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Updated: June 17, 2025
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.
Modern air-ships are of three general types: RIGID, SEMI-RIGID, and NON-RIGID. These differ from one another, as the names suggest, in the important feature, the RIGIDITY, NON-RIGIDITY, and PARTIAL RIGIDITY of the gas envelope. Hitherto we have discussed the RIGID type of vessel with which the name of Count Zeppelin is so closely associated.
Major Von Gross, commander of a Balloon Battalion, produced semi-rigid dirigibles from 1907 onward. The second of these, driven by two 75 horse-power Daimler motors, was capable of a speed of 27 miles an hour; in September of 1908 she made a trip from and back to Berlin which lasted 13 hours, in which period she covered 176 miles with four passengers and reached a height of 4,000 feet.
The under side of the balloon consists of a flat rigid framework, to which the planes are attached, and from which the car, the engine, and propeller are suspended. As the rigid type of dirigible is chiefly advocated in Germany, so the semi-rigid craft is most popular in France. The famous Lebaudy air-ships are good types of semi-rigid vessels.
The NON-RIGID type, on the other hand, can be quickly deflated, and the parts of the car and engine can be readily transported to the nearest balloon station when occasion requires. In the SEMI-RIGID type of air-ship the vessel is dependent for its form partly on its framework and partly on the form of the gas envelope.
Some damage was sustained in this landing, but, after repair, the trip to Paris was completed. Meanwhile the Government balloon factory at Farnborough began airship construction in 1907; Colonel Capper, R.E., and S. F. Cody were jointly concerned in the production of a semi-rigid.
As far back as 1900 Doctor Barton built an airship at the Alexandra Palace and voyaged across London in it. Four years later Mr E. T. Willows of Cardiff produced the first successful British dirigible, a semi-rigid 74 feet in length and 18 feet in diameter, engined with a 7 horse-power Peugot twin-cylindered motor.
The propellers are collapsible, although in the latest craft of this class they are semi-rigid. The mechanical equipment is also interesting. There are two propellers, and two motors, each nominally driving one propeller.
When the semi-rigid airship "V-I" was brought before the notice of the German military department the pressing point concerning its military recommendations arose at once. The inventor had foreseen this issue and was optimistic. Thereupon the authorities asked if the inventor were prepared to justify his claims. The retort was positive. Forthwith the Junkers decided to submit it to the test.
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