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Here is the story of airships-manmade flying machines without wings-from their earliest beginnings to the modern era of blimps. In postcards and advertisements, the sleek, silver, cigar-shaped airships, or dirigibles, were the embodiment of futuristic visions of air travel. They immediately captivated the imaginations of people worldwide, but in less than fifty years dirigible became a byword for doomed futurism, an Icarian figure of industrial hubris. Dirigible Dreams looks back on this bygone era, when the future of exploration, commercial travel, and warfare largely involved the prospect of wingless flight. In Dirigible Dreams, C. Michael Hiam celebrates the legendary figures of this promising technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-the pioneering aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, the doomed polar explorers S. A. Andrée and Walter Wellman, and the great Prussian inventor and promoter Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, among other pivotal figures-and recounts fascinating stories of exploration, transatlantic journeys, and floating armadas that rained death during World War I. While there were triumphs, such as the polar flight of the Norge, most of these tales are of disaster and woe, culminating in perhaps the most famous disaster of all time, the crash of the Hindenburg. This story of daring men and their flying machines, dreamers and adventurers who pushed modern technology to-and often beyond-its limitations, is an informative and exciting mix of history, technology, awe-inspiring exploits, and warfare that will captivate readers with its depiction of a lost golden age of air travel. Readable and authoritative, enlivened by colorful characters and nail-biting drama, Dirigible Dreams will appeal to a new generation of general readers and scholars interested in the origins of modern aviation.

Whirl flutter is the aeroelastic phenomenon caused by the coupling of aircraft propeller aerodynamic forces and the gyroscopic forces of the rotating masses (propeller, gas turbine engine rotor).It may occur on the turboprop, tilt-prop-rotor or rotorcraft aircraft structures.

Set in the context of a new field of engineering, driven apace by conflict, this fascinating history follows the mathematicians and scientists who learnt to fly in order to expand our understanding of aeronautics. Tony Royle makes accessible the mathematics and the personal stories that forever changed the course of aviation.

The 'Turtle' and the 'Dreamboat' is the first detailed account of the race for long-distance flight records between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy less than fourteen months after World War II. The flights were risky and unprecedented. Each service intended to demonstrate its offensive capabilities during the dawning nuclear age, a time when America was realigning its military structure and preparing to create a new armed service-the United States Air Force. The first week of October 1946 saw the conclusion of both record-breaking, nonstop flights by the military fliers. The first aircraft, a two-engine U.S. Navy P2V Neptune patrol plane nicknamed the Truculent Turtle , flew more than eleven thousand miles from Perth, Western Australia, to Columbus, Ohio. The Turtle carried four war-honed pilots and a young kangaroo as a passenger. The second plane, a four-engine U.S. Army B-29 Superfortress bomber dubbed the Pacusan Dreamboat , flew nearly ten thousand miles from Honolulu to Cairo via the Arctic. Although presented as a friendly rivalry, the two flights were anything but collegial. These military missions were meant to capture public opinion and establish aviation leadership within the coming Department of Defense. Both audacious flights above oceans, deserts, mountains, and icecaps helped to shape the future of worldwide commercial aviation, greatly reducing the length and costs of international routes. Jim Leeke provides an account of the remarkable and record-breaking flights that forever changed aviation.

Tracing the hundred-year history of aviation in Texas, aviator and historian Barbara Ganson brings to life the colorful personalities that shaped the phenomenally successful development of this industry in the state. Weaving stories and profiles of aviators, designers, manufacturers, and those in related services, Texas Takes Wing covers the major trends that propelled Texas to the forefront of the field. Covering institutions from San Antonio’s Randolph Air Force Base (the West Point of this branch of service) to Brownsville’s airport with its Pan American Airlines instrument flight school (which served as an international gateway to Latin America as early as the 1920s) to Houston’s Johnson Space Center, home of Mission Control for the U.S. space program, the book provides an exhilarating timeline and engaging history of dozens of unsung pioneers as well as their more widely celebrated peers. Drawn from personal interviews as well as major archives and the collections of several commercial airlines, including American, Southwest, Braniff, Pan American Airways, and Continental, this sweeping history captures the story of powered flight in Texas since 1910. With its generally favorable flying weather, flat terrain, and wide open spaces, Texas has more airports than any other state and is often considered one of America’s most aviation-friendly places. Texas Takes Wing also explores the men and women who made the region pivotal in military training, aircraft manufacturing during wartime, general aviation, and air servicing of the agricultural industry. The result is a soaring history that will delight aviators and passengers alike.

The dirigible Italia crashed onto the Arctic sea ice north-east of the Svalbard archipelago on 25 May 1928 at 10:33 GMT while travelling back to her base from the North Pole. Only eight of the 16 crew members survived: one was killed upon impact, one did not survive the post-crash ordeal and six were trapped in the airship envelope (i.e., the balloon), which floated away and disappeared. No definite conclusions have ever been reached about the causes of the crash. The judgements of the Commission of Inquiry instituted by the Italian government and published in 1929 are carefully examined. Recent analysis has presented evidence that the mishap may have been fatigue-related. In this paper, the pivotal question of why General Nobile was so sleep-deprived at the time of the accident is addressed, specifically with reference to the lack of a second-in-command (i.e., a deputy commander) during the flight. Such a position was a standard practice for airships at the time, and General Nobile himself described this position as one necessary for an airship. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons he proceeded on the Italia expedition without an official crew member responsible for this role. The lack of a second-in-command is proposed as a possible major contributing factor in the overall sequence of events leading to the crash of the Italia, although other possible causes and contributing factors for the crash are also considered, including structural failures, crew selection and political obstacles.

