Dirigible Balloons

On this page are ten watercolor illustrations of a variety of Dirigible Balloons. They are from a collection of postcards that were drawn by the artist A. Molynk in France in the early 1900’s. You’ll see depictions of the Lebaudy airship, a Zeppelin airship, and others. Dirigible Balloons, often referred to simply as dirigibles or airships, are steerable, power-driven lighter-than-air aircraft. Unlike standard hot air balloons that drift with the wind, a dirigible features a propulsion system and rudders, allowing it to be navigated in a specific direction. If you’re enjoying these Dirigible Balloons, be sure to take a look at the pages with more Dirigibles and other Airships. Have fun!

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More on Dirigible Balloons

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• His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine ~ The tragic fate of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.
• When Giants Ruled the Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship ~ When Giants Ruled the Sky tells the true but little-known story of the USS Macon (ZRS-5), the world’s largest, most expensive and most technologically advanced airship of her day, and the four men responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and flying her. In doing so it reveals how the American airship came within a hair’s breadth of replacing planes, trains, and ocean liners as the dominant form of long-distance transportation, and exactly what went wrong, a tale of physical courage, engineering acumen, ugly politicking and two egregious disasters.
• Skyhookers: An Illustrated History of Hook-on Aircraft and Their Dirigible Motherships ~ In 1918, the Navy launched a Curtiss JN ‘Jenny’ from a C-1 Blimp, and in 1924, the Army successfully flew a Sperry Messenger from a TC-Class airship. The US perfected the carry/launch/retrieval method for airship defence and scouting, notably with the USS Los Angeles, which carried aircraft on a ‘trapeze’ device. The Akron and Macon airships, with internal storage for aircraft, further advanced this technique, making them some of the most remarkable aircraft of their time.
• The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships: Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg ~ Drawing on the extensive photographs, notes, diaries, reports, recorded data, and manuals he collected during his five years at the Zeppelin Company in Germany, from 1934 through 1938, Harold G. Dick tells the story of the two great passenger Zeppelins. His original photographs and detailed observations on the handling and flying of the two big rigids constitute the essential data on this phase of aviation history.

 

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