Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  That was still extremely pricey compared to hydrogen—between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet—and for the time being the navy could afford just enough to fill one of its new airships. Because it was smaller, the 2.1-million-cubic-foot Shenandoah was selected as the lucky recipient, with ZR-2 sticking with hydrogen for the next year or two.

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  IN FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, ECKENER watched the celebrations enviously. To his mind, R-38/ZR-2 was a dated piece of junk, helium or not; Zeppelin could do so much better, if only given the chance, but that was hardly likely given the toxic political environment in Europe. A few months earlier, the Allied powers had accused Germany of backsliding and foot-dragging on the war reparations payments it had agreed to at Versailles. To crack the whip, the French threatened to send troops to occupy the Ruhr Valley industrial region while the British began interpreting the Versailles terms more stringently.

  As part of this effort, Masterman and the Inter-Allied Commission clamped down on the Zeppelin Company. After suspending the DELAG, the air commodore persuaded the Conference of Ambassadors, a new body based in Paris responsible for enforcing the peace treaties, to define any German airship as being inherently “military” in purpose, intention, and effect—and thus specifically banned—if it exceeded one million cubic feet in size.5 Eckener’s prized “loophole” had been efficiently sealed.

  The new ruling vaporized Eckener’s hopes of ever crossing the Atlantic. The Bodensee and the Nordstern had been tiny creatures of seven hundred thousand cubic feet, good only for short-range journeys, and Masterman had confiscated them. For an Atlantic route, Eckener would need an airship of at least two million cubic feet, more realistically three, but if he tried building one of that size it would suffer the same fate as its DELAG predecessors. The worst of it was that even as he had the theoretical proof that giant airships were the future, he was powerless to do anything about it.

  There was nothing else for it; Eckener had to take drastic action to circumvent Masterman. On June 13, 1921, he wrote to Major Benjamin Foulois, the assistant to the American military attaché in Berlin. His offer: Zeppelin would build a super-giant, brand-new, top-of-the-line airship of 3.5 million cubic feet for free. Was he interested?

  Eckener knew that that would get his attention. Foulois immediately informed Secretary of State Charles Hughes, who took it to President Warren Harding. Yes, they were very interested indeed. The navy was particularly enthusiastic, rubbing its hands at the prospect of so unexpectedly acquiring a third airship to join ZR-1 and ZR-2.

  Eckener outlined the terms. First, the construction cost of the airship (“LZ-126”) would be counted against what was still owed the United States in compensation for the two promised airships destroyed by the sabotage at Nordholz. To be absolutely clear, Eckener said, LZ-126 was a “compensation airship” freely and independently negotiated between two partners, not a government-endorsed “reparations airship,” in which case it would be part of the Versailles settlement—and that would involve the troublesome Masterman and his hostile Inter-Allied Commission.

  Since the compensation owed had been assessed as 3.2 million gold marks (the “gold mark” was a theoretical rate of exchange set at the prewar value of 4.25 marks to the dollar) and Eckener calculated the cost of a new airship at 3.56 million gold marks, its construction would more than wipe out the debt.

  So eager were the Americans to get their hands on this airship that they didn’t stop to ask how Eckener was performing such a feat of financial magic. The trick, which Eckener did not reveal to the audience, was that since the near-bankrupt Zeppelin lacked the money to build an airship for nothing, he had secretly arranged with Walther Rathenau, the minister of reconstruction, to advance some 3 million gold marks to keep the company solvent. At a time when Germany was claiming penury as the cause of its delayed Versailles payments, this arrangement was, to put it charitably, a sleight of hand.

  Second, in exchange for LZ-126, the Americans had to pledge to pressure the Conference of Ambassadors to overturn Masterman’s ban on large airships so that Eckener could start building his own for the transatlantic route.6 Without cover from the Conference of Ambassadors, there was a danger that Masterman would ignore legal niceties like the difference between a “compensation airship” and a “reparations airship” and swoop in to confiscate it.

