The Airships
Lift-off
No place has played a more important role in the airship story than Lake Constance (called the Bodensee in German). Located in the kingdom of Württemberg near the borders between Germany, Switzerland and Austria, it was the setting for the dramatic story of the man whose name became synonymous with the airship.
Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin
In 1838, on the shores of the lake, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin was born into a world of wealth, privilege and revolution. As an ambitious young nobleman, he felt it his duty to serve in the military, and he distinguished himself as a cavalry officer in the Franco-Prussian war. But at the age of 52, his brilliant career was shattered. His forthright views on the Prussian military leadership saw him relieved of his command. He had no choice but to resign his commission.
Count Zeppelin: Pictures of his life
www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/Geschichte/Zeppelin/english/bio.htm
Short
biography of the count, illustrated by some quite fascinating photographs.
It was a huge psychological blow to a man for whom the army was everything. The king of Württemberg realised that the count (Graf) had been unfairly criticised. As a riposte to the central government and to the kaiser, he immediately appointed him ‘general in retirement’. As far as the count was concerned, this was pleasant but in no way made up for the blow that he had suffered. From that day in 1890, he decided that he would seek to regain his honour by developing for Germany a war-winning weapon.
An idea for a weapon
Zeppelin’s idea for the weapon came partly from the American Civil War. As an official observer on the Union side, he had witnessed the use of tethered balloons to gather information on enemy movement. According to broadcaster and historian Anthony Smith, ‘He thought, “Magnificent, you can see what the enemy is doing.” But he also thought, “Wouldn’t it be even more magnificent if you could drop bombs from them?”’
In 1884, Zeppelin heard that the French army had developed a dirigible balloon – that is, one that could be steered. Powered by a primitive electric engine, it was the first aircraft ever to fly and return to where it had taken off. It gave Germany’s traditional enemy a military advantage, one that, Zeppelin believed, had to be answered.
In the mid-1890s, the count lobbied the German military. He wanted financial help to build a gigantic flying machine – an airship. The idea was not only met with scepticism, Zeppelin was also derided as a fool. But his close friend, the king of Württemberg, considered him a visionary. The king provided land at Friedrichshafen on the north shore of Lake Constance where construction of a weapon that Zeppelin believed would make Germany the most formidable nation on earth could begin.
The first Zeppelins
In late 1898, local men employed by the count began building an enormous floating hangar to house a flying machine unlike anything then in existence. Without any engineering experience, and without even making a prototype, Zeppelin began constructing an airship more than 400 feet (122 metres) long – almost as big as a contemporary battleship. Unlike other dirigibles, it would have a revolutionary rigid frame made from aluminium. A cotton/linen material would cover the hull and 17 bags of hydrogen gas would provide the lift and two small Daimler engines the power.
In early July 1900, Zeppelin and his small crew removed their giant airship – the LZ1 (Luft Zeppelin1) – from the hangar and bravely set off into the unknown. It was by far the largest vehicle that had ever been in the air. However, although the first flight of the Wright brothers’ plane was still years away, the airship’s 3.5-mile flight failed to impress the German military.
With his finances exhausted, the count was forced to scrap the airship. Five years later, with funds provided by the king of Württemberg he was back with a second, improved design. During its trial flight, the LZ2 reached a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour, but it was dogged by engine failure. Then, within hours of a forced landing, it was completely destroyed by strong winds.
French successes
Devastated by the loss and considered a laughing stock by the military, Zeppelin considered abandoning his airship project, but French successes continued to haunt him. In 1901, Brazilian-born playboy Alberto Santos-Dumont astonished residents when he wheeled his non-rigid – that is, frameless – airship through the streets of Paris and then took to the skies.
Highlights in Aviation: Alberto Santos-Dumont, Brazil
www.smithsonianeducation.org/scitech/impacto/graphic/aviation/
alberto.html
Short
biography of the Brazilian aviation pioneer, on the Smithsonian Institution
website.
