Early in the 20th century, there were those that espoused blimps for the roles that larger model airplanes eventually filled. There was just enough success to make the tech detour memorable. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The headscratcher of this stamp is that it comes from Romania. Other stamps in this set honoring the history of blimps show German Zeppelin models over Bucharest in the 1920s, but that is the only tendential connection of blimps to Romania.
Todays stamp is issue AP75, a 1.5 Leu airmail stamp issued by Romania on March 20th, 1978. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled to order.
Our story begins on September 23rd 1916 when a flight of four LZ model Zeppelins in the service of the Imperial German Navy made a successful bombing raid on London dropping 7000 pounds of bombs. LZ 76, on it’s first mission and commanded by Alois Bocker was hit by anti aircraft fire and was forced to go off course. Over the county of Essex it was caught by an RAF biplane fighter B. E. 2e flown by Alfred Brandon that forced the blimp to land in a field. The German crew attempted to burn the craft before it fell into British hands but failed and the British reverse engineered and copied the design.
The end of World War I saw a severe cut in demand but two blimp copies of LZ 76 flew in 1919. The one on the stamp R34 was built by Willian Beardmore and Company in Scotland. The blimp had a crew of 26 and cruised at 50 miles per hour. On July 2nd, the blimp set out from RAF Croydon for Long Island, New York. The journey took 108 hours and by the time the blimp made it to New York it was almost entirely out of fuel. Crossing the Atlantic east to west meant fighting headwinds and much later Concorde airliners would themselves be at the very edge of their range. Since nobody in the USA had experience remooring a flying blimp. one of the crew parachuted out before landing to show the waiting crew how it was done. The parachutist, E. M. Pritchard thus became the first person to reach the USA by air from Europe. The return trip was also successful and because of tailwinds only took 75 hours.
In 1921 R34 crashed into a hillside in the Yorkshire moors in bad weather. It had not recieved the sent return to base signal. R34 was scrapped and the RAF ended their blimp program entirely later that year as an economy measure.
William Beardmore and Company was a giant concern in the twenties building ships, airplanes, one blimp, cars and owning a steel mill. At it’s height it employed 40,000 people. The Deppression was hard not just on blimp production and bankers forced Mr. Beardmore out of his own company. Most operations were quickly would down but a few persisted. A competitor to the London Taxi by Beardmore lasted until 1966. The Parkhead Forge steel mill lasted until 1983. The shipyard is now a hospital and the steel mill is now the site of a shopping mall called The Forge but forgetting Mr. Beardmore.
Well my drink is empty. I included a lot more names than I usually do hopefully inspiring the readers to look up further the interesting men of earlier times that actually achieved things. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.