The Airships
Forced landing
At the beginning of the 1930s, only Germany and the United States remained in the airship business. The loss of the R101 had ended Britain’s plans for a fast Imperial Air Service linking its dominions, and confirmed the worst fears of critics – that airships were unreliable, uncommercial and unsafe.
The search for finance
Zeppelin chief Hugo Eckener disagreed vehemently. His company had built more than 100 airships for military and commercial use. And outside of war, no passenger had ever been injured – let alone killed – on a Zeppelin. His groundbreaking flight around the world in the Graf Zeppelin in 1929 had demonstrated the potential of the airship as a long-range aircraft.
Eckener set out to raise finance for an international airship line, but with the world reeling from the Wall Street crash, he found it impossible to find backers. ‘I suppose the time was wrong – this was the Great Depression,’ says broadcaster and historian Anthony Smith. ‘The idea of anybody putting money into what the press were so keen on calling “gasbags” was just wrong.’
Zeppelin’s saving grace was its partnership with the American rubber and tyre manufacturer Goodyear, based in Akron, Ohio. In 1928, Goodyear Zeppelin finally won an $8 million contract to build two huge airships for the US Navy. To house them, the company constructed a massive air dock designed by Karl Arnstein, who had moved to Akron with 12 other Zeppelin designers and engineers. Its hemispherical doors were revolutionary, eliminating turbulence that could damage airships entering or leaving the dock.
The Akron
By 1930, construction was well underway on the first of the airships – soon to be named Akron. With the economic crash reverberating around the country, hundreds of unemployed men found jobs constructing the largest flying machine yet conceived. At almost 800 feet (244 metres) long and with a gas capacity of 6.5 million cubic feet, it dwarfed the Graf Zeppelin.
Akron was the first airship especially designed for helium rather than highly explosive hydrogen gas. ‘Airships in Europe were inflated with hydrogen, which has the risk of going up in flames,’ says historian Eric Brothers. ‘But the United States was uniquely positioned in having helium, which is a safe inert gas that doesn’t burn and which was considered in many circles the perfect lifting gas for airships. You didn’t have to run the risk of fire any more on large airships, which was also a psychological disincentive to passenger airships.’
The 8th of August 1931 was declared a public holiday in Akron. It was the day Lou Henry Hoover, wife of the US president, came to christen what one journalist called ‘the biggest flying contraption in the world’.
First aircraft carriers of the skies
The Akron and its sister ship Macon – now under construction – were to be deployed as scouts for the battle fleets of the US Navy. Their ability to travel long distances at high speed would enable them to observe enemy fleet movements.
Another striking innovation enhanced their range: the ability to launch and retrieve planes while in flight, making them the world’s first aircraft carriers of the skies. ‘And with the American ability to make everything as complicated as possible,’ says Dennis Kromm, ‘they decided they would carry not just one or two such planes, but have the capability to carry as many as five.’
During scouting missions, the planes could be launched and retrieved by their ‘mother ship’ in flight. In this way, the eyes of the fleet would be extended thousands of square miles. In those years, there was no radar, and these aeroplanes would spot enemy ships and radio back to the mother (air)ship, which would radio back to the fleet.
In their lower hulls, behind the control cars, the Akron and Macon each had a very large aeroplane hangar with a retractable door. Once a plane was retrieved and brought up into the hangar bay via a trapeze-like contraption, it was shunted off into one of the four corners by a trolley system. Initially they planned to hang one plane from the trapeze itself, but then thought better of it when they realised that, if that plane became incapacitated for any reason, they would have to chop it off the trapeze, and thus losing it, so that they could launch the other planes. So, in practice, they only carried four at any one time.
Teething troubles
‘The naval hierarchy did not always appreciate that, at this stage, the airship was largely an experimental platform,’ says Rick Zitarosa, ‘and that there were teething troubles and certain periods of evolution that would have to be gone through before it could deliver on its performance.
