AHC: Airship Fleets

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I don't know how effective they were, but, the French put big fireworks rockets on some aircraft for ballon busting. The idea was to get close as possible, fire the rockets, then veer away.

How about a variation on the Congreve rocket "system"? Instead of launching trays, a mounted tube, making it a proto-bazooka? Fix the tubes a distance from the skin of the dirigible to avoid launching damage.

Also, for propulsion, how about an earlier version of the Stanley Steamer gas/kerosene heated bolier?
 
As others have noted, it would be difficult to have truly efficient dirigibles before relatvely small and light internal combustion engines were available. Assuming you are interested in large zeppelin-type rigid airships, their frameworks also depend on advances in metallurgy - particularly in the availability of alluminum alloys. Bottom line, having reliable and effective airships invented and in service much earlier than the 1890-1910 period is very unlikely.

Your best bet is not to accelerate lighter-than-air (LTA) technology, but find reasons that heavier-than-air (HTA) technology might be delayed. It's hard to imagine that the invention of HTA fight can be significantly delayed given the worldwide fascination with this in the 1890-1900 period, but it is possible to propose reasons that the main corporate and military interests in aviation might focus on airships...at least for 2-3 decades into the 20th century. The best way to do this is to butterfly away WW1 - or any other war between major European powers in the 1900-1920 period.

When the Wrights flew their first airplane a few hundred meters in 1903, Count Zeppelin was flying up to 20 paying passengers on semi-scheduled joy rides between German cities on his airships. When WW1 started, none of the great powers had a clear idea of what to do with airplanes or airships, but arguably airships (both rigids and non- or semi-rigids) were considered the more proven and versatile technology for reconnaissance, naval scouting, and aerial bombing. War is a very effective method of natural selection in the evolution of technologies, and many of the selective pressures that pointed out problems with airships and advantages of airplanes as warcraft would not occur

Butterfly away WW1 and the advancement of HTA will be significantly delayed. Advancement of LTA will also go slower, but since LPA starts in a somewhat advantageous position, its not a complete stretch to argue that by 1920, zeppelin-type rigids and large semi-rigid airships might dominate the aviation arms of many militaries and be engaged in all sorts of money-making commercial aviation tasks. It is also not a stretch to argue that most airplanes would still be small, light, low altitude craft, built primarily for joy rides and personal enjoyment by aviators, and perhaps as military scouts. While a few visionaries might design and build large multi-engined transport and bombing planes, in peacetime there is often a massive inertia in defense establishments to spend money on what you believe will work best rather than experiment with new things.

Maybe, just maybe, in the hypothetical Anglo-American War of 1919 you might just see "fleets" of scout airships go at it over the north Atlantic as part of the great naval Battle of the Azores.
 
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Your best bet is not to accelerate lighter-than-air (LTA) technology, but find reasons that heavier-than-air (HTA) technology might be delayed. It's hard to imagine that the invention of HTA fight can be significantly delayed given the worldwide fascination with this in the 1890-1900 period, but it is possible to propose reasons that the main corporate and military interests in aviation might focus on airships...at least for 2-3 decades into the 20th century. The best way to do this is to butterfly away WW1 - or any other war between major European powers in the 1900-1920 period.
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What initiated such mass fascination, and how could it be halted or diverted to LTA ships?
 
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Your best bet is not to accelerate lighter-than-air (LTA) technology, but find reasons that heavier-than-air (HTA) technology might be delayed. It's hard to imagine that the invention of HTA fight can be significantly delayed given the worldwide fascination with this in the 1890-1900 period, but it is possible to propose reasons that the main corporate and military interests in aviation might focus on airships...at least for 2-3 decades into the 20th century. The best way to do this is to butterfly away WW1 - or any other war between major European powers in the 1900-1920 period.
...
QUOTE]
What initiated such mass fascination, and how could it be halted or diverted to LTA ships?

