U.S.S. Macon

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

What's your favorite color?

long green.

[Canoerebel]

Blue!...no, clear!

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay
Yeah... those Sparrowhawks might have been able to catch a Devastator...[:D]

The USN did operate several airships in ASW roles off both coasts during WW2. I'm not sure if they made it into AE...

Yeah , and what were they flying off carriers at the same time? 1936 ? Sparrowhawks were the equivalent. Don't you guys think they would have fitted a Wildcat with a trapeeze?

I doubt it. Hangar space and minimum speeds would have been likely problems. The Sparrowhawk had a wingspan of 25 feet; the Wildcat was 38 feet. Also, as a biplane with a max speed of 176 mph, the Sparrow could probably throttle back to a low enough speed to allow for it to hook onto the trapeze with minimal force (it's min speed wouldn't have been that much faster than the cruising speed of the airship) while the Wildcat, at a faster minimum speed, might have been too jarring for the airship's framework.

1st . the wildcat started as a biplane. Besides that , you don't feel that removing landing gear and arresting hook would lighten in enough? (Sparrowhawks eventually lost both). And that the frame , when being widened to fit the larger aircraft, couldn't be beefed up? I'm sure trapeze technology , like arresting technology would have had break throughs. After all Non of the CV's of ww2 used Langleys sandbag and wire system. And only four years seperated her birth and Saratoga's.

All I'm saying is that had there been a will, there would have been a way. The bad press of Hindenburg killed the worlds intrest in airships. And technology took another road.

[Mundy]

Or, just use an F3F.
 
M-

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
I'm sure trapeze technology ... would have had break throughs.

I am glad whenever I experience a breakthrough in brassiere technology. And, of course, I have a minor interest in the bicycle seat industry (note in this pic the presence of Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsberg, now on the U.S. Supreme Court).



c'mon you guys, big, slow targets carrying minimal amounts of obolete, poor-performing aircraft were hardly going to supplant, or even augment, the rapidly advancing technology of aircraft carriers and associated strategy and tactics.

About the time a V of Zeros caught up with one of these things, somebody would have rued the day THAT technology was invested in.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: bobogoboom
they were blimps not airships.

Well, that's a pretty rigid attitude to take, my lighter-than-air friend.

Yah. The story of the Akron pretty much sums up the success the U.S. had with these craft ... until professional football on T.V. came along...

Let's be honest...the whole Blimp over the Super Bowl success is directly attributable to the fact that Goodyear, and not the US Government, is in charge of the project. [:D]

[bobogoboom]

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
I'm sure trapeze technology ... would have had break throughs.

I am glad whenever I experience a breakthrough in brassiere technology. And, of course, I have a minor interest in the bicycle seat industry (note in this pic the presence of Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsberg, now on the U.S. Supreme Court).



c'mon you guys, big, slow targets carrying minimal amounts of obolete, poor-performing aircraft were hardly going to supplant, or even augment, the rapidly advancing technology of aircraft carriers and associated strategy and tactics.

About the time a V of Zeros caught up with one of these things, somebody would have rued the day THAT technology was invested in.

agree it was completly useless except for asw(and that was only marginaly efective) and blimps did that better anyways.

[bobogoboom]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: bobogoboom
they were blimps not airships.

Well, that's a pretty rigid attitude to take, my lighter-than-air friend.

Yah. The story of the Akron pretty much sums up the success the U.S. had with these craft ... until professional football on T.V. came along...

Let's be honest...the whole Blimp over the Super Bowl success is directly attributable to the fact that Goodyear, and not the US Government, is in charge of the project. [:D]

and no one is shooting at it.

[Canoerebel]

What about Black Sunday? Anybody remember that movie?

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: bobogoboom

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
I'm sure trapeze technology ... would have had break throughs.

I am glad whenever I experience a breakthrough in brassiere technology. And, of course, I have a minor interest in the bicycle seat industry (note in this pic the presence of Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsberg, now on the U.S. Supreme Court).



c'mon you guys, big, slow targets carrying minimal amounts of obolete, poor-performing aircraft were hardly going to supplant, or even augment, the rapidly advancing technology of aircraft carriers and associated strategy and tactics.

