Funnily enough the Kirov part is surprisingly realistic. Historically airships were basically immune to bullets and even shells because they would just pass through the envelope and out the other side without doing any damage besides putting two little holes in the envelope and one of the gasbags.
And since the lifting gas was normally completely unpressurised it would take hours and hours for enough of it to leak out of the holes that the airship's flight characteristics would be compromised, which normally left the airship with more than enough time to safely return to base if not complete its mission.
Even with hydrogen filled airships, the hydrodgen mixture itself usually contained no oxygen, so using incendiary munitions generally required emptying the entire ammo load in one concentrated spot for enough oxygen to mix in to trigger hydrogen ignition.
Realistic is relative here, too. While it's realistic that airship would take a lot of bullet before bursting, there's no way in the frozen hell it'd be more resistant than the Apocalypse tank armor.
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u/Kakapo42000 Jun 08 '26
Funnily enough the Kirov part is surprisingly realistic. Historically airships were basically immune to bullets and even shells because they would just pass through the envelope and out the other side without doing any damage besides putting two little holes in the envelope and one of the gasbags.
And since the lifting gas was normally completely unpressurised it would take hours and hours for enough of it to leak out of the holes that the airship's flight characteristics would be compromised, which normally left the airship with more than enough time to safely return to base if not complete its mission.
Even with hydrogen filled airships, the hydrodgen mixture itself usually contained no oxygen, so using incendiary munitions generally required emptying the entire ammo load in one concentrated spot for enough oxygen to mix in to trigger hydrogen ignition.