Castles In The Air

LVII 

The idea of carrying passengers inside the hulls of airships was an idea as old as airships themselves.

It was frustrated in the early 1900s by the long and narrow, almost sausage-like shape of the envelopes of the first lighter-than-air-craft. The hulls were set aside completely for the gas cells, and crew (there were no formal passengers as yet) traveled in the gondolas slung from the ships' bellies. These first-generation airships were strictly experimental craft, and like most experiments they were fraught with failures.

The windows on the Promenade Deck of the R-100

Airships matured relatively quickly. The passenger zeppelins launched by DELAG in 1910 were long, pointy-nosed, tubular ships that looked like nothing so much as imaginatively finned space rockets of the 1950s on horizontal trajectories. These second-generation dirigibles were essentially day sailers, and accommodations consisted of a lounge with a buffet table and a bar inside the gondola. Eventually cabins were added to some of the later ships for overnight treks, and the crew was berthed in uncomfortable conditions in the keel at the bottom of the hull.

A two-passenger cabin on R-101 was the size of a small hotel room as opposed to a Pullman car berth. The R-100 could carry over 100 passengers, the R-101 nearly 150. The “porthole” light fixture was a conscious reminder of airships’ nautical roots

The third-generation War Zeppelins of 1915-1917 added little but perhaps technical advances to frame construction of airships. They were ships without any refinements at all.

It was not until the fourth airship generation of the 1920s that the idea of carrying passengers within the hull really began to bear fruit as the airship evolved from a daysailer to a blue water cruiser.

The windows on the Promenade Deck of the R-101. Unlike the Hindenburg's windows these were sealed and made of shatterproof glass

In essence, what had been needed was space --- a large enough envelope to contain both enough gas cells for sufficient lift and a centralized area for cabins and lounges, galleys and public rooms that could be used without overcrowding. When airships attained both the length and beam of ocean liners, internalizing the passenger spaces could become a reality. The fourth airship generation was a transitional generation.

In 1924, the U.S.S. Los Angeles (LZ-126 / ZR-3) was built as a passenger zeppelin with space for passenger accommodations both within the gondola and within the hull. Los Angeles never flew as a passenger ship. The cabins in her gondola became probably the best billets of any U.S. Navy ship. But no sooner had the Los Angeles and her sister the Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) been built then it was realized that decentralizing the passenger spaces on board ship presented some difficult problems. The interior passenger spaces were never completed and were used as utility space on both ships.

The Grand Staircase on the R-100, a first on any airship, connected all three passenger decks

DELAG planned to make the LZ-128 the first of the fifth generation airships, airships that contained all their passenger spaces within the hull. Economics forced the cancellation of the LZ-128, but DELAG's ideas found expression in the Hindenburg (LZ-129).

But before Hindenburg could be completed, both the United States and Great Britain had designed decked airships along the German model. The U.S. vessels were strictly utilitarian flying aircraft carriers, huge, with hangar decks and crew areas within their hulls, but the Great British ships, both hydrogen ships only slightly smaller than the Hindenburg overall, were designed to compete head-to-head with both the Germans and with the oceangoing shipping lines.

The Dining Room on the R-100

The earlier British ship, R-100, had its passenger and crew accommodations on three internal decks. The lowest deck contained the crew's accommodations, which were absolutely salubrious when compared to the DELAG crew cabins. The middle deck contained the Dining Room / Passenger Lounge and the galley and service rooms. 18 four-berth passenger cabins and a spacious Promenade Deck rounded out the layout on this deck. The top deck consisted of a gallery running around the dining-room and 14 two-berth cabins.

The 5,500 square foot passenger lounge on R-101 was, and remains, the largest room aloft. The entirety of "A" Deck on the Hindenburg would be 1000 square feet smaller, and along with "B" Deck would not quite match the size of this one room on R-101

The later R-101 had passenger accommodations that were spread over two decks within the envelope and included 50 passenger cabins for one, two, or four people, a dining room for 60 people, two promenade decks with windows down the sides of the airship, a huge lounge of 5,500 square feet and even an asbestos-lined smoking room for 24 people. In terms of square footage, R-101's accommodations matched or exceeded even a Five Star Hotel or First Class on a premium ocean liner.

Sadly, the R-101 exploded on her maiden voyage in 1930 due entirely to mishandling and the R-100 was grounded, never to fly again. The Hindenburg, which was constructed using some of the salvaged Duralumin from R-101, by default became the standard for airship travel in its time.

 

A remarkable photograph of the enclosed Promenade Deck of R-100 looking for all the world like an open-air Promenade on an ocean liner. The woman at the right, apparently wearing furs, is looking out the large Promenade windows, as are the passengers on the upper Observation Deck. The row of portholes are the windows of passenger cabins. It was felt that portholes kept to the nautical tradition of “air ships,” and passengers who stayed in their cabins could still watch the activities on the Promenade Deck or see the scenery passing beneath the ship