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Airships. In the early years of War, these beasts were known for their majestic presence in the sky and were icons of a country's power and prestige. They reigned mostly as reconnaissance and transport utility aircraft but there was something about this "lighter ....

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.... streamlined to enable easy passage through the air, these Airships could reach speeds up to 10mph with a 5hp steam engine propeller. The first successful airship was that of the French engineer and inventor Henri Giffard, who constructed in 1852 a cigar-shaped, non-rigid gas bag 44 m (143 ft) long, driven by a screw propeller rotated by a 2.2-kw (3-hp) steam engine. He flew over Paris at a speed of about 10 km/hr (about 6 mph). Giffard's airship could be steered only in calm or nearly calm weather. The first airship to demonstrate its ability to return to its starting place in a light wind was the La France, developed in 1884 by the French inventors ....