Items17The creator’s order
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La France (airship)Two French army officers, Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs, took La France up from Chalais-Meudon near Paris on August 9, 1884, and brought it back to where it started. That return is the whole point: balloons went where the wind sent them, and this was the first powered aircraft to fly a circuit…0 - 2
Zeppelin LZ 1Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's first rigid airship rose from Lake Constance on July 2, 1900, and stayed up for less than 20 minutes. It flew only three times, but it proved the idea behind every Zeppelin that followed: a rigid frame holding separate gas cells inside a fabric skin, so the ship kept…0 - 3
Santos-Dumont number 6On October 19, 1901, Alberto Santos-Dumont flew his No. 6 from Saint-Cloud around the Eiffel Tower and back to win the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize, which demanded the round trip in under 30 minutes. His flight lasted 29 minutes and 30 seconds, although the timing was disputed at first, and he gave…0 - 4
Zeppelin LZ 38On the night of May 31, 1915, LZ 38, commanded by Erich Linnarz, made the first Zeppelin raid on London, dropping its first bomb on Stoke Newington. Seven people were killed and 35 injured.
It earns its place because it changed what an airship meant. The graceful machine that drew crowds before…0 - 5
R33-class airshipR34, the R33 class's transatlantic record-setter
In July 1919 R34 made the first east-to-west crossing of the Atlantic by air, flying from East Fortune in Scotland to Mineola on Long Island in 108 hours and 12 minutes. It then flew home to Pulham in Norfolk, completing the first return flight…0 - 6
USS Shenandoah (ZR-1)The US Navy's first rigid airship was also the first to fly on nonflammable helium, from its maiden flight in September 1923. That made it a turning point for airship safety, since a helium ship could not burn the way hydrogen ships did.
Helium could not protect it from the weather. On September…0 - 7
Goodyear BlimpGoodyear's first blimp, Pilgrim, took off on June 3, 1925, and the company has flown airships for the century since. That makes its fleet the longest-running story on this list.
The blimps gave television its aerial view of big events, with a live broadcast of the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game in…0 - 8
Norge (airship)On May 12, 1926, Norge carried Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and its Italian designer and pilot Umberto Nobile over the North Pole, with 16 men aboard in all, on a flight from Svalbard to Teller, Alaska. It was the first crossing of the Arctic Ocean by air.
Many accounts also call it the first…0 - 9
Italia (airship)Built to almost the same design as Norge, Italia carried Umberto Nobile back to the Arctic on an expedition of his own, and its story is the dark other half of the polar airship era. Italia reached the North Pole on May 24, 1928, then crashed onto the ice on the way back the next day. The gondola…0 - 10
LZ 127 Graf ZeppelinIf one airship proves the rigid idea worked, it is this one. The Graf Zeppelin flew more than a million miles on 590 flights and carried over 34,000 passengers without a single injury.
Between August 7 and September 4, 1929, it flew around the world, and it went on to make the first regularly…0