‘One of the problems was that a great many things were promised of the airship, and now that massive expenditure had been made, people wanted to see results. It was in this environment that Rear Admiral William Moffett, chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, often complicated things by sending the airships on publicity missions, rather than actually forcing them to go out to sea and develop tactics for operating with the fleet.’
Wherever it went, the Akron attracted publicity – but not always the sort that Admiral Moffett desired. In 1932, while the airship was attempting to moor, a gust of wind swept it skyward so suddenly that three men in the ground crew were pulled high into the air. Two of the men fell to their deaths. The third crewman hung on and was saved. ‘This was all caught on film,’ says Dennis Kromm. ‘Watching men die on a newsreel rather sickened the American public. They began to think that maybe Zeppelin fever wasn’t such a good disease to have.’
The Akron and Macon crashes
In early April 1933, after 18 months in operation, the Akron left Lakehurst on a mission over the Atlantic to calibrate radio direction finders. The trip was the result of pushing by those in the Navy who felt that the ship’s crew needed to get in more flying time. Admiral Moffett unwittingly helped make sure that the ship would fly by deciding he would go on board, just for the fun of flying in it.
Around midnight, Akron was caught in a violent storm. At full speed, it hit turbulent air and lost altitude and its tail smashed into the sea. ’Unfortunately, the Akron got caught in what nowadays might be considered a microburst,’ says Eric Brothers. ‘Since they were flying only a few hundred feet above the water, it is believed that a strong down gust pushed the stern of the airship into the Atlantic – a catastrophe from which the airship could not recover. It was even more tragic because there were no life vests on board. Of the 76 crew members, there were only three survivors. The remaining, including Admiral Moffett, died of drowning or exposure in the cold north Atlantic.’
William Adger Moffett, Rear Admiral, US Navy
www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wamoffet.htm
Admiral
Moffett’s entry on the website maintained by Arlington National
Cemetery, the US military cemetery just outside Washington DC, where the
admiral is buried. Includes a good account of the Akron disaster
plus a photograph of a letter with a special postmark announcing the ‘Akron Memorial
Services’.
A similar fate was to befall Akron’s sister ship Macon. In February 1935, it was returning to Sunny Vale, California after exercises with the Pacific fleet. It ran into fog, rain and low visibility and was then struck by a severe gust of wind. It crashed, but this time, all but two of the 83 men on board were rescued.
This catastrophe was put down to the fact that structural reinforcements at the rear of the airship had not been completed before the mission. Seventy years on, the Macon’s wreckage in the ocean off Point Sur, California, remains stark testimony to the demise of the US rigid airship programme.
Graf Zeppelin to South America
In the early 1930s, the Graf Zeppelin remained the most successful long-distance aircraft in the world. But Hugo Eckener knew that he had to keep it in the public eye if his plan for a fleet of Zeppelins flying the globe was ever to be realised. With short passenger- and mail-carrying flights throughout Europe, he raised enough money to keep the Graf in operation and pay her crew. He also flew it to the Middle East, and even made a polar expedition. On board were scientists and 50,000 items of mail – which helped pay for the journey.
But Eckener had an even bolder idea. If it worked, it not only would benefit his company, but would also offer German exporters and importers a commercial edge. His plan? South America.
In 1931, Eckener launched the world’s first non-stop passenger and mail flights to Brazil. It was a smart commercial decision, and it also had an enormous political impact in a region dominated by France. ‘As far as intercontinental travel was concerned, it was South America – and, in particular, Brazil – that was always the target of the Zeppelin Company,’ says historian John Duggan. ‘There were German communities – the social link. There were also German businesses strongly represented, particularly in Brazil. And then in the background, as far as Germany itself was concerned, there was the lurking political influence to make the presence of Germany felt in a part of the world where hitherto France had been pre-eminent.’
French officials reported the Graf Zeppelin’s stunning success to Paris and questioned whether France’s massive investment in South America had been in vain as the German airship now commanded the skies over Rio, Buenos Aries and Recife.
