Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  Most of the passengers had not paid for their tickets. The free riders were a mixture of reporters, cameramen, government officials, and business partners, but it was reported that four people had paid $3,000 apiece, a vast sum, for the glory of being the first paying passengers to cross the Atlantic. One of them was Frederick Gilfillan, a mysterious American financier living in Switzerland who had recently survived a plane crash in the Azores (he also had two shipwrecks to his credit). He would prove such a handful that Eckener would have been better off paying him $3,000 to stay at home.2

  The German press was well represented, but Eckener had separately arranged with William Randolph Hearst to cover the journey as an exclusive for his giant newspaper chain. As part of the deal, passengers and crew had to sign confidentiality agreements before they left to ensure they didn’t leak to Hearst’s rivals. The magnate sent two journalists: Karl von Wiegand, a friend of Eckener’s who’d been covering airships since the war, and Wiegand’s rumored lover, the only woman on board, Lady Grace Hay Drummond-Hay.

  Lady Drummond-Hay, in her early thirties, was the recent widow of Sir Robert, a British diplomat in Lebanon older than she was by some half a century. Plump-cheeked, adventurous, witty, and vivacious, Lady Drummond-Hay had turned her hand to journalism and been talent-spotted by Hearst a year or two earlier. She had made quite a name for herself and was an ideal correspondent for the trip.

  Drummond-Hay’s dispatches overflowed with the kind of color, excitement, glamour, and brio readers hankered after. She brought more clothes than anyone else (on departure she wore a “black hat, white georgette waist, a black skirt, gun-metal silk stockings, and a gray squirrel fur coat with a bunch of white violets on her lapel”), made frequent changes (all the better to show her fans that flying was fashionable), and was the only one farsighted enough to bring woolen underwear, woolen stockings, wool-lined boots, and a jumper suit for the cold nights, made colder by the fact that the Graf lacked heating. It was she who seems to have given Eckener the Graf Zeppelin’s mascot—a canary named Hansy who sang for most of the trip and gave the reporters some excellent copy.3

  The voyage began the same as so many others. As the Graf headed toward the Alps, passengers “could not tear themselves away from the windows, running from one side to the other, exclaiming at every new phase of the scenery,” wrote Lady Drummond-Hay, or became “fascinated by the cabin arrangements, the charming little sleeping compartments…which contain almost every comfort and convenience one can wish.”4

  Two Americans had reportedly insured themselves for $1 million each (Eckener showed his confidence in his creations by always sticking to a basic $30,000 policy), and some of the Germans, who had evidently read too many westerns, had brought a chest of dollars with them in case the Graf Zeppelin became lost “on the plains of Arizona” and they were “stranded there among the cowboys and Indians.”5

  But any apprehensions they felt soon washed away as the airship passed over Gibraltar, gateway to the Atlantic, and life settled into a routine of chatter over bottles of wine, diary-keeping, and games of chess. A dance night was arranged, with Lady Drummond-Hay, as sole female, in high demand. She chose Captain Lehmann as her first partner, but the festivities were soon curtailed because the music, supplied by a lone accordion, “was not so good,” according to one newspaper.

  One morning, off the Azores, as the Graf Zeppelin was driving through the air at about 70 miles an hour at 1,250 feet, Wiegand and Lady Drummond-Hay were breakfasting when the sky darkened and “suddenly the bow of the ship dipt at a great angle as if the air-liner were about to dive into the cold waters, which at that moment looked perilously close.” Drummond-Hay, ace reporter to the last, shouted, “Save my typewriters on the table in my cabin!” and Wiegand obediently ran to go get them but was thrown off his feet in the corridor when the nose sharply lifted. “There was a crash, jingle, and rattle as all the dishes on the three tables were piled up on the floor.”

