What Killed Flying Aircraft Carriers?
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- Опубликовано: 8 апр 2021
- Flying aircraft carriers are indeed possible! Probably many people are not aware that they existed in the US Navy in the early 1930s. The question is, what happened to them and why was the concept abandoned? The answer is #NotWhatYouThink!
Music:
Valley of the Kings - Hampus Naeselius
Flight Path - Cobby Costa
Flight Towards Destiny - Max Anson
Wake - Lalo Brickman
German Dance - Traditional
Footage source: National Archives
Note: All footage digitally remastered by NWYT
Airships are seriously some of the coolest inventions we humans have ever made. It may not have lasted that long; it may not even have been that useful, but walking around in the sky like you would on an ocean liner is some pretty awesome stuff.
Yes
If they had been used more wisely they would have been very useful. I think the navy wanted the project to fail. Probably would have spotted the Japanese fleet in 1941.
@@joeluliassi1610 That's a very sad epiphany.
I always thought airships have much more potential than what was exploited.
@@joeluliassi1610 RADAR advancements still would've rendered the reconnaisance purpose of the airships virtually pointless though.
"People of the commonwealth you have nothing to fear. We are the brotherhood of steel."
😂😂😂
shitty game
@@kenetickups6146 who
@@laupatual7137 Fallout 4
@@kenetickups6146 cares
Man held on to a mooring line for TWO HOURS as he was floating through the skies watching two of his buddies let go and drop to their deaths. Incredible story
people nowadays can't even hold for 3 min. Adrenaline is impressive.
@@Kiyoone do you think people had more adrenaline 100 years ago?
@@qt1661 What's your reasoning there?
@@garrett3108 His reasoning is probably that they had more testosterone, which is actually true.
@@darkfool2000 yeah cuz they got that manly moustaches back then
Those things were so friggin cool. It's a massive shame that they were so damn fragile and succeptible to weather.
Yeah, just imagine if they’d still be around, that’d be awesome
Above a certain altitude wouldn't they be above all weather? say 50k feet?
Blame it on the design philosophy these were made. Karl Arnstein who designed these behemoths made them with bigger volumes but with the stress level just near the limit of the materials capacity at the time. Older ships like the Graf Zeppelin, USS Los Angeles, even the Hindenburg are more durable than the later ones...
They died from hypothermia, they shouldve had lifevests.
@@reallyhappenings5597 up there, atmospheric air pressure is around one seventh of what it is at sea level. I think you'd need an equal mass of hydrogen (or helium) to get enough buoyancy BUT that mass of buoyant gas would fill 7 times the volume. This is obviously a big problem for an airship, since it is not made out of (let's say) toy-balloon rubber intended for 7x increase in volume.
USAAF: Hey we made these really cool flying aircraft carriers
Navy: Give it
USAAF: But they fly in the air-
Navy: AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER IS AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER
***Insert Incredibles 2 studying scene***
Usaaf wasn't formed yet
@@malnutritionboy USAF came in in 1947, at this time it would have still been either with the Navy or the Army Air Corps.
@@theusdollar9042 yep. usaf in 1947 usaaf in 1941
Continues to put it in water
"Up to a maximum speed of 69 knots"
Narrator: *n o i c e*
[narrator]: I had to!
@@NotWhatYouThink lol
Seeing that the German biplanes of the time could do 100 mph to it's 70 mph it was still a sitting duck.
Which part is this?
@@NotWhatYouThink [narrator]: it’s not what you think.
i just realised that for a short while in the 1900s-30's both airships and sailing commercial ships coexisted, and that's beautiful
You..just realized that...? Boats...which have been around for thousands pf years...and a blimp...in the world at the same time. Oooooookay.......
@@tylerdurden4006 why are you like this
@@tylerdurden4006 key word is sailing, genius
Airplanes are just ships that fly anyways. 😁
It was a sinpler time
My father interviewed the reporter who witnessed the Hindenburg explosion when he first became involved in journalism in the 1950’s. I still have the reel to reel tape.
Send it to me
lemony Buffalo it’s not worth anything. 🙄
@@u.s.militia7682 send it anyways, I'll make millions 🤪, ill carry on your legacy in ypur honor
@@u.s.militia7682 that's very surprising!
