BALLOONS AND AIRSHIPS HBDJ MONTGOLFIER ZEPPELIN US NAVY SANTOS-DUMONT R34 NORGE PARSEVAL MAYFLY SCHUTTE-LANZ CAQUOT BLIMPS WW1 WW2 BARRAGE AKRON MACON SHENANDOAH LOS ANGELES GRAF ZEPPELIN HINDENBERG GOODYEAR ZRS R100 R101 PICCARD EXPLORER ZPN K-CLASS WW JAPANESE FU-GO WEAPON ZSG

MACMILLAN COLOR SERIES HARDBOUND BOOK with DUSTJACKET in ENGLISH by LENNART EGE

A PICTORIAL HIGHTORY OF LIGHTER-THAN-AIR FLIGHT LTA

---------------------------

Additional Information from Internet Encyclopedia

In 1670, the Jesuit Father Francesco Lana de Terzi, sometimes referred to as the "Father of Aeronautics", published a description of an "Aerial Ship" supported by four copper spheres from which the air was evacuated. Although the basic principle is sound, such a craft was unrealizable then and remains so to the present day, since external air pressure would cause the spheres to collapse unless their thickness was such as to make them too heavy to be buoyant. A hypothetical craft constructed using this principle is known as a vacuum airship.

In 1709, the Brazilian-Portuguese Jesuit priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão made a hot air balloon, the Passarola, ascend to the skies, before an astonished Portuguese court. It would have been on August 8, 1709, when Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão held, in the courtyard of the Casa da Índia, in the city of Lisbon, the first Passarola demonstration.[49][50] The balloon caught fire without leaving the ground, but, in a second demonstration, it rose to 95 meters in height. It was a small balloon of thick brown paper, filled with hot air, produced by the "fire of material contained in a clay bowl embedded in the base of a waxed wooden tray". The event was witnessed by King John V of Portugal and the future Pope Innocent XIII.

A more practical dirigible airship was described by Lieutenant Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier in a paper entitled "Mémoire sur l'équilibre des machines aérostatiques" (Memorandum on the equilibrium of aerostatic machines) presented to the French Academy on 3 December 1783. The 16 water-color drawings published the following year depict a 260-foot-long (79 m) streamlined envelope with internal ballonets that could be used for regulating lift: this was attached to a long carriage that could be used as a boat if the vehicle was forced to land in water. The airship was designed to be driven by three propellers and steered with a sail-like aft rudder. In 1784, Jean-Pierre Blanchard fitted a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft. In 1785, he crossed the English Channel in a balloon equipped with flapping wings for propulsion and a birdlike tail for steering.

19th century

The 19th century saw continued attempts to add methods of propulsion to balloons. The Australian William Bland sent designs for his "Atmotic airship" to the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, where a model was displayed. This was an elongated balloon with a steam engine driving twin propellers suspended underneath. The lift of the balloon was estimated as 5 tons and the car with the fuel as weighing 3.5 tons, giving a payload of 1.5 tons.[53][54] Bland believed that the machine could be driven at 80 km/h (50 mph) and could fly from Sydney to London in less than a week.

In 1852, Henri Giffard became the first person to make an engine-powered flight when he flew 27 km (17 mi) in a steam-powered airship. Airships would develop considerably over the next two decades. In 1863, Solomon Andrews flew his aereon design, an unpowered, controllable dirigible in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and offered the device to the U.S. Military during the Civil War. He flew a later design in 1866 around New York City and as far as Oyster Bay, New York. This concept used changes in lift to provide propulsive force, and did not need a powerplant. In 1872, the French naval architect Dupuy de Lome launched a large navigable balloon, which was driven by a large propeller turned by eight men. It was developed during the Franco-Prussian war and was intended as an improvement to the balloons used for communications between Paris and the countryside during the siege of Paris, but was completed only after the end of the war.

In 1872, Paul Haenlein flew an airship with an internal combustion engine running on the coal gas used to inflate the envelope, the first use of such an engine to power an aircraft.[58][59] Charles F. Ritchel made a public demonstration flight in 1878 of his hand-powered one-man rigid airship, and went on to build and sell five of his aircraft.

In 1874, Micajah Clark Dyer filed U.S. Patent 154,654 "Apparatus for Navigating the Air". It is believed successful trial flights were made between 1872 and 1874, but detailed dates are not available. The apparatus used a combination of wings and paddle wheels for navigation and propulsion.