Even more worrying was a novel type of airship made by Paul and Pierre Lebaudy. Built with only a partial frame at the bottom of the envelope, the so-called ‘semi-rigid’ set a flight endurance record of almost three hours and was immediately purchased by the French military.
Progress with Air Ships
www.pinetreeweb.com/bp-baden-progress.htm
Article by Major B Baden-Powell
of the Scots Guards, brother of the Baden-Powell of Scouts fame, which first
appeared in the September 1903 issue of Illustrated
Scientific News. As well as describing Santos-Dumont’s non-rigid
airship, it has an extended discussion of the Lebaudy machine, complete
with photographs.
Zeppelin publicly vowed to press ahead and both outdo his foreign rivals and silence his critics. But he needed money – and mountains of it. With the help of national newspaper correspondent Hugo Eckener, he mounted a publicity campaign to capitalise on a groundswell of public sympathy that followed the loss of the LZ2. His fortunes immediately changed for the better with the offer of the proceeds of a national lottery, and a gift of a 100,000 marks from the kaiser. Spurred on by the support, Zeppelin set to work refining and perfecting his designs.
The 24-hour flight
Over the next two years, the count produced two spectacular airships. But would they convince the sceptics? Thousands of spectators flocked to witness their test flights.
The airships were a stunning success. While no European aeroplane had taken to the air for longer than 15 minutes, Zeppelin’s astonishing machines were flying for up to 12 record-breaking hours. Germany’s military commanders finally expressed interest in Zeppelin’s invention, but insisted it pass an almost impossible test before any orders would be placed. According to historian John Duggan, ‘The army demanded that there should be a 24-hour flight of 700 kilometres’ [435 miles] duration before they would start to place orders for airships.’
In 1908, the count took up the challenge of the 24-hour flight. It was an event which touched the heart of the nation and was later mythologised in the 1970 German TV film Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin.
‘As it travelled along the Rhine,’ says John Duggan, ‘special newspaper bulletins alerted the German people to the progress of this astonishing contraption that filled the sky. That the experience was phenomenal was demonstrated when the ship was obliged to land at Oppenheim because of a motor defect. Thousands gathered and, without any orchestration, began to sing “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles”.’
With its engine repaired, the ship took off, but soon there was more unfortunate news. The ship again had to land, this time at Echterdingen, near Stuttgart. It was arranged for the damaged engine to be repaired or replaced by the nearby Mercedes works. The count, who had been travelling in the airship, went to the local hotel, leaving the airship in the control of the military who had been quickly summoned to the scene. Then a storm sprang up, the airship was whisked into the air, dashed to the ground and burnt to a cinder.
‘A secular miracle’
‘Then took place what can only be described as a secular miracle,’ says John Duggan. ‘Without any prompting or any organisation, people from all walks of life across Germany offered money to keep Zeppelin’s airship dream alive. Individuals, school classes, workers in factories and business itself – they contributed some six million marks, thus ensuring the financial future and the capability of developing future Zeppelins. The intriguing thing is the enthusiasm within the German people for this vehicle, for this idea and for the count himself.’
Count Zeppelin had become the most popular figure in Germany, a fact not lost on the nation’s leader. Travelling to the count’s premises at Friedrichshafen, the kaiser bestowed on him Prussia’s highest award and placed an order for a military airship. After two decades, Zeppelin’s honour had been restored. In addition, according to one of his descendants, Wolfgang von Zeppelin, ‘Count Zeppelin was a very religious man and so was convinced that he had been chosen to build the airship.’
Overnight the Zeppelin company was transformed into the world’s first military aircraft industry. Piece by piece, millions of parts came together to form the technological manifestation of German inventiveness and ingenuity – a spectacular symbol of aeronautic power that no other country could match.