@@u.s.militia7682 Sounds fake
Next thing is Boat Carriers. Like these but carrying warships.
Imagine a battleship falling from the sky
airship aircraft carrier carrier
@@MangoPuree yes.
Early torpedo boat tenders would carry a few torpedo boats as the boats themselves didn't have the range for independent operation.
Is a CH-47 carrying an rhib counted?
6:03 you did the right thing- I’m proud of you
😅
69 knots........ *nice*
NICE thing he did indeed
I see you're a man of culture as well
@@NotWhatYouThink and a nice amount of likes....
nice
I hope airships make a comeback. I want to cruise in one.
One company is working on one, it will be a massive airship, but it will look more like a flying wing, it is desgined to be a flying cruise ship, with dining halls, bedrooms, and an observation deck.
In Germany und France there are a few companies, which operate Helium filled ones
@@abuBrachiosaurus source? I am quite curious
That would be cool.
I think you can book a tour to ride in a good year blimp
Airships look futuristic and vintage at the same time...
5:01 those are some pretty scary ladders to stand on
What a thrill
back in the days worker regulations where different
They look pretty stable as they have 2 Resting points
@@plusxz821 the section between them is exceptionally long, tho
Steel Balls
I think it comes down to the density of water and air. It’s hard to make a zeppelin lighter than air and still make it robust because air is already light. An ocean going aircraft carrier, on the other hand, just needs to be lighter than water, which is pretty heavy to begin with.
That plus flying aircraft carriers have a bunch of other limitations as well: only being able to carry five planes was a massive limitation, even most of the escort carriers the US Navy used could carry 25-30 (exact numbers depending on class). Plus, planes carried by the flying carriers had to be small and light enough to be caught by the trapeze system, making them much less effective than the stronger, faster planes that could be launched by floating carriers.
@@Macrochenia ever hear of the 747 AAC?
@@blu5021 Yes. And like the dirigible carriers they were deemed impractical.
imagine how robust earth aircraft carriers then
Airports are really robust. Literally unsinkable.
every war thunder player knows that random things on the ground will happily randomly fire at airship/balloon things
or end up like the very cool April 1st event that we got this year
I like shooting the balloons on fields of normandy map
Yes
Excellent, very well-researched video. No hype, no BS, just straight facts. I'm a balloon pilot and have logged flight time in the Goodyear blimp.
😊👍🏼👍🏼
Other than minor inaccuracies like the fact the ZRS-3 Los Angeles was purchased from the Zeppelin company rather than being built as a war reparation, this is WAY more accurate than the videos like the one Cheddar put out. All the crashes in this video were tragic and completely preventable if the flaws in the designs had been corrected. Though escort blimps played an important role in protecting convoys and the coast, these rigid-type airships could have performed well as scouting platforms in the Pacific Theater.
Just as he said 69 knots, i had 69% battery, *double nice*
😁👍🏼
As did I double nice plus 2
I am the 69th like 👀
Nice^2
I read this comment with 69% battery
9:20 can’t imagine the fear of those three men getting dragged into the air....
Poor bastards
There dead
Imagine the one that held on for two hours after watching the two other guys fall to their deaths
Can't imagine the stupidity to not let go when you see the rope tightening and rising in the sky bcoz the airship is rising too...
@@tylerdurden4006 they weren't as smart as you
Brings me back to my childhood game, crimson skies
* intro song starts playing*
Yes! My cat jumped on the disk on my desk and the claws punctured it ... big sad ... I wonder if there is a free version out now
@@omnipotank hello there, there is a way to install it you just have to spend some time searching for it and installing it but once you do it its worth it. Enjoy
High Road to Revenge!
They say the future is tomorrow, but seeing things like this, especially the Aero train, it's more like the future was yesterday
"Ye best believe in cyber-punk dystopias, YER IN ONE!"
No, we are advancing. If we can just move at faster rate, we can see things like this in our lifetime, actually working.
the reason is capitalism. Over time we ditched everything that was nice but useless in the name of this omnious efficiency that we strive for, for some reason. short term financial gain is the only maxime left. Thats why most of the new build stuff in cities is kind of ugly and basic. rather cheap now than invest in something that looks nice for the future
@@yakb.7690 Why would you do ever build these when you could have airplanes? Whats the point? If you want it go build one with your own goddamn money, why would anyone build something thats useless?
