Zeppelins

A zeppelin (also called a blimp or a dirigible) is a giant, cigar shaped air ship invented in the eighteen hundreds. They are very large and averaged about one hundred feet in diameter and are usually a couple hundred feet long. It is a large ship with a hollow frame/skeleton and instead of having wings like a plane or jet they work more like hot air balloons and are filled with a light gas such as Hydrogen or Helium. A man named Count Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf von Zeppelin is credited with the invention of the Zeppelin. He was born in Prussia and had a military background. He went to a military school and joined the Prussian army then came to the United States and worked with the army during the civil war. It took him over ten years to develop the dirigible. The first ones were called Zeppelins in honor of him and the first one was completed in 1900. A decade later a zeppelin provided the first commercial air service for passengers. The LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin made the first commercial passenger flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first commercial passenger flight around the world. It was the most successful zeppelin and it flew for nine years. In those nine years it made five hundred ninety flights, traveling over one million miles. During its life it carried over 34,000 passengers all without harm. The ship was never harmed or destroyed but after the Hindenburg disaster it stopped carrying passengers and retired.

In the following years Zeppelin had built a whole fleet of zeppelins. Some of them were used to bomb London during World War I. They could leave Germany just before sunset, bomb London, then be back home before sunrise. They were also equipped with machine guns and any planes trying to catch them could easily be shot down. That was all fairly early in the war and later new technology and better, faster airplanes began to take down the zeppelins. They could shoot the dirigibles with Phosphorus laced bullets that would easily burn and catch the aircraft on fire. Because they were very fragile and didn't hold up against bad weather and many were filled with Hydrogen, (a light gas that is extremely flammable) they didn't do very well as wartime aircraft, and eventually over forty were shot down and destroyed. The raids and bombings with the zeppelins soon stopped because they were too fragile and were being destroyed fairly easily. Two zeppelins blowing up.

One of the most famous dirigible explosions, and the one that pretty much ended the use of zeppelins for good, was that of the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg was the largest aircraft ever to fly at over one hundred thirty-five in diameter and almost eight hundred four feet long. It weighed over one hundred and twelve //tons// (which is extraordinary even by today's weights standards) and although it was originally supposed to be filled with Helium - a gas that is much less flammable - it was ultimately filled with Hydrogen gas. On May 6, 1937, the gigantic Hindenburg was traveling to Lakehurst International airport in New Jersey. It suddenly burst into flames out of nowhere. No one really knows why, but something as small as a spark of static electricity could be to blame. The ship itself was insanely flammable. Its outside fabric was coated with an extremely flammable protected coating and it was filled with Hydrogen. After it caught fire, the fire spread and the ship crashed to the ground and was destroyed by the flames in less than a minute. Thirty-five people died in the crash, but there were many survivors. The crash of the Hindenburg ended the flying of zeppelins. Today there are very few dirigibles, and the ones that do exist are mostly for sporting events (since they can basically hover silently for a good amount of time cameras are attached to them to record the event) and advertising (like the Goodyear blimp).

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http://www.ciderpresspottery.com/ZLA/wwi/Zep_at_war.html http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/Zeppelin/DI48.htm http://www.ciderpresspottery.com/ZLA/greatzeps/german/Hindenburg.html http://www.airships.net/lz127-graf-zeppelin http://www.vidicom-tv.com/tohiburg.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F54rqDh2mWA

By: Kim Fisher