What is the history of earth day?

As a weapon of war, how practical are dirigibles at various points in Earth's history (medieval, industrial, present day, future, etc)?

• Airships baby. This is primarily a hypothetical, please feel free to embellish with hypothetical possibilities - particular armors, metals, etc. In case it wasn't evident from the question, this is a hypothetical, so what if there were airships in the dark ages, etc. How would that have gone, etc.

• Answer:

  Blimps would have some amazing properties that make them great for tools of war in most any age. Let's look at the Medieval period. Had it been possible to float above a battlefield an army with an "air force" would have the ability to reconnaissance terrain and battle situations, days even months faster than by a man on the ground riding a horse. Secondly these tools would have given capabilities to deliver fire bombs, the grandfather of the modern Molotov Cocktail down on enemy siege weapons that could break down your walls. More importantly is they could also effortlessly do this over a city as well. While they would lack the ability to actually take the city, they would have provided excellent information and harassing abilities (the same as modern air units.) In my wildest imagination I like to think of two medieval armies, both equipped with large airships, their only goal to fly higher and higher so that they could fire down upon the other and gain air supremacy, with arrows. You might see the advent of tiny blimps that could quickly rise above the larger "bombers" and take down enemy airships. It's an interesting thought. Later these tiny fighter blimps would ride across the skies of the battle raining down arrows like chariots of the sky. From this point on we actually do have blimps playing a role in warfare. I won't get into the industrial age and present, since they aren't hypothetical and rather well documented, particularly in World War I. What I would like to mention is a little known fact about blimps used in World War II. During many of the naval invasions, blimps were held by teams of Marines and soldiers who stormed the beaches. These blimps had the purpose of preventing enemy fighter aircraft from performing strafing runs on the invasion force. If a plane were to try and attack the soldiers on the ground, they ran the risk of becoming entangled in the cabling of the blimp. This was one of those super simple ideas that saved so many lives, but fell out of popular history for many. Blimps were used throughout much of World War II for other reasons, but this was my favorite and I wanted it mentioned. Skip ahead and we have fewer and fewer truly good roles for the blimp, but the near future might be cool. I see drone blimps as something that would likely produce a form of border watch patrol in the near future. These devices would be able to stay aloft for long periods of time, cheaply keeping watch of large regions with numerous watch and listening devices. They are eyes in the sky that everyone knows is there. Sometimes stealth is counterproductive. Often when you know you are being watched, you change your behavior. I image a net of drone blimps in places like the southern regions of Afghanistan where insurgents cross the hidden mountain passes from Pakistan. If their ability to detect movement, such as people crossing through a valley where no one has any business being, becomes powerful enough then it would stop a great deal of the problems we now have foot patrols. I would like to think that they would be able to slow down the enemy to such a snails pace that it became impractical to move. Sneaking around every step because of the blimps would make insurgency warfare such a burden that they would have to find yet another new way to do their business and block off one more route for attack.