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ORIGINAL: Perturabo

Does anyone know any good Zeppelin simulator?

The only game I am familiar with on the subject is Zeppelin! by MicroProse, and it's more of a managerial game than a flight sim. The DOS version of it was released in 1993, according to TheLegacy. I wasn't that crazy about it, but an acquaintance of mine really liked it.

Luftschiff boardgame.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/959/luftschiff

Zepplica does a pretty good job of simulating the Zeppelin.

Zeppelin simulator

A Zepplin simulator would be fun. What I never understood was how they managed to successfully bomb London in WWI. Surely they were huge, flammable, slow targets that would have simple to shoot down...never quite understood how they could have been any real threat.

Is John Bonham playable?

ORIGINAL: ezz

Luftschiff boardgame.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/959/luftschiff

Thanks. I'll buy it one day.

ORIGINAL: Tomus

A Zepplin simulator would be fun. What I never understood was how they managed to successfully bomb London in WWI. Surely they were huge, flammable, slow targets that would have simple to shoot down...never quite understood how they could have been any real threat.

They didn't have incendiary ammo and everything else was ineffective. I wonder why there are no Zeppelin simulators. Piloting a 160m airship sounds awesome.

ORIGINAL: gunny


Zepplica does a pretty good job of simulating the Zeppelin.

Zeppelin simulator

For a moment, I thought that you're an adbot[:D].

ORIGINAL: benpark

Is John Bonham playable?

I peeked in this thread just to see if anyone went there. I was not let down. [:D]

They didn't have incendiary ammo and everything else was ineffective.

A good point. The advantage of a zeppelin over a blimp is that the former has a rigid frame and doesn't deflate when hit. (The gas was contained in a large number of individual cloth balloons, giving excellent compartmentalization.) One other thing to note is that if the zeppelin was flying at night or in the clouds and turned its engines off, it became almost undetectable.

Another ZP fact.....Only the US had zeps with Helium vice Hydrogen, making foriegn (to us) Zeps DANGEROUS.

Another Blimp fact: As slow as they were, no Navy Blimps were shot down in WW2, two were lost and one of those returned to California, sans crew ?
Top speed of the last Naval Blimps was 60 MPH, any faster and the Nose started to fold in to itself, excellent convoy and radar escorts for the fleet. They were the only Aircraft in the Navy that had NO Parachutes aboard.
A Blimp holds the record for longest flight without landing, 11 days and 11 hours in 1957 or 58.

Surely they were huge, flammable, slow targets that would have simple to shoot down...never quite understood how they could have been any real threat.

Literary follow-up: in Rudyard Kipling's "Sea Warfare", he writes of an interview with a British submarine captain who surfaced underneath a zeppelin at low altitude. Although the airship seemed to "fill half the sky", the sub's deck gun was only a six-pounder, which did no damage worth mentioning. The sub had to hastily submerge when the zeppelin started dropping bombs. Kipling saw fit to include the incident in a little poem he wrote about the submarine service:
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/k ... adieu.html

Cpt harlock: Blimps used Helium (non-flamable gas) at approx 2 Inches mercury preasure, thereby even with a decent hit the gas would leak slowly (Most of gas was at the top of bag}. The ditching procedure called for a volunteer to strap on a harness that was attached to a (we'll call it a Velcro Zipper, for lack of official name) and jump and unzip same, therby splitting the bag into halves and slowly settling to the the ocean/ground. Oh yeah' cutting off the engines allowed some very nice views of the New Jersey Nudist colonies, not that I ever participated in any such shenanigans. planner 3 (aka Chief)

PS: No sub skipper in WW 2 would surface to shoot at a blimp, his best armament was stealth, if he surfaced he would be reported and depth charged by said blimp or escorts. German U boat commanders interview after WW2 said the blimp was by far very dangerous. As big as they were they made a lousy RADAR target also.

After all these years I still learn a lot from reading these forums.

I love strategy: My comment about the Blimp that returned without a crew, (above), came down in your neighborhood I believe in 1943. Should have comments in your newspapers.

Weird story, that blimp.

http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/L-8_crash_site.htm

ezz: Thank you for refreshing my mind. OK not San Diego but San Francisco. Also noted that it had parachutes on board, contrary to what we were told in squadron lectors, we in the ZPG 's carried NO parachutes whatsoever, only one para harness on board and Mae Wests, etc. Thanks again for digging that up.

At first I thought maybe one tried to kill the other but that would lead to explanning to do when the survivor touched ground. AWOL maybe? That's a hell of a way to do it. Simple fist fight and they fell out?

ilovestratergy: The Dip in the top center of the bag is approximately where the "Velcro" {my name for it} was attached, the crew normally has one man go over the side with a parachute harness and ripline attached, this allows airship to settle slowly, now just prior to touchdown in water the crew jumps in to clear the bag envelope, if this occurred, the ship is no longer ballasted, and surges upward, and if enough helium is trapped, away goes the blimp. 2nd theory could be that on engine failure the crew, valved helium (out), bag gets near the water and in their panic, they jump clear, then ballast is gone blimp rises and they are in the water with only mae wests, since raft was found in the ship. EERIE but feasible.

Wow... The only simulator I can think of that would be more boring than a Zeppelin simulator would be one simulating snail racing...

I have to agree with Terminus on this one.