USS Macon: At 785 Feet Long,
Nearly Twice as Large as the Famous Graf Zeppelin
On April 21, 1933, the USS Macon, costing $2.5 million, left Akron, Ohio on its maiden voyage.
Known officially as ZRS-5 the USS Macon, more modern and slightly faster that its sister ship, the Akron ZRS-4, had a top speed of about 87 miles per hour.
The rigid airship was developed by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Co., a business jointly owned by the Zeppelin Company of Germany and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
Unlike the blimps made famous by Goodyear today, the Macon had a hollow steel hull with three interior keels. The intent of the strong spine was to prevent the type of hull collapse that occurred with one of the Macon's predecessors, the Shenandoah.
The Macon had accommodations for 100 officers and crew, including sleeping berths, a large mess room, a galley and observation platform at the nose and tail.
From the outside it looked and functioned much like a helium balloon. But on the inside the ship was an open cavern of girders, cables and catwalks with few places crewmen could not go.
Before 1925, many lighter-than-air craft operated on hydrogen. But the flammability of the gas proved to be very dangerous as would be demonstrated in May, 1937 when fire killed 36 people aboard the German Zeppelin, Hindenburg.
The Macon was kept aloft by non-burning helium contained in 12 large gelatin-latex cells inside the craft.
The ship carried a large supply of additional helium, and navigators were able to set the Macon's altitude by releasing more of the gas.
Inside the hull, the ship had eight large 560-horsepower engines driving outside propellers, one of the craft's few noisy operations. The propellers could be pointed up or down to control the ship during take-off and landings.
The giant USS Macon landed at Moffett Field on October 16, 1933. During the next 16 months, the Macon became a familiar and popular sight on the Peninsula, never failing to amaze the public whenever it took off or landed.
The Macon carried its own protection - five sparrow hawk fighter planes stored in the aircraft's belly.
The airplanes were release via a trapeze and harness which lowered the planes through a T-shaped hole in the Macon's underside.
Retrieving the planes, however was a difficult process. Like a performing air stunt, the pilots had to match their speed to that of the ship, and "catch" the trapeze with a hook at the top of the plane. The harness would then be attached to the fuselage, and the aircraft would be raised.
Despite the difficulty of the maneuver the pilots, know as the men on the flying trapeze, had a flawless record on both the Akron and Macon.
The Crash of the Macon, and the End of the US Navy's Airship Program
The Macon had scouted for the Pacific Fleet eight times in all. When the airship left Moffett Field on February 11, 1935, to go on maneuvers off the Southern California coast, repairs to two damaged tail fins had not been completed.
Because of the pressure to prove its value, Navy officials decided to do the repair piecemeal. Largely because of that decision, this would be the Macon's 54th and final flight.
The next day, as the ship was returning from a successful mission, it encountered sever storm winds off Point Sur, south of Monterey. Suddenly, a crosswind struck the ship with such force that the upper fins of the previously damaged tail were completely severed, sending shards of metal into the rear gas cells.
In the control car, the steering wheel went slack and the navigators felt the tail drop. Wiley ordered the dumping of ballast and fuel.
Crewmen hurried about the ship discharging anything they could do without to lighten the tail. But the Ship was doomed. After rising to nearly 5,000 feet, the Macon began to fall. Moments later it settled gently into the water.
The crew, clad in life jackets and prepared with life rafts, jumped into the water safely. Ships were quickly on the scent to pull the men out. A radioman was killed when he jumped from the falling ship, and another man was lost when he apparently tried to retrieve his belongings. But in all, 81 of the 83 aboard the Macon survived the crash.
Former USS Macon engineer George Weldy, 89, one of the few surviving U.S. military dirigible crew members, recalled in an interview that fate took a big part in his life while he worked on airships.
"I happened to be off duty the day she went down (off Monterey in 1935)," he said. "They were breaking in some new crew members, and they happened to be aboard that day."
"You know, that day was the only day I saw the Macon in the air," Weldy said. Why? Because he had always been aboard! He had a total of 52 flights on the Macon.
The first airship Weldy was assigned to, the Akron, also crashed, but Weldy again was lucky. "A fellow asked to trade duty station with me, he said. It's sad when you lose friends like that, because we were all like family."
Weldy had a 30 year career in the military before retiring in 1958. He and his beautiful wife, Laura have been married for 65 years and have one son, David.
A commission set up to determine the cause of the ship's demise concluded that the blame belonged not to the crew, but to the Navy's refusal to repair the Macon's tail damage before it was sent on its ill-fated mission. The Macon was the nation's last rigid airship.