World’s first commercial airline
By now, the French had largely abandoned airships in favour of planes, but other inventors across Europe and in the United States joined the airship race. Few could afford to build large, rigid airships like Zeppelin. Instead they constructed, with varied success, semi-rigid and frameless varieties. Some even offered joy rides to raise funds. It was an idea that hadn’t escaped the Zeppelin Company.
In 1909, Zeppelin’s business manager Alfred Colsman decided to cash in on the popularity of the airship and begin taking passengers. He started the world’s first commercial airline company – DELAG, Deutsche Luftschifffahrts Aktiengesellschaft – which would purchase new airships and offer flights between the nation’s major cities. Zeppelin’s brilliant publicist and adviser Hugo Eckener was soon flying the ships and overseeing flight operations. But the uncertainties of the weather made it impossible to schedule regular flights. Instead, it became more profitable to run short but expensive tourist flights over the countryside.
However, DELAG had a disastrous start: its first three airships made only 60 flights between them before coming to grief in accidents. Miraculously, no one was killed and the lessons learned forced improvements in airship design. Over the next three years, more than 10,000 passengers were carried over 100,000 miles in complete safety. But in the summer of 1914, the blossoming Zeppelin enterprise was curtailed by a much greater catastrophe.
The outbreak of war
At the outbreak of the First World War in August, Germany and the opposing Allied nations of Europe boasted powerful armed forces. In its scope and horror, this war would be unlike any preceding it, a war in which technology would dominate.
But at the outset of hostilities, the German military had only eight operational airships. An urgent order was placed for dozens of new machines from Zeppelin and its smaller competitor Schütte-Lanz. Both companies were forced to combine the best of their technologies and reduce construction time. As the war progressed, a new breed of larger super-airships evolved with more powerful engines and lighter frames made of duralumin, a new aluminium alloy.
The German Navy believed that airships, with their extended range, would provide an advantage over Britain in being able to scout during naval manoeuvres and battles. But the count pressed the military to use them as the spearhead of Germany’s attack. ‘Count Zeppelin revealed his true colours,’ says airship historian Douglas Botting. ‘He just wanted to annihilate the British, using the Zeppelin as a bomber.’ Loaded with five tons of bombs, the count said, an airship would become a flying battleship that could strike at the heart of the enemy.
Bombing Britain
The kaiser initially vacillated over bombing Britain – after all, its king, George V, was his cousin. But from January 1915 on, he authorised missions unprecedented in the history of warfare: in the dark of night, Zeppelins would cross the Channel and strike at British targets. ‘This was the birth of strategic bombing,’ says naval historian Eric Grove. ‘This was the birth of modern, total war.’
Over the coming months, hundreds of civilians were killed or maimed in attacks across Britain and on London itself. ‘Suddenly, people began to feel vulnerable in a way they hadn’t done before,’ says Grove. ‘Warfare was spreading from the front line to normal civilian houses. And this psychological effect was what the airships’ owners were trying to achieve.’
Unsurprisingly the British press generated even more anxiety, using terms such as ‘the baby killers’. The British government capitalised on the propaganda value of the Zeppelin raids. ‘When the airships raided Britain,’ says Anthony Smith, ‘they were said to be the best recruiting agent there had ever been. There were awful pictures of a bomb hitting, say, a woman and a child, with the caption: “Are you going to stand by while this sort of thing is happening?”’
First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, considered the Zeppelins easy targets. He mocked them as enormous bladders of explosive gas that Britain’s new fighter planes would easily destroy. But as British pilots discovered, the airships were better armed than they were, and hydrogen gas, although volatile, was almost impossible to ignite with conventional ammunition. Britain’s armaments manufacturers set to work on developing special ammunition that would explode after penetrating an airship’s gas cells.
Fighting back
Germany’s daring airship men were determined to stay one step ahead of British ground and aerial defences. They developed high-altitude Zeppelins, equipped with observation cars that could be slung below the clouds by cable and render the mother ship invisible to the enemy below. ‘The Zeppelins came from above, from 6,000 metres [19,685 feet],’ says airship historian Heinz Urban, ‘and then let down the observation car. The crew man telephoned up and said, “Drop the bombs.” And below they said, “That’s impossible – there are no Zeppelins.”’