Hard to do. People have always wanted to fly, and for the last 200 years this fantasy mainly seemed to focus on people flying like birds. Balloons were around for 150 years and most people did not think that meant people could fly. Even if dirigibles became practical several decades earlier, you'd still see backyard inventors experimenting with ways to combine engines with wings so people could swoop and turn in the air like birds. Even some of the early airships like those of Santos-Dumont were joy ride craft for one person - a completely impractical use of the technology that vanished when airplanes came around

I have a few thoughts, but they are really ASB:

(1) Birds die off 65 million years ago along with the rest of the dinosaurs. Yup, get rid of birds and people might never consider the possibility of "flying like birds" and only consider LTA technologies as the way to do it.

(2) Change the evolving ethic of western civilization away from individual inventiveness and individual mobility to mass mobility. Again, this is probably iompossible. (In this context it's interesting to note that Zeppelin's first (unworkable) concept for his rigid airship imagined it as an aerial train, with each cell carrying passengers or freight and being only losely articulated with the others).

(3) Have the technology originate and evolve completely in a nautical context where "ships" carrying large crews are seen as infinitly better and safer for commercial and naval purposes than small boats. Make airships evolve - not as "flying machines" but as ships that just happen to float a few thousand fleet above the ocean and can travel a bit faster -and that fit into naval/nautical working doctrine that way. This might be doable, but it wouldn't necessarily retard HTA experimentation
 
(1) Birds die off 65 million years ago along with the rest of the dinosaurs. Yup, get rid of birds and people might never consider the possibility of "flying like birds" and only consider LTA technologies as the way to do it.
1) that's impossible, birds are and have for millions of years been one of the most prolific broad groups of animals in all of history, alongside fish and insects, 2) i'm not even one for radical butterfly effects and a POD 65 million years ago would butterfly every species since then, including humans, and 3) something else would evolve to fill the now vacant niche of birds (gliding mammals have existed since the Jurassic, and bats have been around since the Eocene at the latest, e.g., right after the dinosaurs died out) meaning that, assuming a sentient species still evolves and becomes advanced enough to conceive of flight, they would still have an example. the only time that there HASN'T been something flying around in the air was over 350 million years ago, and that's because there was almost nothing alive that wasn't living in the ocean and didn't NEED to fly before then
 
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1) that's impossible, birds are and have for millions of years been one of the most prolific broad groups of animals in all of history, alongside fish and insects, 2) i'm not even one for radical butterfly effects and a POD 65 million years ago would butterfly every species since then, including humans, and 3) something else would evolve to fill the now vacant niche of birds (gliding mammals have existed since the Jurassic, and bats have been around since the Eocene at the latest, e.g., right after the dinosaurs died out) meaning that, assuming a sentient species still evolves and becomes advanced enough to conceive of flight, they would still have an example. the only time that there HASN'T been something flying around in the air was over 350 million years ago, and that's because there was almost nothing alive that wasn't living in the ocean and didn't NEED to fly before then

You did notice that I said this was ASB, didn't you? But conceptually it is an interesting question. If a sentient species (like humans) evolved in a biosphere that either completely lacked flying animals or in which the only flying animals were either tiny insects or (hypothetical) creatures that use lifting gas or have the biological analogs of rotors rather than airfoil wings, would this species evolve a technology of HTA flight and, if so, would it feature anythng like airplanes.
 
(3) Have the technology originate and evolve completely in a nautical context where "ships" carrying large crews are seen as infinitly better and safer for commercial and naval purposes than small boats. Make airships evolve - not as "flying machines" but as ships that just happen to float a few thousand fleet above the ocean and can travel a bit faster -and that fit into naval/nautical working doctrine that way. This might be doable, but it wouldn't necessarily retard HTA experimentation

How about this:

In a TL in which LTA craft tech reaches early 20th century levels by the 1880s (at the latest) Alfred Thayer Mahan follows up his book "The Influence of Sea Power upon History" with another supporting the use of airships. The influence that he and his original book may then give greater influence to the use of airships.
 
