Billy, "The Zeppelin Baby” graduated with a B.A. in English from Haverford College, Pa., and served in the U.S. army for three years as NIKE repairman, and in Anchorage, Alaska, where he helped install Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missiles. After the army he received a Masters in Electrical Engineering and worked as systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He published Nautical Brass, a magazine for nautical antique collectors. He has two children and is retired in Florida and maintains two other web sites:
Nautical Brass,
nautical antiques and codebreaking in World War II
Mariner IV - First Flyby of Mars - Some personal experiences
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin
The Graf Zeppelin was named after Ferdinand August Adolf Graf (Count) von
Zeppelin, a nobleman born in 1838 in Konstanz, in the independent South German
state of Württemberg. The Count became an officer in the Württemberg cavalry
and, in 1863, when he was 25, received a leave of absence to travel in the
United States for a short time. He spent a month with the Union cavalry just
before the battle of Gettysburg.
In 1871, von Zeppelin's State of Württemberg became part of the new German Empire, retaining its sovereign, King Karl, and maintaining its army in which Count von Zeppelin continued to serve. He had a natural gift of creativity and inventiveness. Later, his followers and admirers would consider him an engineering genius. Coupled with a breadth of vision, optimism, original ideas, a strong determination and ever stronger confidence in himself, he was stubbornly devoted to his own success. Later his creative talent would also extend to propaganda, and he encouraged the spontaneous legends which grew up about him.
In 1874 Count von Zeppelin wrote in his notebook: "April 23. Basic idea: a big ship, rigid circular and longitudinal ribs.18 separate gas cells. Cloth covered hull. Shape: like the body of a bird; dynamic propulsion foreseen, machine placement and space for cargo, mail, packages and passengers under the ship's body."
Count von Zeppelin was named Württemberg's diplomatic representative to the Prussian court in 1885, later becoming ambassador and minister for King Karl's successor, King Wilhelm.
Years later, in 1890, now a Brigadier, von Zeppelin returned to the army in charge of a Prussian dragoon brigade. Still remembering his American experiences, the Count tried to make changes in the army, based on what he had observed in the United States. He criticized, in writing, the Prussian war ministry's domination of the Württemberg army. All this became too much for Prussian Kaiser Wilhelm II and, in that same year, Count von Zeppelin was forced into early retirement.
The Count had been promoting the building of his novel airship for Germany's defense, reconnaissance, and troop transport in order to get financial backing from the government. But only King Karl of Württemberg believed in the Count's ideas at first.
The discovery, in 1886, of a cheap method of producing aluminum through the Hall electrolytic process, had greatly helped von Zeppelin's plans for building an aircraft, and early retirement, when he was 52, gave him full time to build his dream ship for which he took out a patent in 1895. In 1898 he established the Joint Stock Company for Promotion of Airship Travel.
Von Zeppelin's first ship, the LZ-1 (Luftschiff Zeppelin-1), a 420 foot long structure, was formed from nose to tail of longitudinal aluminum girders with transverse rings braced by wires, containing 17 separate hydrogen-filled ballonets, the whole covered with cloth. Rudders provided horizontal control, and a 220 lb. movable weight controlled vertical attitude. Two four cylinder 14 h.p. Daimler motors with propellers, in cars which hung below the hull, gave the first zeppelin a speed of 17 miles per hour. On July 2, 1900, LZ-1 made its maiden flight from a floating hangar on Lake Constance, near Friedrichshafen, Germany. A prototype of future LZs, the LZ-1 carried five people and stayed aloft for twenty minutes. But the German Kaiser's military commission declared LZ-1 unsuitable for military or any other purpose because of serious construction defects. After two more trial flights, the LZ-1 was dismantled due to lack of funds necessary for improvements.
However, King Wilhelm of Württemberg, cousin and successor to King Karl, helped the Count by raising funds through a state-held lottery. Daimler contributed motors. Prussia contributed also, and other sources brought in enough capital to build the LZ-2. After being built, the LZ-2 was also dismantled because of damage from a forced landing 20 miles from Manzell.
In spite of many difficulties, Count von Zeppelin continued to build and perfect his dirigibles .The LZ-3 was started in 1906 and used as an experimental ship until replaced in 1908 by the LZ-4. On a flight between Mainz and Manzell, in August, 1908, the LZ-4 was forced to land at Echterdingen, near Stuttgart. A sudden storm tore the zeppelin from its moorings and blew it half a mile away into a grove of trees where it ignited and burned.
Although there was no loss of life, the crowd of spectators who witnessed the accident were very moved by the scene. This feeling of sympathy for Count von Zeppelin generated a folk response from the German People which was so infectious that contributions spontaneously poured in to help him. In a few weeks the public donated six million marks, almost a million and a half dollars, at that time an enormous sum. This, together with contributions from private enterprise turned disaster into success. The result of the accident, in monetary terms, became known as "The Miracle of Echterdingen," and Count von Zeppelin became a folk hero which the old aristocrat thoroughly enjoyed.
