Blimps, zeppelins, dirigibles, airships. While there are slight differences in what might define these things, most people have a pretty good idea of what they look like and what they do. They’re giant pill-shaped balloons that fly, with some moderate level of control, typically over sporting events and provide us with overhead views.
But blimps didn’t just arrive at your friendly neighborhood college football game fully formed; it was quite a journey to become what they are today.
The first thing we might (erroneously) call a blimp was designed and built in Germany around 1900 by a man named Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. This, of course, is why blimps are often called zeppelins. However, there is a slight difference: zeppelins are rigid, and blimps are not. That just means zeppelins and other rigid (or semi-rigid) airships have some level of scaffolding or skeleton inside of them whereas a blimp is effectively just a balloon. This may seem like a silly distinction, but it’s a distinction nonetheless.
Zeppelin’s first two airships didn’t quite work, but his third build did what every large-scale invention in world history has done: piqued the interest of his nation’s military. The German army decided they needed some of these things, and Zeppelin was the guy to build them. In the meantime, a private entity under Zeppelin’s watch was formed and became the planet’s first commercial airline, flying several of his airships around Germany for passengers.
Around the year 1910, his business was booming. And speaking of booming, World War I was about to kick off, which meant more of Zeppelin’s zeppelins going to the military.
The USA’s Introduction to Blimps
I know what you’re thinking: the website is America being weird and here we are talking about Germany. But the USA eventually got involved in World War I and saw the airships, prompting a nationalistic sense of, “Hey, can we do that?” And thus begins our story in the USA.
The United States Navy created something resembling modern-day blimps during the First World War, primarily for use as patrol airships. They flew high and looked around. It worked okay. Goodyear was contracted to build the “envelopes” (the balloons), which is what began their now century-plus relationship with blimps. Why Goodyear? Unclear.
Where Did the Term “Blimp” Come From?
(An EXTREMELY IMPORTANT aside: It is widely accepted that the term “blimp” came from a British Naval Commander named A. D. Cunningham, who flicked the balloon during an inspection. He liked the sound it made. He interpreted that sound and mimicked it, saying the word “blimp.” It stuck. This is not a lie. There are other possible explanations, but this is widely thought to be the real etymology of the word. The Brits are a wonderful bunch when it comes to naming things, aren’t they?)
WWI ended and the Germans needed to get rid of their airships due to peacetime treaties (they didn’t; they sabotaged several). That opened the door for the USA, Britain, and France to make their own. But the 1920s and 30s in American blimp history was littered with events like these, per the Wikipedia page on airships:
* The Navy built the USS Akron and USS Macon, but “by the time the Navy started to develop a sound doctrine for using the ZRS-type airships, the last of the two built, USS Macon, had been wrecked.”
* The USS Shenandoah, in what Wikipedia refers to as “a poorly planned publicity flight,” flew into a thunderstorm in 1925, killing 14 of its crew.
* The aforementioned USS Akron was blown into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm, killing 73 of its 76 crew in 1933.
Not great.
The Use of Blimps in World War II
By World War II, you’d think that airships were pretty obsolete, and you’d be partly correct. Germany focused on manufacturing planes instead of blimps/zeppelins, but the USA made another 150 or so, used primarily as escort and surveillance vehicles. It turns out that if you can see submarines from above, you can drop bombs on them, and that’s exactly what the American blimps did with varying effectiveness. They almost never sank any of the submarines, but they did force the enemy ships to dive deeper, making it nearly impossible to sink the American ships.
Perhaps even more remarkable, only one blimp was ever shot down by a U-boat, and even then it seems to have gently fallen into the ocean. In fact, the only fatality among the crew was a guy who got eaten by a shark. Seriously.
Much like the First World War, however, the Second World War also eventually came to an end. The world was on the verge of commercial airplanes at this point, and the blimp/airship was at a crossroads. The industry could either collapse or adjust. If we’re being frank, they did neither for a few decades. While studies were undertaken on the feasibility of nuclear-powered airships (what?), nothing came of it and blimps were an afterthought until they became exactly what we know them as today: floating billboards. MetLife, Goodyear, DirecTV, Conan O’Brien (Conan’s blimp to promote his move to TBS in 2010 was actually the same blimp that promoted the Rolling Stones’ 2002 world tour), and more have all either had blimps of their own or have had blimps emblazoned with their logos.
Don’t worry, though, because the US military has continued to look into blimps at the hilariously high expense of taxpayer money. In 1987, the US Navy gave a $170 million contract to a UK company to prototype something about detecting sea-skimming missiles. Nothing happened except $170 million to the contractor. In 2010, the US Army, not to be outdone, gave a $517 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop something resembling surveillance blimps. Within two years the project was already over budget and was cancelled. Other projects don’t have readily available price tags, but rest assured, they were paid by your income.
Alas, despite the hundreds of blimps flown in the wars and the ubiquity of them at major sporting events, the truth is that there are only about two dozen blimps in the world. Many of them are owned by the AirSign Airship Group. If you visit their website, the first thing you’ll see is a case study of how much their Shark Week blimp helped Discovery Channel boost ratings/impressions/other advertising metrics.
Modern-day airships still occasionally pop up in weather research, theoretical passenger travel, and even low-orbit space travel. But if there’s not a logo on the side, would it even register as a blimp?
Publicity stunts, fighting Nazis, and millions of dollars spent on failed military research projects: If the blimp isn’t the perfect example of what makes the United States of America weird, I don’t know what is.