  By anyone’s definition, Eckener’s was a brilliant, if extraordinarily risky, jujitsu move. At a stroke, if all went according to plan, he would get approval to build big airships, save the company from extinction, frustrate the hated Masterman no end, gain powerful American backing, and buy more time to pursue the dream of a transatlantic crossing.

  If all went according to plan.

  If it didn’t, though, and he failed to produce LZ-126, it was over for Zeppelin.

  At first, all did go according to plan. Two weeks after writing to Foulois, Washington informed the Conference of Ambassadors that it was willing to accept a Zeppelin in lieu of cash for the losses at Nordholz.

  Then it didn’t. Masterman bluntly told Myron Herrick, the U.S. emissary, that he would never lift the million-cubic-feet restriction. On August 17, 1921, the Conference of Ambassadors accordingly voted against approving LZ-126.

  Eckener had fallen at the first hurdle.

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  ON AUGUST 24, a week after the ambassadors’ vote, R-38/ZR-2 set off on a final trial flight before departing for America. On board were thirty-two British crewmen and officers and seventeen from the U.S. Navy. Flight Lieutenant Archibald Wann, in command, performed some turning tests at 62 mph at low altitude, which so stressed the flawed framework that it crumpled amidships. As the ship bent in two, its structural failure was soon followed by two violent explosions—caused either by sparks or by a fuel fire igniting a very impure and thus very flammable mix of air and hydrogen in the gas cells. The last message sent from the airship came from Wireless Officer Wicks: “Ship broken; falling.”7

  Quite apart from the careless failure to maintain hydrogen purity to reduce the risk of fire, which stunned the Zeppelin experts at Friedrichshafen, R-38’s designer, Commander Charles Campbell, in an omission that boggled Dürr, Arnstein, and Jaray, had not bothered to strengthen the skeleton to compensate for the increased aerodynamic loads at low altitude. They had designed their wartime height-climbing Zeppelins—R-38 was essentially a clone based on captured German technology—to operate in the thin air at high altitude; closer to the ground, the stresses on the airship rose precipitously when the vehicle deviated from a straight line to turn or pitch. The inexperienced Wann compounded the error by undertaking high-speed, high-risk maneuvers that would never have been tolerated in an Eckener-trained Zeppelin captain.

  Campbell died in the disaster, along with all but five of his countrymen (Wann lived but suffered serious injuries). Only a single American survived. The dead were buried with full honors in Westminster Abbey, leaving behind a livid U.S. Navy and an American public suddenly bereft of its anticipated treasure.

  In the United States, the press almost unanimously pointed to “structural weakness”—a euphemism for “British incompetence”—as the cause of the accident, perhaps explaining why, despite the loss of life, public support for the airship remained resolute.8 Scientific American commented that the accident may have been “deplorable” but it would “not prevent airship travel. Deplorable, also, was the loss of the Titanic; but people still travel in steamships and will continue to do so.”9

  The U.S. Navy had by no means lost its faith in airships, but never again would the Americans trust British airship engineering or construction. The next acquisition would have to be German, Masterman be damned.

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  WHEN R-38 EXPLODED on August 24, so too did the Americans. They returned to Paris accusing Masterman of being obstreperous and self-interestedly mounting a p
ersonal crusade against Zeppelin. The U.S. ambassador to London delivered a note to 10 Downing Street expressing Washington’s “surprise”—a bitingly harsh word in the diplomatic world—that Britain was preventing the acquisition of LZ-126 in light of the deaths of so many American personnel aboard one of its own third-rate products.

  Caught in this embarrassing position, His Majesty’s Government opened negotiations with Washington. They eventually agreed to meet in the middle between Eckener’s proposed 3.5-million-cubic-foot airship and Masterman’s one-million-cubic-foot restriction. On December 16, 1921, the Conference of Ambassadors voted to approve a 2.5-million-cubic-foot airship, though to save face it demanded two conditions.

