Airborne Arctic Weather Ships Is Almost Certain to Be Controversial

Home , Airship, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, Rigid airship

J. Gordon Vaeth airborne Arctic National Weather Satellite Center U. S. Weather Bureau weather ships Washington, D. C.

Historical background In the mid-1920's Norway's Fridtjof Nansen organized an international association called Aeroarctic. As its name implies, its purpose was the scientific exploration of the north polar regions by aircraft, particularly by airship. When Nansen died in 1930 Dr. Hugo Eckener of Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin Company suc- ceeded him to the Aeroarctic presidency. He placed his airship, the Graf Zeppelin, at the disposal of the organization and the following year carried out a three-day flight over and along the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The roster of scientists who made this 1931 flight, which originated in Leningrad, included meteorologists and geographers from the United States, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and, of course, Germany. One of them was Professor Moltschanoff who would launch three of his early radiosondes from the dirigible before the expedition was over. During a trip which was completed without incident and which included a water land- ing off Franz Josef Land to rendezvous with the Soviet icebreaker Malygin, considerable new information on Arctic weather and geography was obtained. Means for Arctic More than thirty years have since elapsed. Overflight of Arctic waters is no longer his- weather observations toric or even newsworthy. Yet weather in the Polar Basin remains fragmentarily ob- served, known, and understood. To remedy this situation, the following are being actively proposed for widespread Arctic use: Automatic observing and reporting stations, similar to the isotopic-powered U. S. Weather Bureau station located in the Canadian Arctic. Manned surface stations, including those on drifting ice islands. Constant level balloons, serving as atmospheric "tracers." Tracking their movement would enable wind direction and speed to be inferred. And satellites. These would collect data from all three while carrying TV cameras, IR sensors, and other devices to observe cloud cover, temperature distribution, and other conditions below. To this list of observing platforms intended to help close the Arctic Ocean weather information gap, another should be added and its potentialities carefully evaluated. This is the large dirigible or rigid airship. Advantages of airships A modern, updated, and improved descendant of the Zeppelins of the 1930's, such a lighter-than-air craft would have a nominal length of 1000 feet and a diameter of about 145 feet. Inside its fabric-covered frame of transverse rings joined by girders running from bow to stern, ten million cubic feet of noninflammable helium would be contained in a number of individual gas cells. Nuclear-propelled, a vehicle of this type would possess a station-keeping endurance measured in months. The airship, a displacement vessel, is more like a ship or sub- marine than an airplane. And like ships and submarines, it lends itself unusually well to propulsion by nuclear means. Its size permits remote location and operation of re- actors. It needs propulsive power to move ahead, not to sustain itself in flight. The on-station endurance of a nuclear-powered airship would probably exceed that of its personnel. Like the crews of nuclear submarines, they would have to be relieved and rotated. While the ship remained in its assigned area, personnel would be brought on board and taken off by airplane "hook-ons," a technique perfected three decades ago by 50 Vol. 46, No. 2, February 1965

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/05/21 12:16 PM UTC Bulletin American Meteorological Society the U. S. Navy dirigibles Los Angeles, Akron, and Macon. Employing this airlift of fresh crews (and supplies), the airship would be required to return to base only for major over- haul, major reprovisioning, or replenishment of its helium. Routine maintenance and repair would be carried out aloft owing to the accessibility of all parts of a rigid airship during flight. Assigned to a weather patrol station over the Arctic Ocean, north of 80°, a craft of this type could carry out the functions of an ocean station vessel—and do so in a sparse-data region where weather ships could hardly expect to enter and routinely operate. Potential functions Unaffected by ice-blocked seas, enjoying the increased buoyancy provided by the cold of airships dense air, free from most frontal activity, and operating in a region of relatively light winds, the airship could: 1. Launch, track, and report the observations of rawinsondes; 2. Launch, track, and report the observations of large scientifically instrumented Sky- hook research balloons (To do this one of the dirigible's structural bays would be con- verted into a balloon inflation hangar. Helium to inflate the Skyhook would be drawn from the ship's gas cells. The balloon would be released through a hatch in the top of the bay while the airship drifted, engines idling, to provide a "no wind" condition along its back.); 3. Drift as a free balloon to observe and report the horizontal and vertical motions of the air mass in which it was operating; 4. Tether a Skyhook perhaps tens of thousands of feet above the ship and use the con- necting line to mount meteorological sensors or to serve as a radio antenna; 5. Launch, receive and report the observations of meteorological sounding rockets fired from the aircraft's top; 6. Suspend sensors beneath the ship to obtain meteorological readings from sea level to flight altitude (about 5000 feet); 7. Collect air samples and rain water for on-board laboratory analysis; 8. Lower sampling devices into the sea for on-board oceanographic analysis; 9. Emplace scientific observers on the ice or water surface for more direct and first-hand oceanographic work (These personnel could be landed via a winch arrangement or by a helicopter which the airship's size could easily accommodate.); 10. Descend and land on the ocean surface, as did the Graf Zeppelin, for a closer study of the air/sea interface in Arctic latitudes.