ILA 2000: German Aviation Returns to Roots With Cargo Lifter
By Ryszard Jaxa-Malachowski,
AWN Central European correspondent
BERLIN - Cargo Lifter AG of Berlin is preparing to build the first and only prototype of the heavy lift airship - the CL-160.
The process begins 100 years after the very first German airship, the Zeppelin, was made. However, the CL-160 will be much larger than its predecessors, and with a length of 260 m and diameter of 65 m it will be the largest airship ever built.
The CL-160 will have a capacity of 550,000 cubic meters and be able to carry a payload of 160 metric tons. It should cruise with a speed of 80-135 km/h for 10,000 km or up to 30 days.
The giant design is to be powered by 16 turboshaft engines with output of about 1,000 kW each, but only four of those will be used for propelling the craft. The remaining engines are to be used for maneuvering while loading and unloading cargo.
This solution is unique - four engines are to be located in the nose and rear part of the envelope and eight will be stored in pairs in the powered wings and two horizontal propellers. The wings are spacious enough to allow in-flight servicing of engines.
The main and secondary structures of the half-rigid craft are made of modern composite materials. The crew is to be seated in the front part of the fuselage, while the rear part will be occupied by cargo. Extremely large elements might be loaded directly to the fuselage.
The great challenge will be the certification of the CL-160. It is planned to be completed under JAR requirements, however the German aviation authority LBA will have to prepare special procedures. No airships of this size have been certified so far and rules are being set up as the program makes progress.
One idea is that before the airship's maiden flight, the static tests will need to be passed but this will be done on components - no global test is required.
For Cargo Lifter AG, the whole project is creating a number of challenges. It will have to create a whole support system to serve its airships. There are a number of hangars that need to be created worldwide to house the CL-160s sailing around world. The initial goal is to have at least one hangar on each continent. This will be similar to the hangar already under construction near Berlin.
The market response to the proposal is very optimistic. The estimations made by specialized teams from German universities (and also for Heavy Lift Inc, the US located arm of Heavy Lift AG) suggest that some 200 such craft would be required over the next 20 years. This creates a serious problem for the company as it states that only 50 airships could be manufactured through the year 2015.
The very first investment made by Cargo Lifter is largest hangar in the world, which is in the final stage of construction on a former military airfield near Berlin. This should be finished by September. Construction of the prototype will begin shortly after this is completed.
The official "roll out" is scheduled for October 2002 and certification should be finished by the middle of next year. Soon after, the prototype will start operational service and production of the CL-160 will be undertaken. The first delivery is planned for 2004.
The whole venture is valued at 600 million DEM. The company has secured a significant amount of capital and shares are now sold on the German stock market.
Ornithopter
In 1973, Jeremy Harris and James DeLaurier met while working as research engineers at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus Ohio. Harris had been interested in ornithopter design since the late 1960's, as a result of his Masters research on mechanical amplifiers at Ohio State University. DeLaurier had built rubber-powered model ornithopters while a teen, but this interest became latent until revived by his association with Harris. Both worked together on this problem as a hobby, but it soon became a strong avocation as the challenge of this effort became apparent. This continued unabated after DeLaurier joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 1974, and the first tests of a 3m span engine-powered remotely piloted model took place in 1985. It was not capable of sustained flight, which motivated a research program involving computer analysis and wind-tunnel testing, much of which is described in the Publications section. This work culminated in successful sustained flights by a much-improved model on 4 September 1991, as shown in the Media Gallery section.
The significance of this research is that it established the technological foundation for developing a full-scale aircraft, which began shortly after the model's flights. Construction took approximately a year, beginning in 1995, and in October 1996 the first taxi trials were conducted. These showed that the aircraft was capable of accelerating under its own power. Further taxi tests have been conducted in subsequent years, and the aircraft has self-accelerated on level ground to speeds allowing brief lift-offs.
More:
Many people don't know that flapping-wing aircraft have flown successfully. In 1870, Gustave Trouve's was the first. Powered by an internal combustion engine using gunpowder, it flew 70 meters in a demonstration to the French Academy of Sciences.
Simpler ornithopters, powered by rubber bands, were soon developed, and today they compete in national and international contests. Some ornithopters, like Sean Kinkade's VT2 shown here, are radio-controlled. All are fascinating to design and build because of the endless possible variations.
While the first manned ornithopter may not be far off, unmanned aircraft are increasingly important. Small ornithopters have commercial applications such as surveillance, bird control, and recreation. In the future, ornithopters will have improved performance and greater functionality. New technologies could power these ornithopters with no need for cumbersome motors and gears.
