poor rail network. Maybe even chilled or refrigerated cargo if electricity technology will improve so much that generator weight will not be an issue. Or battery technology?

 

[manta22]

The USN used lighter-than-air aircraft for maritime patrol during WWII. I do know they operated off the US Eastern Seaboard, and over the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico.

When I was Five years old in 1943 we lived near Charleston, SC on the Isle of Palms and later on Folley Beach. The US Navy or Coast Guard flew blimps out over the ocean regularly on anti-submarine patrol. German submarines operated off the coast, sinking tankers and cargo ships as they came out of Charleston port. In Sept, 1943, my father, Major C. C. Albaugh was assigned to a convoy out of Charleston on the SS African Dawn to tour the Persian Gulf and Africa to evaluate the supply situation there.

Blimps (non-rigid airships) were in use on both coasts of the US to spot subs.

 

[Shortround6]

They were faster than WW II (or before) trucks as there were no high-speed motorways in most countries.
freight trains seldom moved at high speed (anything close to passenger train speed)

However even a few large trucks (5 ton cargo) are a tiny fraction of the cost of a rigid airship and need a much smaller crew.

For moving cargo there is no comparing costs between a train and an airship assuming rails go anywhere near where you want to go.

An airship may be efficient in terms of fuel burned per ton/mile but since even a plane like the Ju 52 can make several trips while the airship is making one trip the return on investment of construction takes a long, long time and again, crew cost has to be taken into account.

 

[pbehn]

They were faster than WW II (or before) trucks as there were no high-speed motorways in most countries.
freight trains seldom moved at high speed (anything close to passenger train speed)

However even a few large trucks (5 ton cargo) are a tiny fraction of the cost of a rigid airship and need a much smaller crew.

For moving cargo there is no comparing costs between a train and an airship assuming rails go anywhere near where you want to go.

An airship may be efficient in terms of fuel burned per ton/mile but since even a plane like the Ju 52 can make several trips while the airship is making one trip the return on investment of construction takes a long, long time and again, crew cost has to be taken into account.

I don't know if the calculations on fuel burn for pre WW2 airships included the massive use of hydrogen, it escapes and has to be released. By 1920s in Europe Trains went everywhere mass cargo needed to go. Many roads were unmetalled but making a docking station and shelter is no small task for a piece of kit that was massively expensive to build and run.

 

[GrauGeist]

Very few airships in the years between WWI and WWII survived to retirement.

Just the list of airships lost to fire during those years is long and full of tragedy.

Hydrogen Airship Disasters | Airships.net

 

[swampyankee]

Yes. But.
They are slower than trucks and trains if they fly along the roads/railroads. But they can fly straight from A to B (subject the weather permits) so there is a transit time advantage in many regions of the world.
Airship vs ocean vessel. The speed advantage is small in transatlantic but significant on the Europe-Asia route, for example.
Slower compared to aircraft, but cargo air traffic moves via hubs. In the pre-COVID-19 era, you could reach Bejing from Istanbul in 10 hours. And your 10 cbm cargo would travel for 3-4 days, probably.
I see an airship in the future (very distant, probably) as a vehicle for dry light expensive cargo carried across the distances of 2,000 km and longer over the areas with a poor rail network. Maybe even chilled or refrigerated cargo if electricity technology will improve so much that generator weight will not be an issue. Or battery technology?

One of my college classmates was involved in an experimental engineering program, based on project-based learning. The group he was working on was designing a system to deliver natural gas. They came up with a blimp about 400 meters long using natural gas as both lifting agent and fuel. LNG tankers ended up being the chosen method, but LNG airships would be cool to see.

 

[wingnuts]

I used to work at RAF Cardington near Bedford in the UK occasionally in the airship hangars built for the R100 and the R101, the hangars are huge and would make easy targets, each airship would need to be hangared and it would take huge resources to build the airships and hangars, materials and manpower.

 

[GrauGeist]

Cool that those still exist.
We had two airship hangars in Tustin (Orange County, CA.) that finally succumbed to urban sprawl after all these years.
When I was a kid, I went there on occasion with Dad (they were part of the USMC's LTA base) and I was in awe of their size, especially from the inside.

