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Updated: June 23, 2025
The most successful of the German lighter-than-air machines are those known respectively as the semi rigid and non-rigid types, the best examples of which are the Gross and Parseval craft. Virtually they are Teutonic editions of the successful French craft of identical design by which they were anticipated. The Lebaudy is possibly the most famous of the French efforts in this direction.
First and greatest of these was the company formed by the Lebaudy Brothers, wealthy sugar manufacturers. Their model was semi-rigid, that is, provided with an inflexible keel or floor to the gas bag, which was cigar shaped.
The first of the Lebaudy vessels was named the 'Jaune'; its length was 183 feet and its maximum diameter 30 feet, while the cubic capacity was 80,000 feet. The power unit was a 40 horse-power Daimler motor, driving two propellers and giving a maximum speed of 26 miles per hour.
The Lebaudy airships were what is known as semi-rigids, having a spar which ran practically the full length of the gas bag to which it was attached in such a way as to distribute the load evenly. The car was suspended from the spar, at the rear end of which both horizontal and vertical rudders were fixed, whilst stabilising fins were provided at the stern of the gas envelope itself.
The craft, which was named Lebaudy I, made many successful voyages, and in 1905 M. Lebaudy offered a second vessel, Lebaudy II, to the French Minister of War, who accepted it for the French nation, and afterwards decided to order another dirigible, La Patrie, of the same type. Disaster, however, followed these air-ships.
A Clement Bayard, bought by the army airship section, became scrap after even less flying than had been accomplished by the Lebaudy. In April of 1910, the Admiralty determined on a naval air service, and set about the production of rigid airships which should be able to compete with Zeppelins as naval scouts.
Although the rigid type never has met with favour in France, there is yet a solitary example of this system of construction the Spiess, which is 460 feet in length by 47 feet in diameter and has a displacement of 20 tons. The semi-rigid craft are represented by the Lebaudy type, the largest of which measures 293 feet in length by 51 feet in diameter, and has a displacement of 10 tons.
This vessel made a magnificent flight of six and a half hours in 1908, and it was considered to have quite exceptional features, which eclipsed the previous efforts of Messrs. Julliot and Lebaudy. Unfortunately, however, this vessel was wrecked in a very terrible manner.
Coming to the Lebaudy brothers and their work, their engine of 1902 was a 40 horse-power Daimler, four-cylindered; it was virtually a large edition of the Daimler car engine, the arrangement of the various details being on the lines usually adopted for the standard Daimler type of that period.
So far as France is concerned, experiment began with the Lebaudy brothers, originally sugar refiners, who turned their energies to airship construction in 1899. Three years of work went to the production of their first vessel, which was launched in 1902, having been constructed by them together with a balloon manufacturer named Surcouf and an engineer, Julliot.
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