DELAG and Hugo Eckener
In September of 1908 Count von Zeppelin formed the Zeppelin Airship Construction Company (Luftschifffbau Zeppelin G.m.b.H.) and in the following year, the German Airship Travel Joint Stock Company (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktion Gesselschaft) or DELAG. In 1910 von Zeppelin hired Dr. Hugo .Eckener, journalist, economist and engineer, to work for DELAG as Flight Director. Eckener was born at Flensburg August 10, 1868. Educated at the universities of Munich, Berlin, and Leipzig, he became interested in airship construction. Eckener strongly criticized the LZ-1 and LZ-2 in newspaper articles, which brought the Count and Eckener to meet. This was the beginning of a long and productive friendship.
DELAG's LZ-6 and LZ-7, the first commercial air transports in history, carried passengers who sat in wicker chairs sipping wine and snacking on cold buffets on sightseeing tours over Germany. During this period, DELAG's zeppelins carried more than 30,000 passengers on over 1,500 flights with a perfect safety record. Although the DELAG zeppelins had not been built for combat, when World War I broke out, the government converted them to military use for the Imperial German Army and Navy. The luxuries were removed, the zeppelins outfitted with machine guns, and crews provided with rifles.
The zeppelins were used for reconnaissance and bombing which at first gave Germany a psychological advantage over her adversaries. Long range bombing, especially by night over England, was a new and fearful weapon of war. But the dirigibles were slow, flying at low altitudes for lack of lifting power, and enemy rifle and machine gun fire filled them with holes. The bombs didn't do as much damage as was hoped for and often missed the targets because of faulty navigation. Another weakness of the airships was their flammable hydrogen lifting gas. When the British defense developed incendiary phosphorus and explosive projectiles, the zeppelins' hydrogen was easily ignited.
However, in four plants, 86 dirigibles were built as military weapons for the Army and Navy. Hugo Eckener continued to direct construction and train pilots. The new wartime zeppelins were built to fly as high as 20,000 feet, which subjected their crews to a lack of oxygen and freezing temperatures. By this time their speed had been increased to 80 miles an hour, and lift to 50 tons. The German Kaiser had stipulated that only military targets such as armament factories and railroad junctions be bombed. But by the end of the war, after more than 300 bombing raids, most of the zeppelins had been destroyed in battle, on the ground, or by their own men so they would not fall into the hands of the enemy. Valuable flight experience, useful a decade later in the tropics, was gathered by the flight of the LZ-104 (L-59 of the German Navy) on a mission to deliver arms and medicines to East Africa. Although this was not accomplished and LZ-104 was forced to return to Germany, carrying 22 crew members and 15 tons of cargo a distance of 4,000 miles while staying aloft for 95 hours was, in those days, an astonishing feat. This experience gave confidence to the possibility of long range intercontinental flights in the future. The distance covered by LZ-104 was the same as that between Friedrichshafen and Chicago. However, Count von Zeppelin, who died in 1917 before the end of the war, was not to see his invention once more used for peaceful purposes. His nephew, Baron von Gemmingen, became head of the Zeppelin Company after the Count's death, and after the armistice in 1918, the Zeppelin Company became civilian and commercial again.
DELAG built two small commercial zeppelins, the LZ-120, Bodensee and the LZ-121 Nordenstem, which carried over 2,000 passengers on 100 flights with perfect safety records. But under the armistice terms, Germany was prohibited from further construction. Bodensee was surrendered to Italy and Nordenstem to France. Belgium, Japan and England also received dirigibles as war reparations, and the Zeppelin Works were reduced to manufacturing aluminum cooking ware. An exception to the manufacturing prohibition was the Zeppelin Company's 659 foot long LZ-126, built for the United States Navy as compensation for two dirigibles designated for the U.S. which had been destroyed. Hugo Eckener, von Zeppelin's former right hand man and operational manager of the company, now succeeded von Gemmingen as chairman. Captain Eckener flew the LZ-126 5,000 miles from Friedrichshafen, Germany, to the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, New Jersey, for delivery October 15, 1924, when LZ-126 became the U.S. Navy ZR-3, Los Angeles. Los Angeles was to make over 3,000 successful flights during the next eight years, serving as a "mother ship" for picking up and releasing airplanes in mid-flight, and for perfecting the mechanics of mooring. Before the delivery of Los Angeles, the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation had been formed to exchange services processes and the manufacture in the U.S. of dirigibles for the U.S. Navy (Akron,1931, and Macon, 1933).
