Nazi Zeppelin Base

[AlHazred]

I've been doing some work on my Golden Age Superheroes/Pulp Heroes campaign, and I've decided to make one of the main villains a Nazi mad scientist/Prussian noble whose purpose is to keep the heroes busy at home so that they don't go to Germany to fight. I thought it would be cool to give him an interesting base, but the whole "German castle" thing didn't work because it needed to be in the US.

 

Then, last time I visited Germany, we went to the Zeppelin museum. I've decided to give him a "castle" in the sky -- a giant zeppelin! I figure his ancestral castle was destroyed during World War I, and he rebuilt using "high technology". I've even gotten inspiration from the SHIELD helicarrier and Baron Wulfenbach's dirigible/castle in Girl Genius.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to make it interesting? I mean, I could just take the zeppelin from The Ultimate Vehicle and upgun the Size a notch or three, but I'd like to make it unusual. Any thoughts? What about pictures I can use as inspiration?

[death tribble]

Start with the Hindenburg. Remember that if your history includes the destruction of the Hindenburg in 1937 (I believe) that your villain will have a good motive for taking the battle to the States. America would not supply Helium or knowledge of Helium to Germany who used Hydrogen in the balloon instead.

 

There is a fictional film of the Hindenburg with George C Scott and Anne Bankroft. You could try and see that for some ideas.

 

Look at Crimson Skies as well. That has Zepplins as the freight carriers of the day.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Oooo. Zepplins.

 

• Remember that they're generally rigid.
  
• Remember that they ARE vulnerable to aircraft, i.e. the thing's going to have guns on it to shoot back/down the P-41s and all that come after it.
  
• Remember that it has to restock, i.e. needs to moor somewhere in order to take on provisions.
  
• Remember the fate of the Hindenberg at the mooring mast. I'll guarantee that your players will, and that this is going to be the end of Baron Zima's Zepplin Fortress.
  
• Remember that the mainland US, Canada, & Mexico were NOT all well-known; adventures hunting down this guy's 'secret ground bases' should be be fun, furious, and frequent; they should always be stopping him in the nick of time, he gets away in the Zepplin, but they find out a clue to another secret base until they finally corner him at his ultra-top-secret base hidden in the Nevada desert. And when they DO destroy the Zepplin Fortress, the War Department is going to want to take over Baron Zima's Ultra-Top-Secret Base and give it a bland-sounding label to explain away all the secrets of Baron Zima's they're finding. You know, something like 'Area 15' or something...
  
• Remember that a steady diet of 5th Columnists WILL get boring eventually, even rapidly. Instead of constant adventures in the US, spread the Character's assignments and action between the African theatre, the Southeast Asian (Asia/Burma/Borneo) theatre, action in England and Europe, and fighting Japs in the Pacific. Maybe they'll even go to Stalingrad and fight Those Dirty Nazis in the ugly house-to-house fighting there before returning home for a well-earned two weeks of shore leave -- but when they get there, they encounter yet another dastardly plan by Evil Baron Zima to Steal Cut-Your-Throat-Before-Reading Secrets of Weapon Technology From the War Department!! You know, stuff like really powerful bombs.
  

No rest for the heroic.

[Tom Carman]

Originally posted by Wyrm Ouroboros

Oooo. Zepplins.

 

• Remember that they're generally rigid.
  
• Remember the fate of the Hindenberg at the mooring mast. I'll guarantee that your players will, and that this is going to be the end of Baron Zima's Zepplin Fortress.
  

No rest for the heroic.

A zeppelin is by definition a rigid airship; blimps and semi-rigids probably can't be built as large as I suspect you are planning.

 

Remember that it wasn't the hydrogen that killed the Hindenberg, it was the solid-rocket-fuel-in-all-but-name that they used for a skin. The never-built next generation zeppelin would have had a more fire-retardant envelope. Incendiary bullets are a hazard to a hydrogen-lift airship, but not a sure killer; after all, they need O2 to burn the H2 and there isn't much oxygen in a lift cell. Since your villain is a mad scientist, I would expect a bullet-resistent envelope (Def 3-4 Armor?) and self-sealing gas cells to mitigate the hazards.