In operating the machinery the wings receive an upward and downward motion, in the manner of the wings of a bird, the outer ends yielding as they are raised, but opening out and then remaining rigid while being depressed. The wings, if desired, may be set at an angle so as to propel forward as well as to raise the machine in the air. The paddle-wheels are intended to be used for propelling the machine, in the same way that a vessel is propelled in water. An instrument answering to a rudder is attached for guiding the machine. A balloon is to be used for elevating the flying ship, after which it is to be guided and controlled at the pleasure of its occupants.

In 1883, the first electric-powered flight was made by Gaston Tissandier, who fitted a 1.5 hp (1.1 kW) Siemens electric motor to an airship.

The first fully controllable free flight was made in 1884 by Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs in the French Army airship La France. La France made the first flight of an airship that landed where it took off; the 170 ft (52 m) long, 66,000 cu ft (1,900 m3) airship covered 8 km (5.0 mi) in 23 minutes with the aid of an 8.5 hp (6.3 kW) electric motor,[66] and a 435 kg (959 lb) battery. It made seven flights in 1884 and 1885.

In 1888, the design of the Campbell Air Ship, designed by Professor Peter C. Campbell, was built by the Novelty Air Ship Company. It was lost at sea in 1889 while being flown by Professor Hogan during an exhibition flight.

From 1888 to 1897, Friedrich Wölfert built three airships powered by Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft-built petrol engines, the last of which caught fire in flight and killed both occupants in 1897.[68] The 1888 version used a 2 hp (1.5 kW) single cylinder Daimler engine and flew 10 km (6 mi) from Canstatt to Kornwestheim.

In 1897, an airship with an aluminum envelope was built by the Hungarian-Croatian engineer David Schwarz. It made its first flight at Tempelhof field in Berlin after Schwarz had died. His widow, Melanie Schwarz, was paid 15,000 marks by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin to release the industrialist Carl Berg from his exclusive contract to supply Schwartz with aluminium.

From 1897 to 1899, Konstantin Danilewsky, medical doctor and inventor from Kharkiv (now Ukraine, then Russian Empire), built four muscle-powered airships, of gas volume 150–180 m3 (5,300–6,400 cu ft). About 200 ascents were made within a framework of experimental flight program, at two locations, with no significant incidents.

Early 20th century

In July 1900, the Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ1 made its first flight. This led to the most successful airships of all time: the Zeppelins, named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who began working on rigid airship designs in the 1890s, leading to the flawed LZ1 in 1900 and the more successful LZ2 in 1906. The Zeppelin airships had a framework composed of triangular lattice girders covered with fabric that contained separate gas cells. At first multiplane tail surfaces were used for control and stability: later designs had simpler cruciform tail surfaces. The engines and crew were accommodated in "gondolas" hung beneath the hull driving propellers attached to the sides of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally, there was a passenger compartment (later a bomb bay) located halfway between the two engine compartments.

Alberto Santos-Dumont was a wealthy young Brazilian who lived in France and had a passion for flying. He designed 18 balloons and dirigibles before turning his attention to fixed-winged aircraft.[74] On 19 October 1901 he flew his airship Number 6, from the Parc Saint Cloud to and around the Eiffel Tower and back in under thirty minutes.[75] This feat earned him the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000 francs. Many inventors were inspired by Santos-Dumont's small airships. Many airship pioneers, such as the American Thomas Scott Baldwin, financed their activities through passenger flights and public demonstration flights. Stanley Spencer built the first British airship with funds from advertising baby food on the sides of the envelope. Others, such as Walter Wellman and Melvin Vaniman, set their sights on loftier goals, attempting two polar flights in 1907 and 1909, and two trans-Atlantic flights in 1910 and 1912.