When the Versailles Treaty restrictions on civil aviation were completely lifted in 1925 a new commercial type zeppelin, intended only for civilian use, was constructed in Germany under Hugo Eckener's direction. The LZ-127 or Graf Zeppelin took more than a year to build and was christened on July 8, 1928, the day that would have been Count von Zeppelin's 90th birthday.
Like the original prototype, the framework of the Graf Zeppelin was a complex network of rigid girders of triangular cross section forming rings, and 28 longitudinal girders braced with steel wire, the whole covered with 23,900 square yards of cotton cloth to which was applied four coats of dope, the last two mixed with aluminum powder. The "Graf" was 775 feet long with a mid-diameter of 100 feet and 4,100,000 cubic foot hydrogen gas capacity in 17 cells. Five 550 h.p. Maybach VL-II 12-cylinder engines were suspended from the hull, for an optimum speed of 80 m.p.h. The gross lifting power of this new dirigible was 188,000 pounds. October, 1928, Hugo Eckener commanded the Graf Zeppelin on its first transatlantic flight with paying passengers from Friedrichshafen to Lakehurst and back. A year later the "Graf " made a 21,000 mile flight around the world across Russia and Siberia to Tokyo, Los Angeles, Lakehurst, and back to Friedrichshafen. This trip was partially financed by William Randolph Hearst, who specified that Eckener circle the Statue of Liberty at the beginning and end of the trip, necessitating an extra trip from Friedrichshafen to New York to circle the statue for the beginning of the American flight.
Two years later, Hugo Eckener took a team of scientists on a polar flight over the Arctic Ocean and Siberia. The leading scientist was a Russian, who was accompanied by German, Swedish, and American colleagues, well equipped with photographic and scientific materials, including complete survival gear in case of emergency. These spectacular trips were excellent publicity for the airship company. Subsequently, Graf Zeppelin began the first trans Atlantic dirigible flights with paying passengers, operating between Europe and South America. In 1931 three commercial passenger flights were made from Friedrichshafen to Recife, Brazil, where a German-built mooring mast was erected. Nine more flights were made the following year, and nine in 1933, ours being the last of the season.
Captain Eckener's goal was an inter-continental zeppelin service connecting Germany with Lakehurst, N.J., or Washington, D.C., in the summer, and Seville, Spain, Rio de Janeiro, and Miami in winter, providing mail, freight, and passenger service. The "grizzled globe trotter of the skies", as newsmen called him, hoped to inaugurate this route once a hangar was completed in Rio de Janeiro.
The future of lighter-than-air craft looked especially promising in 1933 when Brazil's President, Getulio Vargas (possibly the only head of State to travel this way) made a flight over Brazilian territory from Recife to Rio de Janeiro after the Brazil route had become established on a regular basis. Furthermore, the appearance of the Graf Zeppelin at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair culminated the last trip of the year with great publicity in favor of air travel.
Three U.S. Navy dirigibles were lost: Shenandoah (1925), Akron (1933), and Macon (1935), which failed structurally during violent thunderstorms, with great loss of life, as well as British and German airships. Those ships were, for the most part, carrying members of the armed forces. It was the fiery Hindenburg disaster in 1937, in which civilian passengers were lost, which brought the era of airship travel to a close. Ironically, the Hindenburg was designed to be filled with helium, which the United States steadfastly refused to furnish to Germany.
Ernst Lehmann, the First Mate on our Graf Zeppelin trip from Rio to Akron, was on
the
Hindenburg as flight director four years later on the fatal flight which ended at
Lakehurst in 1937. He was filmed as a human torch and died the day after the
accident.
Hugo Eckener, however, lived to be 86. He died in 1954 after becoming director of a machine tool factory in Germany and the author of several books.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES
Bertelsman, C., Unser Jahrhundert im Bild, Verlag Gütersloh, Germany, 1964.
Brazilian Newspapers:
Folha de São Paulo
0 Globo
Rio de Janeiro
Jornal da Tarde
Jornal do Brasil
Estado de São Paulo
TV Globo.
Diary, "To Billy", Mrs.Ruegg, October 1933.
Eckener, Hugo, Im Zeppelin Über Länder und Meere, Christian Wolff Verlag, Flensburg, Germany, 1949 (Abridged and translated into English by Douglas Robinson as My Zeppelins, Putnam & Co., London, 1958)
Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1966
Momsen, Dorothea, report to the New York Times, "Zeppelin Notes", October 19-24, 1933, and personal interview.
Newspaper clippings, various U.S.cities.
Pfaltzgraff, Francisco D. R., journalist, researcher, Rio de Janeiro (correspondence).
Robinson, Douglas F., Giants in the Sky, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1973
Zeppelin-Wehlfahrien, Germany, 1932.
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