Zeppelin Historical Flights

After World War I, the German Airships had their Renaissance.

Graf (Count) von Zeppelin, the founder of the factory, had died in 1917.
Before the end of the war, Dr. Hugo Eckener, a man who had long envisioned airships as vessels of peace rather than of war, took command of the Zeppelin business.

The Versailles Treaty had put the Zeppelin company's competitor, Schütte-Lanz, out of the picture.
The Zeppelin company and the DELAG (German Airship Airline) hoped to resume civilian flights quickly.
Despite considerable difficulties, they completed two small Zeppelins:
The LZ 120 Bodensee, which first flew in August 1919 and in the following two years actually transported some 4,000 passengers.
And the LZ 121 Nordstern, which was envisaged being used on a regular route to Stockholm.


However, in 1921, the Allied Powers demanded these two Zeppelins be delivered as war reparations, as compensation for the dirigibles destroyed by their crews in 1919.
Further Zeppelin projects could not be realized, partly because of Allied interdiction.
This temporarily halted German Zeppelin aviation.

Dr. Eckener and his co-workers refused to give up and kept looking for investors and a way to circumvent Allied restrictions.
Their opportunity came in 1924.
The United States had started to experiment with rigid airships, constructing one of their own, the ZR-1 USS Shenandoah.
The US had also ordered another airship from the UK, when the British R38 (ZR-2) was cancelled.

However, the R38 (based on the Zeppelin L70, ordered as ZR-2) broke apart and exploded during a test flight over the Humber on 23 August 1921, killing 44 crewmen.

Under these circumstances, Dr. Eckener managed to acquire an order for the next American dirigible.
Of course, Germany had to pay the costs for this airship itself, as they were calculated against the war reparation accounts.
To the Zeppelin company, this was only secondary.
The engineer Dr. Dürr sat off to design the LZ 126, and using all the expertise accumulated over the years.
The company finally constructed the best Zeppelin so far. It took off for a first test flight on 27 August 1924.


No insurance company was willing to issue a policy for the delivery to Lakehurst, which, of course, involved a transatlantic flight.
Dr. Eckener, however, was so confident of the new ship that he was ready to risk the entire business capital, and on 12 October 07:30 local time, the Zeppelin took off for the US under his command.
His faith was not disappointed, and the ship completed the 8,050 kilometre (5,000 mi) voyage without any difficulties in 81 hours and two minutes.
American crowds enthusiastically celebrated the arrival, and President Calvin Coolidge invited Dr. Eckener and his crew to the White House, calling the new Zeppelin an "angel of peace".

Under its new designation the ZR-3 USS Los Angeles (the former LZ 126), became the most successful American airship.
It operated reliably for eight years until it was retired in 1932 for economic reasons. It was dismantled in August 1940.


The Golden age of Zeppelin

With the delivery of LZ 126, the Zeppelin company had again taken the lead in rigid airship construction.

However, acquiring the necessary funds for the next project proved a problem in the difficult economic situation of post-World-War-I Germany.
It it took Dr Eckener two years of lobbying and publicity work to secure the realization of LZ 127.

Another two years passed before 18 September 1928, when the new airship, christened Graf Zeppelin flew.
The airship was named in honour of the Count Graf Zeppelin.
With a total length of 236.6 metres (776 ft) and a volume of 105,000 m3, she was the largest airship to that point.

Dr Eckener's initial concept was to use the Graf Zeppelin for experimental and demonstration purposes.
It was to pave the way for regular airship travelling, by carrying passengers and mail as paying passenger and cargo.
In October 1928 the first long-range voyage brought Graf Zeppelin to Lakehurst, New York.
Here Dr Eckener and his crew was once again welcomed with parades in New York City.

Graf Zeppelin toured Germany and visited Italy, Palestine, and Spain.
A second trip to the United States was aborted in France due to engine failure in May 1929.

First flight around the globe

In August of 1929 the LZ 127 departed for another daring enterprise, namely a circumnavigation of the globe.
The growing popularity of the "giant of the air" made it easy for Eckener to find sponsors.
One of these was the American press tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who requested the tour officially start in Lakehurst.

In October 1928, the airship took off to fly to New York.
Hearst had placed a reporter, Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay, on board.
In this way she became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air.

From there, Graf Zeppelin flew to Friedrichshafen, then Tokyo, Los Angeles, and back to Lakehurst.
The flight tool 21 days 5 hours and 31 minutes.
Including the initial and final trips Friedrichshafen–Lakehurst and back, the airship had travelled 49,618 kilometres (30,831 mi).



In the following year, Graf Zeppelin undertook a number of trips around Europe.
Following a successful tour to Recife, in Brazil in May 1930, it was decided to open the first regular transatlantic airship line.
This line operated between Frankfurt and Recife in 68 hours, and later, between Frankfurt and Rio de Janeiro, with a stop in Recife.

Despite the beginning of the Great Depression and growing competition from fixed-wing aircraft, the LZ 127 would transport an increasing volume of passengers and mail across the ocean every year until 1936.
The ship pursued another spectacular flight in July 1931 with a research trip to the Arctic.

This had already been a dream of Count von Zeppelin twenty years earlier, which could, however, not be realized at the time due to the outbreak of war.

Dr Eckener intended to supplement the successful craft by another, similar Zeppelin, projected as LZ 128.
However the disastrous accident of the British passenger airship R 101 on 5 October 1930, led the Zeppelin company to reconsider the safety of hydrogen-filled vessels.
Thus this design was abandoned in favour of a new project.
The LZ 129 would advance Zeppelin technology considerably, and was intended to be filled with inert helium.

The political situation in Germany at the time hindered the development of safe airship construction and it was to take many years until a Zeppelin Airship was to fly again, this time with Helium.

Source: Wikipedia

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