ZEPPELIN RIGID AIRSHIPS

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the rigid airship looked more likely to be the future of air travel and transportation than the small, rather fragile airplane. Using a lifting gas enclosed within a metal or wooden framework, rigid airships could fly longer distances and carry more passengers or cargo. Zeppelin: Rigid Airships 1893-1940 examines the rise and decline of the airship by means of individual development histories of all the fifty types of airships built across four countries during a forty year period. Beginning with Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's first rigid airship, the book examines the role played by the rigid airship in both civil and military aviation. The world's first airline, DELAG, operated passenger services using Zeppelins before the outbreak of the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918, the Germans used rigid airships for bombing raids and for patrolling the seas. After the war, the rigid airship was a candidate for providing passenger services, especially over long distances, since they were able to provide far more comfortable settings for those flying in them than the airplane.

Indeed the German airships Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg provided the world's first transoceanic air services, between Germany and both North and South America. Extensive appendices provide a mass of information on the airships themselves, their sheds and transatlantic Zeppelin schedules.

Peter W. Brooks has written Historic Airships and Cierva Autogiros: The Development of Rotary-Winged Flight

The illustrious "Putnam Aviation" series reaches back to one of the most fascinating eras of flight for a notably thorough volume on the airships that went to war in 1914-18 and then carried passengers across the Atlantic until 1937 and the fiery death of the Hindenberg at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Author Brooks's coverage of those monsters (many were 700 feet long) follows the Putnam mold, with copious technical data, 280 black-and-white photos and other illustrations, and matter-of-fact histories that reveal the occasional aeronautical tidbit (e.g., the first craft to make a round trip of the Atlantic was a British airship, the Armstrong-Whitworth R34, in 1919). The volume offers excellent coverage for this neglected aeronautical subject. A recommended work for the avid aviation reader and better collections that is worth the price.
- Mel D. Lane, Sacramento, Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.