Hybrid Airship - History

History

No hybrid aircraft design has ever been developed past the initial experimental stages despite many such designs having been proposed over the years, though recent advances may indicate that the technology has matured.

The idea of a tri-lobe airship belongs to Solomon Andrews when he first flew the Aereon back in 1863. The ship he hoped to use for military and commercial was a triple-hulled, gravity powered airship. When the war was over though it took away the need to fund for a controllable reconnaissance airship vehicle. "Undaunted, Andrews built a single hull airship that moved sideways. To explain how the craft flew, he published a booklet subtitled "Without Eccentricity, There Is No Progression."."

In 1905, Alberto Santos-Dumont made what is likely the first attempt at a hybrid aircraft. His Number 14 combined an airship envelope with an airplane frame. At that time, Santos-Dumont was the world's most accomplished aviator. All of his previous flights had been made in purely aerostatically lifted airships. The Number 14 proved unworkable. Later, Santos-Dumont would remove the envelope and successfully use the recristened 14-bis (meaning "14-again") to make the first public flight of any heavier-than-air aircraft in the world.

In the timespan of 1923 to 1935 the US Navy operated four rigid airships: Shenandoah, Los Angeles, Akron, and the Macon. "The loss of three of them to accidents—only Los Angeles retired without mishap—coupled with the loss of the Hindenburg several years later, sounded the death knell for large airship operations."."

The 1986 Piasecki PA-97 Helistat combined four helicopters with a blimp in an attempt to create a heavy-lift vehicle for forestry work.

The Aereon 26 was an aircraft which made its first flight in 1971. It was a small-scale prototype of the hybrid Airship Aereon Dynairship and part of the "TIGER" project. But it was never built due to lack of market for a hybrid airship.

The SkyCat or "Sky Catamaran" vehicular technology is a hybrid aircraft amalgamation; a scale version at 12 meters called "SkyKitten", built by the Advanced Technologies Group Ltd, flew in 2000.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, initiated the WALRUS program in 2005, a technology development initiative focused on ultra heavy air lift technology explorations. The program was terminated in 2007.

In 2006, Lockheed Martin's P-791 manned flight test of the SkyCat technology indicated substantial progress of the technology, and presently several development efforts are underway, although the only program to provide serious funding is the US Army LEMV one awarded last year to Northrop Grumman and Hybrid Air Vehicles.