Eckener and the Nazis
Wherever Hugo Eckener’s flying machine went, it was difficult not to have some political effect. But in coming years, Dr Eckener himself would become embroiled in a far more serious political game that would ultimately impact on the entire world. ‘He was seen as an independent figure,’ says John Duggan, ‘a much respected figure. But there were those in Germany who resented the fact that he was seeking – as they saw it – to fly not only the airship but also the ship of state.’
In Berlin, politics began to move from the debating chamber on to the streets. Germany was being torn between Hitler’s National Socialists on the right and the Communists on the left. Hugo Eckener argued for a middle way. ‘He spoke out against both extremes, so that, in due course, it was perhaps no surprise when a newspaper headline carried the question: “After Hindenburg, will it be Hitler or will it be Eckener?” And it was this one newspaper article, probably more than anything else, that created in the mind of Hitler a downright opposition to and even hatred of Dr Eckener.’
In January 1933, it was Hitler, not Eckener, who was appointed chancellor of Germany. The new Führer stepped up German re-armament, and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels appealed to the population’s desire to regain national pride. To help inspire his fellow citizens, Goebbels turned to the one internationally acclaimed symbol of German greatness – the Zeppelin.
The birth of the Hindenburg
Hitler had no love for Eckener and no love of the airship, but he understood its potential as a propaganda instrument. In the summer of 1934, the Nazi government supplied funds to the Zeppelin Company to speed up construction of an airship being built at Friedrichshafen. It was to be massively larger and more luxurious than any airship before and would become the most infamous of them all – the LZ129 Hindenburg, named after the World War I military hero who became Germany’s president (and appointed Hitler as chancellor).
At 800 feet (244 metres) in length, it was almost as long as the Titanic. The massive structure weighed 242 tons and relied on lightweight girders made from the aluminium alloy, duralumin. Designed for north Atlantic air travel, its hold could carry thousands of mail items and even a motor car or a small plane. Up to 60 crew were quartered along the main keel, and its 50 passengers were accommodated in 25 cabins, all with hot and cold running water. With separate dining, lounge and writing rooms, Hindenburg’s passenger space and amenities still remain unmatched on today’s aircraft.
But there was one disappointment for Hugo Eckener. Rather than helium gas, Hindenburg would be filled with volatile hydrogen – all seven million cubic feet of it. The US – the world’s only supplier of helium – didn’t want to give up either its commercial or military advantage. Eckener’s ambitious rival within the Zeppelin Company, Captain Ernst Lehmann, endorsed the Nazi’s response to the American rebuff. According to Gordon Vaeth, Lehmann said, ‘Even if the United States would sell us helium for our new airship, the Hindenburg, we wouldn’t want it because this is the day of the greater Third Reich, and we are not dependent on any other nation for anything, and we’re going to show the world that that’s the way it is.’
An advertisement for the Third Reich
And show the world they did. With the new national symbol – the swastika – emblazoned on its vertical fins, the Hindenburg finally emerged from its hangar in March 1936. The world’s largest aircraft would be a floating advertisement both for Germany’s superior technology and the Third Reich.
‘Within a matter of weeks of it emerging from its hangar,’ says John Duggan, ‘Hindenburg – along with the Graf Zeppelin – was chartered by propaganda minister Goebbels to fly the length and breadth of Germany, dropping leaflets, playing martial music, relaying speeches from specially installed loudspeakers – all enjoining the population to vote in favour of Hitler’s policy of remilitarisation of the Rhineland.’ Next it was used for the Olympic Games in 1936 – a huge showcase for Hitler and for the new order. The Hindenburg flew over the opening ceremonies to show the flag and welcome the world to Berlin.
The chartering of the airships for propaganda infuriated Hugo Eckener, but how they were used was now beyond his control. Flight operations had been taken over by a government company jointly managed by Eckener’s former protégé and now Nazi sympathiser Ernst Lehmann. Adding insult to injury, Eckener received disturbing news from a reporter during a flight on the Hindenburg to Rio: because of his disparaging comments about the Nazi regime, Goebbels had banned the German press from mentioning Eckener’s name.
