Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  The decision was taken out of his hands when—speaking of machinations—the French and British spies tailing Hensley informed the Inter-Allied Commission of his activities. The commission reminded Washington that because the United States had not yet ratified the Versailles Treaty it was, legally speaking, still at war with Germany. Newton Baker, the U.S. secretary of war, was horrified to discover that Hensley was in effect, then, running a covert arms-smuggling operation in violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act. On December 1, 1919, Newton canceled and covered up the entire project. (The United States and Germany would eventually sign a bilateral peace treaty in August 1921.)28

  For Eckener, it was a blow, but not a wholly unwelcome one. Building LZ-125 would have brought, aside from economic jeopardy, increased scrutiny from the Inter-Allied Commission just as the DELAG was, against all odds, performing unexpected wonders.

  24. Bringing Back the Dead

  THE ZEPPELIN MEN had outdone themselves. Drawing upon their wartime experience, Dürr, Jaray, and Arnstein managed to conjure Bodensee from nothing in less than five months.

  The airship was like none other. Integrating the latest aerodynamic advances and a masterpiece of craftwork, its graceful streamlined curves made it an elongated Art Deco teardrop. A straight line or a right angle could scarcely be found. Eckener’s friend Colonel Hensley, who would make sixteen flights on it, said Bodensee “is really so far advanced in every way over anything I have seen, that one is led to express the opinion that in airship construction (and operation as well), all other countries are mere Babes in the Woods compared to the Germans.”1

  The combined passenger and control car resembled a railway carriage on the inside, with twenty passengers facing one another across tables. An arched window graced each four-person compartment, and another six people could sit in wicker chairs in the aisle, weight permitting. There was a bathroom and a buffet and overhead luggage racks. For double the price, there was even a first-class private cabin at the front for a VIP traveling alone. A visiting American named Robert Thompson was enraptured by the cleverness of its construction, marveling that the removable “glass” windows were actually made of paper-thin mica, that the comfortable chairs were feather-light, and that the apparently substantial wooden columns decorating the cabin were as “hollow as a paper tube.”2

  Yet at just 396 feet long, Bodensee was considerably shorter than any other previous Zeppelin—by some 25 feet when compared to the first of its kind, the count’s LZ-1 of 1900. At 706,200 cubic feet, Bodensee’s volume was comparable to the prewar Sachsen; it was almost as if, just as Eckener had pledged to begin where it all had ended, the war had never happened. But of course it had happened, and the sacrifices of those four years had not been wasted.

  Whereas Sachsen’s useful lift had been just 16,300 pounds, Bodensee’s was 22,000, and the latter’s four war-tested 245-horsepower Maybach Mb IVa engines drove it faster than any airship that had ever been built: a stunning 82.3 mph, a record not beaten until the advent of the Hindenburg seventeen years later. Henley was amazed when after an airplane drew up alongside the airship, Eckener decided to have some fun ordering “Allekraft” (full speed). Bodensee jumped forward as the engines roared, and the race was on. For twenty-two minutes airplane and airship were neck and neck before the pilot waved, dived, and headed for home, leaving Eckener the jubilant victor.3

  With just a single airship, Eckener could set up only one route. Sightseeing tours, a mainstay of the old leisurely DELAG in its grand imperial days, were rejected as out of date and worse, unprofitable. With the kaiser gone, the new DELAG was part of a modern republic and was directed at the time-conscious business traveler—the men and perhaps even women (it’s interesting that neither Zeppelin’s nor Eckener’s wives would ever fly in an airship) working hard to get Germany back on its feet.