 

[GreenKnight121]

Cool that those still exist.
We had two airship hangars in Tustin (Orange County, CA.) that finally succumbed to urban sprawl after all these years.
When I was a kid, I went there on occasion with Dad (they were part of the USMC's LTA base) and I was in awe of their size, especially from the inside.

Tustin Hangars | Tustin, CA
The Tustin Area Historical Society - Marine Corps Air Station Tustin - Santa Ana Naval Air Station
http://www.militarymuseum.org/NAS-Santa-Ana-History.pdf

Both hangars are still there, hangar #1 (north) is still not repaired.

Note the photos in the second link of the USMC CH-53 helos inside - in the 1980s hangar #2 housed 4 CH-53E squadrons - when visiting friends on the night shift there (I was a Sgt in the USMC, stationed at the nearby MCAS El Toro, working maintenance on A-6Es & F/A-18As) I explored them - the giant columns of the door support structures were hollow, you could climb up to the top (a 10'x10' floor each 10', with an access hole and ladder rungs in the wall), and then walk across inside above the doors - when I did that in 1986 I encountered a barn owl that was nesting there - I don't know who was more startled.

 

[GrauGeist]

They're in bad shape:
Tustin hangar back in shape as Navy finishes refurb – Orange County Register

One time we were there, in the late 60's, the one hangar had it's west doors closed and the east doors open only a fraction, which resulted in clouds in the interior and a mist as ground level.

 

[GreenKnight121]

Note that this summer movies are being shown to the public inside the undamaged hangar #2!
Tustin Movies at the Hangar | Mommy Poppins - Things to Do with Kids

 

[NevadaK]

I understand that the original post focused on large airships used for heavy lifting and transportation, but I wanted to reinforce the couple of posts regarding airships (blimps) used by the US Navy during the war. I had read somewhere that Navy blimps were one of the resounding successes of the war and that blimp escorted convoys had an outstanding success records. It is all pretty well summed up in this Wiki entry:

US Navy airships during World War II - Wikipedia

The short story is that only 1 vessel was sunk from a blimp escorted convoy. The longer story is that they were used in a number of theaters and were instrumental in blocking access to the Mediterranean and incorporated early airborne MAD systems.

I think that one answer to the viability of airships in WW2 is that yes, airships were not only proven to be viable but formed an essential part of the war effort. At least for the US. On the other hand, large dirigible sized airships had technical challenges that make them problematic and were proven to be unviable prior to the war.

 

[GrauGeist]

The USN's K-ships were a success because they had a self-contained gondola slung under a large gas-bag (simplified description) filled with Helium.
They also operated in areas that had Allied air supremacy and were rarely challenged by Axis aircraft, though not impervious to a U-boat's defensive suite.

The other point with K-ships (or blimps in general) is their limited carrying capacity versus that of a dirigible.

 

[pbehn]

I used to work at RAF Cardington near Bedford in the UK occasionally in the airship hangars built for the R100 and the R101, the hangars are huge and would make easy targets, each airship would need to be hangared and it would take huge resources to build the airships and hangars, materials and manpower. View attachment 593033View attachment 593035View attachment 593036

That is for two airships, compare to a railway locomotive servicing sheds which catered for dozens and which can stand outside anyway. Its where my father worked.

 

[NevadaK]

The USN's K-ships were a success because they had a self-contained gondola slung under a large gas-bag (simplified description) filled with Helium.
They also operated in areas that had Allied air supremacy and were rarely challenged by Axis aircraft, though not impervious to a U-boat's defensive suite.

The other point with K-ships (or blimps in general) is their limited carrying capacity versus that of a dirigible.

Greetings GrauGeist,
You'll get no arguments from me about the vulnerability of airships in the presence of opposing aircraft. OTOH, U -Boats weren't shooting them out of the sky, either.

My point is that there was a viable role for airships in WW2 as shown by the US Navy's use. I was actually surprised by the size of the US fleet (?) of blimps. Something like 150. That is not insignificant.

Agreed that blimps are not heavy lifters, but I have yet to see a successful heavy lift LTA craft. Given WW2 era technology it seems to me that it would be nearly impossible to develop a dependable heavy lift transportation LTA vessel.

K