Zeppelin

The term zeppelin refers to a type of rigid airship pioneered by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century (known commonly as a dirigible).

The craft of the zeppelin design were so successful, that the word zeppelin in casual use came to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins are quite distinct from the non-rigid type of airships commonly known as blimps.

In addition to founding the airship construction business, which altogether finished 119 ships until 1938, in the early 20th century, Count von Zeppelin also founded the world's first commercial airline called DELAG (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG). Both business were based in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

The zeppelin airships were lighter-than-air craft using a rigid frame construction with an aerodynamic outer envelope and several separate balloons called 'cells' containing the lighter-than-air gas hydrogen completely within the frame. A comparatively small compartment for passengers and crew was built into the bottom of the frame. Several internal combustion engines provided motive power.

When the elderly Count died in 1917, his place as head of the Zeppelin business was taken by Hugo Eckener. Eckener was both a master of publicity as well as an extremely skilled airship captain. It was under Eckener's guidance that the Zeppelins reached their zenith.

The Zeppelin business was successful up to the 1930s and included long-distance routes from Germany to the United States and South America. The most successful airship of this period was LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" which flew over 1 million miles including the first (and, to date, only) circumnavigation of the globe via airship.

The Great Depression and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany both contributed to the demise of the passenger carrying airships. In particular, Eckener and the Nazis had an intense and mutual loathing. The Zeppelin business was nationalized by the German Government in the mid-1930s and closed down a few years later following the Hindenburg disaster, in which the company's flagship zeppelin caught fire during a landing.

However, during approximately 20 years of private operation as an airline, it was at least somewhat profitable, and had a perfect safety record until the Hindenburg fire.

The history of Zeppelins is of particular interest to stamp collectors. From 1909 through 1939, Zeppelins carried mail during their international flights, including covers (envelopes with stamps attached and canceled) prepared by and for collectors. Many nations issued high-denomination Zeppelin stamps, intended for franking of Zeppelin mail. Among the rarest of Zeppelin covers are those carried during the fateful flight of the Hindenburg; those which survived are invariably charred along the margins, and are worth thousands of dollars. See zeppelin mail for further details.

Table of contents

1 Early Zeppelin history 1.1 The first Zeppelin 1.2 Birth from disaster 1.3 Zeppelins before World War I 2 Zeppelins in World War I 3 Other airships 4 See also 5 External links

Early Zeppelin history

The first Zeppelin

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin seems to have become interested in constructing a "dirigible balloon" after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871, where he witnessed the use of French balloons during the siege of Paris. Also, he had encountered the military use of such aircraft in 1863 during the American Civil War, where he participated as a military observer on the side of the Union.

He began to seriously pursue his project after his early retirement from the military in 1890, aged 52. On August 31, 1895, he obtained a patent including the following principal features, not all of which actually made it into construction:

• a rigid aluminium skeleton of slim form, made of rings and longitudinal girders
• gas space broken up into many small cylindrical cells
• possibility to navigate using rudder and elevator fins
• two separate nacelle rigidly connected to the skeleton
• propellers mounted at the height of maximum air resistance
• possibility to connect several airships like train wagons

An expert committee to whom he had presented his plans in 1894 showed little interest, so the count was on his own for realizing his idea. In 1898 he founded the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Luftschiffahrt (company for the promotion of airship flight), contributing more than half of its 800,000 Mark share capital himself. He delegated the technical implementation to the engineer Theodor Kober and later to Ludwig Dürr.

Construction of the first Zeppelin airship began in 1899 in a floating assembly hall on Lake Constance in the Bay of Manzell, Friedrichshafen. This was intended to facilitate the difficult starting procedure, as the hall could easily be aligned with the wind. The prototype airship LZ 1 (LZ for "Luftschiff Zeppelin") had a length of 128 m, was driven by two 14.2 PS Daimler engines and balanced by moving a weight between its two nacelle.

The first Zeppelin flight occurred on July 2, 1900. It lasted for only 18 minutes, as LZ 1 was forced to land on the lake after the winding mechanism for the balancing weight had broken. Upon repair, the technology proved potential in subsequent flights, beating the 6 m/s velocity record of French airship "La France" by 3 m/s, but could not yet convince possible investors. With the financial resources depleted, Count von Zeppelin was forced to disassemble the prototype and close the company.