But the turning point came in late 1916 when British biplanes armed with new incendiary and exploding bullets downed two German airships.
Eric Artiss witnessed it as a six-year-old child: ‘There was a little cheer as the whole thing burst into flames. I was asleep at the time … and they woke me up and said, “There’s a Zeppelin on fire. Would you like to come and see it?” Well, it was the first time we’d seen any enemy aircraft at all. And to have one relatively close and to be caught up in flames like that – it’s the scene that has stayed in my memory more, I suppose, than any other in my whole life.’
As the war dragged on, growing numbers of airships on bombing raids across Europe and over Britain failed to return to base. One of the Zeppelins crash-landed in an Essex field, the captain setting the ship alight to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. But it wasn’t completely destroyed, and the remains provided the British with much-needed technical information for their own airship programme.
Britain’s blimps
Indeed, from the outset of the war, the Royal Navy had seen potential in the airship, but Britain was many years behind Germany in technical expertise. A handful of rigid airships were built but played little practical role in the conflict. Far more important to the war effort was Britain’s large fleet of blimps.
Speed of construction was paramount. Using a simple frameless design and slinging the fuselage of an ordinary aeroplane beneath it, a blimp could be built and tested in less than two weeks.
These non-rigid airships were used for a range of purposes. What they were most useful for was anti-submarine patrol. By starving Allied troops of ammunition and supplies, the German U-boat was proving an important weapon and a major strategic threat. But with as many as 100 blimps hunting them down, Britain began to neutralise the undersea raiders.
‘A submarine of this generation that has dived is an immobile submarine – it can’t continue its attack,’ says Eric Grove. ‘But particularly in the context of convoys, if a blimp is escorting a convoy, that convoy is virtually completely safe. So the blimps played an absolutely key role in the defeat of the U-boat in First World War.’
Enter Hugo Eckener
At war’s end, the victors met at Versailles to mete out their revenge on Germany and her allies. There appeared little doubt that all of Germany’s surviving airships would be confiscated as part of war reparations. To prevent their beloved Zeppelins falling into enemy hands, some of the ground crews destroyed them in their hangars. At Friedrichshafen, the Zeppelin Company braced itself for a bleak future. Its wartime workforce was cut from more than 13,000 to a few hundred.
With the loss of Count Zeppelin – who had died in 1917 – former publicist and chief pilot Hugo Eckener (1868-1954) became the driving force behind the company’s push for survival.
Hugo Eckener
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Eckener
Short biography of the
aviation pioneer, from the Wikipedia.
‘He had a very big challenge in front of him,’ says airship historian Dennis Kromm. ‘The Zeppelin was hated by people around the world. He had to get the whole subject of the military weapon and “baby killer” off the table as quickly as possible if he was going to be able to build ships and run a viable company.’
Using leftover parts from the war, Eckener began building airships for Zeppelin’s pre-war commercial passenger service, DELAG. These new ships would not be for tourism, but purpose-built for domestic and ultimately international flights. The first airship, christened Bodensee, was the smallest but most beautiful Zeppelin yet created. ‘This was a source of enormous pride to the German in the street after all the vicissitudes of World War I,’ says Dennis Kromm. ‘In Friedrichshafen they were building these symbols and they were moving forward. Hugo Eckener was picking up from Count Zeppelin and carrying this thing forward.’