  First, the airship would be used only to “determine the feasibility of rigid airships for commercial purposes”; and second, this would be a “special exception” to the rule forbidding Zeppelin construction. There was to be just this one non-military airship, no more, after which Eckener would either liquidate the business or start selling pots and pans, as Colsman had once proposed. Three weeks later, on January 6, Masterman was ordered to approve the deal, notwithstanding his fierce objections.10

  Neither Eckener nor the navy had any real intention of adhering to these conditions. LZ-126 was being built for the American military, and it was hardly likely that Zeppelin, the navy’s co-conspirator, would voluntarily close up shop upon finishing it. As the very Hungarian proverb goes, if you trust somebody, then you can steal horses together, or in this case, an airship.

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  SOON AFTERWARD, THE navy’s representatives arrived in Friedrichshafen to establish the “Office of Inspector of Naval Aircraft” to supervise construction of LZ-126—now dubbed ZR-3—which they expected Zeppelin to finish within fifteen months.11

  Led by Lieutenant Commander Garland Fulton, the Americans quickly ran into trouble. At the welcoming party, Eckener, Gemmingen, Dürr, and Karl Maybach (in charge of developing the engines) were “most courteous and pleasant,” Fulton reported home, but “it soon became obvious that they did not propose to give us the slightest bit of information in regard to the proposed airship.”

  Over the coming weeks, Fulton and Commander Ralph Weyerbacher, his colleague, also kept hearing mysterious rumors of a “Dr. Karl Arnstein,” considered, said Weyerbacher, “the brains of the outfit.” Yet “the Zep people took pains to hide this,” and secreted him away. (Jaray, the aerodynamicist, was sick with tuberculosis and about to leave the company to move to Switzerland.)12

  The reasons for the Zeppeliners’ curious behavior soon became clear. To the Germans, the U.S. Navy had bought an airship—but not the arcane know-how that created it and made it work. That information was the exclusive property of the Zeppelin Company and must remain a closely guarded secret—or else it would seem as if Eckener had sold his customer the keys to the kingdom. The Americans, conversely, believed they owned the complete package, including details of German design methods, aerodynamic and structural calculations, and stressing processes.

  Legally speaking, the Germans were right. The contract stated specifically that the inspectors must have full access to the manufacturing facilities for the structure, engines, and other equipment, but it said nothing about being given the crucial data.

  On the other hand, the contract also stipulated that the airship must be finished within fifteen months and “operational in every respect,” including engines, mechanical and signals equipment, the control car, and even the tools commonly carried aboard. If Zeppelin failed “to comply with one of the provisions of this contract,” the navy could demand full repayment of more than 3 million gold marks in cash—which, of course, Eckener would no longer have after building the airship.13

  Confronted by a smokescreen and a stonewall, poor Fulton tried to figure out who was really in charge and what on earth was going on at Zeppelin. In a lengthy report for his boss, a bemused Rear Admiral William Moffett, the chief of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, Fulton described the existence of three groups: “The ‘Colsman faction’ and the ‘Eckener faction’ with possibly a third ‘Dürr faction.’ The Eckener faction is in the saddle and the Dürr faction pulls very well with it.”

  With Colsman sidelined by Eckener, Fulton only had the Eckener-Dürr alliance to worry about. The latter was certainly the weaker, but also more troublesome, partner. The hermitlike Dürr “has never traveled and has very narrow views. Believes implicitly in German theory of absolute secrecy about work; also in building just about as he pleases.” Explaining his resistance, thought Fulton, was that “he has never quite accepted the ZR-3 contracts Eckener signed and it was rumored he declined to affix his name to a contract that ‘sold’ the Zeppelin ‘birthright.’ ” The Zeppelin captain and off-and-on Eckener rival, Ernst Lehmann, he added, was siding with Dürr in wanting to give the Americans as little assistance as possible.

  Fulton fixed on Eckener as the easiest to deal with. “Dr. Eckener is a very fine type and the most broad-minded and reasonable man in the organization,” he judged. “He creates an excellent impression and is very highly regarded throughout Germany. He is an excellent negotiator—sizes up a situation and makes decisions quickly.”