  Eckener selected Friedrichshafen-Berlin, with a stop in Munich a few times a week to pick up passengers. Before the war, the trip had taken, thanks to the remorselessly efficient German railway system, fourteen hours. In 1919, revolutionary strikes, smashed engines, coal shortages, and cracked rails had turned the once-pleasant journey into a twenty-eight-hour descent into Hades—when the trains actually ran. Eckener said he could do it in between five and seven hours.4

  On August 24, 1919, the Bodensee embarked on its first voyage and was an instant success, with tickets on subsequent flights being sold out four weeks in advance. Prices were set relatively low to lure affluent customers away from the railway, but they were not cheap. The DELAG brought in extra income from the mail and packages it carried on each flight, as well as from add-on fees for heavy luggage. Each passenger could take a carry-on bag and had a free allowance of thirty pounds in a suitcase. For passengers unaware of the weight restrictions, an unwelcome surprise awaited: One traveler noticed an “elegantly fur-clad” woman protesting the bill for the more than “half a dozen trunks” she had brought with her. The add-on fee for the extra pounds amounted to more than her ticket.5

  In its first month of operation, the Bodensee brought in 500,000 marks—not bad at all in a country where potatoes were now luxuries. Costs exceeded that figure, but as larger Zeppelins plied ever-longer routes, Eckener predicted, operating costs per mile would fall.6

  The DELAG operated a daily schedule. On the odd days of the month, Bodensee departed Friedrichshafen and sailed north; on the evens, it returned south from Berlin. With a good tailwind, the trip sometimes took just four and a half hours.7

  The DELAG was so successful that Eckener went to Sweden in October 1919 to discuss opening a route—an international one—to Stockholm with a new airship he’d commissioned: the Nordstern (North Star), a slightly larger (thirty-passenger) clone of the Bodensee. He received an enthusiastic reception and gave, he told his wife, Johanna, twenty interviews to the press. He even presold 50,000 marks’ worth of tickets for an airship that didn’t yet exist.8

  Spain was a strong possibility for the next expansion.9 Like Sweden, Spain had been neutral during the war, and Eckener was still wary of needlessly antagonizing the French and British with talk of running a route across their territory. But a flight south through Switzerland would require only the permission of the more easygoing Italians before crossing the Mediterranean.

  Spain was important to Eckener for three reasons. First, its warm weather meant that Eckener could operate flights year-round rather than having to close during the winter.10 Second, he could benefit from the coming boom in postwar tourism by selling the spectacular views of mountains and sea to leisure travelers. The views in Germany, in contrast, were unremittingly awful, with its pyres of grim black devastation. The journalist Ernst Klein, while traveling on the Bodensee, lamented the smokeless factory chimneys of once-vibrant Nuremberg and the immense new cemetery outside Leipzig where soldiers’ graves stretched in endless rows.11

  Last, and most important, Spain was the gateway to South America, whose commercial and tourism possibilities were only just beginning to be realized. Seville or Cádiz, in particular, provided an ideal jumping-off point for a trip to Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires along a southern route, an easier one than the North Atlantic, where fog, gales, and low temperatures often prevailed. That the Canary Islands and Cape Verde were on the way for repairs and emergency respite was an added bonus. From South America, the next natural jump was Miami, then Washington and New York. If Eckener could set up airports in Spain, Brazil, and Argentina, he’d be well ahead of anyone else in establishing a global network. No one could ever claim Eckener lacked ambition.12

  It was not to be. On December 5, 1919, four days after Secretary Baker canceled Colonel Hensley’s “compensation airship” scheme, the DELAG closed for the winter. Bodensee went into its hangar for refitting, and Nordstern was scheduled to undergo final preparations for the coming season’s Stockholm expansion.

  Then the Inter-Allied Commission of Control struck its death blow: St
arting January 10, 1920, when the Treaty of Versailles was due to come into force, all DELAG operations would be suspended and the Bodensee and Nordstern confiscated.

  * * *

  —

  ECKENER WAS SURPRISED, and bitterly disappointed, at the guillotining of his airship line. In its ninety-eight days of existence, the DELAG had flown on eighty-eight days and made 103 flights totaling 32,300 miles. Bodensee had carried 2,253 passengers (an average of 22 per flight, making for an impressive 85 percent load factor) plus 11,000 pounds of mail and 6,600 of cargo with not a single accident.13

  The DELAG had also struck a hopeful chord in the German breast. Not only was the Bodensee a symbol of a new and proud Germany, it represented youth and optimism, the “returning energy” and “physical reconstruction” of a vanquished nation. As one writer noticed, on his flight there had been two Dutchmen, one of whom remarked as they disembarked in Berlin, “Do you know, a nation that can set up such an institution as this right after its defeat will never go down.”14

  The mastermind behind the shutdown soon revealed himself: Air Commodore Edward Masterman, the head of the Inter-Allied Commission and an airship expert of some note. Masterman just happened to be in charge of Britain’s own lackluster airship program, and the DELAG move, to Eckener’s mind, was a blatantly protectionist attempt to strangle the competition.