Nearly Twice as Large as the Famous Graf Zeppelin
On April 21, 1933, the USS Macon, costing $2.5 million, left Akron, Ohio on its maiden voyage.
Known officially as ZRS-5 the USS Macon, more modern and slightly faster that its sister ship, the Akron ZRS-4, had a top speed of about 87 miles per hour.
The rigid airship was developed by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Co., a business jointly owned by the Zeppelin Company of Germany and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
Unlike the blimps made famous by Goodyear today, the Macon had a hollow steel hull with three interior keels. The intent of the strong spine was to prevent the type of hull collapse that occurred with one of the Macon's predecessors, the Shenandoah.
The Macon had accommodations for 100 officers and crew, including sleeping berths, a large mess room, a galley and observation platform at the nose and tail.
From the outside it looked and functioned much like a helium balloon. But on the inside the ship was an open cavern of girders, cables and catwalks with few places crewmen could not go.
Before 1925, many lighter-than-air craft operated on hydrogen. But the flammability of the gas proved to be very dangerous as would be demonstrated in May, 1937 when fire killed 36 people aboard the German Zeppelin, Hindenburg.
The Macon was kept aloft by non-burning helium contained in 12 large gelatin-latex cells inside the craft.
The ship carried a large supply of additional helium, and navigators were able to set the Macon's altitude by releasing more of the gas.
Inside the hull, the ship had eight large 560-horsepower engines driving outside propellers, one of the craft's few noisy operations. The propellers could be pointed up or down to control the ship during take-off and landings.
The giant USS Macon landed at Moffett Field on October 16, 1933. During the next 16 months, the Macon became a familiar and popular sight on the Peninsula, never failing to amaze the public whenever it took off or landed.
The Macon carried its own protection - five sparrow hawk fighter planes stored in the aircraft's belly.
The airplanes were release via a trapeze and harness which lowered the planes through a T-shaped hole in the Macon's underside.
Retrieving the planes, however was a difficult process. Like a performing air stunt, the pilots had to match their speed to that of the ship, and "catch" the trapeze with a hook at the top of the plane. The harness would then be attached to the fuselage, and the aircraft would be raised.
Despite the difficulty of the maneuver the pilots, know as the men on the flying trapeze, had a flawless record on both the Akron and Macon.
The Crash of the Macon, and the End of the US Navy's Airship Program
The Macon had scouted for the Pacific Fleet eight times in all. When the airship left Moffett Field on February 11, 1935, to go on maneuvers off the Southern California coast, repairs to two damaged tail fins had not been completed.
Because of the pressure to prove its value, Navy officials decided to do the repair piecemeal. Largely because of that decision, this would be the Macon's 54th and final flight.
The next day, as the ship was returning from a successful mission, it encountered sever storm winds off Point Sur, south of Monterey. Suddenly, a crosswind struck the ship with such force that the upper fins of the previously damaged tail were completely severed, sending shards of metal into the rear gas cells.
In the control car, the steering wheel went slack and the navigators felt the tail drop. Wiley ordered the dumping of ballast and fuel.
Crewmen hurried about the ship discharging anything they could do without to lighten the tail. But the Ship was doomed. After rising to nearly 5,000 feet, the Macon began to fall. Moments later it settled gently into the water.
The crew, clad in life jackets and prepared with life rafts, jumped into the water safely. Ships were quickly on the scent to pull the men out. A radioman was killed when he jumped from the falling ship, and another man was lost when he apparently tried to retrieve his belongings. But in all, 81 of the 83 aboard the Macon survived the crash.
Former USS Macon engineer George Weldy, 89, one of the few surviving U.S. military dirigible crew members, recalled in an interview that fate took a big part in his life while he worked on airships.
"I happened to be off duty the day she went down (off Monterey in 1935)," he said. "They were breaking in some new crew members, and they happened to be aboard that day."
"You know, that day was the only day I saw the Macon in the air," Weldy said. Why? Because he had always been aboard! He had a total of 52 flights on the Macon.
The first airship Weldy was assigned to, the Akron, also crashed, but Weldy again was lucky. "A fellow asked to trade duty station with me, he said. It's sad when you lose friends like that, because we were all like family."
Weldy had a 30 year career in the military before retiring in 1958. He and his beautiful wife, Laura have been married for 65 years and have one son, David.
A commission set up to determine the cause of the ship's demise concluded that the blame belonged not to the crew, but to the Navy's refusal to repair the Macon's tail damage before it was sent on its ill-fated mission. The Macon was the nation's last rigid airship.
