C. Michael Hiam

I was pleased to receive this book for free through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program. Space flight has long been a major interest of mine -- and by extension, early aviation history. Nonetheless, I found this work to be something of a disappointment. Its focus, of course, is on the history of dirigibles, during the relatively short period that they were used (1897-1938), as means of transportation and of warfare. I found it bland in tone, and shy on technological details. My perspective is not shared by most reviewers here and at Amazon, and I cheerfully admit that perhaps I was not the optimal audience for the book. Given the great scarcity of books on the history of dirigibles, I would recommend the book to those with deep interests in the history of aviation, much more so than to the casual reader. The numerous photographs interspersed through the book are a nice plus. And I love the alliterative title!… (mere)

The age of the airship was brief -- 25 years, 30 at the most -- and its heyday was even briefer: a few years around 1930 when the British R100 crossed the Atlantic to Canada; the Graf Zeppelin began her 9-year, million-mile career; and the Akron and Macon, single-engined fighter planes stowed in their onboard hangers, scouted for the US fleet. Soon enough, though, it began to unravel. Akron and Macon both crashed into the sea, Britain abandoned airships (and R100 was broken up for scrap) after the tragically overweight R101 plowed into a French hillside. The Graf Zeppelin lasted, and her stablemate Hindenburg put in a successful season of Atlantic crossings before the first flight of her second year of service ended in a fireball at Lakehurst. The Hindenburg disaster took Germany's airship program, and the Graf Zeppelin, down with it, but the day of the airship was already ending: brought to a close by faster, more economical airplanes.

It's been several decades since Douglas Botting's The Great Airships last surveyed this story, and more than half-a-century since John Toland's The Great Dirigibles emerged as the standard introduction. Hiam tells the story for the 21st century, from the early experiments of Zeppelin and Santos-Dumont through the end of the dream in the late 1930s. The emphasis is as much on the quirky visionaries behind the airship as on the technology itself, but that seems as fitting as the title: The airship, in retrospect, was always a machine for dreamers.… (mere)