  During the war, in late 1916, the British had commissioned R-34 (the R stood for “rigid”), a near-exact copy of the German L-33, which had recently crashed. It had not been finished by the Armistice, and the Admiralty managed to get rid of the white elephant by dumping it on the newly formed Air Ministry, which hoped some private investors would take it off its hands. To whip up interest, the ministry organized a long-distance voyage: R-34 would travel to America and back.15

  Annoyingly, just as R-34 was being readied, the honor and glory of conquering the Atlantic by air fell to the U.S. Navy. Setting out from Newfoundland, three of its flying boats had made the attempt, though only one, the stripped-down NC-4, had made it to Britain on May 31, 1919, after an arduous journey of nearly two weeks, including three prolonged stops.16

  Still, R-34 could at least salvage something by making a relatively rapid return trip. On July 2, R-34 departed Scotland bound for Roosevelt Field on Long Island, near New York City. Owing to constant mechanical problems and high winds, the flight west was very slow, taking 108 hours and 12 minutes—the steamship record for a crossing was held by the Mauretania in 1909, better by roughly two hours—but R-34 had beaten the pants off the U.S. Navy aviators. It had been a close thing, though. On arrival, R-34 had just 140 gallons of fuel left—enough for a mere two hours’ flying time. The return flight, thanks to a nice tailwind, took only seventy-five hours.17

  The New York Times may have claimed that “the [NC-4] airplane flights of 1919 were gallant adventures” and that “the voyage of R-34 is the real beginning of the new age” of transatlantic travel, but the plaudits were premature.18 Disappointingly, still no commercial bidders appeared, probably because R-34 had shown that while a return flight was indeed possible, no one could see how to make a paying business out of it. R-34, old and worn ragged by the flight, had left no room for revenue passengers, mail, or cargo, and more to the point, what madman would want to risk his life in a contraption that had made transoceanic landfall with a mere two-hour margin of safety?

  In Germany, Eckener couldn’t understand the hubbub over NC-4 and R-34. They were both one-off, go-for-broke stunts undertaken for the sake of being first. Had not his L-59 two years earlier traveled farther (to Africa and back) with no stops and no mishaps? Eckener, always thinking about the long term, understood that the key to ultimate success was endurance. Making a single moonshot effort was a very far cry from flying safely, repeatedly, and profitably.

  Echoing Eckener’s views, the German press dismissed the Atlantic crossings as a mere “sports feat.”19 As indeed it proved (as Eckener had shrewdly suspected all along): R-34 flew domestically a few more times before ignominiously bumping into a hill and being sold for scrap.

  That was cold comfort. To save the Zeppelin Company, Eckener had thrown the dice when he’d tried to sell L-72 to the Americans—and lost. He’d thrown them again to build Hensley’s LZ-125—and lost. And he’d thrown them once more to set up the DELAG—and lost.

  But this was no time to quit.

  * * *

  —

  WHAT FORCE CONTINUED to propel Eckener forward with almost demonic energy in these dire years for the Zeppelin Company? Why was he compelled to fight off rivals and challenges that would have felled a man less driven? It could not have been only a sense of loyalty to the count’s memory—though Eckener proved himself adept at exploiting that memory for his own ends—and neither was it due to some lust for power and station, for he could easily have found himself a place in the government or a directorship at a major conglomerate.

  It was because, very simply, he knew he was right. He unshakably believed that if he could steer the Zeppelin Company through the storms he was onto a winner. And he was not wrong about that.

  The fact of the matter is, the Zeppelin, condemned and mocked as the world’s worst weapon by 1918, was by 1919–20 being exalted as the silvery herald of global travel. That such a surprising turnaround, partly engineered by Eckener himself, occurred when memories of the Zeppelin raids were still raw says much about his canny publicity skills.