Eckener considered seeking political asylum in the United States rather than live under Hitler, but he decided to stay in Germany to do what he could to save his company – and his airships.
A concept whose time had come
In its first season, the Hindenburg proved itself a wonderful success. As well as business executives, its passenger list often boasted millionaires, diplomats and show business personalities. Some 1,700 passengers voyaged on seven return flights from Frankfurt to Rio and 10 across the north Atlantic to the United States. International travel by airship was a concept whose time had come.
‘Most of the passengers on the north Atlantic route were American nationals,’ says John Duggan. ‘They paid in US dollars – vital to the National Socialist regime who needed to use such dollars for the import of strategically important raw materials.’
‘The Hindenburg,’ says Richard van Treuren, ‘being the first airship that was large enough to carry enough fare-paying passengers, had the possibility of earning its keep. So it is a very significant airship in that it showed the way by which a commercial operator could actually make a return on investment.’
In early May 1937, the Hindenburg underwent final preparations for a flight to the US. Much was riding on its ability to stick to its schedule and arrive on time. ‘Until it could demonstrate a regular scheduled service,’ says John Duggan, ‘neither France nor Great Britain would sign up for a mail contract, and neither would the business community, which had deadlines to meet, come to rely on the ship.’
But in a matter of days, the world’s largest aircraft would be destroyed in one of the most infamous disasters of the 20th century.
The Hindenburg’s final flight
Werner Franz was a cabin boy on that flight: ‘I was looking after the officers and the captain on board. I served the officers their breakfast, lunch and dinner, and did all the things a steward did for passengers.’
The fare was $400 one way – equivalent to the cost of a motor car. But this was by far the most exclusive way to cross the north Atlantic. On board was the largest family group yet to fly on the Hindenburg – the Doehners. Herr Doehner’s home movies would become a remarkable record of a young family’s last, fateful journey together.
Throughout the flight, the Hindenburg battled headwinds and was forced to detour to avoid storms. But even in rough weather, passengers were struck by the steadiness of the ship. According to Werner Franz, ‘The trip was so smooth, it was as if one was sitting at the table. Or moving around at home. There was no swaying or turbulence that I noticed.’
By the time it reached New York, the Hindenburg was seriously behind schedule. Its landing at nearby Lakehurst was delayed even further when news came through that a thunderstorm was lingering in the vicinity. Just after 7pm, the airship made its final approach.
‘Oh, the humanity!’
‘The ship prepared for landing at a height of 80 metres [262 feet],’ remembers Werner Franz. ‘The mooring lines were dropped as usual. Shortly after the ropes hit the ground, there was a big shaking on the ship.’
The awful moment was captured forever in a recording by Herb Morrison, a reporter for WLS radio in Chicago:
It’s burst into flames. Oh my, get out of the way, please! It’s bursting into flames. This is the worst catastrophe that the world … Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers … I can’t talk to people … It’s, it’s, it’s, a – Oh! I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sorry.
Hindenburg airship goes up in flames
http://hearitnow.umd.edu/1937.htm
Listen
to a recording of Herb Morrison’s heart-rending report of
the Hindenburg disaster.
Hindenburg explodes
www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=prelinger&
collectionid=hindenberg_explodes
Stills
and silent film footage from Castle and Pathé coverage of
the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst. Also shots of the big ships
over New York.
Meanwhile cabin boy Franz was in danger: ‘I sat down and stamped my feet through the gangway till I saw the ground coming up towards me through the hole. And I jumped out. In these moments, my life just rushed past me, like in a film. I was so agitated that I broke into hysteria and just ran away.’
John Iannaccone was a member of the US Navy ground crew: ‘We ran towards the ship, and when we got up to the passenger compartment, there was a couple of passengers still in there. And this other fella and I, we told them, “It’s time to get out,” and told them to get moving.
‘I saw one man jump out of the nose up there – at least 500 feet [152 metres] – he jumped out and he got killed. And the man who stayed in there, when he got out of the ship – he stayed until it hit the ground – and he walked out, all he had on was his shoes. He was burnt from his heels right up to his hair. Everything was gone – skin, clothes, everything.’
