You are given the power of infusing everyone who designed the Akron and Macon with a collective flash of genius constrained to the airship production process to make a design informed by some current improved knowledge of how to make airships.Can future knowledge (but not any flat out future technology to be very clear) have pushed the Akron/Macon over the finish line into being (barely) ww2 viable machines? At least until halfway? They don't have to be war winners or anything and they'll get lapped by planes as is inevitable but *could* there have been a set of airships built well enough for people to have remembered them.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6vgVTJK_rg&
no. airships were a terrible idea.
The ultimate limiting factor of airship design is that there is hard limit on the lifting action you can harness for a given volume. Hydrogen airships in a shooting war are obviously a poor idea, but helium will only ever provide so much lift (IIRC, the Hidenburg would have been too heavy to lift off if it had used helium). So the only method you really have is lightening the structure, which means less equipment you can carry.
With future knowledge you could very much build an airship with radar to use on anti-submarine patrols.It's one of those concepts that might have worked for a very short time in the late 30s and early 40s.
>>64668712>Would the perfect airship do okay in ww2?Maybe. Might even be a ‘likely’ thing. I'm just going to give a blanket assumption that better frame design truisms could reduce weight by a good…5%? Airships lift from what little i understand (which is fuck all) is that it’s a very plateau'd field with tiny improvements made over time since the concept peaked in the 30s but they ‘are’ improvements all the same. The video mentions the ships being able to fly for a week at a time so that's for sure something which could be improved since I know future blimps could be made to do better than that. Probably should consolidate a lot of those 7 AA guns into 2-3 heavier AAs.I’m sure a more perfect crew setup would cut down on necessary bodies as well. >Could /k/ anons in your slider thread think it up?Fuck no.
>>64668740use vacuum
There have been too many serious accidents caused simply by bad weather.
>>64668712It's best use would be as a very high altitude, long endurance patrol aircraft. Like 45,000 feet high. Give it a radio, a bunch of observation stations, and it could act as a naval/coastal patrol given an endurance of a few days. Maybe even give them a radar set. That should keep them at least useful into 1943.
shoulda used cheap H2 airships towed by convoy ships to spot U-boats.Once spotted or otherwise detected, the blimp would drop its tow line, release lots of H2 to help it dive for speed, and start engines and go after U-boat with depth charges.Danger of H2 is overrated and 1/3 of the Hindenburg lived, without any even minimal combat bail out stuff.Danger from U-boat flak would be minimal, since U-boat would be more worried about diving from surface fleet guns once discovered, and its questionable if AAA shells would even explode when hitting fabric. I guess tracers might be a problem.But still safer to be in H2 burning blimp and fall into water than any fixed wing crash or even bail out. By the time you hit the water all the H2 has burned off safely going up. You be in a Life Pod that detaches when the main bag catches fire, and it drops away with 'chute. Simple and effective but not practical for fixed wing at the time.
Look OP we all love airships and there are many autists here who have thought extensively on how to make their viability as a platform last longer than it did who could explain it better than me I'm sure.What you have to understand is that the limited window of time they had ended in the 1930s. They are slow, big ungainly targets, extremely vulnerable to weather and unable to fly above it. They only worked as well as they did in WW1 and shortly thereafter because airplanes just weren't powerful enough yet to do things like fly high and long range and carry large bomb loads, defensive guns, radios etc. Rigid airships were a nonstarter by 1935 and probably earlier. Airships in general could only be useful in niche applications like submarine patrols but blimps did it cheaper.
>>64668864>45,000 feet highThat's 10k higher than a typical airliner cruising altitude. I think most zeppelins only ever attempted half that.
>>64668740What about a hybrid design, with a thin outer gas bag of helium surrounding a larger inner gas bag of hydrogen?You'd have almost as much lift as a pure hydrogen airship, but incendiary bullets would be unable to ignite the inner hydrogen bag unless the ship was so damaged that all the helium had already been lost.
>>64668740nigga you clearly dont know anything about the macon>>64668712only the macon even slightly made sense but even then its a more vulnerable target than ship carriers and fuckton harder to land in/much more prone to being destroyed in the event of a crash
>>64668911Im well aware of the Amis carrier zeppelins, my point is that they are basically the limit because there's not much you can do beyond them >>64668890You would not only be basically doubling the amount of gas bag you need, which would be alot of weight, but your also almost certainly need a more complex and heavier structure for the airship frame.
Crew on the perfect airship should be optimized into a slim figure. The 70 onboard irl is crazy high. A blimp today would scarcely have a crew larger than its pilot duo there should be a dozen ‘necessary’ crew at most.Akron/Macon looks to have been treating themselves as kinda prestigious vessel with crew treatments modeled after the creature comforts afforded on the big ships. Merge the mess hall and bunks. Observation platform should be be more like a cockpit. Airship gets the full submarine sardines treatment. These ship’s tours irl were only 10 days max anyway plus some extra after we’re done optimizing it so crew can suck it up. >Tactic ideas: tell me why it’s ass.Already mentioned but use them as an early AWAK radar planeThe Goodyear approach. Passively decorate the sides of the airship between flights that happen to go over land for ‘leafleting’ & giving instructions to stranded guys or friendly insurgents on the ground in places where for some reason you can’t contact them. Helicopter infil/exfil before helicopters: Float over the place you want dudes to raid and insert them on the roof (or use the airship to pick them up.) airship gives covering fire & spotlight assists during the op.It’d be expensive as shit but NOBODY would see it coming. Fly over one of those occupied uk islands and land 200 guys to overwhelm and murder every German in the area then get out of there back in the black of night.
