LZ-129 The Latest Airship
DR. HUGO ECKENER’S latest venture with rigid airships promises to unfold endless possibilities of traveling safely and swiftly through the air in modern luxury.
The “LZ-129,” under construction since February, 1932, is about to make her maiden trip across the Atlantic, with Dr. Eckener as her master.
Here are the main facts about the ship: Length, 812 feet; greatest diameter, 137 feet; gross lifting capacity, 418,000 pounds; pay load twenty-five to thirty tons; fuel load, 130,000 pounds; cruising speed eighty miles per hour, which will carry it across the Atlantic in about two days.
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Gasless DIRIGIBLE for Safe Air Travel
EVEN the most rabid enthusiast cannot defend the weakness of the hydrogen-fill dirigible. Death and destruction lurk in every cubic foot of it. Human ingenuity has failed to devise a means of making it safe and the prospect of riding the air with 2,000,000 cubic feet of a violent explosive over one’s head is not alluring, at least to those who have had laboratory experience with the energetic hydrogen atom.
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Anyone Can Fly a Blimp
This first-hand account of a novice at the controls of an airship is so graphic and thrilling that you cannot fail to be delighted with it You will find it all the more interesting because, while airplanes have become commonplace, comparatively few have ridden these gas bags.
By ANDREW R. BOONE
SMITHY stuck his head out of the port window. “Give us a weigh-off,” he shouted, raising his voice to get it past the roar of the two engines.
The ground crew, stepping back from the car, slackened all ropes. Instantly the Volunteer began to rise from the Goodyear air dock. And as suddenly all hands grabbed the ropes and the rail running around the bottom of the car.
Across the field came one of the more distant crew members, a canvas bag, heavy with sand, clutched in each hand. Through the starboard door he swung them onto the floor of the car.
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Why Don’t We Build An Atoms-For-Peace Dirigible
Here is a bold plan for displaying peacetime uses of the atom to the peoples of the world.
By Frank Tinsley
EARLY last year, President Eisenhower asked the Congress for funds with which to build a fission-powered merchant ship for the global spread of peaceful atomic knowledge.
“Visiting the ports of the world,” the President stated, “the ship will demonstrate to people everywhere the peacetime use of atomic energy, harnessed for the improvement of human living.”
In Washington, the basic idea of a floating exhibit of American fission techniques was received with general approval by members of the Congress. Some of the plan’s technical aspects, however, generated a bit of discussion. To avoid protracted experimental research and thus speed the ship launching date, it was originally decided to fit the vessel with a duplicate of the power plant used in the atomic submarine Nautilus.
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Floating Mooring Mast Proposed as Way Station for Airships
CONVINCED that battle fleets of the future will require the aid of rigid airships as long range scouts, aeronautic experts recently have suggested an ingenious method of mooring rigids to the mast of a moving depot ship at sea, as pictured above.
The depot ship, preferably a converted cruiser, has a hangar forward for small fighting planes, with a launching deck from which the planes are seen taking off to protect the rigid as it returns from a trip.
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Is The Military Dirigible Doomed?
YES!
by WING COMMANDER S. K. UHLER
Royal Air Force, Great Britain, Retired Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views or opinions of the armed forces of His Majesty, the King of England.
SINCE Count Zeppelin built and flew the first large, rigid airship, approximately 150 such lighter-than-air craft have been built and flown. Practically all of them, built by Germany, Great Britain, France and America have exploded in mid-air, burned or crashed with disastrous loss of life. There have been 19 major, peacetime dirigible disasters during the past 23 years.
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Skyscraper Airport for City of Tomorrow
WHAT the metropolitan skyport of tomorrow may look like, as conceived by Nicholas DeSantis, New York commercial artist, is shown in the illustration below. His remarkable proposal, embodied in a model that he has completed after five years’ study of the project, calls for a 200-story building capped by an airplane field eight city blocks long and three blocks wide. A lower level of his “aerotrop-olis,” as he has named it, offers a port for lighter-than-air craft. Hangars for planes and airships occupy the top fifty floors.
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36 Killed on the “Hindenburg” But Records Prove That Zeppelins Are Safe
by Bob Gordon
TO MOST of us Earth-bound mortals, there is something singularly terrifying about death from the sky. The only terror equal to it is death from fire. When the two horrors are combined in one spectacular disaster such as overtook the airship Hindenburg, we of panicky imaginations are prone to ignore facts, prone to throw up our hands and cry, “That is enough!”
Yet the men who must face this fate again if airship progress is to continue are far from ready to cry enough. Every uninjured survivor of the Hindenburg crew hurried back to Germany, that he might get a berth in the next great Zeppelin, the LZ-130, rapidly nearing completion.
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Proposed Rotary “Aero-Zep” Uses Novel Screw Vanes
A MOST unusual type of dirigible involving wide departures from established principles has recently been patented by two South Dakota inventors. They call it the “Rotary Aero-Zep,” and aside from the fact that the entire craft is designed to be constructed of aluminum, the most novel feature of the invention is the metal gas bag which is designed to revolve around the frame trackway carrying the passenger car, screwing the airship forward in the air through the action of spiral vanes mounted on the side of the bag.
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