[AlHazred]

Originally posted by Tom Carman

Remember that it wasn't the hydrogen that killed the Hindenberg, it was the solid-rocket-fuel-in-all-but-name that they used for a skin. The never-built next generation zeppelin would have had a more fire-retardant envelope. Incendiary bullets are a hazard to a hydrogen-lift airship, but not a sure killer; after all, they need O2 to burn the H2 and there isn't much oxygen in a lift cell. Since your villain is a mad scientist, I would expect a bullet-resistent envelope (Def 3-4 Armor?) and self-sealing gas cells to mitigate the hazards.

 

I've read the books/seen the documentaries and I'm convinced it was the material they used to "dope" the skin to prevent gas leakage. It seems the Zeppelin company also knew this, just a few months after the accident, but it didn't hit public consciousness until very recently.

 

The Zeppelin in The Ultimate Vehicle has a DEF of 4, which seems pretty good for a rigid airship. I'll probably give it a 5 overall, with a more heavily-armored gondola (Partial Coverage).

 

Since I'm using Pulp Superscience in this game, there might very well be more advanced planes than P-41s flying about. The PCs have a team transport that is based on the Weserflug P.1003/1, which would have anticipated the V-22 Osprey by 50 years. I expect the villain of the piece to know this and plan accordingly.

 

I'm less interested in tactical details (he'll probably be using salvaged Martian Heat-Rays as primary weapons), and more interested in the special touches that make any base memorable. Launch assist/arrest platforms for Messerschmitt Me 163B Komets and other experimental planes? If a platform, is it on top of the gasbag, or slung underneath? Large side-mounted propellers to provide lift/steering? Faux stone wall and tower designs, emulating the character's lost castle? Or pulp-era continental styling, making it look like a luxury train car? The devil is in the details...

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Originally posted by AlHazred

The Zeppelin in The Ultimate Vehicle has a DEF of 4, which seems pretty good for a rigid airship. I'll probably give it a 5 overall, with a more heavily-armored gondola (Partial Coverage).

 

Good idea. Always armor the gondola a bit more. Also, don't forget your science labs tucked away here, there, and yon within the lift cells -- inside the massive framework makes a stunning 3-D maze for the heros to have to fight their way through.

 

Launch assist/arrest platforms for Messerschmitt Me 163B Komets and other experimental planes? If a platform, is it on top of the gasbag, or slung underneath?

 

Launch from the bottom; recover on top. Maybe part of the 'experimental planes' are the ability to disassemble and move them short distances; a 'lift elevator' down the side/front/through the middle of the gasbag?

 

Large side-mounted propellers to provide lift/steering?

 

No, no, too SHIELD Helicarrier. But it SHOULD have bomb racks.

 

Faux stone wall and tower designs, emulating the character's lost castle? Or pulp-era continental styling, making it look like a luxury train car? The devil is in the details...

 

Pulp-era Continental Styling. If Hitler did one good thing for Germany, it's that he made the trains run on time. This thing should be posh, elite, arrogant, high-society. Hell, have Baron von Munchausen invite the characters there for a tete-a-tete. If he's classy, play it up. If the place is really big, why not have a ballroom -- one of the aerodromes opens out to the sky (upwards, into the landing platform?), dancing, music, all that. Class, style, evil laboratories. Experimental Steampunk Mecha battling it out with the heros (in their dinner jackets and evening dresses, no less!!) on the top of the zepplin.

 

I'd put regular guns in the cupolas, though, and save the Martian Death Ray as a thing the characters have to stop -- maybe during the ball he unveils it, pointing at the Washington Monument or some such national monument. Something suitably dramatic, luxurious ... posh. Like you said, this is the era of Pulp Heros.

[Lord Liaden]

If you're going with pulp-era super science, perhaps the airship's hull could be made of some experimental super material ("proto-duraluminum") that's very light but highly durable. If it's a conductor like metal, flying PCs landing on it could be hit with an electrical charge boobytrap.

