A blimp (/blɪmp/), or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships, blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas inside the envelope and the strength of the envelope itself to maintain their shape. Blimps are known for their use in advertising, surveillance, and as observation platforms due to their maneuverability and steady flight capabilities.
An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air flying under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air to achieve the lift needed to stay airborne.
USS Los Angeles was a rigid airship, designated ZR-3, which was built in 1923–1924 by the Zeppelin company in Friedrichshafen, Germany, as war reparations. She was delivered to the United States Navy in October 1924 and after being used mainly for experimental work, particularly in the development of the American parasite fighter program, was decommissioned in 1932.
The Zeppelin NT is a class of helium-filled airships being manufactured since the 1990s by the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) in Friedrichshafen. The initial model is the N07. The company considers itself the successor of the companies founded by Ferdinand von Zeppelin which constructed and operated the very successful Zeppelin airships in the first third of the 20th century. There are, however, a number of notable differences between the Zeppelin NT and original Zeppelins as well as between the Zeppelin NT and usual non-rigid airships known as blimps. The Zeppelin NT is classified as a semi-rigid airship.
The Norge was a semi-rigid Italian-built airship that carried out the first verified trip of any kind to the North Pole, an overflight on 12 May 1926. It was also the first aircraft to fly over the polar ice cap between Europe and America. The expedition was the brainchild of polar explorer and expedition leader Roald Amundsen, the airship's designer and pilot Umberto Nobile and the wealthy American adventurer and explorer Lincoln Ellsworth who, along with the Aero Club of Norway, financed the trip, which was known as the Amundsen-Ellsworth 1926 Transpolar Flight.
The Goodyear Blimp is any one of a fleet of airships operated by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, used mainly for advertising purposes and capturing aerial views of live sporting events for television. The term blimp itself is defined as a non-rigid airship—without any internal structure, the pressure of lifting gas within the airship envelope maintains the vessel's shape.
The J-class blimps were non-rigid airships designed by the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in the early 1920s for the US Navy.
A rigid airship is a type of airship in which the envelope is supported by an internal framework rather than by being kept in shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope, as in blimps and semi-rigid airships. Rigid airships are often commonly called Zeppelins, though this technically refers only to airships built by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company.
HMA No. 9r was a rigid airship designed and built by Vickers at Walney Island just off Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. It was ordered in 1913 but did not fly until 27 November 1916 when it became the first British rigid airship to do so. It was dismantled in June 1918 after being flown for around 165 hours, mainly for experimental purposes.
Roma was an Italian-built semi-rigid airship, designated by its designer as the Model T-34. Purchased by the United States from the Italian government in 1921, Roma was operated by the United States Army Air Service from November 1921 to February 21, 1922, when it crashed in Norfolk, Virginia, killing 34 people aboard, with 9 survivors. As a result of this accident, Roma was the last hydrogen inflated airship flown by the US military; all subsequent airships were inflated with helium.
The DN-1 was the United States Navy's first airship.
The D class blimp was a patrol airship used by the US Navy in the early 1920s. The D-type blimps were slightly larger than the C-type and had many detail improvements. The Navy continued the practice of dividing the envelope production between Goodyear and Goodrich. The control cars were manufactured by the Naval Aircraft Factory. The major improvements over the C-type blimps were a better control car design and easier, more reliable controls and instrumentation. The engines were moved to the rear to reduce noise and allow easier communications between crew members. The fuel tanks were suspended from the sides of the envelope. The envelope was identical to the C-type, except an additional six-foot panel was inserted for a total length of 198 feet (60 m) and a volume of 190,000 cubic feet (5,400 m3). The last of the D-Class, D-6, had a redesigned control car by Leroy Grumman who later founded the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation.
The K-1 was an experimental blimp designed by the United States Navy in 1929. The K-1 was not the prototype of the later K-class blimps.
A semi-rigid airship is an airship which has a stiff keel or truss supporting the main envelope along its length. The keel may be partially flexible or articulated and may be located inside or outside the main envelope. The outer shape of the airship is maintained by gas pressure, as with the non-rigid "blimp". Semi-rigid dirigibles were built in significant quantity from the late 19th century but in the late 1930s they fell out of favour along with rigid airships. No more were constructed until the semi-rigid design was revived by the Zeppelin NT in 1997.
Airship hangars are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a serious risk.
The Goodyear GZ-20/20A was a class of non-rigid airship or blimp introduced in 1969 by The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in the United States as its signature promotional aircraft, the Goodyear Blimp. The design is based on the previous Goodyear GZ-19 class. The GZ-20 featured a larger envelope to carry the "Super-Skytacular" advertising night sign and more powerful engines. The GZ-20s were the mainstay of Goodyear's airship operations until 2017, when they were replaced with the new Zeppelin NT semi-rigid airship.
The ZeppelinLZ 1 was the first successful experimental rigid airship. It was first flown from a floating hangar on Lake Constance, near Friedrichshafen in southern Germany, on 2 July 1900. "LZ" stood for Luftschiff Zeppelin, or "Airship Zeppelin".
The Willows airships were a series of pioneering non-rigid airships designed and built in Wales by Ernest Thompson Willows in the first decade of the 20th century. The first airship Willows No. 1 flew in 1905, and the last, the Willows No. 5 in 1913.
Lebaudy République was a semi-rigid airship built for the French army in Moisson, France, by sugar manufacturers Lebaudy Frères. She was a sister ship of the airship Patrie, the main differences between the two being in the dimensions of the gasbag and the ballonet. Although she was operationally successful, République crashed in 1909 due to a mechanical failure, killing all four crew members.