In all, 36 people lost their lives. Sixty-two survived, including Werner Franz. Of the Doehner family, father and daughter perished.
Hindenburg disaster
http://history1900s.about.com/cs/disasters/a/hindenburgcrash.htm
Concise article on the catastrophe at the Lakehurst airship station in
New Jersey in 1937.
The cause of the accident
Thousands came to the quayside at New York to pay their respects. Questions were being asked: Was it sabotage, an attack on the Third Reich? Hugo Eckener sailed from Germany to give evidence at the enquiry into the disaster.
‘Eckener had a very big problem on his hands,’ says Dennis Kromm. ‘He knew that it would take only a few sentences in an official enquiry report to damage for ever his entire enterprise, perhaps to the point where it would never recover. There was, initially, in his mind a thought of sabotage, but he ultimately rejected that when he heard the full report of all those who had witnessed it, and all those who talked about it.’
There were many theories put to the enquiry, but in its conclusion, the commission agreed with Eckener – that the ship had been leaking hydrogen and a spark of static electricity had caused the volatile gas to ignite.
‘So the cause of the accident may have been a spark here or a spark there,’ says John Duggan. ‘But the background to the whole thing was the need to demonstrate a commercial service. It had had only a short turnaround time available to it, and the waiting passengers included those anxious to attend the coronation [of Edward VIII] in London. Luftschiff Captain Pruss, who was in charge of the landing, had been under pressure from the ground, who were saying, “Land now.” He had done so, and that was the result.’
The disaster’s consequences
‘It was the first time that cameras had been present to record one of these ships being destroyed, as it happened,’ says Dennis Kromm. ‘In the newsreels, movie-goers got to see people running out of the wreckage with white hot light behind them, obviously burning them as they ran. People who were not used to this sort of thing, as we are today, started to scream in the newsreel theatres as they watched the Hindenburg burn, got to see the largest aircraft in the world destroyed in the little time of 30 seconds, utterly and complete destroyed. The airship as a viable thing received a death blow that day.’
The news of the Hindenburg’s demise rocked Friedrichshafen, its birthplace. This was a company town whose lifeblood was the airship. What would become of it now? For the image-conscious Nazi government, the crash was a major embarrassment, but rather than abandon the airship, the government declared that it would push to re-establish air services between Germany and the United States.
Already under construction was the Hindenburg’s sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin II. Insurance money from the Hindenburg disaster helped fund its completion. Eckener headed for Washington to appeal to Congress to allow the export of helium gas to Germany for the new ship. His request received a sympathetic hearing, but just as the first gas cylinders were about to be shipped from Texas, Hitler’s foreign policy brought everything to a halt.
The end of the giant Zeppelins
In March 1938, German troops annexed Austria for the Third Reich. On hearing the news, the US government refused to allow the export of helium to Germany. With only hydrogen available, the Graf Zeppelin II was destined never to carry passengers. Instead, it would be used for propaganda flights over Germany and spying missions over Europe and the British coast.
On 1 September 1939, Luftwaffe dive-bombers began the Nazi blitzkrieg assault on Poland – and sparked the Second World War. With the coming of war, Germany no longer had any use for its airships. The most famous airship ever, the Graf Zeppelin, and its new namesake were ordered to be broken up, along with their sheds, and melted down to make bombers for the Luftwaffe. After four decades of triumph and controversy, the era of the giant Zeppelins was over. It was an inglorious end to Dr Eckener’s dream machine.
The American blimps
During World War II, no nation possessed large rigid airships. The United States, however, relied heavily on the small, non-rigid airship, or blimp. ‘In 1940, Congress authorised the construction of 48 useful non-rigids to be operated by the Navy,’ says Rick Zitarosa of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society. ‘This was a remarkable, almost overnight change. From being a lowly stepchild of naval aviation, lighter-than-air was now going to have a considerable amount of influence in setting up a defensive perimeter around the United States.’
