13. Wolf, “The First Flight,” p. 10.
14. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 27; Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, p. 33.
15. Toland, The Great Dirigibles, p. 40; H.W.L. Moedebeck, “The Termination of the Trials of Count von Zeppelin’s Airship,” Scientific American, April 13, 1901, Supplement, pp. 21138–21140. On Krogh, see Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 48; “Count von Zeppelin’s Dirigible Airship,” Scientific American, March 3, 1906, p. 195.
16. Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, p. 33; Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 124. On the banking crisis, see C. M. Reinhart and K. S. Rogoff, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009), Appendix A.4, “Historical Summaries of Banking Crises,” p. 365.
17. W. von Schierbrand (ed.), The Kaiser’s Speeches: Forming a Character Portrait of Emperor William II (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1903), pp. 258–59.
18. G. de Syon notes German press reaction. See G. de Syon, Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship, 1900–1939 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. 23. The Frankfurter Zeitung is quoted in Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 58.
19. “The Ascension of Count von Zeppelin’s Airship,” Scientific American, August 11, 1900, p. 88.
20. The report is quoted in Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 26–27.
21. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 76.
22. H. Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins (London: Putnam, 1958), p. 11. For Eckener’s report from the second flight, see P. Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 7–8, and Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 94.
9. The Surprise
1. Recollection of Oskar Wilcke, printed in Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, pp. 140–41.
2. The letter of congratulation (dated January 7 and 15, 1901) is printed in Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, p. 86; and M. Goldsmith, Zeppelin: A Biography (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1931), pp. 120–21.
3. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 44.
4. As noted by Moedebeck in his “The Termination of the Trials of Count von Zeppelin’s Airship,” pp. 21138–21140.
5. Dürr, 25 Years of Zeppelin Airship Construction, p. 39; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 29.
6. Dürr, 25 Years of Zeppelin Airship Construction, pp. 50–51; illustrations 51–54, p. 49; illustrations 55–56, p. 50.
7. Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 44–45; Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, pp. 34–35. Fuel consumption fell by a third between LZ-1 and LZ-2. See Dürr, 25 Years of Zeppelin Airship Construction, p. 83, Table 2, “Airship Engines.”
8. Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 125. On Hergesell’s appearance, see his photograph in “How Zeppelin Plans to Try to Reach the North Pole by Airship,” The New York Times, July 25, 1909.
9. Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 45–46, and associated photographs. It is unclear how movable the rudders were. Zeppelin was more concerned with controlling altitude than direction at this stage.
10. Letters of February 18 and February 16, 1903, quoted in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 92.
11. Eckener, Count Zeppelin, p. 222.
12. Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 44–45; Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 60. The Die Woche article proposed raising funds to transport a dismantled airship to New York and then sending it by train to St. Louis for the 1904 World’s Fair, where it would be reassembled. On this outlandish scheme, soon quietly dropped, see Goldsmith, Zeppelin, p. 125. The aeronautical writer A. L. Rotch was the count’s American contact for the St. Louis proposal, though Rotch was under the impression that the airship was to be built in St. Louis. See his The Conquest of the Air, or the Advent of Aerial Navigation (New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1909), p. 104. On Zeppelin’s ham-handed appeal, see De Syon, Zeppelin!, p. 26. For the Vaterland anecdote, see Meyer, Count Zeppelin, p. 50.
13. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 45.
14. G. Hartcup, The Achievement of the Airship: A History of the Development of Rigid, Semi-Rigid, and Non-Rigid Airships (North Pomfret, Vt.: David & Charles, 1974), pp. 30–39. See “German-French Airship Rivalry,” Scientific American, August 24, 1913; “Comparison of French and German Strength in Dirigible Airships,” August 16, 1913, pp. 126, 133–34; De Syon, “Toys or Tools? The Riddle of French Army Airships, 1884–1914.”
15. Regarding Zeppelin’s finances, there are varying accounts available. The most authoritative seems to be Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 45, but see also Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, pp. 60–61; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 29; and Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, pp. 34–35.
16. Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 118–19.
17. As related in Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 125. For Krogh and Dürr’s placement, see “Count von Zeppelin’s Dirigible Airship,” Scientific American, p. 196.
18. Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, p. 134.
19. Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 126–27.
10. The Equestrian
1. Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 128.
2. Quoted in Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 49.
3. Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, pp. 11–14; and the recollections in his Count Zeppelin, p. 225. Meyer cites the der Luftikus remark in Count Zeppelin: A Psychological Portrait, p. 50. Elphberg’s article, “Wasted a Fortune on a Flying Machine,” Baltimore American, December 30, 1906, appeared in several other papers, including the Omaha World-Herald. Zeppelin cited his lack of experience and the estimate of three hours of flying time in his article “Dirigible Airships,” Scientific American, Supplement, December 22, 1906, p. 25887; see also Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 50. Eckener’s “vague” feeling about the dinner is recorded in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 108. See also Eckener’s much later recollection of the conversation, in T. Nielsen (trans. P. Chambers), The Zeppelin Story (London: Allen Wingate, 1955), pp. 35–39.