@@aryaaswale7316 For fun because we can. Also a helium ballon with electric engines could be a quite sustainable way of slow flying. We rule this world and still most people life in pretty bad conditions, our cities are ugly, the air hard to breathe, most people spend a lot of time doing unecessary jobs. Its dumb honestly. Everyone forgot that money is made up.. the "economy" is a system we thought up - not a law of nature.
“and this is where the success part of the video ends”
oof i felt that
Man, I wish they hadn't dismantled it. Would be an awesome addition for an aviation museum
"What killed flying aircraft carriers?"
"Aircraft already fly so for the carrier to be useful in any way requires an advantage over just telling the plane to be less lazy. The biggest problem is fuel consumption and lift. If you made some kind of giant helicopter with a landing strip on its back, fuel requirements would ground that monster before it got off the drawing board. That means you need to get most or all of your lift passively, and that means a zeppelin. And no one is dumb enough to use a zeppelin as a strategic asset in a war."
11 minutes later
"The only thing that wasn't what I thought was that they were crazy enough to build the things in the first place."
@@Cha4k Problem is, how do you deal with wind? Either you let it be the plaything of whatever aircurrents it encounters, or you add some way for it to move around - which requires power which increases weight which requires a larger balloon which leads you back into the same issues but with even less potential usefulness.
Well, since Karl Ernstein designed the Los Angeles, as well as the Macon/Akron twins, the main reasonwas that the LA wan't sent out on as many dangerous situations. The Akron was launched when the weather was son nasty that it grounded all airplanes. The Macon was subjected to extreme forces of stress during exercises. The Macon wouldhave to do flank speed maneuvers to evade being bombed during naval exercises, as well during training with it's own planes. The Macon flew at 76 knots, BTW(87 MPH). The weather may have been the reason for failure, but it was the inexperience, and right down stupidity of the US navy, that made these prorotypes fly in weather were airplanes would dare not thread. The Germans only(and last fatal acident) for commercial flying, was with the Hindenburg. They were extremely cautious when flying their ships, whereas the Americans were not.
Sounds about right
Sounds about right
Sounds about right
The navy wanted them to fail they were too good at spotting the us fleet in war games.
@@joeluliassi1610 remove your comment
6:03 got me off guard deff spilled some soy sauce on my table laughing
As long at it's not soy milk
@@staz3014 😲
Why do you have soy sauce lying around while watching?
@@markzaikov456 Asian I presume am Asian and occasionally have soy sauce near me
@@markzaikov456 he or she could also be cooking
What a job that would have been. Be in the navy in a airship aircraft carrier. I would love to hear stories from crew members of their time aboard these airships.
It would have been horrifying but just imagine the stories that WWII vets could have shared if airships remained in use. I wish we got some good movies where airships were used in a real war.
Rest in Peace to the lost souls and my condolences to their loved ones - even tho it's been a while since those accidents
I wonder what happened to the sailor who held to the rope for 2 hours...
If only we had some Elerium. We could get those beasts floating no problem.
Nice reference.
Or hydrium!
@@theuberhunter9698 sky breaker?
Castle in the sky?
@@AD-fz8pb Airborne trilogy, Kenneth Oppel. Read it in high school.
I can thank the video game Crimson Skies for my obsession with airships. And it's nice to know that the games zeppelin carrier weren't so far fetched as it seemed.
Crimson Skies was GG
@c4cmadcat honestly, all of the weight that was loaded on the top of the Crimson Skies airships was the more “unrealistic” part of that as they could have a chance of tipping upside down if literally anything goes wrong
I spent way too many hours on that game back in the day lol
@@firestorm165 Same here. Especially bombing the gyrocopter around New York.
As soon as I saw the video, I wondered how many others played this extremely cool game!
I'm glad I found this channel, this exactly the kinda stuff I wanna see!
My family lives in the region where the Shenandoah crashed and my uncle owns the largest surviving piece outside of a museum. The crash site is still marked off of i77 in Caldwell, ohio
dude this channel is underrated
It's worth noting that the US still continued to make and use military airships, manned and unmanned, for a multitude of purposes, from antisub patrol carrying depth charges to siege balloons. They're just all blimps, and didn't have attached planes.