About the time a V of Zeros caught up with one of these things, somebody would have rued the day THAT technology was invested in.

agree it was completly useless except for asw(and that was only marginaly efective) and blimps did that better anyways.

Blimps were not totally useless. No ship protected by blimps was ever lost.

As for fiction, does anybody remember the old Wallace Beery movie "This Man's Navy" ?..It was a fictional piece about USN blimps taking on Zekes over the Pacific..Apparently the Japanese pilots in the movie had never heard of Frank Luke and they targeted the crew gondola, oblivious to that huge silverish-gray object over it!

[AW1Steve]

x

[bobogoboom]

they sunk exactly 1 submarine the entire war. they were good for convoy escort and sub detection but that was about it. i said that in my previous post but the rigid airships were useless the blimps could do the same thing cheaper and you could have a lot more of the. i never said the blimps were useless

[AW1Steve]

x

[USSAmerica]

Steve-o, you seem a bit defensive.  Was your first "sea duty" tour on an airship or something?  [:'(]

[AW1Steve]

[quote]ORIGINAL: USS America

[bobogoboom]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

They sank 1 sub. And kept thousands of ships from being sunk. The major difference between an airship and blimp from a tactical point of view is scale. Blimps were local, airships could cross oceans. And, ships like Macon and Akron could cover much greater areas due to fuel, speed , and the fact that they could carry spotting aircraft. Trade out those Sparrowhawks for Seagulls (without the floats) and look at the area you can cover. [:)]

but you couldn't get enought of them and they were to slow. also blimps and airships are totaly different types of aircraft.the blimps worked cause you had so many of them. the airships you could of never biuld in enought quanity to make them useful and they required to many to crew.

[engineer]

When the USN program was conceived, actually before the Washington Treaty, the idea was to use the airships for scouting.  The cost benefit analysis of a Los Angeles class airship versus Omaha class light cruisers looked good on paper (and didn't account for the fragility of airships that showed up with actual use).  The Macon's, with embarked aircraft, again looked good for scouting, being able to cover more square miles of ocean in a day than anything other than aircraft carrier devoting a lot of scouting sorties.  AW1Steve is right about the core of the doctrine being persistence.  The problem was that the interwar airships had catastrophic failures.  The Los Angeles and the Graf Zeppelin were the only air ships to survive to a relatively old age with considerable use.  The R100 was retired after just a handful of flights to Canada after the R101 crashed in France.  The Hindenburg had a sister ship that didn't fly much after she went up like torch.   
 
The other point was that rigid airships were essentially a 1920's technology that looked attractive against WW1 era aircraft as a way to eyes in the sky.  With the revolution in aviation that took place in the 1930s, along with the maturation and differentiation of aircraft carriers, airships weren't attractive at all as fleet scouts where first line fighters might be encountered.  The USN did a good job of exploiting blimps in ASW and convoy escort roles.
 
The USN had one wing of blimps on the west coast in WW2.  One squadron operated in southern California, one around the Bay area, and one in the northwest.  In the Atlantic/European theater there were three wings.  One for the North Atlantic, one in the South Atlantic, and one eventually deployed to the Mediterranean.   

[AW1Steve]

x

[Canoerebel]

Me thinks AW1Steve was the same guy who urged the German army to continue using horses for transport at the expense of mechanization. "They eat grass! They don't require oil! They're much cheaper!"

[bobogoboom]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

You man them with less people than a PC required. Cost? More than an Squadron of airplanes, less than half a destroyer. The biggest limiting factor would be helium. But how many would you need? Maybe five, to cover all of the Central Pacific . Imagine Pearl Harbor being patroled by five Akron class Airships vice , what ? 8 Squadrons of PBY's? The Bellinger report called for 180 B-17"s. I think you could have actually freed up many planes, crews and maintainers for other fronts and forward areas. Like I said before , now one ever envisegined Blimps or Airships for fron line combat. But you don't need a B-17 for open ocean patrol.

give me the pby squadrons any day if you are going to put anything around hawaii it would be a squadron of blimps. and 5 airships could not cover all of the central pacific.