In 1902 the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo published details of an innovative airship design in Spain and France titled "Perfectionnements aux aerostats dirigibles" ("Improvements in dirigible aerostats"). With a non-rigid body and internal bracing wires, it overcame the flaws of these types of aircraft as regards both rigid structure (zeppelin type) and flexibility, providing the airships with more stability during flight, and the capability of using heavier engines and a greater passenger load. A system called "auto-rigid". In 1905, helped by Captain A. Kindelán, he built the airship "Torres Quevedo" at the Guadalajara military base.[80] In 1909 he patented an improved design that he offered to the French Astra company, who started mass-producing it in 1911 as the Astra-Torres airship.[81] This type of envelope was employed in the United Kingdom in the Coastal, C Star, and North Sea airships.[82] The distinctive three-lobed design was widely used during the Great War by the Entente powers for diverse tasks, principally convoy protection and anti-submarine warfare. The success during the war even drew the attention of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who acquired a model in 1922.[83] Torres also drew up designs of a 'docking station' and made alterations to airship designs, to find a resolution to the slew of problems faced by airship engineers to dock dirigibles. In 1910, he proposed the idea of attaching an airships nose to a mooring mast and allowing the airship to weathervane with changes of wind direction. The use of a metal column erected on the ground, the top of which the bow or stem would be directly attached to (by a cable) would allow a dirigible to be moored at any time, in the open, regardless of wind speeds. Additionally, Torres' design called for the improvement and accessibility of temporary landing sites, where airships were to be moored for the purpose of disembarkation of passengers. The final patent was presented in February 1911 in Belgium, and later to France and the United Kingdom in 1912, under the title "Improvements in Mooring Arrengements for Airships".

Other airship builders were also active before the war: from 1902 the French company Lebaudy Frères specialized in semirigid airships such as the Patrie and the République, designed by their engineer Henri Julliot, who later worked for the American company Goodrich; the German firm Schütte-Lanz built the wooden-framed SL series from 1911, introducing important technical innovations; another German firm Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft built the Parseval-Luftschiff (PL) series from 1909,[87] and Italian Enrico Forlanini's firm had built and flown the first two Forlanini airships.

On May 12, 1902, the inventor and Brazilian aeronaut Augusto Severo de Albuquerque Maranhao and his French mechanic, Georges Saché, died when they were flying over Paris in the airship called Pax. A marble plaque at number 81 of the Avenue du Maine in Paris, commemorates the location of Augusto Severo accident.[89][90] The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax" is a 1902 short silent film recreation of the catastrophe, directed by Georges Méliès.

In Britain, the Army built their first dirigible, the Nulli Secundus, in 1907. The Navy ordered the construction of an experimental rigid in 1908. Officially known as His Majesty's Airship No. 1 and nicknamed the Mayfly, it broke its back in 1911 before making a single flight. Work on a successor did not start until 1913.

German airship passenger service known as DELAG (Deutsche-Luftschiffahrts AG) was established in 1910.

In 1910 Walter Wellman unsuccessfully attempted an aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in the airship America.

World War I

The prospect of airships as bombers had been recognized in Europe well before the airships were up to the task. H. G. Wells' The War in the Air (1908) described the obliteration of entire fleets and cities by airship attack. The Italian forces became the first to use dirigibles for a military purpose during the Italo–Turkish War, the first bombing mission being flown on 10 March 1912. World War I marked the airship's real debut as a weapon. The Germans, French, and Italians all used airships for scouting and tactical bombing roles early in the war, and all learned that the airship was too vulnerable for operations over the front. The decision to end operations in direct support of armies was made by all in 1917.

Many in the German military believed they had found the ideal weapon with which to counteract British naval superiority and strike at Britain itself, while more realistic airship advocates believed the zeppelin's value was as a long range scout/attack craft for naval operations. Raids on England began in January 1915 and peaked in 1916: following losses to the British defenses only a few raids were made in 1917–18, the last in August 1918.[94] Zeppelins proved to be terrifying but inaccurate weapons. Navigation, target selection and bomb-aiming proved to be difficult under the best of conditions, and the cloud cover that was frequently encountered by the airships reduced accuracy even further. The physical damage done by airships over the course of the war was insignificant, and the deaths that they caused amounted to a few hundred.[95] Nevertheless, the raid caused a significant diversion of British resources to defense efforts. The airships were initially immune to attack by aircraft and anti-aircraft guns: as the pressure in their envelopes was only just higher than ambient air, holes had little effect. But following the introduction of a combination of incendiary and explosive ammunition in 1916, their flammable hydrogen lifting gas made them vulnerable to the defending aeroplanes. Several were shot down in flames by British defenders, and many others destroyed in accidents. New designs capable of reaching greater altitude were developed, but although this made them immune from attack it made their bombing accuracy even worse.