Big props on sourcing this old video footage 👏👏👏
I didn't think this channel was an engineering channel, but this was the by far best and most comprehensive documentary of US Airships. Thank you :)
What a marvelous history video, thank you so much for posting it !!!
Glad you enjoyed it
This is just so interesting and well done. I really like your channel! Again I’m so glad I found out about you and wonder why it took me this long. Good job all around!
Thanks very much! We are happy to have found you (and many many others) as well 😊
Great work getting those vintage video clips. Very cool video.
---
With today’s technologies including light weight materials for aviation and accurate weather monitoring, I think airships would be great for recreational use.
✈Great videos, very well researched, and presented. Thank you✈
“69 knots..Nice” best thing ever lol
Currently 69 thumbs up, nice
Wonderful work as always!
Thank you! Cheers!
Great job of finding this footage
Imagine these beasts in the sky, flying with graphine for it's structures and electric engines to propel it, it can even be coated with radar absorbent paint or something
Radar absorbent belly and solar absorbent back, both could produce the power for the engines.
That would be its only chance after the advent of good radar. It would have horrendous stealth otherwise. A big airship isn't going to fool anybody on its own.
That sounds fun
Next stop is the Carrier from Marvel lol
That would be awesome
Its already in production,nobody knows about it yet..
Funny how some people can only learn from and speak only memes
Wrong Arsenal bird
Feels like something out of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
The footage is incredible.
Very interesting news and really great videos
Somewhere I remember hearing that helium is found here in the United States. That's why other countries across the Atlantic use hydrogen. I could be wrong.
The reason is actually simpler: back then, helium was relatively expensive in these high amounts. Hydrogen is extremely cheap but is dangerous,a risk taken by smaller companies or countries with less money.
Thank you. I can see the expenses being a huge part with both products. But wow hydrogen and a small spark. Hindenburg burned up 2 minutes. Poor people on board had no chance. Scary
Helium is actually a really rare gas and we are in danger of running out soon if we dont manage the supply.
Correct, the US controls 90% plus of the world's supply. Most of it is stored under atmospheric pressure in old mines. It is act5ually a very precious and valuable resource thatw e are currently wasting far too much of given how important it is in several processes.
@@marvindebot3264 I agree sir
Well seeing as we’ve got the loyal wingman fighter now, I think the next step is the Arsenal bird to deploy it during combat.
Probably ought to build a space elevator to help power it too! Maybe a series of them across the equator...
We need built railgun for possibly meteor come to us
The footage is amazing!
Really good content!
Can you make a video about "Cruiser Submarines" or "Monitor/River Monitor" next time please ?
Thanks. We will consider it.
@@NotWhatYouThink my vote is on the cruiser submarine.
@@NotWhatYouThink Surcouf!
Being in that spy basket must be one of the scariest things any human has been subjected to
Yes
Yeah sod that for a pack of biscuits
Germany utilized a spy basket many times during WW1.
Great content, btw. Liked and shared.
I love airships so much! I hope with modern engineering and technology we can see these things up in the air more and more
Maybe there will be a vast civilian airship industry.
Where i live you can book a Trip in a Zeppelin and fly around lake constance.
@@Trollvolk Lovely.👍
@@Trollvolk yep
Just gotta say that I love these long videos
This was in fact EXACTLY what I thought. The airships couldn't handle storms.
OK this is the boss thing I've seen all week! That was brilliant
GREAT VIDEO !
6:04 man that "nice" part caught me off guard
There's a little more to the story. Reading through the logs of all four ships it was obvious that the Navy top brass did not understand the limitations of the airships; all four being ordered to fly an overland course that forced them to exceed their critical altitude (a factor in the loss of Shenandoah) and along known storm routes (resulting in damage to the Macon that eventually led to get loss).
I've often wondered how the Akron and the Macon might have altered the war in the Atlantic as scout and ASW platforms.
Probably not much, the USN had poor ASW performance at the start and would've been near useless during Operation Drumroll. Heck, some U-Boat may have pulled a Reuben James on one using its 88
Amazing footage
This is so cool, I never knew something like this actually existed!!
I like this
It’s in color and it brings it to life a real look into the days of the great rigid airships.