  Weyerbacher was more hostile toward Eckener, pointing out that he was the same “just plain rotten” man who had so ruthlessly “stabbed Colsman in the back and tossed him over the side” to seize control of Zeppelin. As an airshipman, Eckener was admittedly “a shrewd, cautious operator,” and the same could be said for his negotiating skills.

  Fulton would soon come to agree that Eckener was more cunning than he at first appeared, but he understood that Eckener had acted against Colsman to save the company at a desperate time. Fulton also began to appreciate the pressure Eckener was under to maintain the facade of mutual support with Dürr and Lehmann—called a “conceited little man” by Eckener—in order to keep the Zeppelin flying.14

  Once the scales had fallen from Fulton’s eyes, he had what he called a “very frank conversation” with Eckener to impress upon him the precariousness of his seemingly strong position. He acknowledged that, yes, the contract excluded technical data, but reminded him that he had full power to cancel it if Zeppelin failed to deliver on each and every one of its other provisions. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to find somewhere Zeppelin had slipped up, and if the Americans walked, by the way, Eckener could look forward to the tender ministrations of Masterman.

  In short, Eckener was within his legal rights to withhold information, but it would be…strategically unwise to choose to insist on it. With a start, Eckener realized that Fulton was not quite so naive as he had originally thought, and promised to persuade his colleagues to become more helpful.

  Aside from shuffling the never-seen Dr. Arnstein out from his lair in November to meet Fulton to show goodwill, Eckener initially had little success.15 Dürr and Lehmann continued to be uncooperative.

  Dürr insisted that he was willing to sacrifice the contract if it meant keeping the count’s birthright in German hands, somehow not realizing that without a contract there would be no birthright to keep. “I have encountered,” wrote one of the exasperated navy observers, “that old bird in the conference room and have noticed that for unadulterated, square-headed resistance, he wears a gold medal, or if he don’t, they ought to give him one.”16

  For his part, Lehmann stalled, then repeatedly submitted inaccurate plans while claiming to be protecting “vital business secrets.” Fulton, who’d earlier been impressed by Lehmann’s seeming helpfulness, revised his earlier judgment and now saw him as two-faced, underhanded, and more than willing to betray Eckener if ever given the chance.17

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  LEHMANN INDEED MAY have been those things, but he had his own reasons to be obstreperous. In this period, Germany’s relations with France reached their lowest note over Berlin’s continuing defaults on the repar
ations payments due under the Versailles Treaty. From the French point of view, following negotiations the huge sum had already been nearly halved, and yet still the Germans were loath to pay what they themselves had agreed they owed. In thirty-six months, for instance, Germany had not sent its promised coal delivery thirty-four times.

  In mid-January 1923, French troops marched into the Ruhr region and occupied the mainstay of German coal, steel, and iron production. With strikes and civil unrest convulsing Germany in reaction, a coalition of right-wing parties emerged to present a united front against Versailles, and the nationalist-minded Lehmann made common cause in opposing any compromise with the Allies, who he believed were intent on destroying Germany. Like Dürr, but with a different motive, he found it hard to accept selling the Zeppelin Company to the Americans.

  Fulton had another one of his straight-shooting talks with Eckener, passing on a remark made by Admiral Moffett that Americans had a prejudice against “slippery contractors” who appeared to be evading their responsibilities.18 Eckener was vexed at the insult but was conciliatory. At some length, he explained to Fulton how best to deal with his people. All the problems stemmed from a culture clash, Eckener said.

  As Fulton reported to Moffett in Washington, first, “it should be realized that German psychology, methods, habits, and language are all different from our own. Secondly, that the Zeppelin Company is a peculiar organization. They always enjoyed very special privileges from the Government, their only previous customer, and have therefore had a free hand in regard to building airships. This independence coupled with secrecy carried to an extraordinary length even for Germany…has created a state of mind which requires a process of education and some time to dispel.”

  Eckener, meanwhile, emphasized the need for trust: Dürr was admittedly somewhat eccentric, but what he and the others feared was that the Americans were going to steal their stolen horse. They would soak the company for its data and then cancel the contract, “leaving them in a hole. They have been afraid of this all along.”