Countermeasures by the British included sound detection equipment, searchlights and anti-aircraft artillery, followed by night fighters in 1915. One tactic used early in the war, when their limited range meant the airships had to fly from forward bases and the only zeppelin production facilities were in Friedrichshafen, was the bombing of airship sheds by the British Royal Naval Air Service. Later in the war, the development of the aircraft carrier led to the first successful carrier-based air strike in history: on the morning of 19 July 1918, seven Sopwith 2F.1 Camels were launched from HMS Furious and struck the airship base at Tønder, destroying zeppelins L 54 and L 60.

The British Army had abandoned airship development in favour of aeroplanes before the start of the war, but the Royal Navy had recognized the need for small airships to counteract the submarine and mine threat in coastal waters.[97] Beginning in February 1915, they began to develop the SS (Sea Scout) class of blimp. These had a small envelope of 1,699–1,982 m3 (60,000–70,000 cu ft) and at first used aircraft fuselages without the wing and tail surfaces as control cars. Later, more advanced blimps with purpose-built gondolas were used. The NS class (North Sea) were the largest and most effective non-rigid airships in British service, with a gas capacity of 10,200 m3 (360,000 cu ft), a crew of 10 and an endurance of 24 hours. Six 230 lb (100 kg) bombs were carried, as well as three to five machine guns. British blimps were used for scouting, mine clearance, and convoy patrol duties. During the war, the British operated over 200 non-rigid airships.[98] Several were sold to Russia, France, the United States, and Italy. The large number of trained crews, low attrition rate and constant experimentation in handling techniques meant that at the war's end Britain was the world leader in non-rigid airship technology.

The Royal Navy continued development of rigid airships until the end of the war. Eight rigid airships had been completed by the armistice, (No. 9r, four 23 Class, two R23X Class and one R31 Class), although several more were in an advanced state of completion by the war's end.[99] Both France and Italy continued to use airships throughout the war. France preferred the non-rigid type, whereas Italy flew 49 semi-rigid airships in both the scouting and bombing roles.

Aeroplanes had almost entirely replaced airships as bombers by the end of the war, and Germany's remaining zeppelins were destroyed by their crews, scrapped or handed over to the Allied powers as war reparations. The British rigid airship program, which had mainly been a reaction to the potential threat of the German airships, was wound down.

The interwar period

Britain, the United States and Germany built rigid airships between the two world wars. Italy and France made limited use of Zeppelins handed over as war reparations. Italy, the Soviet Union, the United States and Japan mainly operated semi-rigid airships.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was not allowed to build airships of greater capacity than a million cubic feet. Two small passenger airships, LZ 120 Bodensee and its sister ship LZ 121 Nordstern, were built immediately after the war but were confiscated following the sabotage of the wartime Zeppelins that were to have been handed over as war reparations: Bodensee was given to Italy and Nordstern to France. On May 12, 1926, the Italian built semi-rigid airship Norge was the first aircraft to fly over the North Pole.

The British R33 and R34 were near-identical copies of the German L 33, which had come down almost intact in Yorkshire on 24 September 1916.[101] Despite being almost three years out of date by the time they were launched in 1919, they became two of the most successful airships in British service. The creation of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in early 1918 created a hybrid British airship program. The RAF was not interested in airships while the Admiralty was, so a deal was made where the Admiralty would design any future military airships and the RAF would handle manpower, facilities and operations.[102] On 2 July 1919, R34 began the first double crossing of the Atlantic by an aircraft. It landed at Mineola, Long Island on 6 July after 108 hours in the air; the return crossing began on 8 July and took 75 hours. This feat failed to generate enthusiasm for continued airship development, and the British airship program was rapidly wound down.

During World War I, the U.S. Navy acquired its first airship, the DH-1,[103] but it was destroyed while being inflated shortly after delivery to the Navy. After the war, the U.S. Navy contracted to buy the R 38, which was being built in Britain, but before it was handed over it was destroyed because of a structural failure during a test flight.

America then started constructing the USS Shenandoah, designed by the Bureau of Aeronautics and based on the Zeppelin L 49.[105] Assembled in Hangar No. 1 and first flown on 4 September 1923[106] at Lakehurst, New Jersey, it was the first airship to be inflated with the noble gas helium, which was then so scarce that the Shenandoah contained most of the world's supply. A second airship, USS Los Angeles, was built by the Zeppelin company as compensation for the airships that should have been handed over as war reparations according to the terms of the Versailles Treaty but had been sabotaged by their crews. This construction order saved the Zeppelin works from the threat of closure. The success of the Los Angeles, which was flown successfully for eight years, encouraged the U.S. Navy to invest in its own, larger airships. When the Los Angeles was delivered, the two airships had to share the limited supply of helium, and thus alternated operating and overhauls.

