"WWI Zeppelins: Not Too Deadly, But Scary as Hell" Topic

"World War I was shaped by the new vehicles developed during the four years of conflict. A century after the start of the war, we're looking back at the most remarkable vehicles—the planes, cars, tanks, ships, and zeppelins—it helped bring about.

World War I saw the rise of the submarine and the airplane as vital weapons of war, and even now they remain keystones of military might. The airship, on the other hand, became little more than a means of capturing fantastic aerial shots at the Super Bowl.

Although the zeppelin was embraced by both the Germans and the Allies during World War I, the Germans made far more extensive use of the rigid, hydrogen-filled airships. The concept of "strategic bombing"—targeted airstrikes on a particular location—didn't exist before the conflict. The advent of aerial warfare changed that, and also robbed the British of the protection afforded by the English Channel. The zeppelin allowed Germany to bring the war to the English homeland. Kind of…"
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Amicalement
Armand

It was ironic that the German Zeppelin commander decided to join a raid in the last month of the war & was shot down (& killed).

I knew an Englishwoman back in 2000 who was 100 years old but as sharp as a tack. She was from London and she told me she vividly remembered the zeppelins attacking London. She said they looked like great big dark grey whales floating in the sky…sinister was the word she used. You could still see the awe and perhaps even fear in her eyes.

I love hearing stories from times gone by. Thanks for sharing that Jason!

Th Hindenburg marked the end of the era of these things after it famously blew up in New Jersey. The flammable gas was blamed for the explosion of course. Did the WWI airships use the same gas? I know they would get machine gunned by biplanes. But did that usually result in a explosion?

My grandmother gave me a couple of photos her mother took of a zeppelin over London. They're not the best quality, but you get a sense of the menace and dread they must have instilled when you look at them.

I went to a primary school in Poplar, East London which was been bombed during WW1 and a number of children were killed (survived WWII with just broken glass). There was a memorial flower bed/clock in nearby municipal park.

Older folk did talk about that raid, because it stood out even past the blitz.

Cheers

John FoA

Th Hindenburg marked the end of the era of these things after it famously blew up in New Jersey. Did the WWI airships use the same gas?

Yes. Hydrogen gas. Easy and cheap to make, but highly flammable when mixed with air. The alternative lifting gas was helium, which is inert but heavier, so did not lift as well. IIRC, the only helium mine in the world was in the US. We regarded it as a strategic asset and didn't sell helium on the world market. We used it in our own airships between the wars, and barely produced enough enough to keep the fleet going. Sometimes they had to pump out one airship in order to gas up another.

I know they would get machine gunned by biplanes. But did that usually result in a explosion?

Not usually…but that was the intention. Hydrogen gas only burns when it's mixed with oxygen. Punching holes in a zep's gas bag usually just lets some gas out. The trick is to let enough hydrogen out to develop a pocket of hydrogen/air mitxture, then light that up with incendiary ammunition. The fighter had to stay with the zep for a while, work on the right area and have the right ammunition. When it worked, the zep was destroyed.

It worked often enough that zeppelin operations became prohibitively expensive late war and Gotha bombers took over bombing London. Then the Germans developed a new type of zep that they called a 'sky climber', that could operate above where the fighters could reach. The war ended at that stage of the arms race.

I kinda like airships. Fascinating beasts.

Actually, I'd say it was the loss of Roma, Akron, Macon and Shenandoah in the United States, R-100 in the UK and several others world-wide that doomed the airship, rather than the Hindenburg crash, spectacularly awful though that was. We just couldn't operate the darn things safely – they didn't do well in storms.

Of course, airplanes crashed too, but those crashes typically killed one or three people, maybe 9 or 10 if an airliner went down. Losing an entire Navy airship crew of 30 or 40 men in one crash was a shock to the nation in the 1930s, and it happened over and over and over again.

Today, we take mass casualties from a big transportation accident more in stride.

The Hindenburg marked the end of the era of these things after it famously blew up in New Jersey. The flammable gas was blamed for the explosion of course. Did the WWI airships use the same gas? I know they would get machine gunned by biplanes. But did that usually result in a explosion?

Not until the advent of the use of incendiary ammunition in about 1916.

Prior to that an attacking plane could fire off all its available ammo (freqently from a single rifle calibre MG) and just cause some minor gas leaks, Hydrogen was the main gas used in air tansport up until the mid 1930`s because it was easy to produce and, by the time the big airships appeared at the end of the 19`th century had been in use for nearly a century so the risks were well understood.

One of the big tragedies about the Hindenberg was that it had been designed in the first place to use non-inflammable Helium as a lifting gas but the Zeppelin company were unable to get supplies of it in the quantities they needed from the US for political reasons.

After the airship was destroyed the Zeppelin company decided that Hydrogen was just too dangerous for passenger flying and the Hindenberg`s sister ship the Graf Zeppelin II was restricted to test flying (and some spy work) for its entire career until it was broken up early in WWII on the orders of Hermann Goring.
So the end of the big airship can be more blamed on him and the advent of WWII.

The British alternated incendiary with explosive rounds in their machine gun ammunition drums.

The incendiary didn't, by themselves cause an explosion because of the lack of oxygen. You needed to fire as many of these dual rounds as possible in the one spot to cause a rupture in the bag big enough to allow oxygen in & then set that alight.

SPI had a fun little game on these raids, must dig it out…

In response to zippyfusenet,

In addition, Germany produced 18 Zeppelin-Staaken 'Resienflugzeug' bombers. One unit of these performed bombing raids on Britian, launching 11 raids with 5 planes each, none of which were lost.

The first Zeppelin shot down was by a plane from the (ex) airfield a couple of minutes away from me…

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We've played out Zeppelin raids a few times in years past. Nobody shot one down. But we did damage a couple, i.e. torched one or two "cells". That's the best we could do. Meanwhile, defensive machine guns are a real hazard to the attackers. It pays to knock them out as expeditiously as possible….