Blimps had evolved in the shadow of the giant rigid-framed airships and were generally seen as lesser craft. But in the absence of long-range planes, they proved invaluable for reconnaissance and convoy missions. The location of most enemy submarines was known long before they reached striking distance. But when one was sighted close to a convoy, that immediately set into motion coordinated action by blimps, ships and combat planes. Of the 89,000 surface ships escorted by blimps during the war, not a single one was lost to enemy action.
The blimp had proven its worth throughout the war, but at the height of the Cold War, competition for the military dollar saw it fall from favour. By the late 1950s, the US Navy began to disband its airship arm in favour of newly developed long-range aircraft and carrier-based planes.
But it was the advent of the jet engine that dashed any hope of resurrecting the airship as a passenger carrier. In the second half of the 20th century, the only airships in operation were used as advertising billboards or for broadcasting and surveillance where other aircraft were impractical. Today, the large rigid airship has been relegated to history as a technology that has little relevance in the modern world.
An airship revolution
While it is doubtful that we will ever see airships such as the Hindenburg or the Graf Zeppelin again, there is an airship revolution in the making – a revolution that some say is in the realm of science fiction, but it has already captured the interest of governments and corporations.
Japan Aerospace has designed a huge unmanned airship to hover 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) above the earth. The stratospheric platform is to be fitted with electronic equipment for telecommunications, broadcasting and environmental monitoring. ‘Lighter-than-air has the real advantage of being a very inexpensive way to achieve altitude,’ says Joseph Huber of the Akron Airship Historical Center. ‘It tends to get overlooked by all of the advocates of heavier-than-air, who ignore the fact that you can’t get in space cheaper and more effectively than you can with lighter-than-air.’
And it works. The world’s first high-altitude airship underwent successful flight testing in August 2003. The airship takes off in a vertical position. In less than 90 minutes, it reaches the stratosphere – and at a fraction of the cost of a rocket. Once the airship’s tasks are completed, retrieving it is simple: the ground crew remotely ruptures the top of the ship, and with the aid of a parachute, it slowly descends to earth.
The project is ambitious and takes the airship into an exciting new realm, but if the United States has its way, Japan soon won’t have the stratosphere all to itself. The most powerful military force on the planet is also developing a stratospheric airship. Designed by Lockheed Martin, the craft will be inflated with more than five million cubic feet of helium, making it the fourth largest airship in history. It would barely fit inside an American football stadium.
With a payload of optical and infrared sensors, the airship will play a surveillance role in the United States’ controversial anti-missile defence system. In the event of an attack mounted against the US, the airship would provide critical early-warning and tracking information to trigger and guide an anti-missile response. The Pentagon believes that the project is so promising that it has invested heavily in the next stage of development. If the mammoth craft is ever built, the United States will join Japan in spearheading the greatest technological advance yet seen in the airship story.
A new generation of Zeppelins
In the early 21st century people-moving airships are also returning to
the skies. At Friedrichshafen, a new generation of Zeppelins has been developed
for tourism.
Using new aerospace materials, they are the first airships since the days of the Hindenburg to be built with an internal structure. Today in Germany, you can take an hour-long flight around the Swiss Alps in one of three new Zeppelin airships.
And there is an even more ambitious plan for the modern Zeppelin – a fleet of large airships connecting 10 cities throughout Europe, each ship carrying 40 passengers and their luggage. Critics, however, question whether a fleet of slow-moving airships would be financially viable in skies now dominated by jet aircraft.
But as Count von Zeppelin proved more than a century ago, the potential of the airship lies not with sceptics but with visionaries. The lighter-than-air machine is a ship of dreams, which casts a spell not only on its passengers but on anyone who has ever witnessed the world’s largest flying machines take to the sky.
‘I think the most important thing about the airships is the people,’ says Rick Zitarosa. ‘The technology changed over the years, but what remained constant were the determination, the vision, the feeling and the soul that went into the development and flying of these craft.
‘No other type of aircraft has evoked so much emotion, so much feeling from the heart, so much appeal to humanity’s wish to dream.’