  It was Eckener who assiduously promoted the idea that the jolly old count’s marvelous invention had been perverted and brutalized by the German war machine for nefarious purposes, whereas he had remained loyal to Zeppelin’s (allegedly) original intent of forging ever closer union between the peoples of the earth. It was a tale undoubtedly true in certain respects—Eckener had always fantasized, and always would, of peace-through-airship—but he took care to obscure his own wartime role in the Naval Airship Division and downplayed the count’s less wholesome aspects.

  Stage One in the rehabilitation process had been the appearance in March 1919, a few months before the Bodensee’s first flight, of a report (leaked by Eckener) in the German aeronautical weekly Luftpost on the still-secret L-59 Africa flight of 1917. The amazing story was picked up by the British, and then international, press.20 The revelation reignited interest in the airship as a viable transatlantic transport—hence the R-34 voyage—with advocates deriving inspiration from President Woodrow Wilson’s famous address to Congress unveiling his idealistic “14 Points” that would reform an anarchic, shattered world.

  When Wilson promised free trade, freedom of navigation, open borders, and liberty to all, airship enthusiasts resurrected the rhetoric of those happier days when balloon flight promised to unchain mankind from its manacles and proclaimed the imminent arrival of a new age “when giant ships of the air will be carrying mail and passengers to all parts of the globe, ignoring boundary lines and spreading the democracy of the world.”21 When Wilson spoke of establishing a League of Nations to bring world peace through disarmament and negotiation, the airshipmen echoed that an “internationalization [of] the air” was at hand: It would create a Utopia where people never again had to “live permanently in a border-defending state of affairs.”22

  For the nations mourning ten million dead in a war to end all wars that had swept away five emperors, eight kings, and eighteen dynasties like so much detritus, their future would be dominated and safeguarded by the airship. And this future was the Dream—Eckener’s Dream. Eckener was compelled to pursue the airship, even when all seemed lost, as a means to revolutionize the system of the world and attain glory immortal and peace eternal. Building airships was his destiny, and he would let nothing stand in his way.

  Eckener might otherwise have been dismissed as a monomaniacal crank but for the fact that the pie-eyed fantasists were actually airplane lovers like Willis Abbott, a well-known journalist who boldly imagined an alternative future wh
ere aerobuses, private biplanes staffed with liveried pilots, four-seater family fliers more numerous than Ford Model Ts, and huge triplane passenger expresses plied the crowded sky above America with flights between New York, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Washington. They would take off every hour on the hour, Abbott confidently forecast, and “delays are most unusual.”23

  Eckener, at least, had a record of reliable flying undergirding his utopian dreams, but readers of Abbott’s article would have been struck by the gulf between his rosy predictions and the parlous reality that was aviation in America at that time.

  25. The Visionary

  SINCE ITS HEYDAY in the Wright brothers era, the United States had fallen so far behind in aviation that it barely scraped a mention in the world rankings. In 1914, on the very eve of war, the entire U.S. airplane industry employed a grand total of 168 men, and the largest firm, Glenn Curtiss’s Aeroplane Company of Hammondsport, New York, could build just one aircraft per week.

  Meanwhile, that same year, the French military possessed 162 modern airplanes compared to the United States’ all-obsolescent air force of 23. By April 6, 1917, when America entered the war, the situation had worsened: The armed forces now had at their command 109 airplanes (half were non-combat trainers; the rest were so dated they couldn’t be used in combat) and just 83 pilots. In comparison, France, Germany, and Britain each had thousands of aircraft.

  On May 24, the Allies requested that the United States provide 4,500 airplanes as soon as possible for the war effort. Full of vim, the army and navy went above and beyond and in 1918 alone the United States trained some 10,000 pilots and built 14,020 aircraft.

  An extraordinary achievement, but the vast majority of these aircraft were kept at home as bare-bones trainers. A mere 260 U.S. airplanes were operating on the Western Front in November 1918—France alone had 2,820 front-line aircraft—and their technological backwardness was embarrassingly apparent: Not a single American ace flew a U.S.-made fighter in World War I.