Monday, Oct. 01, 1928

Lazy Giants

Five hundred men with ropes pulled her out of the house in which she lolled. She swayed a little and they had to be careful not to let her injure herself by bumping against the sides of the house. Out in the open, she made a noise somewhere between a purr and a roar, put her nose into the sky, was soon out of sight.

She is some two blocks long (763 feet) and her name is Count Zeppelin, nyth rigid airship of famed Zeppelin progeny. Last week, out of her hangar at Friedrichshafen, Germany, she emerged for her maiden flight, a short one. Her pilot was her designer--Dr. Hugo Eckener. She carried a crew of 30 and Lieut. Commander Charles E. Rosendahl, U. S. Navy, lord of the Los Angeles.

Two days later, the Count Zeppelin took 82 people on a longer trip, 620 miles, over southern Germany and Switzerland. She performed so splendidly that the flight was as lazy and as delightful as an afternoon on an ocean liner in calm weather. Yet, at one time, she stepped up her speed to 81 m.p.h. Over Heidelberg, she cast her shadow on pigmy castles and at Stuttgart solemnly circled the grave of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Wine, ham and eggs, etc., were served above Freiburg, Baden-Baden and Constance. But there was NO SMOKING, for fire is the arch enemy of airships.

"We can," said Dr. Eckener, "remain in the air for hours in perfect safety, even if every motor should give out, which is most unlikely. We can get at every motor to repair it. We have even taken apart an entire motor and reassembled it while in flight."

Dr. Eckener plans to pilot the Count Zeppelin to the U. S. and establish a regular trans-Atlantic passenger service, as the culmination of his career. Long before the World War, he worked with the late Count Zeppelin in converting the clumsy blimp into the streamlined airship. The change was essentially the perfection of a light and rigid duraluminum framework within the gas bag (envelope). The result was a superb instrument of war--with long cruising radius and many-bomb capacity. Terms of peace made it necessary for Dr. Eckener to bring Zeppelin ZR3 to the U. S., where she was promptly rechristened Los Angeles. After that, he built the Count Zeppelin for commercial purposes. Now, in his 60's Dr. Eckener carries his six feet as straight as does a drill sergeant.

In England, the rigid airships, R-101 and R-101, each larger than the Count Zeppelin, are awaiting final tests. Within a year they will be put into service between London and Egypt and India. A heavy oil fuel has been developed for their engines. In recent experiments, this fuel was poured on some burning gasoline and actually extinguished it.

In the U. S., the Los Angeles is the only rigid airship. The Shenandoah disaster of 1925 had put a crimp in lighter-than-air development. But now, the airship is being revived and it seems likely that the Good-year-Zeppelin Corp. at Akron, Ohio, will be the center of a lusty infant industry. Goodyear will probably get the U. S. Navy contracts for two giant airships (TIME, Sept. 17). Since 1923, when Goodyear bought U. S. rights to Zeppelin patents and hired Dr. Karl Arnstein, experiments have been quietly pushed at Akron under the leadership of airship-minded Paul Weeks Litchfield, president of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.* In fact, Goodyear now has in service two small semirigid airships, Pilgrim and Puritan, embodying designs more advanced than those of either the Shenandoah or Los Angeles. The chief rival of Goodyear is the American Brown-Boveri Electric Corp., employer of Capt. Anton Heinen, onetime figure in the German Zeppelin works.

Arguments. The airship starts with an advantage over the airplane. Its engines have only to drive it, whereas the airplane's engines must drive and lift. Hence, many aeronauts believe that, even in the present stage of development, the airship is more dependable, more comfortable, capable of longer journeys--and it is distance which gives air-travel an advantage over the automobile and the railroad. Certainly, for transoceanic trips the airship is the thing. Its promenades on the edge of a duraluminum jungle within the envelope, with a view through occasional windows of the ocean; its large dining saloons and cabins; its feeling of safety should appeal.

Commercially, the biggest objection to airships is keeping them. They require an enormous apartment, 30 servants in the air, several hundred when landing or leaving. There are three hangars in the U. S. big enough to house the Los Angeles (at Lakehurst, N. J., Scott Field, Belleville, 111., Cape May, N. J.). Mooring masts are only useful so long as a storm does not come up and tear the ship's nose off.

Also, when in the air, storms and contrary blasts of winds are apt to twist and wreck the light framework of a ship. This was, roughly, what happened to the Shenandoah. However, she was a weak sister in comparison with the present airships.

There remains fire, caused by the engines or by lightning. Steps to prevent it have been: i) the use of non-inflammable paint on the fabric of the envelope; 2) the substitution of safe helium for highly explosive hydrogen. But helium is expensive, difficult to obtain. The U. S. is fortunate in having an increasingly promising source of helium in Texas.

*Mr. Litchfield built with his own hand the first Goodyear automobile tire (in 1900). A decade later, he extended Goodyear activity to balloons and, since then, there has been no stopping of his lighter-than-air enthusiasm. He is a friend of labor, once wrote a pamphlet entitled The Industrial Republic.