Zeppelining

(See front cover)

The grandest deliberate advertising stunt, grander than the Prince of Wales' warship jaunts to the U. S. and his Dominions, ended at Friedrichshafen last week, when the Graf Zeppelin snuggled into her home schuppen (hangar). "Speaking frankly," said Dr. Hugo Eckener (in Manhattan last week), "the Graf Zeppelin's voyage around the world was to demonstrate the expediency of her mode of travel, to intensify public interest and to get financial support for the construction of the ideal Zeppelin which we know how to build." The trip served its purpose. It led last week to banker negotiations to provide Dr. Eckener with money for the construction of four more Zeppelins.

Lakehurst to Friedrichshafen. Except for brief electrical storms, navigation was simple for Capt. Ernst A. Lehmann on the Grafs final 5,300 miles from Lakehurst to Friedrichshafen. He kept lookout for the lost Swiss flyers (TIME, Sept. 2) and detoured over Santander, Spain, to salute King Alfonso and Queen Victoria. This detour was a prudent courtesy, because Spain is planning a dirigible hangar at Seville, which will be useful when the Germans establish their Europe-South America Zeppelin line. But some passengers were vexed at the out-of-the-way delay. Their nerves were jumpy because one Frederick S. Hogg, retired Mount Vernon, N. Y., businessman, had smoked a cigar in the ship's lavatory. One spark might have blown up her hydrogen lifting gas. Some of the other passengers wanted Passenger Hogg imprisoned. Capt. Lehmann only reprimanded him, took his cigars and pocket lighter ignominiously away. The ship made the Lakehurst-Friedrichshafen trip in 67 hours. Her time around the world from Friedrichshafen to Friedrichshafen was 20 days, 4 hours--26 hours less than from Lakehurst to Lakehurst.

Graf's Future. The Graf Zeppelin was built for demonstration purposes. It is aerodynamically imperfect. Because it is a cylinder with conic ends, air does not flow smoothly over it. It should have no straight surface lines or level planes as in the Los Angeles, "best product of the Zeppelin works" (Dr. Eckener). Building of a new Friedrichshafen hangar will be completed about Nov. , when construction of a huge, fattish dirigible will be begun. Imperfect, the Graf Zeppelin will never be put on a commercial line. It will be used as a training ship for dirigible crews, for excursions and sight-seeing trips.

Biggest results of the Graf's flight were:

Mail. The Luftschiffbau Zeppelin and the Goodyear Zeppelin Corp., in which the German company has minority stock in terest, will cooperate in establishing oceanic airship lines. Operations are de pendent upon getting dollar support and mail contracts from at least Germany and the U. S. President Paul Weeks Litchfield of the Goodyear company, which is about to build two dirigibles greater than the Graf Zeppelin for the U. S. Navy, has asked President Hoover to use his offices toward getting the U. S. contracts. Mr. Hoover did not spurn the request, and Postmaster-General Walter Folger Brown is considering asking the Congress for permission. A German mail contract is virtually certain.

Money. As soon as the mail contracts are signed, U. S. money will be forthcoming. Then the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin will rush construction of four commercial dirigibles, the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. one, possibly two, others.

Lines. The Germans will first establish a line between Europe and the U. S., with two ships running each way across the Atlantic weekly. The U. S. base will be near Baltimore, Washington, or Richmond. Va., because the weather there is more even than at points farther north. The German dock will be, probably, in Central France, where too the weather is even. Berlin will be a stop. Fare will be $1,000 per passenger.

After the U. S.-Europe line becomes established, the Germans will run ships from their French and German ports to Brazil and Argentina, with a way station at Seville, where the Spaniards are planning a hangar.

Four years at least will be necessary for the development of this program.

Briefer is the period for Goodyear-Zeppelin's plans. It will run its ship, or ships, from the Pacific Coast to Hawaii, later to the Philippines.

Ersatzgas, Ersatzpfennige. Ersatz has become a brave word in Germany. As a substantive it means War Reparations. As part of compounded words it means substitute. Its substitute connotations the Germans have met with courage. They have done with Ersatz foods, clothing, fuels. It was on a quest for further Ersatzsachen that Dr. Eckener remained in the U. S. after his ship sailed. Those things were substitutes for hydrogen, substitutes for pfennigs.

