A Brief History of the Goodyear Blimp, Which Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary This Year

If you’ve watched a major sporting event on TV recently—whether a college football game or a NASCAR race—chances are, you’ve seen aerial footage captured by a Goodyear Blimp. The massive blue-and-yellow airship floats above stadiums and racetracks using high-definition, gyro-stabilized cameras to get overhead shots of the action below.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Goodyear Blimp and the 70th anniversary of providing aerial event coverage. To celebrate, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is taking its iconic airship on a tour of North America and Europe. It’s also giving fans a chance to ride in the blimp, something only 0.0006 percent of Americans can say they’ve done, according to a statement from the company.

“Takeoff feels like someone just let go of a balloon that happens to fill about 80 percent of a football field and fly a top speed of 73 miles per hour,” says Jesse Kirsch of NBC’s “Today.”

The helium-filled blimp’s actual birthday isn’t until June. But Goodyear already kicked off the festivities on New Year’s Day at the Rose Bowl college football bowl game in California, where it first debuted its aerial coverage concept in 1955. From there, it will fly over more than 100 cities, making appearances at other big sports matchups, as well as music and cultural festivals.

The history of airships

Airships, also known as “lighter-than-air” craft, date back to 1852, when French engineer Henri Giffard filled a 144-foot-long bag with hydrogen. Using a steam engine to turn a large propeller, his invention lifted off from the Paris Hippodrome and flew through the air for roughly 20 miles, per Encyclopedia Britannica.

In the ensuing decades, engineers made various improvements and tweaks to this initial design. They experimented with internal-combustion engines, electric motors and rigid hulls made of aluminum.

But airships really took off during World War I, when rigid models developed by Germany’s Ferdinand von Zeppelin were used to bomb Paris and London. They became known as “zeppelins.”

Airships remained popular throughout the 1920s and 1930s, even ferrying explorers to the North Pole in 1926. But by the late 1930s and early 1940s, they’d all but disappeared from the world’s skies.

Airplanes, helicopters and other “heavier-than-air” craft were getting cheaper, faster and better equipped to fly through inclement weather. The airship’s demise was also hastened by events like the Hindenburg disaster.

In May 1937, the rigid German airship was landing in New Jersey after a commercial transatlantic crossing when it burst into flames. The 804-foot-long vessel was filled with highly flammable hydrogen, and 36 passengers were killed in the explosion.

Goodyear’s aviation heritage

Founded in 1898 as a tire manufacturer, Goodyear entered the aviation market in 1910 when it started making rubber-infused fabrics and coatings for aircraft. Goodyear began making its own airships during World War I to fulfill several large orders from the U.S. Navy.

The company considers the Pilgrim—the airship that debuted in 1925—to be the first official Goodyear Blimp. It was also the first commercial non-rigid airship to use helium.

Goodyear quickly saw the value in using the Pilgrim for public relations and advertising. Every year at Christmas, for example, it was promoted as the “Santa Claus Express.” In 1930, engineers equipped the vessel with a lighted neon sign so that the company’s name could still be seen after dark. (They also briefly experimented with loudspeakers, microphones and record players but later scrapped those plans.)

Goodyear's Blimp Time-Lapse Build in Blimp Hanger

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Another early blimp, the Volunteer, gave Charles Lindbergh a ride and appeared in the 1932 film Hidden Valley. The Volunteer also soared over the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

During World War II, Goodyear produced more than 150 blimps to help the U.S. Navy keep a lookout for enemy submarines.

In 1955, the company used one of its blimps to provide a live aerial broadcast of the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game. In 1967, a Goodyear Blimp covered the first Super Bowl.

Since then, Goodyear Blimps have broadcast World Series games, Olympic events, horse races like the Kentucky Derby, the America’s Cup yacht races, World Cup soccer matches and many other events. The company has also used its technology to help first responders after natural disasters, including the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, according to the Tallahassee Democrat’s C. A. Bridges.

These days, Goodyear has four blimps in its fleet, including one that flies full-time in Europe. They each weigh nearly 20,000 pounds when empty, but they lighten to roughly 200 pounds once they’re filled with helium.

Sarah Kuta | READ MORE

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.