Without the ungodly bad PR that the disaster created, I think airships might have maintained a niche market for people that wanted to travel in class and comfort, with absolute cost and speed being a secondary consideration. With modern technology they would probably still be the safest way to cross long distances, like oceans.
One did duke it out with a U-boat
http://www.history.navy.mil/nan/backissues/1990s/1997/ma97/blimp.pdf
Between Detroit and Chicago, between Boston and New York and other close cities it would make sense. They don’t use as much gas. They wont have you tied up in an airport for hours. I wonder how high they would have to fly?
It’s a shame the bomb racks jammed. They could have sunk the sub.
How much security would a helium zeppelin need? Hijacking one would be much harder than in a plane (though with modern technology we probally could automate one so that it had a much smaller crew). Zeppelin + skyscraper = broken windows on the skyscraper and a totaled zeppelin. Even sneaking a bomb on board would do much less damage than on an airliner. It might disable her, but she’d still be airborne.
It was doomed as a commercial opportunity, as already explained. But the larger operational issue may have always been airships’ helplessness against storms, not the flammability of hydrogen. It’s almost unfair that the “Hindenburg effect” was the coup de grace, but if it hadn’t been, the Akron/Macon/Shenandoah effect would/should have been.
Agreed. I took Amtrak from D.C. to Montreal for Worldcon last summer - about a fifteen-hour ride all told, but the scenery from upstate New York onward was stunning. Sitting in the dining car, reading while the Hudson went by, with wine and cheese at hand, was one of my very favorite parts of that trip. Unless I truly need to get someplace fast, I’ll take a train over a plane any day of the week.
Not true, at least when it comes to law enforcement: Are Police Department Mounted Units anachronisms or still useful? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
The statistic that could be measured is that “no ship was ever lost from a convoy escorted by a blimp”*. That seems a pretty significant measurement.
*Assuming that it’s true. I don’t have any cite; I just recall reading it from a book on WWII some years ago. But it does make sense. I know that convoys had significantly reduced losses while escorted by airplanes, but planes couldn’t cover a big part of the middle Atlantic, and due to fuel limits & speed differences, could only stay overhead a limited period of time. A blimp could stay at about the same speed as the convoy, and could carry enough fuel to stay overhead all the way across the Atlantic. So it seems likely that a blimp watching overhead, and communicating with the armed escort vessels, would be very effective in protecting the convoy. (And note, the guiding principle of convoy escorts was the safe and timely arrival of the convoy, NOT the sinking of submarines.