In 1922, Sir Dennistoun Burney suggested a plan for a subsidised air service throughout the British Empire using airships (the Burney Scheme).[102] Following the coming to power of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government in 1924, the scheme was transformed into the Imperial Airship Scheme, under which two airships were built, one by a private company and the other by the Royal Airship Works under Air Ministry control. The two designs were radically different. The "capitalist" ship, the R100, was more conventional, while the "socialist" ship, the R101, had many innovative design features. Construction of both took longer than expected, and the airships did not fly until 1929. Neither airship was capable of the service intended, though the R100 did complete a proving flight to Canada and back in 1930.[108] On 5 October 1930, the R101, which had not been thoroughly tested after major modifications, crashed on its maiden voyage to India at Beauvais in France killing 48 of the 54 people aboard. Among the dead were the craft's chief designer and the Secretary of State for Air. The disaster ended British interest in airships.

The Locarno Treaties of 1925 lifted the restrictions on German airship construction, and the Zeppelin company started construction of the Graf Zeppelin (LZ 127), the largest airship that could be built in the company's existing shed, and intended to stimulate interest in passenger airships. The Graf Zeppelin burned blau gas, similar to propane, stored in large gas bags below the hydrogen cells, as fuel. Since its density was similar to that of air, it avoided the weight change as fuel was used, and thus the need to valve hydrogen. The Graf Zeppelin had an impressive safety record, flying over 1,600,000 km (990,000 mi) (including the first circumnavigation of the globe by airship) without a single passenger injury.

The U.S. Navy experimented with the use of airships as airborne aircraft carriers, developing an idea pioneered by the British. The USS Los Angeles was used for initial experiments, and the USS Akron and Macon, the world's largest at the time, were used to test the principle in naval operations. Each carried four F9C Sparrowhawk fighters in its hangar, and could carry a fifth on the trapeze. The idea had mixed results. By the time the Navy started to develop a sound doctrine for using the ZRS-type airships, the last of the two built, USS Macon, had been wrecked. Meanwhile, the seaplane had become more capable, and was considered a better investment.

Eventually, the U.S. Navy lost all three U.S.-built rigid airships to accidents. USS Shenandoah flew into a severe thunderstorm over Noble County, Ohio while on a poorly planned publicity flight on 3 September 1925. It broke into pieces, killing 14 of its crew. USS Akron was caught in a severe storm and flown into the surface of the sea off the shore of New Jersey on 3 April 1933. It carried no life boats and few life vests, so 73 of its crew of 76 died from drowning or hypothermia. USS Macon was lost after suffering a structural failure offshore near Point Sur Lighthouse on 12 February 1935. The failure caused a loss of gas, which was made much worse when the aircraft was driven over pressure height causing it to lose too much helium to maintain flight.[111] Only two of its crew of 83 died in the crash thanks to the inclusion of life jackets and inflatable rafts after the Akron disaster.

The Empire State Building was completed in 1931 with a dirigible mast, in anticipation of future passenger airship service, but no airship ever used the mast. Various entrepreneurs experimented with commuting and shipping freight via airship.

In the 1930s, the German Zeppelins successfully competed with other means of transport. They could carry significantly more passengers than other contemporary aircraft while providing amenities similar to those on ocean liners, such as private cabins, observation decks, and dining rooms. Less importantly, the technology was potentially more energy-efficient than heavier-than-air designs. Zeppelins were also faster than ocean liners. On the other hand, operating airships was quite involved. Often the crew would outnumber passengers, and on the ground large teams were necessary to assist mooring and very large hangars were required at airports.

