LXXV
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A DZR advertisement for the Graf Zeppelin II (LZ-130) offering
"safety, speed with quietude, and every traveling facility and
comfort"
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Most airship histories end with the
destruction of the Hindenburg.
However, the history of airships did not end with the Hindenburg.
DELAG, from 1909 to 1935, had never
lost a passenger to a flying accident, or even had a serious injury, safety
being paramount (there had been one passenger death aboard an early flight when
a man suffered a sudden, fatal heart attack). DZR had blackened that record in
just its one year of operation, likely due to the fixation of keeping to a
schedule.
On the day that the Hindenburg burned, the Graf Zeppelin was en route from South America to Europe. Wishing to avoid crew and
passenger upset, Dr. Eckener ordered that no word of the Hindenburg’s destruction be transmitted to the Graf Zeppelin. When the reliable old airship came home she was
immediately pulled from service and given the overhaul and refit she so badly
needed and richly deserved. It was during this refit that DZR technicians
discovered that her envelope was non-flammable.
While the old Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) was being refit, construction continued on
the new Graf Zeppelin (although she
is usually referred to as Graf Zeppelin
II she bore no sequence number on her hull except LZ-130, her fleet number;
since DZR referred to its ships numerically, there was little chance of
internal corporate confusion).
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| LZ-127 |
There was a sharp public outcry against
the use of hydrogen lifting gas after the Hindenburg
exploded. DZR nonetheless continued to work diligently on their new vessel,
having finally been promised the use of American helium. Though the old “Helium
Control Act” was still good law that forbid the sale of helium to any but
American airship carriers, President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, citing public safety, issued a Signing Statement in
the aftermath of the Hindenburg fire,
reinterpreting the law to extend helium sales to airship carriers operating
from United States ports. It seemed the new Graf
Zeppelin would fly, and she would fly safely.
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| LZ-130 |
She was much like the Hindenburg, though she was configured to carry 90 passengers. At 803 feet, four inches, she was just eight inches shorter than the Hindenburg (thus missing out on being the “largest airship in the world”), but she carried 7,100,000 cubic feet of gas to the Hindenburg’s 7,062,000 (this was still less than the volume of the Akron and the Macon). With the expected helium, her lift would be less than Hindenburg’s and with the extra passengers and weight she would fly lower and slower. Graf Zeppelin II seemed destined not to break any records.
To compensate for these reductions in
her technical capabilities, DZR enlarged the passenger decks.
“B” Deck, the lower deck, was made up,
except for the galley, entirely of accommodations in the Pullman style of the Hindenburg. The crew wardrooms lay on a
quasi-deck below “B” Deck but above the keel. The quasi-deck also held the
cramped Officer’s quarters and Stewards’ quarters.
“A” Deck, the main deck, featured
passenger cabins, the Lounge, the Dining Room, the Reading and Writing Room,
the office and cabin of the Purser (no longer just the Chief Steward), and the
Bar and Smoking Room. The airlocked Bar and Smoking Room were outboard and had
hermetically sealed windows.
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“A” Deck of the Graf Zeppelin II
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“A” Deck
was split level. The outboard passenger cabins on both “A” Deck and “B” Deck
were windowed.
On the Graf Zeppelin II, the Dining
Room stretched width-wise across the beam of the ship, with the Lounge and
Reading and Writing Room forming the wings of a U. Thus, at full capacity, all
three rooms could be utilized at mealtimes.
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The Dining Room on Graf Zeppelin II
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| The Reading and Writing Room on Graf Zeppelin II. Note the split-level floor plan |
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The stairs from the Dining Room to the
Lounge. Note the portrait of Hitler
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The main Lounge on Graf Zeppelin II
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A passenger cabin on Graf Zeppelin II, with window and a
closet alcove. Note the flowers, meant to be delivered daily
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The Men's Room
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The major exterior difference between
the Graf Zeppelin II and the Hindenburg was the Graf Zeppelin II’s enlarged engine gondolas. They featured
front-facing (“tractor”) propellers rather than rear-facing (“pusher")
propellers. Due to the difference in the two ships’ doping solutions, the Graf Zeppelin II was a whitish-silver
color as opposed to the grayish-silver of the Hindenburg.
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The Graf
Zeppelin II (LZ-130) aloft. Note the propellers on the engine gondolas
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In photographs, both exterior and
interior, the two aircraft are frequently confused.
Sadly, the Graf Zeppelin II did not have much of a career. She never flew the
North Atlantic Ferry Route or even divided the South American Route with the
old Graf Zeppelin. Naziism doomed her.