Birth from disaster

It was largely due to support by aviation enthusiasts that von Zeppelin's idea got a second (and third) chance and could be developed to a reasonably reliable technology. Only then, the airships could profitably be used for civilian aviation and sold to the military.

Donations and the profits of a special lottery, together with some public funding and further 100,000 Mark contributed by Count von Zeppelin himself, allowed for the construction of LZ 2, which took off for the first and only time on January 17, 1906. After both motors had failed, it made a forced landing in the Allgäu mountains, where the provisionally anchored ship was subsequently damaged beyond repair by a storm.

Its successor LZ 3, which incorporated all parts of LZ 2 that were still usable, became the first truly successful Zeppelin, travelling 4398 km in total during 45 flights until 1908. Now the technology became interesting for the German military, who bought LZ 3 and renamed it Z I. It served as a school ship until 1913, when it was decommissioned for being technologically outdated.

The army was also willing to buy LZ 4, but requested a demonstration that the ship could serve a 24 hour trip. While attempting to fulfil this requirement, the crew of LZ 4 had to make an intermediate landing in Echterdingen near Stuttgart. Here, an upcoming storm tore the airship away from its anchorage in the afternoon of August 5, 1908. It then crashed into a tree, took fire and quickly burnt down to ruins. No one was seriously injured (though two technicians repairing the engines only escaped by a hazardous jump), but this accident would certainly have knocked out the Zeppelin project economically, had not one spectator out of a crowd spontaneously initiated a collection of donations that finally yielded an impressive total amount of 6,096,555 Mark. This enabled the count to found the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH (airship construction Zeppelin Ltd.) and to erect a Zeppelin foundation. Thus, the Zeppelin project not only rose like Phoenix from the ashes, but was at last financially secured.

Zeppelins before World War I

In the following years until the outbreak of World War I in summer 1914, a total of 21 more Zeppelin airships (LZ 5 to LZ 25) were finished. (See List of zeppelins for a complete reference).

In 1909, LZ 6 became the first Zeppelin to be used for commercial passenger transport. For this purpose, it was taken over by the world's first airline, the newly founded Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG). Another six airships were sold to the DELAG until 1914, and were given names in addition to their production numbers, for example LZ 11 "Viktoria Luise" (1912) and LZ 17 "Sachsen" (1913). Four of these ships were destroyed in accidents, mostly while being transferred into their halls. There were no casualties.

Altogether, the DELAG airships travelled approximately 200,000 km, transporting about 40,000 passengers.

The remaining 14 pre-war zeppelins were purchased by the German Army and Navy, who labelled their aircraft Z I/II/... and L 1/2/..., respectively. (During the war, the Army changed their scheme twice: following Z XII, they switched to using the LZ numbers, later adding 30 to obscure the total production.)

When World War I broke out, the military also took over the three remaining DELAG ships. By this time, it had already decommissioned three other zeppelins (LZ 3 "Z I" included). Five more had been lost in accidents, in two of which people died: a storm pushed Navy zeppelin LZ 14 "L 1" down into the North Sea, drowning 14 soldiers, and LZ 18 "L 2" burst into flames due to an exploding engine, killing the entire crew.

By 1914, state-of-the-art zeppelins had lengths of 150-160 m and volumes of 22,000-25,000 m³, enabling them to carry loads of around 9 t. They were typically powered by three Maybach motors of around 200 PS each, thus reaching speeds up to about 80 km/h.

Zeppelins in World War I

Zeppelins were used as bombers during World War I but were not notably successful. At the beginning of the conflict the German command had high hopes for the craft, they appeared to have compelling advantages over contemporary aircraft - they were almost as fast, carried many more guns, had a greater bomb load and enormously greater range and endurance. These advantages did not translate well in reality.

The first offensive use of Zeppelins was just two days after the invasion of Belgium, a single craft the Z VI was damaged by gunfire and made a forced landing near Cologne. Two more Zeppelins were shot down in August and one was captured by the French. Their use against well-defended targets in daytime raids was a mistake and the High Command lost all respect for the Zeppelin, leaving it to the Naval Air Service to make any further use of the craft.

The main use of the craft was in reconnaissance out over the North Sea and the Baltic, the admirable endurance of the craft led German warships to a number of Allied vessels. During the entire war around 1,200 scouting flights were made. The Naval Air Service also directed a number of strategic raids against Britain, leading the way in bombing techniques and also forcing the British to make the pace on anti-aircraft defences. The first airship raids were approved by the Kaiser in January 1915. The raids were only to target military sites but raiding at night, and after the black-out became widespread, meant many bombs fell randomly in East Anglia.