ILA 2000: German Aviation Returns to Roots With Cargo Lifter
By Ryszard Jaxa-Malachowski,
AWN Central European correspondent
BERLIN - Cargo Lifter AG of Berlin is preparing to build the first and only prototype of the heavy lift airship - the CL-160.
The process begins 100 years after the very first German airship, the Zeppelin, was made. However, the CL-160 will be much larger than its predecessors, and with a length of 260 m and diameter of 65 m it will be the largest airship ever built.
The CL-160 will have a capacity of 550,000 cubic meters and be able to carry a payload of 160 metric tons. It should cruise with a speed of 80-135 km/h for 10,000 km or up to 30 days.
The giant design is to be powered by 16 turboshaft engines with output of about 1,000 kW each, but only four of those will be used for propelling the craft. The remaining engines are to be used for maneuvering while loading and unloading cargo.
This solution is unique - four engines are to be located in the nose and rear part of the envelope and eight will be stored in pairs in the powered wings and two horizontal propellers. The wings are spacious enough to allow in-flight servicing of engines.
The main and secondary structures of the half-rigid craft are made of modern composite materials. The crew is to be seated in the front part of the fuselage, while the rear part will be occupied by cargo. Extremely large elements might be loaded directly to the fuselage.
The great challenge will be the certification of the CL-160. It is planned to be completed under JAR requirements, however the German aviation authority LBA will have to prepare special procedures. No airships of this size have been certified so far and rules are being set up as the program makes progress.
One idea is that before the airship's maiden flight, the static tests will need to be passed but this will be done on components - no global test is required.
For Cargo Lifter AG, the whole project is creating a number of challenges. It will have to create a whole support system to serve its airships. There are a number of hangars that need to be created worldwide to house the CL-160s sailing around world. The initial goal is to have at least one hangar on each continent. This will be similar to the hangar already under construction near Berlin.
The market response to the proposal is very optimistic. The estimations made by specialized teams from German universities (and also for Heavy Lift Inc, the US located arm of Heavy Lift AG) suggest that some 200 such craft would be required over the next 20 years. This creates a serious problem for the company as it states that only 50 airships could be manufactured through the year 2015.
The very first investment made by Cargo Lifter is largest hangar in the world, which is in the final stage of construction on a former military airfield near Berlin. This should be finished by September. Construction of the prototype will begin shortly after this is completed.
The official "roll out" is scheduled for October 2002 and certification should be finished by the middle of next year. Soon after, the prototype will start operational service and production of the CL-160 will be undertaken. The first delivery is planned for 2004.
The whole venture is valued at 600 million DEM. The company has secured a significant amount of capital and shares are now sold on the German stock market.
Ornithopter
In 1973, Jeremy Harris and James DeLaurier met while working as research engineers at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus Ohio. Harris had been interested in ornithopter design since the late 1960's, as a result of his Masters research on mechanical amplifiers at Ohio State University. DeLaurier had built rubber-powered model ornithopters while a teen, but this interest became latent until revived by his association with Harris. Both worked together on this problem as a hobby, but it soon became a strong avocation as the challenge of this effort became apparent. This continued unabated after DeLaurier joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 1974, and the first tests of a 3m span engine-powered remotely piloted model took place in 1985. It was not capable of sustained flight, which motivated a research program involving computer analysis and wind-tunnel testing, much of which is described in the Publications section. This work culminated in successful sustained flights by a much-improved model on 4 September 1991, as shown in the Media Gallery section.
The significance of this research is that it established the technological foundation for developing a full-scale aircraft, which began shortly after the model's flights. Construction took approximately a year, beginning in 1995, and in October 1996 the first taxi trials were conducted. These showed that the aircraft was capable of accelerating under its own power. Further taxi tests have been conducted in subsequent years, and the aircraft has self-accelerated on level ground to speeds allowing brief lift-offs.
More:
Many people don't know that flapping-wing aircraft have flown successfully. In 1870, Gustave Trouve's was the first. Powered by an internal combustion engine using gunpowder, it flew 70 meters in a demonstration to the French Academy of Sciences.
Simpler ornithopters, powered by rubber bands, were soon developed, and today they compete in national and international contests. Some ornithopters, like Sean Kinkade's VT2 shown here, are radio-controlled. All are fascinating to design and build because of the endless possible variations.
While the first manned ornithopter may not be far off, unmanned aircraft are increasingly important. Small ornithopters have commercial applications such as surveillance, bird control, and recreation. In the future, ornithopters will have improved performance and greater functionality. New technologies could power these ornithopters with no need for cumbersome motors and gears.