 

How about rocket engines for an emergency burst of speed to escape? Or for added versatility, the dirigible could set down on a body of water, pump out the hydrogen/helium and pump in water, and become a submarine; good for escaping or for sneaking up on a target.

 

Smoke/cloud generating equipment would be handy; the dirigible could fly over an area hidden within its own innocuous-looking cloud.

 

To keep the heroes from simply blowing it up or blasting it out of the sky, the lifting gas in the dirigible could be mixed with a new toxic nerve agent; if the airship is destroyed over a populated area, a lot of innocents will die.

[Cyberknight]

Love the idea of a super-zep

If you really want to be odd / unusual, what about a 'catamaran' design with a pair of rigid hulls (each of course festooned with power turreted 7mm and 12.7mm MGs), with a platform section between them. The top of the platform would give you a place for your aircraft launch / recovery systems, the labs could be in the mid-decks platform area, and the platform's underside could have the obligatory bomb racks, gantry cranes (for getting heavy supplies from ground bases, and an escape chute / escape pod for the Master Villian. You could even have 'towers' at the corners of the platform mounting heavier AA guns (3-5") as a tip of the hat to the Baron's former castle.

 

I think I'll go take my meds now

 

Cyberknight

[Tom Carman]

Originally posted by Cyberknight

Love the idea of a super-zep

If you really want to be odd / unusual, what about a 'catamaran' design with a pair of rigid hulls (each of course festooned with power turreted 7mm and 12.7mm MGs), with a platform section between them. The top of the platform would give you a place for your aircraft launch / recovery systems, the labs could be in the mid-decks platform area, and the platform's underside could have the obligatory bomb racks, gantry cranes (for getting heavy supplies from ground bases, and an escape chute / escape pod for the Master Villian. You could even have 'towers' at the corners of the platform mounting heavier AA guns (3-5") as a tip of the hat to the Baron's former castle.

 

I think I'll go take my meds now

 

Cyberknight

One of the funkier villains in the old, original, Spider-Man cartoons had one of these. Only he was flying WWI-style biplanes or triplanes, armed with paralysis (?) ray guns.

[BNakagawa]

Maybe this guy could have captured a super-scientist Tesla clone to work for him.

 

Then he could build a giant array of charge harvesters so he could fly into thunderstorms and absorb electricity from the clouds and then threaten cities with lightning storms if they didn't send up baloons filled with provisions and valuables. If they didn't have baloons he could always parachute some down.

 

This could also be used as a defensive weapon to ward off fighters.

 

If you build the hull/skin as self-sealing, then it should have a low base def plus a bonus against any attack that is a penetrating type weapon. This makes it extremely resistant to bullets, but very vulnerable to some yahoo jabbing a saber into the side and riding it down like a swashbuckler on a sail.

 

$0.02

[Mutant for Hire]

Weather control is also useful for concealing the zepplin's existance. It could always travel inside a storm front of some sort and have lightning as part of the defenses. That would be one of the reasons that planes would have a hell of a time against the thing.

[Trebuchet]

Edgar Rice Burroughs' pulp novel Tarzan at the Earth's Core featured a rigid airship whose lift was provided by vaccuum. It featured an airtight skin made of a supertough "experimental" metal. (The ship was even German-made IIRC) When the shell was emptied by vaccuum pumps the ship became lighter than air and floated. This would really work, and would certainly seem super-advanced to WWII era characters. And of course, since it doesn't need hydrogen (potentially explosive) or helium (extremely expensive and rare in the 1940's), it could go anywhere.

[AlHazred]

Vacuum-filled ships wouldn't work in RL. I'll probably go with hydrogen. The American government was worried that the Germans would use helium to build war machines, so they forbade any company to sell helium to the Zeppelin company. So they used hydrogen instead; it provides more lift anyway, which allowed them to carry more passengers. I can foresee a plotline where the Baron (it's always a Baron, isn't it) has brought his airship/castle to America and tries to steal a quantity of helium to make it safer. Hijinks ensue.

 

As far as electrical attacks and lightning-filled clouds, well, static discharges can lead to the end of a hydrogen-filled airship. I'll avoid that for the time being. Of course, if that helium theft works, the PCs could have more difficulties the next time...