  As strong and virile men “turned pale, with the thought of death in their eyes,” Lady Drummond-Hay, in full Wodehousian Aunt Agatha mode, stoutly cried, “I’ve lost my coffee!” Her eggs landed in her lap, the plate in someone else’s, and Gilfillan—who, said Wiegand, “had been panning everything on board the airship. The coffee was rotten, the air bad, the ship slow, and the service terrible”—suffered the indignity of a movie camera hitting his head, which put him in a mood fouler than before.6

  Wiegand went to the control car to find Eckener in deep discussions with the other officers. What appeared to have happened was that a nearby squall had caused a Shenandoah-style vertical current and an inexperienced helmsman had overcompensated in bringing the nose down to regain trim. Then he exacerbated the problem by trying to ascend bow-first, making it feel as if “a giant hand had suddenly shoved up out of the sea below.”

  Eckener was again fully in command of the vessel, which had been righted, when the ashen-faced chief machinist arrived from the stern and told him that hundreds of square yards of fabric had been ripped from a stabilizer fin and entangled in an elevator hinge. Eckener ordered the engines stopped, turned to his guest Lieutenant Commander Rosendahl of the Los Angeles, and said quietly, “I want a ship to stand by.” Rosendahl nodded and telegraphed the navy to send vessels to their position.

  Eckener had to perform emergency surgery mid-flight. Knut, his son, and a handful of others volunteered for the task. As ominous clouds enveloped them, seven crewmen, including Knut and Chief Helmsman Ludwig Marx (with Zeppelin since the count’s earliest days) undertook the perilous mission to crawl on all fours along the catwalk and then climb the girders until they were outside on the giant fin. The torn outer skin flapped in their faces as the rain got into their eyes; one poorly chosen move or an unlucky slip would result in a man falling a thousand feet into the churning sea. With shears and knives they cut away the cloth and painstakingly sewed it back together as the tail whipped fifty or a hundred feet this way and that, swaying them like sailors clinging to a yardarm. Eckener, in the control room, could not see or communicate with his son, but after five hours the team returned safely and Eckener told Rosendahl to call off the rescue. By midday, Eckener had restarted the engines and gingerly accelerated out of the storm at 71 mph.7

  Among the passengers, excitement soon turned to boredom. The delay and a subsequent detour to avoid another storm resulted in food and drink running short. Guests took their lukewarm coffee in glasses as all the china had broken and, after the coffee ran out, had to make do with condensed milk because not enough wine and beer had been brought (and whatever drops were left were locked away as the Graf Zeppelin neared America, to conform with Prohibition laws). The electricity had not been turned back on while the crew checked for problems, so there were neither hot lunches nor hot water. Instead of cuisine prepared by Friedrichshafen’s Kurgarten Hotel and sealed into vacuum cans for reheating, there was only smoked salmon on buttered bread to be had, and washing was done with wet paper towels that “melt[ed] to pulp in one’s hand,” Lady Drummond-Hay informed her readers.8 Deepening the ennui was the ban on smoking, a source of considerable irritation to Frederick Gilfillan, who never shut up about it while others soldiered on “with unlit menthol cigarettes in our lips,” as one passenger said, or “pulled at unlighted pipes.”9

  But finally, on October 15, land hove into view and everyone’s spirits rose. The Graf Zeppelin took Washington, D.C., by surprise by floating over the capital for twenty minutes. As it dipped gracefully over the White House, President and Mrs. Coolidge, surrounded by nervous Secret Service men, emerged to gaze and applaud the apparition casting a shadow over them. Thousands of government personnel left their offices to watch the show, but, as the Supreme Court was in session, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Chief Justice William Howard Taft were forced to miss the event. “I wish I could have seen that Zeppelin,” complained Holmes.10

  That afternoon, the Graf Zeppelin arr
ived over New York, hypnotizing the hundreds of thousands of spectators who gathered in parks or on rooftops. There were so many, judged one newspaper, that their multitude exceeded that which had congregated to watch the passing of Halley’s Comet in 1910. During the Graf’s half hour above the city, the courts of justice ceased dispensing, as did retailers and wholesalers; taxi drivers refused to pick up, mischievous office boys threw confetti everywhere, and elevator attendants quit their posts to go outside. Prison wardens even allowed their charges a little extra time outside to enjoy the sight. As the airship proceeded north along Broadway to turn west at 110th Street to cross the Hudson into New Jersey, bells jangled on streetcars, trains shrilled their horns, and factory whistles joined in with their baritones, adding to the deep-chorded notes of steamships greeting the mistress of the skies. A dozen biplanes cheekily circled the Graf Zeppelin, dodged over, and slipped alongside it.11

  Shortly after, the airship loomed above Lakehurst and officially landed at 5:38 P.M., ending its 111-hour-and-38-minute voyage. The first visitors were Dr. Leon Van Horn of the Public Health Service, acting as quarantine officer, and Customs Inspector Theodore Morgan, whose task it was to transfer passengers, cargo, and luggage to the waiting room. This took an inordinately long time, partly because Eckener would not allow baggage to be unloaded until the ship was secured, and sparked a minor diplomatic incident.

