The dirigible returns

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33739, 11 January 1975, Page 15

The dirigible returns

CHARLES FOLEY,

(By

of the Observer Foreign News Service)

SANTA MONICA (California).

The only airships flying today, Goodyear’s tubby, silvery, advertising-and-observation blimps, can often be seen tooling along the coastline of Santa Monica, amusing beach-people with their portly dig nity, modest pace and antique quaintness.

But to engineers like Mr John Roda, of Santa Monica, who helped design one of America’s most successful airships, the Navy’s ZMC-2 (which operated from 1929 to 1942), the Goodyear craft is a symbol of the future. Mr Roda is one of the growing number of aerospace experts and military men who believe that a great airship revival is around the corner. They envisage vest new lighter-than-air craft, infinitely safer and more sophisticated than the dirigibles of old, filling a startling variety of roles as cargo carriers, transporters of natural gas, tanker s-of-the-skies, and, inevitably, multi-purpose combat weapons.

Indications

Mr Roda’s dream of an airship renaissance is looking less impossible every day. He can point to three recent events which have Warmed the hearts of all di-rigible-lovers: a conference of 300 scientists and engineers at Monterey, California; a National Aeronautics and Spce Administration-funded feasability study; and a Shell International study of airships a*s natural gas carriers. Britain will host the first international airship conference at which these and other notions for reviving lighter-than-air ships will be fully discussed by representative*? of government and industry. At the Monterey conference, some 50 papers were heard by experts from nine countries over five days of virtually non-stop talk, beginning at 7.30 a.m. and going n until 10 at night. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was hot for the meeting; N.A.S.A., the Navy and the Federal Aviation Administration footed the $BO,OOO bill. All but two of the papers read were optimistic, viewing the airship as a form of transport with unique advantages over today’s jumbo cargo planes. They could carry huge weights, make less noise and pollution, take on and discharge cargoes at remote spots where no airports exist, and conserve fuel. The new airships would dwarf the great silver ghosts of the past — ojie design,

for instrance, calls for a vast, triple-hulled craft up to 1000 feet long, capable of lifting 500 tons or more.

Crashes

But the big obstacle in the path of airship advocates is the widespread belief that dirigibles have a bad habit of crashing in flames. In fact — ask any airship buff — they were among the safer forms of transport, and would be much more so today, thanks to use of nonflammable helium and advanced technology. From 1921 to 1937 — when the German Hindenburg went down in a spectacular inferno of flame at Lakehurst, New Jersey — accidents wrecked seven of the great ships, taking 259 livas in all. (The worst single air disaster in history, last March’s crash of a DCIO jumbo near Paris, killed 346 people.) It was World War II as much as the fate of the hydrogenfilled Hindenburg that brought an end to airship technology research, with every country turning its effort into producing new lightens and bombers.

“Now the time of the airship is back again,” says Mr J. Gordon Vaeth, an airship officer of the 1930 s who is today director of systems engineering for the National Environmental Satellite Service. Mr Vaeth, an old Navy type not given to flights of hyperbole, says there are still many questions to be probed in fact and theory, but our changing economic needs have set the scene for a dirigible come-back. The airship people see filling the gap between costly, speedy air freight and cheap, slow sea movement. Seeking faster ways to ship Californian agricultural products around the world, the Southern California Aviation Council has proposed that the Federal Government should sponsor new airship research. The council believes the craft have “vast potential” for helping to solve the nation’s critical transport problems.

Moving gas

Oil companies like Shell envisage tanker dirigibles to

move natural gas. Aerospace Developments, Ltd, of Lon don, has already spent $’ million researching the possibilities for Shell, which is thinking in terms of a fleet — perhaps 10 — of airships 1800 feet long, each capable of carrying 84 million cubic feet of natural gas. Besides their low cost, the craft would be a better bet in areas of “low political stability.”

The idea would be to fill the airship with gas at the source and fly it,, in the gaseous state, to its destination, thus avoiding the “hideously expensive” process of liquefying, storing and transporting the gas on ocean-going tankers which alone cost $llO million each to build.

“All the emphasis is on moving cargo, not passengers,” says one Goodyear airship expert. Flying at about 100 m.p.h. at heights of around 5000 feet (well below busy air traffic lanes), a big dirigible carrying some 500 tons of container cargo would take four days — non-stop — on the Los Angeles to London run. “But there’s a special interest in moving odd pieces of equipment to remote areas,” says Goodyear. Massive lengths of pipe for the Alaskan oil pipeline, for instance, or a 500-ton nuclear boiler section which has to be placed in an area far from navigable water.

Latin Americans

Latin American nations are also taking a keen interest. Experts at the Organisation of American States offices in Washington say that airships could play a significant role in opening up new lands and building roads through the interior. Coastal roads cost $300,000 per mile to build: roads through the jungle may take more than $1 million per mile. Small airships, costing about $1 million apiece, and carrying between six to ten tons of equipment and material could slash building costs dramatically. It may well be that the cash and impetus to develop the first airship of the seventies will come from the

Unites States Navy, which ilready has several studies inder way. Airships can move massive amounts of nen and equipment into areas with no airfields or roads; they have vast range; and they make superior surveillance craft for the oceans. Operations Research Inc., which has completed one study for the Chief of Naval Operations, says that an airship could carry radar of unprecedented size and power. Sophisticated electronic devices could be used to counter missiles fired at it. As for conventional attack, the craft “can absorb damage better than a fixedwing plane.” The envelope over the frame in the old days was merely rubberised cotton, enclosing the ship and its gas cells. Today, things are different: new synthetic materials are available with twice the tensile strength of steel at less than a quarter of its weight. The Navy is very interested in a bizarre-looking hybrid airship being developed by N.A.S.A. and the Megalifter Company of California. The mammoth craft, 650 feet long, will have the familiar blimp body, but will incorporate several features of the jumbo CSA transport built by Lockheed for the U.S.A.F.: wings, two comparatively small jet engines for speed, computerised flight controls. The Megalifter transport, which would dwarf a 747 jetliner, could carry hundreds of tons of equipment, including tanks, heavy artillery and helicopters.

Police interest

American police are interested in the airship, too: Goodyear is designing an experimental two-man blimp for a small-town police chief in the Arizona desert. “He’s tried light aircraft and helicopters,” says a Goodyear executive, “but he thinks that a small airship would give him the quiet approach and steady observation platform he needs to fight crime. We think he’s ahead of his time.” — O.F.N.S. Copyright.