TIL: cow gut balloons where filled with hydrogen gas for WW1 Airships/Zeppelins 🎈
TIL: cow gut balloons where filled with hydrogen gas for WW1 Airships/Zeppelins 🎈
… yes they used cow gut/intestines 🐄🐄. 7 layers of cow gut where sewn onto a carrier layer of fabric to create an airtight balloon that could hold hydrogen lifting gas for some days 🎈. 50.000 cows where slaughtered for one gas-cell
Advantages over rubber of cow gut:
- rubber-cotton balloons got brittle with repeated uses with hydrogen filling. Cow gut is a flexible material that lasted longer, though expensive.
- rubber balloons can get statically charged. A small spark can flame all the hydrogen at once. Cattle gut does not charge as quickly as rubber.
Source:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbeater%27s_skin#Applications
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschl%C3%A4gerhaut german article mentions some more numbers data.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Envelope
Also German-empire had unreliable access to colonies that produced rubber or cotton during ww1. So they used cow gut as a rubber-balloon replacement.
Layers where sewn in secret alternating patterns to make it airtight.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/zeppelins-made-out-of-cow-intestines.html
https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/ridiculous-history-nation-sacrifices-sausage-to-fight-war.htm
I couldn't find anything on a specific pattern of the "fabric", but what I did find was the natural glues(?) worked fine for it being airtight.
Oh, I am not doubting that there were specific patterns of this stuff, but I can't find any references. (I have an interest in wartime engineering, s'all)
thank you for adding more sources! I am also interested in this. They stacked 7 layers on top of each other. Alternating layer patterns (similar to a brick wall stacked alternating overlap) to prevent gas escape seems logical to me.
Why was it important that the patterns be secret?
So company manufacturing it can make more money with monopoly. Also it had military relevance, if your enemies copy this shit … yout get air-raided. The family holding secret knowledge on this was "Weinling". Later germans found out on this smh and knitted them in a 7 layer pattern.