  Morgan’s Customs officials examined the mail and goods before moving on to the luggage and only then allowed their Immigration counterparts to clear the tired passengers. Since the Graf Zeppelin carried nearly seventy thousand pieces of mail, as well as packages containing such things as five dozen pairs of women’s leather gloves, Parisian hats, and precious jewelry, the process was a drawn-out one. Each and every suitcase was then inspected while the passengers stood around for hours.12

  Eckener—who had slept for just eight hours in the previous four days—slipped out to smoke a cigar (the crewmen cadged lights from the base’s American sailors), and was unaware that some passengers had begun to complain mightily of high-handed treatment by humorless Customs and Immigration officials. One German passenger shouted, “Is this the American freedom we hear so much about?” which somehow failed to move his interlocutors.13

  The brouhaha, which eventually calmed down, paled beside the general atmosphere of excitement and anticipation outside. Some twenty thousand people had come to see the landing, and their numbers increased dramatically after carpenters built a wooden cradle to help rest the gondola. If they were willing to wait on line for a few hours, visitors were allowed to climb the stairs, peer in, and gasp at the control room, lounge, radio room, and passenger cabins.

  Over the coming days, an estimated 150,000 people would come to Lakehurst, requiring the presence of seventy-six Marines, fifty sailors, and forty state troopers whose main jobs were to tell visitors to extinguish their cigarettes when anywhere near the airship hangar and to confiscate cameras (Hearst was determined to retain his exclusivity rights). With forty thousand cars on the roads leading to the naval base, ten special trains laid on from New York, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and Newark, and hundreds of buses, the traffic for twenty miles around was sluggish indeed.14

  Demand for Zeppelin news around the world was insatiable. “250 Reporters Held Lakehurst Sector,” announced The New York Times, amusingly making it sound as if the Journalism Corps were stoutly defending the line on the Western Front.15 In Germany, where people had listened in beer halls and at home for hourly radio reports during the flight, news of Eckener’s triumph was greeted by cries of “God be thanked!” Hindenburg cabled his congratulations, and even the dour Dürr was more effusive than usual. In taking passengers by air, “the Graf Zeppelin has accomplished a deed heretofore unknown in the history of crossing the ocean,” he announced before flashing a brief smile, a sight rarely glimpsed. Elsewhere in Friedrichshafen, where the airships’ officers and crew lived, their fellow townspeople spent the night celebrating in the streets.16

  The next day, Eckener got down to work. In New York, there were the usual ticker-tape parades, honorary luncheons, and celebratory dinners, as well as some amusing gossip items. One newspaper noticed that Eckener, who pronounced “exhausted” as ex-howsted, was unaware that he sounded like Lew Fields, a comic famed for his exaggerated German accent, while Captain Schiller was delighted that not only stores but even cab drivers refused to take his money.17

  Less noticeable, but still detectable, was the lingering, low-intensity conflict between Eckener and Lehmann. When they were forced into close proximity for long periods, the normally ebullient Eckener would become “sardonic” while the chatty Lehmann turned “uncommunicative.”18 Disagreements over their relative status and fame lay at the heart of the matter. When Lehmann wrote a long opinion piece for The New York Times, Eckener was irritated to find that Lehmann had somehow omitted to include his name while mentioning his own numerous times—and had also supplied a very large photo of himself. In this case, Eckener gained a satisfying revenge for the slight when a subsequent article ran a picture of him and Lehmann, neither looking too pleased to be posing together, with a caption that ran: “Commander of the Zeppelin and His Aide.”19

  Lehmann, at least, could be dealt with later. Eckener’s most urgent task was to sell the Graf Zeppelin as a business proposition. He was feted and lauded everywhere he went around the country, but the trip did not turn out to be the grand slam he’d anticipated.

