As Light As Eiderdown

XXXVI

Before the radio / TV mast was erected atop the Empire State Building, the peak of the building was conceived as a dirigible mooring station. The U.S.S. Los Angeles tried several experimental moorings in the late 1920s as the building was under construction, but the wind conditions at the top of the building were found to be too unpredictable to allow for the safe mooring of airships and so the idea was abandoned. Had the idea worked, the skyline of New York would have become even more dramatic on a daily basis than it was.

 

An unadorned passenger cabin on the once-civilian U.S.S. Los Angeles

While the United States experimented with the U.S.S. Los Angeles, DELAG in Germany launched the second, much larger, Los Angeles-class airship, the Graf Zeppelin, in September 1928. The Graf Zeppelin was destined to become the most successful and nearly the most famous airship in the world. After a number of experimental shakedown intercity cruises in Germany, the Graf Zeppelin set out to become the first German airship to successfully cross the Atlantic, from Frederichshafen to Lakehurst, New Jersey (the Empire State Building was already retired as a port of entry). The first transatlantic flight, in October 1928, was fully crewed and passengered, though most of the passengers were either journalists or airship specialists sent aloft by their respective governments.

The bridge of the Graf Zeppelin. The big wheel handled the rudder, the smaller ones the elevators and ailerons. On the left hand wall is a ballast station

 

The Graf Zeppelin was the most elaborate airship to date. Although the crew slept in the hull, the passengers slept in the large gondola slung under the ship that was divided into the bridge, navigation room, radio room and galley (the electric stoves on board were a new innovation), the dining room / passenger lounge, ten double Pullman-like sleeping compartments, and men's, ladies' and crews' lavatories. Each Pullman berth had a large picture window. Although there was no heat on board, the passengers were provided with eiderdown bedding for warmth.

A passenger compartment on the Graf Zeppelin. The windowed cabins were a popular feature

By and large it was a successful flight but for a frightening incident over the mid-Atlantic. With Dr. Hugo Eckener captaining, the ship came upon a fast moving and violent storm front too big to avoid. Eckener wisely called his Prime Crew to the controls, but even as they began to relieve their junior crewmates the ship was struck by a violent downdraft that caused the nose to dive some 50 degrees.

Passengers in the dining room suddenly found themselves toppled from their chairs covered in the ship's hot luncheon, or dodging flying crockery and silver.

The dining room / passenger lounge of the Graf Zeppelin

 

The journalists later admitted, "We thought we were going to die," and they might have, but the Senior Elevator Man shoved his less-experienced crewmate out of the way, and undid what would have been a fatal overcorrection of the ailerons; at the same time, the Senior Ballast Board operator began valving gas and dumping water ballast in a virtual ballet that brought the ship to an even keel within seconds. The whole incident became an interesting story, and nothing more.

Bad weather slowed the passage further and the Graf Zeppelin crossed the U.S. coast 24 hours behind schedule and several hundred miles off course, but Dr. Eckener knew how to make lemonade. He turned the ship north over the Chesapeake Bay and floated her magisterially above Washington D.C., where President Coolidge broke up a Cabinet meeting and the Supreme Court went into recess to view the Graf Zeppelin passing overhead. Eckener bypassed Lakehurst to sail the Graf Zeppelin over New York City, to the accompaniment of every horn, whistle and siren in the city. Eckener and his crew were invited to dinner at the White House and received a tickertape parade and the Key to New York City. 

The voyage went into the annals as a spectacular success.