Airships were used by the Germans before World War I for reconnaissance patrols across the North Sea. This escalated on 19 January 1914 when the Germans dropped bombs on Britain from a Zeppelin, killing two civilians and injuring 16 more. Every few weeks a further raid was launched, and May 1915 saw the first bombing raid over London in which seven people died. In June 1915 Lieutenant Rex Warneford was sent on a bombing mission from Britain against the airship hangers at Evere in Belgium. The Zeppelin LZ-37 suddenly appeared, returning from a bombing raid over London, and Warneford decided to attack. He tried shooting at it with his rifle — the only gun he carried — but was driven off by the Zeppelin’s machine guns. Warneford doubled back and climbed above the enemy, dropping his bombs on top of the airship. The detonations set fire to the hydrogen gas and the Zeppelin crashed in a pillar of flame. It was the first time a Zeppelin had been downed in the war.
The sight of the airships over English soil was terrifying to the population, though they did little real damage. Most of their bombs fell wide of the target, and they were vulnerable to searchlights, night fighters and cloud. When the British began to use incendiary shells the destruction of hydrogen-filled airships was easier. In 1916 four Zeppelins were brought down in the battle of Verdun, and from then on they were prey to British fighters. At the end of the war, all German airships were to be handed over to the victorious powers, but most were damaged or destroyed by the Germans. Many of the airships constructed across Europe in the following years were built from the German designs.
After the war, these machines of terror re-emerged in a more peaceful guise. The British inaugurated a round-trip airship service to New York in July 1919 with the R-34, and ten years later construction began on the R-100 and R-101. In these airships, then the largest ever built, the structure of the ship was based on a geodesic lattice, a revolutionary concept that had been introduced by the young Barnes Wallis. Wallis (who was later to design the ‘bouncing bomb’) was an engineering apprentice who went on to become one of the greatest innovators in aircraft construction. His design for a lattice of light alloy girders allowed the construction of a remarkably lightweight framework. However, the haste to develop these huge aircraft led inexorably to tragedy. The R-101 was still undergoing tests and modifications when she was ordered to fly to India to carry officials to a conference; but she was not properly prepared and on 5 October 1930 she crashed in France, killing 48 of the 54 people on board. The British Air Ministry cancelled all further flights, and sold R-100 for scrap in 1931. The United States Navy ordered the British R-38 for military use but it was inadequately designed and was destroyed prior to delivery. Several semi-rigid airships were constructed in the Soviet Union and their SSSR-V6 set the world record for endurance with a flight of 130 hours. It eventually crashed into a mountain in 1938 with the loss of 13 of the 19 people aboard. In 1923 the Americans launched their own design of airship, the USS Shenandoah, which was the first to be filled with non-inflammable helium.
Germany had continued to design airships secretly in spite of the original ban imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. To help finance their development, the German designers undertook contract work for the United States, building the LZ-126, which was later named the USS Los Angeles, in 1924. Negotiations to end the treaty continued throughout; Germany argued that the conditions had been unilaterally imposed upon her, and so the treaty was really nothing more than a Diktat, or dictated peace. Hitler also argued that Part V of the treaty had called for all sides to reduce their military capability, and he showed that the Allies had ignored the ruling. In 1932 the German government announced that it would no longer observe any of the military limitations imposed by the treaty. By then, the treaty restrictions had already begun to be eased, and in fact the Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) was launched in 1928. It went on to fly 990,000 miles (1,600,000km) without a single injury to any passenger, and made the first circumnavigation of the globe by air. The United States Navy built two further airships, but all were eventually lost: the USS Shenandoah went down in a thunderstorm in 1925, the USS Akron crashed off New Jersey in April 1933 and the USS Macon crashed off Point Sur Lightstation State Historic Park in 1935. The German airships continued to dominate until the Hindenburg (LZ-129) burst into flames and crashed at Lakehurst, New Jersey, while approaching the landing mast on 6 May 1937. It was made into one of the most famous disaster films of all time, and led to the end of the civilian air transport by these airships.
World War II had already begun before the Germans scrapped the final two Zeppelins, yet the Soviet Union did use an airship during the war. The Russian W-12 had been constructed in 1939 and was used for transporting equipment and for parachute training from 1942 to 1945. A second Soviet airship was built in 1945 and used for mine-clearance and removing wreckage from the Black Sea until it crashed in 1947. A third airship, also built in 1945, was later used for training and as an eye-catching feature at parades and major celebrations. The Russian company Augur-Ros Aerosystems Group now manufactures multi-functional airships that can carry ten passengers, and patrol airships including the Au-12 and Au-30.
Apart from the Russians, no nation used airships during World War II, though the United States had squadrons of blimps that were used for detecting submarines, mine-sweeping and transportation of equipment. These blimps were able to control the Straits of Gibraltar and patrolled the coastal waters of North America and Brazil. One was based in the hangar originally built for the Graf Zeppelin at Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, which had closed down after the Hindenburg catastrophe. From 1942 until the end of World War II, the blimps of the United States protected the Atlantic fleet, making 37,554 flights with a total flying time of 378,237 hours. It is proudly claimed that over 70,000 ships in convoys were protected by blimp escorts, and only one of those dirigibles was ever brought down by the Germans.
After several decades of lack of interest since the end of World War II, development work on airships has resumed. Per Lindstrand designed the GA-42 blimp for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which was the first to use fly-by-wire flight control. He also conceived the largest hot-air ship, the AS-300m, which was constructed in 1993 and is used for transporting botanists to the tropical rain forest canopy. The Chinese have built the CA-80 airship, launched in 2001 by the Shanghai Vantage Airship Manufacture Co., and now the Zeppelin Company has resumed construction of airships. Most are used for pleasure flights, but a Zeppelin in South Africa is being utilized in the search for potential diamond mines. Hot-air ships are being built by companies including Cameron Balloons of Bristol, England, while the European Space Agency has been investigating a high-altitude long-endurance airship and there are even plans for a high-altitude airship sponsored by the United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command. An ‘orbital airship’ could lift cargo into low Earth orbit; and other secret developments are now believed to be under development in the United States.