Now they transported carefree tourists and busy executives across an ocean few remembered was once an unbridgeable moat—except by airship. By mid-1962, Pan American had completed no fewer than a hundred thousand nonstop transatlantic flights, and to mark his airline’s global domination Trippe moved the company the following year to a new fifty-nine-story skyscraper towering above Grand Central Station with a gigantic “Pan Am” sign at the top. In 1964, Trippe retired as president and finally left Pan American four years later. He would die in 1981, just a decade before his airline did in bankruptcy court.
* * *
—
BY THEN, THAT there was once an age of the airship, a time when these silver giants had freely roamed the skies, had been almost completely forgotten. Hugo Eckener, too, for decades one of the most famous men in the world and counted as Lindbergh’s equal, had vanished from the collective memory.
The omnipresence of the airplane was, and is, so overwhelming that it’s easy to forget that it even had a competitor or that its rise was not necessarily inevitable. One could say the same, perhaps, about the internal combustion engine, which in the earliest days of the automobile was considered on a par with steam-driven engines and battery-powered motors. It required a certain concatenation of decisions, luck, and circumstances to emerge the victor, but nothing is permanent. Today the electric car is presenting a challenge to the internal combustion engine’s once-unquestioned superiority.
Occasionally, there are similar attempts to revive the airship business. Benefiting from new, advanced materials and improved design, a future airship would be, as Eckener’s had been, extraordinarily energy-efficient, especially in terms of cargo-lifting. Some believe its modern incarnation would be ideal for bringing humanitarian aid to remote, war-ravaged locations.
After all these years, it would be nice to think of the airship as an emissary of peace and a bridger of national divides, as a young Count von Zeppelin and an old Hugo Eckener had hoped.
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Early balloons’ endless forms most wonderful—yet mostly impracticable
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A young Count von Zeppelin (second from right), with some Union friends during the Civil War
COURTESY OF MILITARY IMAGES AND SCOTT VEZEAU
The aeronaut John Steiner, who first sparked Zeppelin’s interest in airships and the secrets of aerial navigation
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
The first Zeppelin, LZ-1, on its maiden flight, July 2, 1900
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The stern of LZ-4, with its complicated, if much improved, control system of fins, elevators, and rudders
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Hugo Eckener (right) on board the Schwaben with an elderly Count von Zeppelin
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Eckener and his reclusive engineer Ludwig Dürr, the latter looking not altogether happy about being photographed
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
The wreck of LZ-4, immediately before “the Miracle at Echterdingen”
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
The DELAG airship Viktoria Luise salutes a sailing regatta on the Bodensee.
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
The pleasures of early air travel aboard Eckener's DELAG.
COURTESY OF THE WATKINSON LIBRARY, TRINITY COLLEGE, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
“With Zeppelin Boldly Forward!”—a fanciful depiction of a Zeppelin leading the troops in the Great War. Any airship attempting to do this would quickly have been shot down.
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
Eckener’s graceful, modest Bodensee of 1919
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The front section of the U.S. Navy’s Shenandoah. Because it used helium, it did not burn, yet the crash still killed fourteen crewmen.
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The Los Angeles (ZR-3), the airship that saved the Zeppelin Company, dwarfed by the U.S. Navy’s Akron in the Lakehurst hangar
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"Wild Bill” Hopson of the U.S. Air Mail’s “Suicide Club.” He was killed, as many were, in an airplane crash.
SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR & SPACE MUSEUM NASM A-4140
A Fokker F-7 with Juan Trippe on board. The plane would later survey the route from Miami to Havana.
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Trippe (right), with his wife, Betty, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and two mechanics during their South American tour, with one of Pan American’s Sikorsky S-38s
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Building the Graf Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen, with its intricate system of wires and girders visible
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
Hugo Eckener watching Karl von Wiegand playing chess during the Graf Zeppelin’s Round-the-World flight. Note Eckener’s beloved Beethoven records.
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
Captain Ernst Lehmann, looking debonair
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
A vacationing Eckener accidentally meets Hitler in Bavaria. Their conversation was an awkward one. Rudolf Hess (standing, left) takes a photograph as the deranged Julius Streicher, publisher of the luridly anti-Semitic Der Stürmer, nosily listen in.
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The new and the old: a Pan American flying boat passing over a sailing ship on the Spanish coast.