[BoloOfEarth]

One suggestion, though not for the zeppelin itself: have a huge base carved out of the side of a mountain. Nice and inaccessible, but the heroes can investigate the thefts of explosives from all over the region, maybe hear of odd blasting in the mountains, etc. If they haven't encountered the zeppelin yet, that would be an interesting way to see it for the first time, and if the location is not accessible by the team's plane, it allows for the Baron and his zeppelin to get away.

[BoloOfEarth]

Oh, as far as weaponry is concerned, how about a Wind Vortex Cannon (patent pending). I'm thinking a huge hull-mounted thing that is hard to aim, but sends a blast of air that, focused, does damage, or wide-spread (read: AE Cone), causes flight problems for airplanes and helicopters/gyrocopters (Flight and Gliding Dispel, only vs. wing/rotor craft; the pilot needs to make Combat Piloting rolls to recover from the stall and spin). Heck, turn the Cannon aft and it provides a brief burst of acceleration.

 

Of course, smoke projectors (white smoke to look like clouds) is another given.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by AlHazred

Vacuum-filled ships wouldn't work in RL.

1) Why not? A vaccuum is certainly lighter than any gas, so at least theoretically it should work. (The practical problems of a vaccuum chamber 500 feet long might be another issue entirely.)

 

2) You're worried about real life in a discussion of flying bases inhabited by a Nazi nobleman in a world with superheroes?

 

With a vaccuum-ship even if the hull gets breached they need only patch the holes and pump out the air. With hydrogen or helium airships the villains would need to find a sufficient supply of the gases, which might be difficult. Oh well, at least with a helium-filled ship you can make the heroes talk funny.

[RevHooligan]

Of course, you could use a fictional gas the Barron invented. Something with a silly name. Also, the idea of inviting the PCs to a ball onboard is too cool to not use, but maybe the zeppelin is soo big, they don't even realize they're in the air. The place will be all faux stone and walnut. The trick is getting them aboard...

[tmutant]

You could have the super-scientist evil Baron invent hydrogen fusion to produce helium. Then the heroes have to stop him from delivering the process to his Nazi masters in Germany. Maybe give him a lobotomy afterwards, and put him in an asylum, ala The Shadow.

[Twilight]

If you want some more ideas, I reccomend trying to find the episode of Batman: The Animated Series that featured Jonah Hex. The airship that R'as Al Ghul used in that episode sounds like just the thing you're looking for.

[The Monster]

I've run a zeppelin-based pulp JI campaign for years; I Know A Few Things About Zeppelins....

(but my wife knows more...)

 

Don't use hydrogen, unless you really want everyone to try to set in on fire - even if it wouldn't be that easy in RL, you'll get a big argument when someone tosses a match at it and it doesn't just go poof. Use helium or a fictional gas (or some totally rubber-science foofaraw like that vacuum ship). Note: the Hindenburg wasn't designed for hydrogen; some of the safety devices and procedures that would have been in place on an H2 ship were not on the Hindenburg. The only reason they didn't use helium was that the only source for it at the time was in the USA, and we wouldn't let Nazi Germany have access to such a strategic material (the government strategic helium reserve program wasn't shut down until a few years ago).

 

Now, about the ship...

 

My thought on rocket/jet fighters. Problem with the exhaust and thrust power involved (flame and pressure on a lighter-than-air frame). I'd stick with high-powered prop jobs, perhaps with some kind of V/STOL capability - maybe even Osprey-type rotating wings. Those could easily be launched from the top (historically, planes were launched & retrieved on hooks lowered from the bottom, so you could even have it both ways). This does give a bit more SHIELD-flavor, with a landing platform on top, but oh, well, not everything we do can be totally original. Crimson Skies has kewl pulpy planes for the period.

 

Gun/missile platforms of course, you seem to have tacticals well enough in hand. Bombs of course. With supers and wild pilots (a la Crimson Skies) you'd have to prepare for boarding actions; marines (aerines?) with some points in Swinging or even hang gliders/ultralights could be a surprise; there might even be deployable boarding nets for marines to use for climbing. Air torpedoes, etc.