The first raid was on January 19, 1915, the first bombing of civilians ever, two Zeppelins dropped 50 kg high explosive bombs and ineffective 3 kg incendiaries on Kings Lynn, Great Yarmouth and the surrounding villages. In all five people were killed, although the public and media reaction were out of all proportion to the death toll. There were a further nineteen raids in 1915, dropping 37 tons of bombs killing 181 people and injuring 455. British defences were divided between the Royal Navy and the Army at first (the Army took full control in February 1916) and a variety of sub 4-inch calibres were converted to anti-aircraft use and searchlights were introduced, initially manned by the police and their inexperience led to a number of illuminated clouds being mistaken for attacking airships. Aerial defences against Zeppelins were haphazard, the lack of interruptor gear in early aircraft meant that the first successes was achieved by dropping bombs on them. The first man to bring down a Zeppelin in this way was R. A. J. Warneford of the RNAS, flying a Morane Parasol on June 7, 1915. Dropping six 9 kg bombs he set fire to LZ 37 over Ghent and won the Victoria Cross.

Raids continued in 1916, London was accidentally bombed in May and in July the Kaiser allowed directed raids against urban centres. There were twenty-three airship raids in 1916 dropping 125 tons of ordnance killing 293 and injuring 691 people. Anti-aircraft defences were becoming tougher and new Zeppelins were introduced that doubled the operating altitude from 1,800 m to 3,750 m. To avoid searchlights these craft flew above the cloud layer whenever possible, lowering an oberver through the clouds to direct the bombing. The improved safety was balanced against the extra strain on the airship crews and the British introduction in mid-1916 of forward-firing fighters. The first night-fighter victory came on September 2, 1916 when W. Leefe-Robinson shot down one of a sixteen strong raiding force over London, he too won the Victoria Cross.

The introduction of effective fighters marked the end of the Zeppelin threat. New Zeppelins came into service that could operate at 5,500 m but exposed them to extremes of cold, and changeable winds could, and did, scatter many Zeppelin raids. In 1917 and 1918 there were only eleven Zeppelin raids against England, the final raid occured on August 5, 1918 and resulted in the death of KK Peter Strasser, commander of the German Naval Airship Department.

A total of eighty-eight Zeppelins were built during the war. Over sixty were lost, roughly evenly divided between accident and enemy action. Fifty-one raids had been undertaken, dropping 196.5 tons in 5,806 bombs, killing 557 people and injuring 1,358. It has been argued that the raids were effective far beyond material damage in diverting and hampering wartime production, diverting twelve squadrons and over 10,000 men to air defences.

Other airships

Airships using the Zeppelin construction method are sometimes referred to as zeppelins even if they had no connection to the Zeppelin business. Several airships of this kind were built in the USA, Britain, Italy, and the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly imitating original Zeppelin design derived from crashed or captured German World War I airships.

The first American-built rigid dirigible Shenandoah (ZR-1) ("daughter of the stars") flew in 1923. The Zeppelin was christened on August 20 in Lakehurst, New Jersey and was the first to use helium gas. It was tested in flight on September 3. It could carry a large amount of fuel to cruise 5,000 miles at an average speed of 65 mph. A series of fatal crashes halted the American construction of "Zeppelins".

The most successful American zeppelin, however, was a "true" Zeppelin: the Los Angeles (ZR-3) which was ordered from the Zeppelin Company and delivered to the United States in 1924. Here, it was at first filled with the helium from the Shenandoah, as that gas was still so rare that ZR-1 contained most of the world's reserves at that time. The Los Angeles operated reliably for eight years until it was retired in 1932 for economic reasons and dismantled in August 1940.

See also

• List of zeppelins

External links

• Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH the original company, still developing the concept
• The Zeppelin museum in Friedrichshafen
• Advanced Technologies Group a company developing a range of products such as UAV's - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and HAPS' - High Altitude Platform Stations for telecommunication
• American Blimp Corporation the only company focusing on the scheduled production of modern airships

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Not to be confused with Led Zeppelin, a famous rock band who took their name by substituting "zeppelin" in the expression "lead balloon".