The article focuses on the aerodynamic experiments of Petr Vasil’evich Miturich (1887–1956), in particular his so-called letun, a project comparable to Vladimir Tatlin’s Letatlin, but less familiar. Miturich became interested in flight during the First World War, elaborating his first flying apparatus in 1918 before constructing a prototype and undertaking a test flight on 27 December 1921—which might be described as an example of Russian Aero-Constructivism (by analogy with Italian Aeropittura). Miturich’s basic deduction was that modern man must travel not by horse and cart, but with the aid of a new, ecological apparatus—the undulator—a mechanism which, thanks to its undulatory movements, would move like a fish or snake. The article delineates the general context of Miturich’s experiments, for example, his acquaintance with the ideas of Tatlin and Velemir Khlebnikov (in 1924 Miturich married the artist, Vera Khlebnikova, Velemir’s sister) as well as the inventions of Igor’ Sikorsky, Fridrikh Tsander, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and other scientists who contributed to the “First Universal Exhibition of Projects and Models of Interplanetary Apparatuses, Devices and Historical Materials” held in Moscow in 1927.

New technologies significantly increased the reach of advertising from the late nineteenth century. Some aspects of this phenomenon, such as advances in printing methods, are well known. Others, in particular its controversial leap into the sky, have received far less attention. Though no longer seen as the home of divine portents, the sky did not become “empty space” in the modern era: it was still freighted with significance. This meant that the various attempts made by entrepreneurs from the 1880s to bring advertising to the skies were often met with hostility, even panic. In exploring these responses, this article resists depicting opponents of aerial advertising as oversensitive aesthetes or technophobes. Rather, it explores the ways in which urbanization and commercial development imbued the sky with new meanings. The sky was imagined as man's most valuable connection to nature in an urban society, a precious but endangered part of the nation's heritage, and an essential counterweight to consumer society. Aerial advertising therefore represented an unjustifiable commercialization of a priceless public space. The rejection of this form of advertising did not involve denying modernity, but achieving an accommodation with it.

The German Geophysical Society was founded in 1922 as the Deutsche Seismologische Vereinigung. One of the 24 founders of this society was Karl Friedrich Almstedt. Born in 1891 and deceased in 1964, Almstedt represents a generation of academics and scientists who grew up during the decline of the European empires, experiencing the devastations of the two World Wars and the cruelties of the Nazi era as well as the resurrection of academic and cultural life in post-war Germany. A detailed biographical sketch of Karl Almstedt's life is presented through historical notes on his social, political, and scientific environment.

Like the railroad and the automobile, the airliner has changed the very geography of the societies it serves. Fundamentally, air transportation has helped redefine the scale of human geography by dramatically reducing the cost of distance, both in terms of time and money. The result is what the author terms the ‘airborne world’, meaning all those places dependent upon and transformed by relatively inexpensive air transportation. The Economic Geography of Air Transportation answers three key questions: how did air transportation develop in the century after the Wright Brothers, what does it mean to live in an airborne world, and what is the future of aviation in this century? Examples are drawn from throughout the world. In particular, ample consideration is given to the situation in developing countries, where air transportation is growing rapidly and where, to a considerable degree, the future of the airborne world will be determined. The book weaves together the technological development of aviation, the competition among aircraft manufacturers and their stables of airliners, the deregulation and privatization of the airline industry, the articulation of air passenger and air cargo services in everyday life, and the challenges and controversies surrounding airports. It will be of particular interest to students and researchers in air transport history, the geography of the airline industry, air transport technological development, competition in the commercial aircraft industry, airport development, geography and economics. It will also be useful to professionals working in the airline, airport, and aircraft manufacturing industries. Introduction, Part 1: Getting Airborne: The Development of the Airliner and Commerical Air Transportation, Chapter 1: From Kitty Hawk to Idlewild: The Geography of Early Commercial Aviation, Chapter 2: Jetting Towards a Smaller World, Chapter 3: Far and Wide: Wide-body Jetliners and the Ascent of the Global Airline Industry, Chapter 4: Space-Makers and Pace-Setters: Boeing and Airbus, Part 2: Open Skies and Crowded Airports, Chapter 5: Letting Go: The Liberalization of the Airline Industry, Chapter 6: Survival of the Fittest: Network Carriers in the Global Airline Industry, Chapter 7: A World Taking Wing: Low Cost Carriers and the Ascent of the Many, Part 3: Life Aloft and on the Ground in the Airborne World, Chapter 8: People on the Move in a Smaller World, Chapter 9: The High Ways of Trade, Chapter 10: Points of Departure: Airports in the Airborne World, Part 4: Towards the Horizon, Chapter 11: Fear of Flying: The Broader Costs of the Airborne World, Chapter 12: Coming Back Down to Earth? The Cloudy Future of Air Transportation John T. Bowen is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Central Washington University, USA.