Very cool!!!
Dude i like ur vids and thank you for telling me the 1990s planes thanke yiu
Good to see your subs have increased a lot subscibed when it was 6000 wonderful voice as well and expalination
Thank you! That would have been early January probably. It’s been exciting times for us 😊
man these things are so frigging cool I wished they still existed today
People were able to zoom into the cabin @ 9:13 in the OLD video 😳😳 how!? I want that technology!
Great video love the History
Great video.
I only have one concern when I heard "Flying Aircraft Carriers"
Anti-aircraft guns
@@FishbedFive Exactly. Any large calibers gun could shoot and pierce the flying carrier, let alone any AA gun. I wouldn't know if medium caliber could do the same but nevertheless. It's still not a very defensive design. Offensively speaking, yes if you can deploy aircrafts straight from the sky and drop bombs down to the enemy, that sounds great on paper. But i still wouldn't consider this design to begin with
11:33 it was definitely because of the Germans. Up until the Hindenburg they never had a death on one of their zeppelins, in peace times. And I even have an old model of the Los Angels.
The airplanes were Curtiss F9C’s. Maximum speed was almost 177 mph, with a range close to 300 miles, with a maximum altitude of 19,200 feet. This airplane would extend the dirigibles scouting range by approximately 150 miles.
The German built Maybach engines were to be eventually replaced by the American designed Allison V1710 V-12 engine to improve their performance. Only the Allison transmission was used in USS Akron and USS Macon for prop direction and rotation. The Allison engine was actually specifically developed for the US Navy dirigible’s but were instead eventually fitted into the Lockheed P-38, Bell P-39, Curtiss P-40, and the North American P-51A. It was also used in many experimental aircraft in the late 1930’s up until the mid 1940’s. The two stage super-turbocharger limited this engine design at critical altitude, however at lower altitudes, the Allison out-performed the British Rolls-Royce Merlin and American built Packard Merlin engines in every way. It was a rugged engine that performed flawlessly in every theater or war. It would have been an extremely reliable engine for the Navy’s two dirigibles while increasing their airspeed, but the crashes of the two airships came before the Allison V1710’s were ready to fly.
Structural problems and a schedule that forced these airships to fly in questionable weather ultimately proved fatal to the United States Navy rigid LTA Program. Blimps however flew on convoy patrols during WW2 and ASW patrols up until 1962.
The last US Navy blimp ASW patrol was flown out of NAS Lakehurst, which was home to the USS Los Angeles and USS Akron and was also where the German Zeppelin Hindenburg crashed in 1937.
What I never knew, amazing 👏
*P-1112 Aigaion has entered the chat*
Says the belkan
Storms. That's what I thought all along.
With today's weather prediction tech, those Zeps could have been saved, but there's really no saving a weapons platform that the enemy knows it can attack with impunity whenever the wind kicks up.
Attack is to heavy a word rather say that shoot half a dozen bullets at em
Solution? Invent Force fields. Fixes that issue right up.
@@Windrake101 If you can do that, why not create a zeppelin *made* out of force fields? Sci-punk/steam-fi let's go!
I had no idea this was a thing very interesting stuff
You earned a like just for the NOICE
the hydrogen was never the real issue. Hydrogen was actually most of the time the solution. The reason for airship fires was mainly the highly flammable engine fuel and not the gas filling the lift bags. While the hydrogen would make an airship fire spectacular, removing the hydrogen didn’t stop airship fires from being just as deadly. The cover, the impregnated fabric itself, was flammable enough that a fire in an engine room would very likely spread to kill an airship even if it was filled with helium. This is why Zeppelin put their engines OUTSIDE the hull.
At the same time hydrogen is HALF the density of helium, meaning using hydrogen generated a LOT more lift from the same volume. US filling airship with helium vastly reduced their lift and expansion margins (=safety margins) for the same structural rigidity. Remember, the lift bags are filled with pure hydrogen and are above atmospheric pressure, so no oxygen can enter them. There’s also no ignition source close to the lift bags. At the same time fuel in the engine compartments is processed with access to air, the engines themselves are a source of ignition, and their technology back then was far from perfect. The real fire risk was always the engines.