FIG. 1. Arctic ice as viewed from a U. S. Navy blimp making a mail run to Ice Island T-3 in August 1958. Photographs like this would become commonplace if the use of dirigibles as Arctic weather ships is realized. (Official U. S. Navy Pho- tograph)

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FIG. 2. During January 1957, a U. S. Navy ZPG airship of this type was placed on patrol in the North Atlantic, 200 miles off the east coast. A sister ship relieved the first airship 24 hours later. This change of ships was repeated at long intervals. The blimps flew through extremes of snow, freezing rain, high winds, and other weather conditions which, at times, kept all other type aircraft grounded. The watch of airships was maintained constantly for ten days. (Official U. S. Navy Photograph)

These are some of the meteorological and oceanographic functions which such a flying "ocean station vessel" might perform. Conventional ocean station vessels, however, carry out other functions as well . . . Navigational assistance Communications relay Search and rescue. For these functions, too, the ship of the air could effectively substitute for the surface ship in the impassable waters of the Arctic Basin. Communications capabilities are roughly comparable (each type would suffer some probable degradation at high latitudes). An airship, equipped with radar and serving as a navigational "beacon" or station in the remoteness of 80 to 90N, would be enthusiastically received by aircraft operating in the vicinity. And the availability of such a ship, either itself or its on-board helicopter and fixed wing aircraft, to go to the assistance of aircrews in distress would, of course, be no less welcome. Uses of the frame To increase still more the rigid airship's value, electronic engineers should consider what they might be able to do with a 1000-ft long frame consisting of perhaps 32,000 linear feet (six miles) of longitudinal girders. Could the dirigible's structure be coupled and trans- formed into an immense "flying antenna"? Could this skeleton, plus the ship's curva- ture, be used to fashion the equivalent of a mammoth airborne parabolic antenna for data transmission to shore-based relay points circumferential to the Polar Sea? And how well could the large airship's inherent stability in flight, lack of shock and vibration, spacious- ness for the mounting of electronic equipment, and structural members to which to mount it be utilized to give a polar-based dirigible even greater usefulness and application? Other possibilities It is even possible that, with enough creative technical thinking and development effort, the dirigible might provide the much talked-about but little hoped-for polar station for satellite command and readout. And carrying this type of thinking one step further, the initial processing of the satellite observations received and the extraction of the most im- mediately important data could be performed aboard the ship. Communicating of this information to civilization would naturally then follow. It is beyond the scope of any article in a meteorological journal to discuss just how these things could be technologically achieved. The important thing is that they probably could be achieved—if there is enough demand from those who would put them to use- ful purpose. Admittedly the technical problems which must be overcome to station a nuclear- powered dirigible over the Polar Basin are both severe and costly. But in many respects, 52

Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/05/21 12:16 PM UTC Bulletin American Meteorological Society they are no more severe or costly than other concepts being advanced in meteorology to- day, particularly where achievement of global coverage via the World Weather System is concerned. The author has written this not as a meteorologist but as a former airshipman. He knows what airships can, and cannot do, where they can, and cannot, safely go. He re- members that Hugo Eckener, most successful of all dirigible commanders, concluded that the Arctic was a natural habitat for large airships; that to the fabric-covered airship, icing was a psychological rather than actual hazard. And he recalls how decisively the icing experiments carried out during the 1950's in winter over the North Atlantic by U. S. Navy blimps confirmed Eckener's conclusion. Problems and promise Will weather conditions and the performance of rigid airships permit such vehicles to be operated in the very Far North on a year-round basis and with an adequate margin of safety? How many nuclear dirigibles would be required to maintain one on station continu ously? What would be their construction and operating costs? And what would be their performance (speed, endurance, payload, crew size, operating radius, etc.)? These questions cannot practicably be answered here. There is not sufficient space. And the information is simply not available. The important thing is whether the role that such vehicles could play in providing continuous, routine, and regular meteorological and oceanographic observations in the Polar Basin warrants that these questions be investigated and quantitatively answered. The purpose of this article is not to claim flatly that dirigibles should be built, equipped with nuclear power, and put into service at the top of the earth. Instead its aim is to invite the attention of atmospheric and geophysical scientists to the unique role that such vehicles might play and to excite professional interest in their potentialities. For decades airships have been controversial subjects. Yet controversy is not always a bad thing. It stimulates thinking and inspires imagination. The idea of using dirigibles as airborne Arctic weather ships is almost certain to be controversial. But if, by controversy, the subject becomes alive and active in scientific and technological thinking, then the purpose of this paper will have been served. History has shown that technologies are sometimes abandoned, only to be revived years later in response to new situations and requirements. The rocket was one such technol- ogy and from its rebirth came TIROS and Nimbus with their tremendous impact upon meteorology. The dirigible, too, given renewed impetus by the applicability of new materials and nuclear propulsion may return to fulfill meteorological and other applications in the north polar regions. If the dirigible does come back, and for this purpose, it will doubtlessly be most enthusiastically supported—perhaps even collectively funded and operated—by those nations which border upon the Arctic Ocean. If indeed this comes to pass, then the goals of Fridtjof Nansen's Aeroarctic will at last have been in fullest measure achieved.

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