The first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic
Along with its sister ship Nordstern, Bodensee made daily flights between Friedrichshafen, Berlin and Munich, with almost every flight booked solid. But it was not to last. ‘The Bodensee in particular was highly successful in providing a commuter service,’ says John Duggan. ‘However, the Allies perceived both of these airships, small though they were, as potential military airships. Just as the Zeppelin Company seemed to have put the war behind it, France and Britain demanded that the new DELAG airships be confiscated as reparations for the war. The most obvious consequence was that Germany was forbidden to build or operate aircraft, including airships. It also provided for the destruction of the airship bases and the dismantlement of airship sheds.’ In desperation, the Zeppelin Company was forced to retool its machinery to make aluminium pots and pans.
The British were eager to deny Germany airships, but not only as revenge for the war – they wanted to capitalise on their commercial potential. What was to come would stun Germany and capture the imagination of the world.
Using design technology gained from downed Zeppelins, British engineers created two spectacular airships. At more than 640 feet (195 metres) long, the first was three times the length of a modern 747 and the largest yet built. In late June 1919, a second airship, the R34, was equipped for the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic by an aircraft. A few weeks earlier, a US naval flying boat had made the crossing to England but with refuelling stops along the way.
On 2 July, the R34 set off for New York from an airbase in Scotland. If it was successful, it would hopefully pave the way for a service linking the British Commonwealth with airships. Four-and-a-half days later, the R34 landed on Long Island, breaking the official world endurance record for powered flight. While the R34 drifted over the landing field, an officer descended by parachute to instruct the ground crew in the unfamiliar technique of hauling down a big airship.
Using copied Germany technology, and thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, Britain could now lay claim to being the leading airship nation. But it was not to last.
The Americans join the race
The United States was also eager to exploit the rigid airships, but not for commercial reasons. The Navy wanted to employ them like Germany had during the war, as aerial scouts for its blue water fleets. In 1919, the US Congress was convinced by the British Admiralty to fund the purchase of two massive airships, but it was to be far from smooth sailing.
First off the drawing board was the USS Shenandoah, the first American-built rigid airship. Like her British competition, it was a pirated copy of a German Zeppelin – in this case, the LZ49, which had been forced down in France during the war. But in terms of safety, the Shenandoah was unique: rather than combustible hydrogen gas, it was inflated with helium, a non-flammable gas. The only known sources of helium in the world were naturally occurring vents in Texas and Kansas. If it hadn’t been for helium scarcity and the United States’ reluctance to share it, the fate of many airships might have been completely different.
‘The Shenandoah became the first great American airship to ignite the public,’ says Dennis Kromm. ‘People were standing on rooftops, leaning out of windows, ships’ sirens sounded in the harbour, and there was an almost childlike glee at this wonderful new thing.’
For its second airship, the US Navy went straight to the builders of the record-breaking R34. The order came as a godsend to the British government. Budget cuts were threatening to force the scrapping of an airship being built at Cardington in Bedfordshire – the R38 – which now could be completed and sold for a profit. There was even hope that the sale would lead to further American orders and establish Britain as a premier builder and exporter of airships.
The R38 disaster
But the largest airship yet created was to prove a disaster, not only for her builders, but for Britain’s international prestige. In August 1921, the newly completed R38 set off into thickening fog towards the River Humber, on a final test flight. Its design was a copy of high-altitude wartime Zeppelins. A lightweight frame allowed maximum performance in thin air. However, its strength in heavy air at low altitudes had not been questioned.
‘Although we had made smaller airships and then advanced a little,’ says Anthony Smith, ‘we still didn’t have that magic expertise, and I think that was the fundamental fault. We tried to get in on the act too fast. And then there was disaster.
‘The R38 broke up, apparently because people hadn’t done the sums correctly [and hadn’t taken account of] the stresses involved when you turn a corner. For heaven’s sake, you know you’re going to turn a corner in airships! And then the thing broke in two and killed lots and lots of people.’
Of the 49 men on board, 44 died in the disaster, including the chief designer and the cream of British and American airshipmen. Only one of 16 Americans survived. The memorial service was reminiscent of those following the sinking of the Titanic, the public mourning not only the airmen but also an overly optimistic faith in gigantic technologies.
