The book showcases the illustrations of Italian artist Max Pinucci, who has created beautiful and accurate illustrations of the world’s most famous airships along with infographics explaining airship routes, performance, dimensions, and more. I am proud to have worked with Max and others as co-author of this stunningly beautiful book.

The Museum Edition is identical in content to the “Limited Edition” offered in 2015 but with high-quality digital printing.

The Museum Edition is $145 plus $20 shipping in the continental United States.

UPDATE: Unfortunately this edition is now sold out. 

AIRSHIPS: Designed for Greatness features:

• 114 panoramic pages
• Impressively sized at 46,5 cm x 29 cm (18.3″ x 11.5″), and
• 24 accurate and detailed airship profiles (1:400 and 1:700 scale).
• Extensive infographic plates
• Original photographs, renderings, and hand-drawn portraits.
• Imperial and metric measurements, technical specifications, and flight data.
• Bilingual text and captions (English/Italian)

The book includes detailed illustrations and information about the following airships:

• Lebaudy Le Jaune
• Zeppelin LZ 8 Deutschland
• Zeppelin L30 (LZ 62)
• Zeppelin L35 (LZ 80)
• Zeppelin L59 (LZ 104)
• Zeppelin L70 (LZ 114)
• HMA R33 (R33 Class)
• HMA R34 (R33 Class)
• LZ 120 Bodensee
• Dixmude
• ZR-1 USS Shenandoah
• N-1 Norge
• ZR-3 USS Los Angeles
• N-4 Italia
• Zeppelin LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin
• HMA R.100
• HMA R.101
• ZR-4 USS Akron
• ZR-5 USS Macon
• V-6 Osoaviakhim
• Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg
• Zeppelin LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin
• Goodyear ZPG-2 Snowbird
• Zeppelin NT 07
• Goodyear NT-07 101 Wingfoot One

The post AIRSHIPS: Designed for Greatness<BR>Museum Edition now available in USA appeared first on Airships.net.

Dedicated to the great airships of history, the calendar presents 24 profiles in scale, highlighting historical milestones of the world of aviation.

It is available in two formats and sizes:

2017 Calendar
70 x 50 cm | 19.7 x 27.5 inches
1:2000 scale

Perpetual Calendar
100 x 70 cm | 27.5 x 39.4 inches
1:1400 scale

Both are printed on hi-quality matte paper, designed for collectors and airships enthusiasts.

The post Beautiful Airship Calendar by Max Pinucci appeared first on Airships.net.

Cheryl Ganz, Patrick Russell, and I wrote this book together over the course of a year. We included dozens of never-before-published photographs and extensive text about Hindenburg’s development, design, construction, operation, and crash. Our goal was to create the most definitive book about LZ-129 ever published, and unlike other works on the topic the entire book (all 192 pages) is devoted solely and completely to Hindenburg.

We are very proud of this book and we know you will enjoy it!

The book is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com.

If anyone would like to purchase a copy that I have autographed, with a personalized inscription if requested, feel free to contact me at dan@airships.net for payment details.

The post Definitive new book about Hindenburg now available appeared first on Airships.net.

I was pleased to serve as historical consultant for The Hindenburg in Flames. Although designed for young adult readers, the publisher was determined to create a highly accurate work and I am quite proud of the book we produced.

I hope you enjoy it!

The post New Hindenburg Book – “The Hindenburg in Flames” appeared first on Airships.net.

The Roma was a United States Army airship built by Umberto Nobile; the ship ignited when it hit high-tension electrical wires near Langley Field at Hampton Roads, Virginia, killing 34 of the ship’s 45 crew members.

Burning wreckage of the U.S. Army’s hydrogen airship Roma; Norfolk, Virginia – February 21, 1922.

The Roma crash was just one of many hydrogen airship disasters and after the accident the United States government decided never again to inflate an airship with hydrogen.

I am looking forward to reading more about the full story in Ms. Sheppard’s book.

The post New Book about the Airship Roma Disaster appeared first on Airships.net.

AIRSHIPS: Designed for Greatness

The book is impressively sized at 46,5 cm x 29 cm (18.3″ x 11.5″) and printed on the finest quality paper.

Max Pinucci with “AIRSHIPS”

AIRSHIPS features:

• 114 oversize, panoramic pages
• 24 accurate and detailed airship profiles (1:400 and 1:700 scale).
• Extensive infographic plates
• Original photographs, renderings, and hand-drawn portraits.
• Full-color plate (poster) of a historic airship, autographed by Max Pinucci and suitable for framing, 42 cm x 28 cm
• Imperial and metric measurements, technical specifications, and flight data.
• Bilingual text and captions (English/Italian)
• Limited Edition (only 200 copies)

USS Akron from AIRSHIPS

One of the infographics in AIRSHIPS

The book includes detailed illustrations and information about the following airships:

• Lebaudy Le Jaune
• Zeppelin LZ 8 Deutschland
• Zeppelin L30 (LZ 62)
• Zeppelin L35 (LZ 80)
• Zeppelin L59 (LZ 104)
• Zeppelin L70 (LZ 114)
• HMA R33 (R33 Class)
• HMA R34 (R33 Class)
• LZ 120 Bodensee
• Dixmude
• ZR-1 USS Shenandoah
• N-1 Norge
• ZR-3 USS Los Angeles
• N-4 Italia
• Zeppelin LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin
• HMA R.100
• HMA R.101
• ZR-4 USS Akron
• ZR-5 USS Macon
• V-6 Osoaviakhim
• Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg
• Zeppelin LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin
• Goodyear ZPG-2 Snowbird
• Zeppelin NT 07
• Goodyear NT-07 101 Wingfoot One

The Airships

The post Beautiful New Book: “AIRSHIPS: Designed for Greatness” appeared first on Airships.net.

I am very pleased to present this guest post by Ed Regis, in which he responds to my review of his recently-published Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology.

I was very flattered to read such a glowing review of my book, and was equally glad to see your critical assessment of its deliriumâ argument and the pathological technology business.

I think you are right in your claim that part of the appeal of hydrogen airships was that they permitted long-distance human flight at a time when no real competitors existed. Your point is also sound that people accepted greater levels of risk back then than we do today, when we want everything to be absolutely safe and totally risk-free (as if that were possible). Still, I think the two points of view are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Pragmatism and delirium were both at work, so it was a case of “both-and” rather than “either-or.”

I must confess that, speaking for myself, the magical quality of LTA craft exists even today: when I see the MetLife blimp aloft in the distance, even I feel somewhat enchanted by the sight. It has an otherworldly aspect that an ordinary winged aircraft simply lacks. (And I speak as a former private pilot.)

You also hit the nail on the head when you note that I provide few examples of pathological technologies. This is because they are rare rather than common, and, given how damaging they are, or could be if and when fully implemented, it is actually fortunate that they are scarce. But I do identify four defining characteristics of such technologies, and the three other examples I provide do seem to meet the defining conditions, so I see no escape from the conclusion that such technologies are real.

It is not quite correct to say that the SSC “never got off the drawing board.” As I described it (p. 284), the SSC was about 20 percent complete when abandoned, ten miles of the tunnel had been dug, seventeen access shafts had been sunk into the ground, some superconducting magnets had been built and tested [and failed the tests], and 2,000 people were employed on the project all for naught. Indeed, it took a couple of billion dollars to shut down the project over a period of several months.

In one of the comments, Guillaume suggested that my pathological technology theory does not work out on the ground that, other than for the hydrogen airship, the technologies in question did not mature. But maturation is not a criterion of a pathological technology as I define it. In fact, I argue that a large part of the point and utility of identifying such technologies in the bud is that we can perhaps avoid developing them fully, thus actively preventing them from becoming mature.

We proactively assess emerging technologies all the time. Consider, for example, nanotechnology, in the specific sense of atomically precise molecular manufacturing systems as proposed by Eric Drexler in Engines of Creation (1986). Such systems do not exist as yet, but their desirability has been debated for years. Other examples: Using genomic engineering to create designer babies, or to resurrect extinct animals such as the passenger pigeon. Are these good ideas? Finally, there is Elon Musk’s recent plan to nuke the Martian polar ice caps in order to warm the planet: Project Plowshare all over again! Is that pathological or not?

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Ed!

The post Ed Regis Responds to Book Review of “Monsters” appeared first on Airships.net.

Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology, is a reappraisal of the large rigid airship by science writer Ed Regis, who argues that the very concept of a hydrogen-inflated passenger airship was flawed from the beginning and an example of a “pathological technology.”

The book is one of the most readable accounts of airship history that has recently been published. Regis has a delightful turn of phrase on almost every page, and while many of his jibes are sardonic or sarcastic they are always well deserved and justified by the facts.

The author’s argument that airships were inherently flawed will be considered heretical by those who view Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg solely in the warm light of nostalgia, but his thoughts are refreshingly realistic and he makes some excellent and well-grounded points.

Regis devotes almost 200 pages to a clear, readable, and accurate history of lighter-than-air flight. The book covers aircraft from Rozier to Schwarz to Zeppelin; describes the passenger zeppelins of DELAG and the DZR; and discusses the British and American experience with airships. And most notably, Regis includes a clear and readable account of Hindenburg’s final moments, the fate of the individuals onboard, and a discussion of the various investigations into the cause of the disaster.

For its discussion of airship history alone, the book is well worth buying.

And the book is interesting for the larger thesis advanced by Regis, whether one accepts it or not. Regis uses Hindenburg as an example of what he calls a “pathological technology” whose “œobvious and sizable risks were ignored, discounted, minimized, and swept under the rug by the influence of what amounted to an overriding, all-consuming, and almost irresistible emotional infatuation.”