By the mid-1930s, only Germany still pursued airship development. The Zeppelin company continued to operate the Graf Zeppelin on passenger service between Frankfurt and Recife in Brazil, taking 68 hours. Even with the small Graf Zeppelin, the operation was almost profitable.[113] In the mid-1930s, work began on an airship designed specifically to operate a passenger service across the Atlantic.[114] The Hindenburg (LZ 129) completed a successful 1936 season, carrying passengers between Lakehurst, New Jersey and Germany. The year 1937 started with the most spectacular and widely remembered airship accident. Approaching the Lakehurst mooring mast minutes before landing on 6 May 1937, the Hindenburg suddenly burst into flames and crashed to the ground. Of the 97 people aboard, 35 died: 13 passengers, 22 aircrew, along with one American ground-crewman. The disaster happened before a large crowd, was filmed and a radio news reporter was recording the arrival. This was a disaster that theater goers could see and hear in newsreels. The Hindenburg disaster shattered public confidence in airships, and brought a definitive end to their "golden age". The day after the Hindenburg disaster, the Graf Zeppelin landed safely in Germany after its return flight from Brazil. This was the last international passenger airship flight.

Hindenburg's identical sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130), could not carry commercial passengers without helium, which the United States refused to sell to Germany. The Graf Zeppelin made several test flights and conducted some electronic espionage until 1939 when it was grounded due to the beginning of the war. The two Graf Zeppelins were scrapped in April, 1940.

Development of airships continued only in the United States, and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had several semi-rigid and non-rigid airships. The semi-rigid dirigible SSSR-V6 OSOAVIAKhIM was among the largest of these craft, and it set the longest endurance flight at the time of over 130 hours. It crashed into a mountain in 1938, killing 13 of the 19 people on board. While this was a severe blow to the Soviet airship program, they continued to operate non-rigid airships until 1950.

World War II

While Germany determined that airships were obsolete for military purposes in the coming war and concentrated on the development of aeroplanes, the United States pursued a program of military airship construction even though it had not developed a clear military doctrine for airship use. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, bringing the United States into World War II, the U.S. Navy had 10 nonrigid airships:

4 K-class: K-2, K-3, K-4 and K-5 designed as patrol ships, all built in 1938.

3 L-class: L-1, L-2 and L-3 as small training ships, produced in 1938.

1 G-class, built in 1936 for training.

2 TC-class that were older patrol airships designed for land forces, built in 1933. The U.S. Navy acquired both from the United States Army in 1938.

Only K- and TC-class airships were suitable for combat and they were quickly pressed into service against Japanese and German submarines, which were then sinking American shipping within visual range of the American coast. U.S. Navy command, remembering airship's anti-submarine success in World War I, immediately requested new modern antisubmarine airships and on 2 January 1942 formed the ZP-12 patrol unit based in Lakehurst from the four K airships. The ZP-32 patrol unit was formed from two TC and two L airships a month later, based at NAS Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California. An airship training base was created there as well. The status of submarine-hunting Goodyear airships in the early days of World War II has created significant confusion. Although various accounts refer to airships Resolute and Volunteer as operating as "privateers" under a Letter of Marque, Congress never authorized a commission, nor did the President sign one.

In the years 1942–44, approximately 1,400 airship pilots and 3,000 support crew members were trained in the military airship crew training program and the airship military personnel grew from 430 to 12,400. The U.S. airships were produced by the Goodyear factory in Akron, Ohio. From 1942 till 1945, 154 airships were built for the U.S. Navy (133 K-class, 10 L-class, seven G-class, four M-class) and five L-class for civilian customers (serial numbers L-4 to L-8).

The primary airship tasks were patrol and convoy escort near the American coastline. They also served as an organization centre for the convoys to direct ship movements, and were used in naval search and rescue operations. Rarer duties of the airships included aerophoto reconnaissance, naval mine-laying and mine-sweeping, parachute unit transport and deployment, cargo and personnel transportation. They were deemed quite successful in their duties with the highest combat readiness factor in the entire U.S. air force (87%).

During the war, some 532 ships without airship escort were sunk near the U.S. coast by enemy submarines. Only one ship, the tanker Persephone, of the 89,000 or so in convoys escorted by blimps was sunk by the enemy. Airships engaged submarines with depth charges and, less frequently, with other on-board weapons. They were excellent at driving submarines down, where their limited speed and range prevented them from attacking convoys. The weapons available to airships were so limited that until the advent of the homing torpedo they had little chance of sinking a submarine.