  No one committed to fund his $15 million airship venture. All his meetings went very well, but there were no signatures where it counted. What he heard repeatedly instead was, We’re Interested But Let’s Wait and See.

  * * *

  —

  THE TRUTH IS, the 1928 flight had not decisively proven the airship’s superiority. News that the Graf Zeppelin had needed urgent repairs mid-flight was damaging, as were the revelations of the troublesome American passenger, Frederick Gilfillan, who had waited for Hearst’s confidentiality agreement to expire to give hostile interviews to every paper he could. Among his litany of complaints: running out of mineral water, lack of sleep caused by anxiety over the fin repair and the descent, the small cabins, the lack of room to exercise, the ban on smoking, a shortage of wine, the canned food, and the closed windows. “Which reminds me,” he added, “I haven’t had a bath for five days.”

  Though most of these could be written off as minor inconveniences, easily remedied if Eckener improved the in-flight entertainment and onboard dining selection, more harmful was Gilfillan’s assertion that “the airship, as I see it, is too uncomfortable in its present stage of development to commend it to the traveler.” He returned home by the Cunard steamship Mauretania.20

  Gilfillan was a symptom, albeit a singularly annoying one, of a broader evaluation of the merits of Eckener’s Graf Zeppelin. Now that the initial furor had died down, experts were taking a harder look at his plan to establish a regular transatlantic line. The general consensus was that, well, nobody quite knew since the results were so ambiguous.

  On the plus side, the Graf Zeppelin had demonstrated to a nervous public that airship travel was safe (an airplane suffering a similar mishap mid-flight would have been doomed) and enjoyable (Gilfillan excepted), could traverse huge expanses, and could carry more passengers and freight than any conceivable airplane. To the man in the street, it definitely seemed to be the future. “In this vast monster of the atmospheric deeps,” rhapsodized the New York Herald Tribune, “the public, despite the tragedies that have punctuated the history of the dirigible, feels a strange confidence.” To that end, the Graf Zeppelin would be just “the first representative of that mighty argosy of air-liners with which the human imagination has for generations been painting the skyscape of the future.”

  The picture was less positive when it came down to brass tacks. In terms of cost, for instance, it was unclear whether airships could pay their way. Eckener claimed the flight h
ad made a profit of $100,000 but remained opaque on details.

  Before departing Germany, he’d said that operating costs for a one-way trip would be $54,000. Mail and cargo revenue was estimated to amount to about $70,000, but one had to consider the huge expense of building the Graf Zeppelin (thought to range between $840,000 and $1.4 million, though almost certainly considerably more), the gigantic $2 million hangars it required, and its ongoing maintenance (hydrogen, fuel, storage, parts, etc.). One also had to account for the large number of personnel required to fly a Zeppelin: If a ten-seater airplane employed two pilots and a stewardess to stay in the air, then the twenty-passenger Graf Zeppelin needed forty highly trained officers and crew to do the same.

  All of which meant that if Eckener had turned a profit, it was probably owed to his selling of the media rights to German press agencies for $15,600 and to Hearst for another $67,400. But he could hardly count on doing the same for every trip.

  Since only four people had paid full fare for the voyage, if Eckener could subsequently increase the number of paying passengers he might have a viable enterprise, but he would have to keep prices high and every cabin occupied on every trip to pull it off—and he’d need to make scores of trips to offset the sunk costs of construction.

  Whether that was possible was another question. Eckener had always bragged that airships would beat ships handily across the ocean, but Graf Zeppelin’s travel time to New York had been 111 hours, unimpressive compared to a fast Mauretania time of 107 hours. Granted, Eckener had had to make a detour south and to contend with a lengthy repair, but North Atlantic storms were inevitable occurrences, so how often would they delay flights? And assuming most flights did arrive a day or so earlier, was it really worth paying $3,000 for a ticket to take an airship across the Atlantic when a steamship would get you to your destination a little later but much more comfortably and cheaply?21