While she was under construction, Hitler had
perpetrated the Rape of Czechoslovakia and the Anschluss with Austria. Hitler
was gnawing at the vitals of Europe, and FDR deemed that the delivery of the promised
helium presented a threat to U.S. interests. The Graf Zeppelins, old and new, would be hydrogen ships.
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(Top) The engine gondola of LZ-130 with its tractor
propeller in 1939. Note the motorman
(Bottom) The same engine gondola, scrapped in 1940
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The two Graf Zeppelins were launched on the same day in 1938. While the older ship returned to the South Atlantic run, it turned out to be an unprofitable venture. Bookings were few. No one wanted to sail on a hydrogen airship any longer. Most sailings were cancelled. The service officially limped on into the summer of 1939, when it was “suspended indefinitely” and the old ship was retired. Graf Zeppelin had flown 1.7 million miles in the eleven years since 1928, without a serious problem. She would fly no more.
The new ship was used, as the Hindenburg had been, for propaganda
purposes. She overflew post-Anschluss Vienna (to great enthusiasm) and appeared
in the skies of the Sudetenland (where she was cheered) and over Prague (where
she was booed). She also, in a series of baldly phony “navigational errors”
overflew and photographed military installations in the Low Countries and in
France. When the Graf Zeppelin II
crossed the English Channel “by mistake” and tried to photograph British radar
installations she was chased off by Hurricane and Spitfire fighter planes.
She, along with her older namesake, was
grounded on August 16, 1939. World War II
began on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
Both ships were ordered scrapped in
1940, and their Duralumin was used to build fighter planes.
Far across the ocean, the lonely U.S.S.
Los Angeles lived on, the last of her
kind, in the hangar at Lakehurst. Although Commander Rosendahl lobbied hard for
her return to service, convinced she could play a role in the Second World War,
LZ-126 shared the fate of her German sister LZ-127 when she was scrapped in
1942 for her metal, which was used for U.S. warplane production.
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A typical U.S. Navy World War II-era
blimp, the J-3
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The Soviet Union apparently continued
to use semirigid airships along the lines of those designed by Umberto Nobile,
well into the 1950s for long-distance travel and carrying over Siberia.
The scrapping of the Los Angeles was the end of the Great Age
of Airships, though not the end of airships. Goodyear-Zeppelin, the company
that had imagined itself building a fleet of forty silver sky giants received
the U.S. Navy contract to build blimps instead, and built far more than any
company might have built of airships. When the U.S. Navy retired its last blimp
in 1962, Charles Rosendahl was at the controls. It also built (and builds) blimps
for corporations.
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(Top) Blimps were used for advertising early
on. Tydol Gasoline was a brand manufactured by today's Exxon-Mobil. It was used
on zeppelins along with the same company's Veedol lubricants
(Bottom) Goodyear's blimps are by far the most famous commercial blimps in the United States, and likely the world. The newest generation of Goodyear blimps are actually built by Goodyear-Zeppelin and are not blimps but semirigids. This semirigid is based in Pompano Beach, Florida
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| Snoopy, seen in his trademark World War I aviator's costume, is famed for his battles with The Red Baron. He apparently flies blimps as well as Sopwith Camels |
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Even as dressed-up toys dangling in the
corner of a favorite sports bar, the human fascination with airships makes them
prime marketing material
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As for DZR, it suspended operations.
Its assets, held in Trust between 1939 and today, grew exponentially. In 1989,
Zeppelin Neue Technologie (Zeppelin NT), a progeny corporation, began planning
a fleet of semirigid airships to be used for long-distance low-environmental
impact freighting, research, advertising, and sky cruises offered through
DZR. In 2011, Goodyear-Zeppelin and DZR
finally formalized the 1929 DELAG partnership, and German-built zeppelins are
taking to the skies again. Graf von Zeppelin’s fleet of skysailing day cruises,
first conceived over one hundred years ago, is on the drawing boards, and
airlines, spurred by increasing passenger dissatisfaction, are investigating
airships as a possible alternative means of travel for select First Class
travelers.
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A Zeppelin NT. Note the propellers in
the tail and the flanks. Zeppelins NT are semirigids, built of superlight
and sturdy modern materials. All are helium ships
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The control car of a modern Zeppelin NT. Note the female pilot
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A Zeppelin NT configured for skysailing
day cruises
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The Zeppelin Museum at Friederichshafen
features among many other things, a full-sized tourable mock-up of the public
rooms on "A" Deck on the Hindenburg
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Modern airship designers often exercise
their imaginations
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