From Manhattan a fortnight ago he dashed to the Cleveland Air Races and Show, shook hands with Col. Lindbergh (who did for airplaning what the older man has just done for zeppelining >. caught a Goodyear Army blimp for the 30-mile trip to Akron, inspected the finances and construction activities of the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. (of which he is a director). Then at the comfortable, unpretentious home of Goodyear's President Paul Weeks Litchfield, he went into a politely brisk conference with Mr. Litchfield, Jerome Clark Hunsaker (Goodyear-Zeppelin vice president), William Patterson MacCracken, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics (out going) and Karl Arnstein, onetime Luftschiffbau Zeppelin engineer, now loaned to the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. to direct construction.

The names of the Americans are important. Paul Weeks Litchfield is chief of the U. S. lighter-than-air ship industry. He began with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in 1900 as a factory superintendent and built Goodyear's first tire with his own hands. Before the War he persuaded Goodyear's Founder-President Frank A. Seiberling to build spherical balloons for the U. S. air services. Before, during and since the War, Mr. Litchfield built sausage balloons and nonrigid dirigibles (blimps; for the Army and Navy. In 1924 he and Edward G. Wilmer, Mr. Seiberling's successor as Goodyear president, were at Friedrichshafen, inspecting the Zeppelin works. They at once made a deal with Dr. Eckener for exclusive North American manufacturing rights. Hence the formation of the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp.

Those Americans were Dr. Eckener's hope for his Ersatzgas. The only lifting gas which he has available in Europe is hazardous hydrogen. Helium, non-inflammable, although not as efficient a lifter as hydrogen, is the only substitute which he knows of, although industrial scientists are searching for others. Helium is a natural U. S. monopoly. By devious corporate interrelations and by performing an air service for the U. S. public, he expects his U. S. collaborators to get him his gas substitute.

Getting dollars to replace pfennigs is almost as devious and difficult. The Graf Zeppelin was built by pfennigs. In 1925 the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin was virtually bankrupt. Two ships which it had built, the Nordstern and Bodensee (since wrecked) were confiscated by France and Italy for War damages. The Los Angeles the U. S. forced it to build. Dr. Eckener, great publicist,* organized the Zeppelin- Eckener Spends (gifts, alms) and despatched collectors with small boxes to German street corners, theatres, beer halls, to collect pfennigs from money-pinched patriots. The pfennigs totalled enough to build the Graf Zeppelin.

Last week, Dr. Eckener and most of the Akron group sped to Manhattan. There they conferred with representatives of G.M.P.-Murphy & Co. and of Lehman Bros., and feted with National City Bank officials. Those houses are bankers for Continental plane lines-- North, Central and South America. By making connections with them Dr. Eckener and Mr. Litchfield foresaw a possible world air linkage--Zeppelins by sea, planes by land.

But the bankers were not carelessly openhanded. Said they, in effect: "You can have all the dollars you need, if you get mail contracts, if you start to build your ships. Show us the prospects of profits. And German bankers must co-operate."

Relatively easy, though not simple, were those stipulations for Dr. Eckener. With passengers, plus air mail, plus ex- press, Zeppelins can be made to pay handsomely he thinks. He tightened his tie, which slips loose on his thick neck, looked at his Manhattan timepiece (he carries three watches, showing Friedrichshafen. Greenwich and New York time), arched his mephistophelian brows, and hastened to the first Hamburg-American liner available for Hamburg. A Hamburg-American it had to be, for that company aided Graf Zeppelin in her world flight. The first boat was the slow New York, which takes ten days for the crossing. As the indom- itable, tired oldster (he is 61) boarded her, his grey pants wrinkled from much conference sitting, his black lisle socks drooping from the legs of his white long-drawers he sighed like any German burgher: "I am in a hurry to get back to my wife and home."

* With James McKeen Cattell (see p. 52) he was one of the late great Psychologist William Max Wundt's first pupils. Later he married the daughter of a Schleswig-Holstein publisher, and did newspaper work himself. On the Frankfurter Zeitung he ridiculed the late Count Ferdinand Zeppelin's dirigible plans, recanted, joined the Zeppelin company, learned navigation, of which he had some skill from childhood at his native town of Flensburg.