 

IIRC the largest ships were some 800 feet long - btw, check out the American ships Akron and Macon, the finest military airships ever built; that's what I based my zeppelin on. Yours will have to be much larger to accomodate a real superbase.

Big prop engines along either side for thrust (the Akron had six, maybe 8, it's tired and I'm late), and there's little reason they couldn't swing up or down for further control - again, maybe too SHIELDish for you, but it makes too much sense. You'd have a loading bay with big power winches so that you don't have to go into hangar for resupply.

 

One big hint: go to Star Trek for ideas. It's what inspired my campaign. You have a big, independent ship with lots of people, well-armed, with defenses, weapons, engines, entertainment areas, crew quarters, galley, etc. Anything you see on ST will have its analog on this ship (OK, no holodeck, just a movie projector). Even the transporter could be paralleled with a small, fast winch which ferries up to six people to the ground . (Oh, that brings to mind the "cloud cars" - little one-man pods lowered from the zeppelin for observation, so the ship could remain hidden in the clouds while still keeping a lookout below.)

 

A ship which uses Captain Nemo's mysterious power source from 20,000 Leagues could fly forever without refueling. Solar power's another possibility. The idea of charging batteries from electrical storms has great possibilities for fun.

 

On weather: I recall a statement by the most successful airship captain ever, as to why he never crashed a ship: to the effect of : "I just flew around the storms instead of trying to go through them." If you can arrange weather control, even of a limited sort, you'd have a major advantage - really, even reliable weather prediction would have saved lives and ships in RL. That reminds me, be sure to put radar on it. Maybe it strikes you as a "duh" but it was a Really New Thing in the 30s, and only became deployable on an aircraft later in the war.

 

Even on a helium ship, there'd probably be a strong prejudice against smoking. To save weight, there'd be a constant sense of things being light or even flimsy, even if richly appointed. One ship (IIRC the H'burg) had a piano - made of aluminum to save weight. Intercabin walls would be little more than traditional Japanese wood/paper walls. Hardpoints of course would have some armor (gondola, auxiliary control room, forward gun emplacement...).

 

One interesting thing that happened IRL (I think it was the Shenandoah crash) was that when the ship broke apart, the tail section managed to land in one piece; the tail airfoils provided some semi-controlled semi-gliding capability which saved lives. The supervillain base might have that kind of thing designed in, so that the tail, gondola, and maybe even the nose can split off and come to a more or less safe landing. With a separate gondola, the nose might even be able to conduct independent flights and reattach, kind of like the Star Trek saucer. It would either operate as an unpowered balloon or have a small internal engine for thrust.

 

In my campaign, the people on board are divided into the airship crew itself and the staff - the latter being the various scientists, linguists, and other SMEs who don't actually run the ship systems. The whole thing is under the captain, but it allows the ship to operate as a military unit while the scientists conduct their research more or less separately, without assigning them ranks within the military ladder.

 

That should be quite enough for now. I can blather much longer of course (what gamer can't?), but it's time to get back to MOO3 before bed.

[BoloOfEarth]

Great post, TheMonster!

 

The Akron and Macon are definately must-check-out for a zeppelin flying base. I used them and the Hindenburg as partial inspiration for my modern Champions campaign fixture, an airship casino.

 

There was a website for a neat-looking airship design, at www.quantumaerostatics.com , but I can't seem to pull the site up right now. Basically, the frame was a geodesic design rather than the standard rib-and-ring frames. I can't remember when Buckminster Fuller's heyday was, but I think this could be applied in that time period. Their design also had no fins, instead relying on 30 rotatable engines for maneuverability. This allows higher maneuverability even at lower speeds, which fins don't provide. However, IMO it just didn't look quite right without the fins...

 

The big thing, if you're interested in reality, is keeping the frame's weight down. A super-alloy (like Lord Liaden suggested) could go a long way here. Also, increasing the diameter does wonders for increasing volume (and the lifting capacity for all that extra LTA gas).