Regis attributes the development of zeppelins to a form of delirium: “The Hindenburg and other zeppelins were built and flown because the bigger these leviathans got the more they acquired a spellbinding, mesmerizing, hypnotizing, practically immobilizing sway over human minds and emotions.”

Regis has a good point, and one that may explain my own fascination with these beasts: I have often said there is something magical about an aircraft the size of the United States Capitol that floats weightless in the air, and perhaps that is the precise point Regis is making. But by attributing the world’s 37-year devotion to the airship solely to delirium, Regis neglects an important consideration: For much of those 37 years there was simply no alternative.

While it is possible that people subconsciously ignored the risks of the airship because they were blinded by a psychological phenomenon, it is equally possible that they considered and deliberately disregarded these risks because they had no choice; as dangerous as the technology was, it was the only way to fly. It was the airship or nothing.

Even the use of hydrogen itself may be explained by necessity rather than delirium. The danger of hydrogen was well known: As Regis himself points out, Henry Cavendish, the man who discovered hydrogen, was more interested in its explosive properties than its lifting ability. But for Count Zeppelin and others there was nothing else available. It was hydrogen or nothing.

And the hydrogen airship allowed man to achieve feats of aviation that were inconceivable with any other aircraft of the time. When the world’s first zeppelin, LZ-1, first flew on July 2, 1900, it carried a crew of men for 3-1/2 miles; the Wright brothers’ first flight was still three and a half years in the future, and when the Wright airplane did fly for the first time, on December 17, 1903, it managed only a 120 foot hop. The Wright Flyer’s longest flight of the day carried one man just 852 feet in a short 59 seconds. In 1908, the year the Wright brother’s airplane was made public, with a version able to carry a single passenger, the zeppelin L-4 made a 24-hour endurance flight, and between 1910 and 1914 DELAG’s commercial zeppelins carried thousands passengers on hundreds of flights without a single injury.

At all stages of the zeppelin’s brief history it was ahead of all other aircraft of its time. In 1919 the British R-34 crossed the Atlantic in both directions, and the German LZ-120 Bodensee was carrying 26 passengers in comfort on regularly scheduled flights between Southern Germany and Berlin.  In 1928 LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin was launched, and within a few years it began the world’s first intercontinental airline passenger service, carrying passengers between Europe and South America long before any passenger airplane could cross an ocean.

In other words, for most the period between 1900 and 1937 it was the airship or nothing, and it is not in the nature of human ambition ““ and certainly not in the nature of men like Zeppelin and Eckener and Rosendahl — to accept nothing.

We also cannot divine the motivation behind the hydrogen airship — Delirium or Pragmatism? — without remembering that people of the era were willing to accept a much different level of risk than we are today. In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries routine factory work and construction projects had injury and death rates that we can barely imagine, and the earliest ships, trains and airliners were also enormously dangerous but nevertheless embraced by the public.

Of course there is a difference; early trains and airliners were dangerous because they were embryonic — the first versions of a technology that could, and did, become safe ““ while Regis argues that large hydrogen airships could never become safe, and they certainly never did. But was that obvious to people at the time?

And there is one other thing we must remember with regard to airships of the 1930s: Helium was on the horizon. If airships had been inflated with helium, as many people predicted and desired, would they have been inevitably doomed, or merely inevitably obsolete?

There is also a larger question one might ask about the book’s main thesis: Has Regis has identified enough examples to justify a generalized concept of “pathological technology?”

Hindenburg is the best example Regis can find of a technology that was arguably “œpathological,” and he seems to have difficulty summoning equally compelling examples to justify the need for an overarching theory. The only other examples he offers are Project Plowshare, the idea of engineering giant construction projects (such as artificial harbors and new canals) with nuclear bombs; the Superconducting Supercollider, a gigantic and never-built particle accelerator; and the “100 Year Starship,” a fanciful attempt to create a space vehicle to travel to the stars. But none of these projects ever got off the drawing board; none consumed significant resources or experienced actual failure, because none were ever tried; and none took a single human life. So one might ask, do these examples fit the author’s definition of a pathological technology, or did he craft his very specific definition to fit the examples he was able to summon?

But there is no doubt that Regis has put his finger on a significant reason for the public’s intense, enduring, and perhaps otherwise inexplicable devotion to the airship: their magical quality.

And perhaps that is a form of delirium after all.

The post Book Review: “Monsters” by Ed Regis appeared first on Airships.net.

Although it was published a few years ago I have not yet read the book — my copy is now on the way — but knowledgeable friends speak highly of it. The only criticism I have heard relates to the publisher’s decision to use a photo of LZ-127 on the cover. 🙂

Please feel free to post your own thoughts and reviews of the book in the comments.

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Food in the Air and Space: The Surprising History of Food and Drink in the Skies discusses dining in the early DELAG airships as well as Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg, and even mentions the military airships of WWI.

I was pleased to help with the book in a small way and the author was kind enough to thank me in the acknowledgments.

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