DN-1

DN-1
DN-1 approaching its floating hangar at Pensacola.
Role Experimental airship
Manufacturer Connecticut Aircraft
First flight 20 April 1917
Number built 1


The DN-1 was the US Navy's first airship. Captain Mark L. Bristol, the second Director of Naval Aviation, supported the development of the dirigible in the anti-submarine role.[1] Victor Herbster, Holden Richardson and Frank McCrary drew up the specifications for the DN-1.[2] The contract was awarded on 1 June 1915 to the Connecticut Aircraft Company of New Haven, CT.[3] The DN-1 was roughly based on the German Parseval type of non-rigid airship. The envelope was made of two layers of cloth, with rubber between them as well as on the inside and outside. The gondola control car, built by George Lawley & Son of Dorchester, Massachusetts, was a large rectangular box with two four-bladed propellers on outriggers. The two engines, built by the B F Sturtevant Company of Hyde Park, MA, were mounted in the open gondola, and the propellers could be swiveled to provide thrust in either the horizontal or vertical planes.[4] The gondola was water-tight as the Navy intended to operate the DN-1 off water.[5]

The DN-1 was shipped to Pensacola, Florida in late 1916 and assembled in a floating hangar constructed for it. The day of the planned first flight, the DN-1 was removed from its hangar, only to lose lift and sink. The DN-1 was returned to its hangar and lightened. When the test program began on 20 April 1917 the DN-1 was a disappointment. DN-1 lacked lift, barely met the speed requirement of 35 miles per hour (56 km/h) and the transmission overheated, melting the bearings. It was 27 April before the airship flew again. Two days later the handling party which was attempting to tow the airship across the water damaged the DN-1.The Navy decided that the airship was not worth repairing and the DN-1 was scrapped.[6][7] The DN-1 was an inept failure, being barely capable of flight, delivered long after the planned time, and way over budget, the DN-1 made the Navy realize it did not have the technical skills and knowledge needed to construct airships.[8][9]

Years later the DN-1 came to be considered the A class. Such designation was never officially used by the Navy. Nor was it used during DN-1's short life.[10]

Specifications

General characteristics

Performance

See also


Related lists

References

  1. ↑ Grossnik, Roy A. 1986 Kite Balloons to Airships . . . the Navy's Lighter-than-Air Experience, Washington D.C.: Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare) and the Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, p. 3.
  2. ↑ Grossnik, Roy A. 1986 Kite Balloons to Airships . . . the Navy's Lighter-than-Air Experience, Washington D.C.: Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare) and the Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, p. 3.
  3. ↑ Clark, Basil, The History of Airships, New York: St Martin's Press, 1961, Library of Congress 64-12336, p. 146.
  4. ↑
  5. ↑ "The Navy's First Airship Comes to Pensacola". National Naval Aviation Museum.
  6. ↑ Grossnik, Roy A. 1986 Kite Balloons to Airships . . . the Navy's Lighter-than-Air Experience, Washington D.C.: Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare) and the Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, p. 5.
  7. ↑ "The Navy's First Airship Comes to Pensacola". National Naval Aviation Museum.
  8. ↑ Althoff, Wlliam F, SkyShips, New York: Orion Books, 1990, ISBN 0-517-56904-3, p. 4.
  9. ↑ Grossnik, Roy A. 1986 Kite Balloons to Airships . . . the Navy's Lighter-than-Air Experience, Washington D.C.: Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare) and the Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, p. 5.
  10. ↑ Grossnik, Roy A. 1986 Kite Balloons to Airships . . . the Navy's Lighter-than-Air Experience, Washington D.C.: Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare) and the Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, p. 5.
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