>>64669178Other than acting as radar towers in the sky which is genuinely does bounce around as being actually viable irl your two ideas are solutions in search of a problem.If you have air control and ground safe enough to pull that stunt you can afford to drop leaflets instead because they are cheaper and easier. The enemy can use ground guns to pop your ass at the heights where an airship billboard is visible by naked eyes on the ground.Precision raids as you describe fail by the whims of the weather. You can’t rope down. The blimp a giant target that anyone on the ground chan shoot up at. Another “””niche””” is that the blimp is a cargo lift for heavier singular objects then any single object then planes can fly with for semi-fast and far delivery but that utility is vanishingly narrow becaus it costs an assload more to deliver ‘1 tank’ into the boonies of random jap campaign island 4000 by airship. Airship bleeds gasses which themselves bleed money to supply it and it’s not worth the cost in gas reserve for most anything you want to place.If it’s not an island or assend of the world on zero infrastructure then you can drive, ship and train lift anything anywhere.
>>64668712Over a hundred K-Class Blimps were built for convoy escort duty. Non-Rigid Airships were very effective in WW2, blimps escorted 89,000 ships and only 1 of them, a tanker was lost to enemy action.I assume you are imagining a more retro-futuristic approach like a capital ship from Star Wars. I guess you could put modern missiles, drones, radars, lasers or something on an airship but at that point it is not the airship that matter but what is bolted to it and you could just as easily attach that stuff to more suitable ships or aircraft.
https://sciencewritingmountainlakeuniversityofvirginia.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gunpowder-from-guano.pdf
https://sciencewritingmountainlakeuniversityofvirginia.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gunpowder-from-guano.pdfhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpetre_works%23:~:text%3DManufacture,-Saltpeter%2520Mine%2520Ruins%26text%3DThe%2520process%2520involved%2520burial%2520of,ebullition%2520in%2520the%2520boiler%2520plant.https://www.britannica.com/science/saltpeter%23%3A~%3Atext%3Dsaltpetre%2C%2520any%2520of%2520three%2520naturally%2520occurring%2520nitrates%2C%2Csaltpetre%2C%2520wall%2520saltpetre%2C%2520or%2520calcium%2520nitrate%2C%2520Ca(NO3)2.https://www.vedantu.com/geography/saltpeter%23%3A~%3Atext%3DSaltpetre%2520is%2520formed%2520through%2520a%2520natural%2520process%2Csoil%2520convert%2520the%2520nitrogen%2520compounds%2520into%2520nitrates.https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/the-300-industrial-secret-that-changed-the-world/%23%3A~%3Atext%3DThe%2520secret%2520was%2520how%2520to%2520make%2520saltpetre%2Cthe%2520natural%2520process%2520and%2520performing%2520a%2520crystallisation.https://waltons.com/science-of-curing-salts%23%3A~%3Atext%3D-%2520Slow%2C%2520converted%2520into%2520nitrite%2520by%2520bacteria%2520over%2520weeks%2520or%2520months.https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/20/innovative-process-turns-diapers-sanitary-products-into-energy.html%23%3A~%3Atext%3DOther%2520processes%2520and%2520techniques%2520have%2520been%2520developed%2Cthe%2520waste%2520humans%2520produce%2520into%2520something%2520useful.https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/atiwa/%23%3A~%3Atext%3DGuano%2C%2520for%2520those%2520not%2520in%2520the%2520gua-%2Cits%2520use%2520in%2520the%2520production%2520of%2520gunpowder.https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/guano-mining-a-deadly-obsession.htmlhttps://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/259312/could-saltpeter-be-discovered-from-fertilizer
>>64673708https://hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/11035-gunpowder-making-it-the-old-way-with-a-manure/%23:~:text%3DSurvivalists%2520and%2520gun%2520enthusiasts%2520today,part%2520not%2520the%2520yucky%2520part.https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/saltpetre-mining.htm%23:~:text%3DThe%2520mining%2520process%2520involved%2520extracting,blood%252C%2520to%2520create%2520the%2520saltpetre.https://www.vice.com/en/article/gunpowder-is-shit/%23:~:text%3DWatch%2520Motherboard%27s%2520new%2520documentary%252C%2520A,the%2520decomposition%2520of%2520the%2520manure.%25E2%2580%259D
@64673708@64673716Bots?
>>64669330Wow. Didn't know about these K-Class blimps. They had depth charges, a machine gun and radar. They can fly at 68 knots, fast enough to escort freighters and even fleet carriers and can loiter for up to 38 hours. Basically all that could be done with airships back then and even now.
>>64673823Most likely a bot anon, it is dumping random links that have nothing to do with airships. Saltpeter mining? gunpowder-from-guano.pdf?
>>64668890This was actually experimented with by the Zeppelin company (IIRC for LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin II), not as a way to prevent fires but to reduce costs.Since you need to valve off lifting gas as external air pressure drops, you don't really want to do that with Helium because it's expensive as fuck compared to Hydrogen.It didn't work and the US wouldn't export thr Helium anyway