What the public didn’t know was that Britain has shunned the Zeppelin Company’s offer to share its knowledge in return for their participation in post-war aviation. As Britain had discovered, it was a dangerous game for the inexperienced, and following the disaster, all work on British airships was suspended.
Exploiting a loophole
The news of the crash of Britain’s R38 and the United States’ need for a second airship were difficult for Zeppelin’s Hugo Eckener to ignore. But under the Treaty of Versailles, Zeppelin was no longer allowed to build airships. The US, however, was not a signatory to the treaty and was still owed an airship by Germany as reparations for the war. It was a loophole that Eckener knew he had to exploit if Count Zeppelin’s dream machine was to survive.
‘The great problem,’ says John Duggan. ‘was to persuade France and Britain to allow such an airship to be built. Eckener – using the publicity skills he had learned as a student of the behavioural psychologist Wilhelm Wundt [1832-1920] – articulated the idea that Germany should not be deprived of its livelihood and that it had every right to construct an airship. This did not sit well with the government in Berlin who feared that Eckener’s activities and words of would upset the Allies, to the disadvantage of Germany. But eventually the commission was forthcoming.’
For both Zeppelin and Germany, this was likely to be the last opportunity to show the world the technical superiority of their airships. Indeed the craft that Zeppelin now built for the Americans was designed to be the most extraordinary yet conceived. At 658 feet (200 metres) long and with a capacity of 2.5 million cubic feet, it eclipsed all that had gone before. And its five 12-cylinder engines theoretically could take it a quarter of the way around the globe without stopping.
‘This wonderful ship made a trip around Germany so that Zeppelin could show it off to the people of Germany,’ says Dennis Kromm, ‘because there was no guarantee that they would be able to build another. This could have well have been the end of the Zeppelin story in Germany.’ According to John Duggan, ‘excitement, amazement – idolatry almost – emerged from the German people. They were proud of the new ship but devastated that it had to be, as they saw it, “given away” to the United States.’
The Los Angeles
In mid-October 1924, Zeppelin’s brilliant new creation headed off into the morning mist, bound for North America. For Hugo Eckener, it was the gamble of his life. The ship was uninsured and he was obliged to lodge the company’s entire assets as guarantee of its safe arrival. If it was forced down into the cold, unforgiving waters of the north Atlantic, there would be little likelihood of survival for Eckener and his crew.
And it was far from an uneventful flight. Using skills learned as a sailor, Eckener predicted atmospheric changes that could have dramatically reduced his speed. If he had maintained his course, the airship would have run out of fuel, but Eckener continually adjusted his course and prevented disaster. ‘He became the world’s greatest master of handling these very complex flying vehicles,’ says Douglas Botting. ‘His crew would say, “If he says it’s going to rain, or there’s going to be a storm, there will be storm because the weather wouldn’t dare be anything else.”’
Eighty-one hours and 5,000 miles later, the airship – soon to be named Los Angeles – cruised over Manhattan. It had completed the fastest journey either by air or sea between the old and the new worlds. And, combined with its ownership of the Shenandoah, the United States was now the leading airship nation.
‘It was one of the great airship transoceanic epics,’ says Kromm. ‘It was covered in great detail by the press as the magnificent thing it was. As it arrived in Lakehurst, New Jersey, at the new airship facility at the naval air station there, Eckener became a heroic figure in America overnight, probably doing as much towards healing the wounds between the two countries as any single figure could have done. Even his government had to recognise that Eckener had done something for the country that no one else could really have done.’
‘Dr Eckener was a hero figure of the hour,’ says Duggan, ‘and by extension, Germany was reinstated among the nations of the world.’
Navy Lakehurst Historical Society
www.nlhs.com
Has a detailed history of the airship station at Lakehurst,
New Jersey, plus the stories of the Shenandoah, Los Angeles, Akron and Hindenburg,
accompanied by lots of photographs.