 

The Hindenburg also had plastic fixtures (yes, plastic existed then -- the first plastic from cellulose was presented in 1862, and the first totally synthetic plastic was patented in 1907). I'd replace The Monster's wood/paper walls with wood/cloth walls, though, just to keep the PCs from running right through them.

 

BTW, I believe the Hindenburg's piano was an aluminum frame with cloth covering, to save even more weight. Also, the Hindenburg had a smoking room with an airlock-type entry and negative air pressure within the room, plus the only lighter or matches on the airship. (Passengers had to turn over all of theirs to the purser before boarding.)

 

There's lots of stuff on the web pointing out the pros of using hydrogen. It has more lifting capacity than helium (15% more by volume, IIRC), can be easily extracted, etc. The initial design for the Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin may have been for helium, but when the Germans couldn't get any from the US, they redesigned for hydrogen, taking advantage of this greater lifting capacity to add more internal passenger/crew area.

 

Also, if you use hydrogen to power the engines, you only have to return to the ground for food. (Use water condensers to collect water vapor.)

 

Actually, you can use both hydrogen and helium, since the lifting gas is held in multiple gas bags. (Hindy had 16 gas cells.) That way, if the players are the destructive types, you can say that the bag they're trying to light up is filled with helium. You don't need to tell them that only one of every three gas bags is helium-filled, and the others contain hydrogen...

[ChuckB]

Maybe have the zeppelin protected by valkyries on flying horses or something.

[SkyKnight]

I believe that some real-life designs called for multiple layers of gasbags. You can have inner gas bags loaded with Hydrogen and outer bags loaded with Helium. Even if they puncture the inner Hydrogen bags, they are surrounded with inert Helium and won't burn anyway. You could also put a pseudo-science fire retarding chemical into the Hydrogen to make it safer, or maybe mix it with Helium, which will make it much harder to reach flash point.

 

Maybe a good lifting source would be "Super-Ionic Lift Cells" which are charged by lightning and lift better than Hydrogen.

[Trebuchet]

Mentor recently ran a fun game in which his master-villain Master of the World and his superpowered henchmen were based in a giant airship. After a running fight through a Turkish palace (Don't ask.), the villains blew a hole through the ceiling of the palace and escaped to their tethered giant airship with MidGuard hot on their heels. Our two martial artists, Eagle Eye and Zl'f, leapt to catch the tether ropes and began climbing up to the airship in a scene wonderfully reminiscent of 30's pulp fiction. Only one of our available team, Silhouette, could fly and the team's teleporter, Lt. Kilroy (As in "Kilroy was Here") TP'd up through the bottom hatch of the gondola. Once we got inside the huge vehicle it was like something out of a Pink Panther movie, with heroes and villains ducking in and out of doors and hatches to hide and strike at each other. Outside, Silhouette couldn't punch through the metallized exterior, so she finally Desolidified through the hull and then went to full Density Increase (All 400Ktonnes) and did a high speed Move Through which succeeded in seriously damaging the airship. Then we heard a downward countdown begin: 30 seconds...29...28...27... We assumed it was a self destruct device, so after a frantic but unsuccessful scramble to find the bomb we finally abandoned ship at the count of 3. Much to our irritation, the countdown turned out to be not a self-destruct countdown but rather for the launching of the villains' rocket powered escape vehicle located in the tail of the airship, and hanging on to Silhouette hundreds of feet in the air we watched helplessly as they literally rocketed to safety, sans one member whom Zl'f had defeated and we had taken prisoner in the palace now miles away.

 

That was our second encounter with the Master of the World's goons (We've since had a third), and like the other encounters we've basically managed tactical victories but strategic draws each time we fight. (The developing rivalry between our brick Silhouette and their brick Fezzik is fast approaching legendary status.) We've managed to run them off and capture one each time, but the Master seems to have a steady supply of supervillains to fill vacancies in his ranks. They are a pretty tough team, and we haven't even seen him yet.

[Agent X]

Anybody seen floorplans for the dirigibiles? It's all well and good to see schematics that explain how they fly but I haven't been able to find any graphics of the space human beings actually used on the ships. This would be helpful for the AlHazred too I"m sure.