Hey, here are the ships Solomon Andres and Frederick Marriot designed in the 1860s
201850944_eaa8ee4914_o.jpg

Airship_Aereon_by_Solomon_Andrews.jpg
 
How about this:

In a TL in which LTA craft tech reaches early 20th century levels by the 1880s (at the latest) Alfred Thayer Mahan follows up his book "The Influence of Sea Power upon History" with another supporting the use of airships. The influence that he and his original book may then give greater influence to the use of airships.

I have being a spoil sport, but here I go again. The problem is its hard to imagine LTA technology reaching early 20th Century levels in the 1880's - which I still would argue needs advances in aluminum metallurgy and petrol or Diesel engines. One must always be a bit critical when considering the sucesses attributed to some of the early pressure airships of the mid-late 19th century. Often the accounts are more in the nature of sales pitches for a small and only marginally successful prototype, and a whole cottage industry of success stories can grow up over the years when in fact the craft never flew, or at best made inconclusive directed flights in absolutely still conditions/indoors (Or was actually the tiny unmanned gasbag in the photo of the Avitor Hermes Jr, when the published print turns it into a streamlined hybrid airship with an internal steam engine sailing majestically through the sky). Another case is the Aeron (the three-hulled unpowered dirigible also shown in your attachment). If you read John Toland's exciting but not always accurate history of airships, you will learn about tests of the Aeron prototype in front of Abraham Lincoln and a raft of US Government folks, who were amazed that a completely unpowered ship could achieve directed flight merely by using a shifting weight to undulate through the air. It's really a cool idea, but if it really worked or had any future you would have seen Aerons filling the sky by the 1870's. Problem is, there is no incontrovertable documentary record that any of this occurred, or that a flying Aeron even existed.

Regarding Mahan, I'm not sure he would have been all that excited about airships, even if effective ships were invented 20 years earlier. To him sea power meant the ability to marshall big fleets of big ships. He might see airships as useful scouts...but then so were cruisers and other light, fast ships.
 
Government resources is one major thing - there were airship (dirigible) races in Paris in IIRC the 1880s. Give the winners government contracts, then you can build on this. Like how France did with submarines in the 1890s

Lilienthal style gliders could also be useful. The US would later use dirigibles as mother ships to powered aeroplanes, but a glider is a lot lighter (no engine) so you could drop them off a mother airship

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I have being a spoil sport, but here I go again. The problem is its hard to imagine LTA technology reaching early 20th Century levels in the 1880's - which I still would argue needs advances in aluminum metallurgy and petrol or Diesel engines. One must always be a bit critical when considering the sucesses attributed to some of the early pressure airships of the mid-late 19th century. Often the accounts are more in the nature of sales pitches for a small and only marginally successful prototype, and a whole cottage industry of success stories can grow up over the years when in fact the craft never flew, or at best made inconclusive directed flights in absolutely still conditions/indoors (Or was actually the tiny unmanned gasbag in the photo of the Avitor Hermes Jr, when the published print turns it into a streamlined hybrid airship with an internal steam engine sailing majestically through the sky). Another case is the Aeron (the three-hulled unpowered dirigible also shown in your attachment). If you read John Toland's exciting but not always accurate history of airships, you will learn about tests of the Aeron prototype in front of Abraham Lincoln and a raft of US Government folks, who were amazed that a completely unpowered ship could achieve directed flight merely by using a shifting weight to undulate through the air. It's really a cool idea, but if it really worked or had any future you would have seen Aerons filling the sky by the 1870's. Problem is, there is no incontrovertable documentary record that any of this occurred, or that a flying Aeron even existed.

Regarding Mahan, I'm not sure he would have been all that excited about airships, even if effective ships were invented 20 years earlier. To him sea power meant the ability to marshall big fleets of big ships. He might see airships as useful scouts...but then so were cruisers and other light, fast ships.
I agree with Al metallurgy, I suggested such in an earlier post.

As I mentioned before I am working on a TL of my own in which rigid LTA-crafts become popular earlier than in OTL. It is an ASB TL with steampunk elements though but I plan on backing up the fiction by having the industrial aluminum smelting process, known in OTL as the “Hall–Héroult process”, developed after the ACW instead of 1886, and by having the element Scandium and the strength it adds to Al alloys discovered by 1872. Also I intend on having the most common design of airships in my TL to be a hybrid one, that is a LTA-craft equipped with lift inducing wings.
 