Only one airship was ever destroyed by U-boat: on the night of 18/19 July 1943, the K-74 from ZP-21 division was patrolling the coastline near Florida. Using radar, the airship located a surfaced German submarine. The K-74 made her attack run but the U-boat opened fire first. K-74's depth charges did not release as she crossed the U-boat and the K-74 received serious damage, losing gas pressure and an engine but landing in the water without loss of life. The crew was rescued by patrol boats in the morning, but one crewman, Aviation Machinist's Mate Second Class Isadore Stessel, died from a shark attack. The U-boat, submarine U-134, was slightly damaged and the next day or so was attacked by aircraft, sustaining damage that forced it to return to base. It was finally sunk on 24 August 1943 by a British Vickers Wellington near Vigo, Spain.

Fleet Airship Wing One operated from Lakehurst, New Jersey, Glynco, Georgia, Weeksville, North Carolina, South Weymouth NAS Massachusetts, Brunswick NAS and Bar Harbor Maine, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Argentia, Newfoundland.

K-class blimps of USN Blimp Squadron ZP-14 conducted antisubmarine warfare operations at the Strait of Gibraltar in 1944–45.

Some Navy blimps saw action in the European war theater. In 1944–45, the U.S. Navy moved an entire squadron of eight Goodyear K class blimps (K-89, K-101, K-109, K-112, K-114, K-123, K-130, & K-134) with flight and maintenance crews from Weeksville Naval Air Station in North Carolina to Naval Air Station Port Lyautey, French Morocco. Their mission was to locate and destroy German U-boats in the relatively shallow waters around the Strait of Gibraltar where magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) was viable. PBY aircraft had been searching these waters but MAD required low altitude flying that was dangerous at night for these aircraft. The blimps were considered a perfect solution to establish a 24/7 MAD barrier (fence) at the Straits of Gibraltar with the PBYs flying the day shift and the blimps flying the night shift. The first two blimps (K-123 & K-130) left South Weymouth NAS on 28 May 1944 and flew to Argentia, Newfoundland, the Azores, and finally to Port Lyautey where they completed the first transatlantic crossing by nonrigid airships on 1 June 1944. The blimps of USN Blimp Squadron ZP-14 (Blimpron 14, aka The Africa Squadron) also conducted mine-spotting and mine-sweeping operations in key Mediterranean ports and various escorts including the convoy carrying United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Yalta Conference in 1945. Airships from the ZP-12 unit took part in the sinking of the last U-boat before German capitulation, sinking the U-881 on 6 May 1945 together with destroyers USS Atherton and USS Moberly.

Other airships patrolled the Caribbean, Fleet Airship Wing Two, Headquartered at Naval Air Station Richmond, covered the Gulf of Mexico from Richmond and Key West, Florida, Houma, Louisiana, as well as Hitchcock and Brownsville, Texas. FAW 2 also patrolled the northern Caribbean from San Julian, the Isle of Pines (now called Isla de la Juventud) and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as well as Vernam Field, Jamaica.

Navy blimps of Fleet Airship Wing Five, (ZP-51) operated from bases in Trinidad, British Guiana and Paramaribo, Suriname. Fleet Airship Wing Four operated along the coast of Brazil. Two squadrons, VP-41 and VP-42 flew from bases at Amapá, Igarapé-Açu, São Luís Fortaleza, Fernando de Noronha, Recife, Maceió, Ipitanga (near Salvador, Bahia), Caravelas, Vitória and the hangar built for the Graf Zeppelin at Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro.

Fleet Airship Wing Three operated squadrons, ZP-32 from Moffett Field, ZP-31 at NAS Santa Ana, and ZP-33 at NAS Tillamook, Oregon. Auxiliary fields were at Del Mar, Lompoc, Watsonville and Eureka, California, North Bend and Astoria, Oregon, as well as Shelton and Quillayute in Washington.

From 2 January 1942 until the end of war airship operations in the Atlantic, the blimps of the Atlantic fleet made 37,554 flights and flew 378,237 hours. Of the over 70,000 ships in convoys protected by blimps, only one was sunk by a submarine while under blimp escort.

The Soviet Union flew a single airship during the war. The W-12, built in 1939, entered service in 1942 for paratrooper training and equipment transport. It made 1432 flights with 300 metric tons of cargo until 1945. On 1 February 1945, the Soviets constructed a second airship, a Pobeda-class (Victory-class) unit (used for mine-sweeping and wreckage clearing in the Black Sea) that crashed on 21 January 1947. Another W-class – W-12bis Patriot – was commissioned in 1947 and was mostly used until the mid-1950s for crew training, parades and propaganda.