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Inside Trippe’s Martin M-130 China Clipper
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Trippe, ever watchful, in his austere office with the rolltop desk—where he locked away his secrets
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Trippe and Paul Litchfield of Goodyear watch the passing cavalcade on Eckener’s “Millionaires’ Flight.”
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Interior of the Hindenburg
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A stateroom on the Hindenburg
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The dining room of the Hindenburg (Eckener in background, marked by arrow)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The “unpersoned” Eckener with Roosevelt in the White House meeting that may have saved his life. Lehmann and Hans Luther, the German ambassador (left), were undesired presences.
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The colossal tail fin of the Hindenburg. Note the tiny figure standing next to it.
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The Hindenburg serenely cruises over New York a few hours before its destruction.
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May 6, 1937: the death of the Hindenburg
EVERETT HISTORICAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
The Nazified funeral service for the victims of the disaster at Pier 86 on West Forty-fourth Street in New York
SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM/HENRY CORD MEYER COLLECTION
<
br /> Three years to the day after the Hindenburg disaster, the Zeppelin hangars at Frankfurt were unceremoniously dynamited.
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Eckener, indefatigable
To Rebecca and Edmund, as always, and forever
Acknowledgments
WRITING AN AIRSHIP-SIZED book like this one requires the contribution of many individuals. I would like to thank, in particular, Dr. John D. Anderson for his technical advice on aerodynamics, John Provan for an illuminating discussion of airship history, and Patrick Russell, who rendered invaluable assistance in correcting several points in my discussion of the last minutes of the Hindenburg. I must also include in that list Mark A. Heald, for sending me information regarding his father’s witnessing of the disaster, as well as Alvaro Bellon, trustee of the Lighter-Than-Air Society of Akron, Ohio, and Professor Guillaume de Syon of Albright College, who provided copies of several hard-to-find articles. Any errors are mine, I should add.
Pamela Elbe, of the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, helped with some details about the Jewish War Veterans of the United States (JWV) organization, while Albrecht Graf von Brandenstein-Zeppelin clarified the count’s religious views.
Of key importance were Karen Caruana and Karen Laakko, who heroically (and accurately and quickly) translated many of the longer or more complex German texts, as well as David Pfeiffer, who at the National Archives undertook for me the task of digitizing thousands of pages of testimony from the 1937 Board of Inquiry into the loss of the Hindenburg. And I should not forget Debbie Saracini and the staff of the San Diego Air & Space Museum for their assistance in procuring files from the Henry Cord Meyer Collection, and Patrizia Nava, curator of Aviation Archives at the Eugene McDermott Library, University of Texas at Dallas, who provided copies of important documents from the Charles Rosendahl, Hans von Schiller, and Douglas Robinson papers.
Molly Turpin of Random House shouldered the tremendous burden, in terms of both effort and time, of editing, weeding, and taming an overlong and digressive manuscript, for which hard labor and dedication she must be awarded highest honors, while Martin Schneider performed sterling service in copyediting the text, improving prose, and asking good questions. Because the making of a book is a team effort, recognition, too, is due to production editor Evan Camfield, production manager Jennifer Backe, designer Simon Sullivan, cover designer Pete Garceau, and art director Anna Bauer.
A thousand thanks should be extended to ace agent Eric Lupfer of Fletcher & Co., who instantly said yes to my offhand question (“Hey, what about a book about the Hindenburg?”) and diligently piloted it from proposal to final draft. He remains a rock of sound advice, excellent judgment, and admirable dedication.
Family often comes last in the acknowledgments, though really they ought to be first. My late parents, Paul and Susan Rose, would have loved to see this book, and I dearly wish they could have. I’d like to thank my brother, Ari, and my sister, Zoë (and my brother-in-law, Craig), for their support over an occasionally trying couple of years, as well as my extended family (Liz and Chad, Ben and Jaime, Erna, David and Carolyn, and Freya). Special mentions, too, for Yvonne Taylor and William Liberman for all that they have done.
Pride of place, of course, goes to my beloved wife, Rebecca, the best partner one could imagine—she is my north star. My fine son, Edmund, though he’s mostly a car guy, has also learned to appreciate the grandeur of the airship, and I’m beyond proud of him, and all that he shall accomplish.
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