I agree with Al metallurgy, I suggested such in an earlier post.

As I mentioned before I am working on a TL of my own in which rigid LTA-crafts become popular earlier than in OTL. It is an ASB TL with steampunk elements though but I plan on backing up the fiction by having the industrial aluminum smelting process, known in OTL as the “Hall–Héroult process”, developed after the ACW instead of 1886, and by having the element Scandium and the strength it adds to Al alloys discovered by 1872. Also I intend on having the most common design of airships in my TL to be a hybrid one, that is a LTA-craft equipped with lift inducing wings.

Actually, if you propose such a smelting and alloying process discovered in the 1870's that's not ASB. In fact, even if it were ASB, describing this technology in an intelligent and internally consistent manner can cover a host of sins. Go for it! My biggest concern remains the steam powerplant(s). Realistically, can a steam power plant (or several I imagine) produce enough power to drive an airship along at at least 40 mph (anything else would put the ship at the mercy of normal winds) but not be so heavy that it takes up most of the useful lift? This might be where your hybrid concept comes in. The engines might be too heavy for a normal dirigible to lift off the ground statically, but the hydrogen does make it very light which requires less forward speed to fly. If a substantial part of the lift comes from forward motion over the airfoils then it might work. But then you are really talking about an airplane with supplementary lifting gas instead of an airship with supplementary airfoils. Either way its an interesting concept, but they do affect how you operate them. If you want airships it seems to me that they ought to be true aerostats floating in an ocean of air like a ship or submarine and commanded/controlled like a ship. If they rely on aerodynamics and forward motion for stay in the air and manuever, it is more likely they would be flown by a pilot like an airplane.
 
Hard to do. People have always wanted to fly, and for the last 200 years this fantasy mainly seemed to focus on people flying like birds. Balloons were around for 150 years and most people did not think that meant people could fly. Even if dirigibles became practical several decades earlier, you'd still see backyard inventors experimenting with ways to combine engines with wings so people could swoop and turn in the air like birds. Even some of the early airships like those of Santos-Dumont were joy ride craft for one person - a completely impractical use of the technology that vanished when airplanes came around
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All early aircraft suffered from poor engine weight-to-power ratio. LTA had the advantage that the craft itself floated and could be enlarged to support more weight. In the same pattern as had occurred with steam, internal combustion engine developement at first produced -big/heavy- weak engines.
 
Actually, if you propose such a smelting and alloying process discovered in the 1870's that's not ASB. In fact, even if it were ASB, describing this technology in an intelligent and internally consistent manner can cover a host of sins. Go for it! My biggest concern remains the steam powerplant(s). Realistically, can a steam power plant (or several I imagine) produce enough power to drive an airship along at at least 40 mph (anything else would put the ship at the mercy of normal winds) but not be so heavy that it takes up most of the useful lift? This might be where your hybrid concept comes in. The engines might be too heavy for a normal dirigible to lift off the ground statically, but the hydrogen does make it very light which requires less forward speed to fly. If a substantial part of the lift comes from forward motion over the airfoils then it might work. But then you are really talking about an airplane with supplementary lifting gas instead of an airship with supplementary airfoils. Either way its an interesting concept, but they do affect how you operate them. If you want airships it seems to me that they ought to be true aerostats floating in an ocean of air like a ship or submarine and commanded/controlled like a ship. If they rely on aerodynamics and forward motion for stay in the air and manuever, it is more likely they would be flown by a pilot like an airplane.


Thank you for the encouragement, I appreciate it.

To analyze your concerns about engine power I have to admit that that is where some of the ASB features of my TL come into play. Amongst other things I plan on having the designs of the later steam engines produced by the Doble Steam Car company (the most efficient in design for this application that I could find based on my limited abilities) transported to the 1860s.

Also hybrid airships designed as an "airship with supplementary airfoils" exist in OTL like the example below.


battle-blimp-01-0812-lgn.jpg

The hybrid airship LEMV
 
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