The Great Dirigibles by John Toland
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Book Reviews of The Great Dirigibles
Book Review: The Great Dirigibles
Summary: 4 Stars
Good book high in personal details, but lacking in technical insight, basicly describes, a series of airship disasters from individuals personal point of view. Good general reading but not if you want to understand the reasons behind the headlines.Book Review: Still a worthy read
Summary: 3 Stars
Informative look beyond just the Hindenburg of the many voyages and tragedies experienced in air travel of this type. The book was originally published in 1957 and then reprinted in 1972 and during this time, many new theories have developed that explain why certain events took place. Although slightly out of date on technology explanations, the material and stories are worth reading.Book Review: Not so hot
Summary: 2 Stars
Perhaps you have never heard of Dr. Solomon Andrews of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, who occupies the first chapter of John Toland's "The Great Dirigibles." Andrews claimed to have invented an Aereon balloon that could be flown into the wind, thanks to taking the advantage of the "differences in specific gravity" between the Aereon and the air.
Yeah, right. News reports from the 1860s claimed that Andrews flew his ship in figure eights and against the wind over Manhattan. Only John Toland, who later in life proved himself to be a perfect gull over fanciful claims about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and -- this is a group I had not known existed before reading this book and doing a little side exploration -- a body of kooks devoted to the history of occult flying machines in the Gilded Age believe this.
Ah, well, as a belief it is no sillier than chiropractic and a lot less dangerous to your well-being.
The remainder of this book is unsatisfactory though not as crazy.
Hydrogen has gotten a bad rap in connection with dirigibles, because of the fiery crash of the Hindenburg in 1937, the first time a transportation disaster had been captured on newsreels. But while a big bag of hydrogen is undoubtedly dangerous, hydrogen explosions were not what brought down most dirigibles. Almost all the United States Navy's big airships crashed, and they didn't use hydrogen.
You might suppose that a book subtitled "Disasters" of dirigibles would explore the underlying cause of all these disasters. Not here. "The Great Dirigibles" was originally published in 1957, the 20th anniversary of the end of the dirigible, but it is not a mere catchpenny tract culled from old newspaper files.
Toland, a trained (although not very competent) historian, interviewed scores of participants in the dirigible madness and examined a thick pile of documents. And produced something not very much better than a mere catchpenny tract, although written with some style.
Toland later became a famous historian, as nice an example as one could wish to find of the triumph of style over substance.
His book is one of personalities, without taking much interest in the technique of something that its promoters claimed was a -- sometimes, the -- technological marvel of the age. The personalities are sometimes vivid, although Santos-Dumont, who is still imagined to be the inventor of the airplane by many Europeans, comes over as an insipid character. He invented an actual dirigible but could not think of any better purpose to use it for than to make showy entrances to Parisian cafes.
The most attractive character in the book is Umberto Nobile. Italians are not usually thought of as dirigible masters, but Nobile was extremely successful, the first and last man to fly a dog over the North Pole in a balloon twice. He was victimized by the Fascists, and his adventures take up more pages than anyone else, even Count Zeppelin.
Since most of the book is made up of escapes -- the dead tell no tales -- "The Great Dirigibles" makes a good read if you like that sort of thing. Unlike contemporaries, Toland does not shy away from sordid behavior, like the looting of the corpses of American flyers by the salt-of-the-earth Ohio farmers when the Shenandoah crashed.
But, except by implication, you will not find out why these big beasts went down. The inherent problem of the rigid dirigible is that its light (duh) structure cannot withstand racking forces. The semirigids (as designed by Nobile) were somewhat more rugged and the blimps, with no structure to rack, were and are safe.
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