Replacing hydrogen with helium was just a PR stunt to gain acceptance, akin to today’s greenwashing.
Imagine if they made a flying aircraft carrier now with modern engines and used them for air shows and things like that
Could you imagine a jet fighter trying to dock with a giant balloon, that’s going to go badly
@@chrissmith3587 Yes
I grew up in the home of Paul Helma, one of the 12 German engineers brought to Akron under Karl Arnstein to set up Zeppelin design and production in the US. They were a fascinating group and left a huge legacy on civil and military lighter-than-air operations that’s recently been revived by Sergei Brin at the Akron Airdock!
while British, French and American airships were prone to bursting into flames or breaking in the wind.
no German airship ever lost a peace time passenger until the Hindenberg disaster.
I think British already did this with R23 in 1917, when she was carry Sopwith camel.
They did but they also only had
1 camel and couldn’t retreats it
Cool shit though
What killed flying aircraft carriers? Floating aircraft carriers on the sea
Cool vid, fun facts
Wow, what at amazing ships, would have been so cool to see one up close.
That's normally something that would've been too cool to exist. Amazing that this got off the ground
They were extremely successful for about 40 years. Unfortunately the Hindenburg was the first ever disaster broadcast on film, and even though most people survived the airship the PR was just so negative that nobody wanted to go aboard one again.
That's some good Steampunk stuff here
“Skyhook”
No steam there, pos.
@@suprememasteroftheuniverse well, yes but airships somehow match steampunk for me
great idea
Finally, a long video.
We more or less have been doing a long video every Friday for the past few months. Make sure you haven’t missed any 😉
context of the miyazaki's Poiesis, instance references in Castle in the Sky and kiki delivery service
Yeah it's what we didn't think☹️
🥰
I would've loved to have seen those. So badass.
Already read up on this but never realized the planes didn't have landing gear. Makes perfect sense, but also very cool.
It's really too bad that helium is so rare. I always was fascinated by airships, it would be awesome to sail over the land like that. They could also be really useful in places where runways can't be built like central africa. Hopefully we find some huge store of helium someday and are able to continue this technology.
Likely a thing that could come about if we are able to produce Helium extraction mines on other planets in the solar system.
@@Windrake101 More likely if/when we get fusion power sorted out, sail to the stars extracting hydrogen for fuel (since Hydrogen on Earth is comparatively rare making up less than 0.1% of Earth yet 75% of material in space) and then end up with a whole bunch of Helium, which we might eventually then use to make long-distance terrestrial transit more power-efficient as companies try to find uses for their waste products. Problem is, that's a long way off.
@@Neion8 water has hidrogen. Just about every molecule in your body has hydrogen. Just do electrolysis. Hydrogen is pretty abundant.
@@gabrielandradeferraz386 Electrolysis is pretty energy-intensive and given that the main issue with fusion atm is its atrocious efficiency (like we can do it, it just uses more energy than it creates), I don't think relying on a process that would decrease efficiency even more is a good idea. Also, if you read what I wrote earlier, hydrogen in any form is nearly 5 times rarer that Titanium, let alone hydrogen in a pure form which is what is needed, comparively the ratio of Hydrogen:other elements in space is 535 times greater than on Earth. Given we'd eventually need to travel from this world eventually anyway if we don't want to live at constant risk of extinction, it seems an ideal multitask.
On another note, we've only got so much water on Earth, destroying it to make power could end up creating the next big environmental issue if the future is built upon it.
@@Neion8 I can make enough hydrogen for a fusion reactor with 1% efficiency to power my house for a month with an AA battery wtf are you talking about? grab some tap water throw some salts grab the gasses put them through a cold distillery and you are done, we have litteral oceans made of that stuff, we would have thousands of years before it even threatens to become a serious problem, and even then we have whole gass giants before we would even need to consider grabing it from stars by then fusion reactor tech would be even better, and we would probably be able to do fusion with other stuf, such as, you know, all the helium we made
11:33 it was the German engineering definitely 😂
BRRRRRRRAKA MONOGA!!!
Have you done a video on the I-400 submarine carrier?
I heard that the Goodyear hangar is so tall that on rainy days it actually rains inside of the building. My great grandpa worked there and told my grandpa that so I don’t know if it’s true or not but it is an absolutely massive hangar