4. On the Wrights and their outlook on flying, see P. L. Jakab, Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).
5. D. McCullough, The Wright Brothers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), pp. 103–6.
6. H. G. Wells, Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (London: Chapman & Hall, 1902), p. 191.
7. It’s possible that Zeppelin was dimly aware of the Wrights this early. Moedebeck had published an article by Wilbur in the July 1901 issue of his journal, Illustrated Aeronautical Reports, “Die Wagerechte Lage Während des Gleitfluges” (The horizontal pilot-position in gliding flight). Gibbs-Smith, Invention of the Aeroplane, Appendix V, “European Aviation: 1901–1903,” pp. 305–6.
8. J. Tobin, “The First Witness: Amos Root at Huffman Prairie” (September 28, 2001), Following in the Footsteps of the Wright Brothers: Their Sites and Stories, Paper 7. corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/following/symposium/program/7.
9. On the cost of Flyer I, see McCullough, The Wright Brothers, p. 108.
10. Only a month before the Wrights first took off, for instance, a German civil servant named Karl Jatho had made a 180-foot journey in a 9-horsepower-engine airplane equipped with rudimentary elevators and rudders. It turned out that the “flight” was merely a Maxim-style forced Flugsprung (leap into the air) by a craft unsustainably carried forward by its own momentum and no more work was ever done on it. Gibbs-Smith, Invention of the Aeroplane, p. 51; see also “Aeronautics Now Are Far Advanced,” The New York Times, October 7, 1907.
11. Gibbs-Smith, Invention of the Aeroplane, p. 87.
12. Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, pp. 13–14; Nielsen (trans. Chambers), The Zeppelin Story, p. 43; Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 107.
13. Zeppelin, “The Truth About My Airship,” dated mid-February 190
6, and co-signed by Eckener, printed in Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, pp. 80–84.
14. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 14–20, 77.
15. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 52–57.
16. Letter to Ottomar Enking, printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 54.
17. By his daughter. See Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 77.
18. Quoted in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 78.
19. Quoted in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 80.
20. Various letters, quoted in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 83, 62, 80.
21. Eckener, Count Zeppelin, p. 226.
22. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 54.
23. On Gross’s comment, see Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, p. 87. The ill feeling would never quite dissipate. Years later, when Zeppelin was made aware that a Gross-Basenach would be present when one of his own airships made an appearance before the kaiser, he installed a small cannon in his gondola to fire a blank shot across its bow. It was only by the intervention of his friend, the aviation enthusiast Georg von Tschudi, that Zeppelin was dissuaded from using it. G. von Tschudi, Aus 34 Jahren Luftfahrt: Persönliche Erinnerungen (Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1928), pp. 94–95.
24. Hartcup, Achievement of the Airship, p. 69.
25. Meyer, Count Zeppelin, p. 58.
26. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 55.
27. Meyer, Count Zeppelin, p. 56. A memorandum to the minister of war from Zeppelin, marked “Secret,” of February 10, 1906, exhibited the same confidence. Printed in Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, pp. 84–85. For Eckener’s comment about Parseval, see his letter to Friedrich Maass, quoted in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 126–27.
28. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 51; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 31.
29. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 50.
30. Hartcup, Achievement of the Airship, pp. 39–40.
31. H. Hergesell and Captain von Kehler, “The Flights of Zeppelin’s Airship on October 9 and 10, 1906,” Scientific American, Supplement, February 23, 1907, p. 26037.
32. Eckener, October 14, 1906, Frankfurter Zeitung, printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 101–3.
33. Parseval later sold his rights and patents to the army for 130,000 marks. Between 1909 and 1914, some twenty-three blimps would be built, but only six were bought by the army: Eight would be sold to foreign governments as far afield as Japan and the rest to companies to take tourists on brief sightseeing trips. Hartcup, Achievement of the Airship, p. 41.
34. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 32–33.
35. J.C.G. Röhl (trans. S. De Bellaigue), Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1859–1941: A Concise Life (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 103–8.
36. Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 53–54.
37. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 33, 35; Meyer, Count Zeppelin, p. 57; Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, pp. 89–91.
11. Up into the Empyrean
1. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 64; Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, pp. 36–37.
2. “Remains in Air, 4h 17m,” Boston Daily Globe, September 25, 1907.
3. Recollections of Oskar Wilcke, in Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, pp. 140–41. The first woman to fly a motorized dirigible, if only for a brief time, was Aida de Acosta, an American socialite who in June 1903 persuaded Alberto Santos-Dumont to allow her to pilot his one-man personal dirigible in Paris.
4. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 34.
5. “Germany and Count Zeppelin’s Airship,” Irish Times, October 9, 1907.
6. Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, p. 37; Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 64; Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 67; Meyer, Count Zeppelin, p. 57; Hartcup, Achievement of the Airship, p. 70.
7. A.M.B., “Count Zeppelin,” Daily Mail, June 20, 1908.
8. “Count Zeppelin a Union Veteran,” The Washington Post, July 23, 1908. I traced this genealogy by following the breadcrumbs in geni.com/people/Ferdinand-Graf-von-Zeppelin/6000000008469593415.
9. “Has Conquered the Air,” Cincinnati Enquirer, November 25, 1907.
10. A. M. Krecker, “Seven Great Wonders of Science and Industry Perfected in 1907,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 15, 1907.
11. “Airship Club in Germany,” The New York Times, December 22, 1907.
12. “What Will Society Do Next?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 15, 1908.
13. “Aeroplane Crushed After Long Flight,” The New York Times, May 15, 1908.
14. Zeppelin, “Dirigible Airships,” Scientific American, Supplement, December 22, 1906, pp. 25886, 25888.
15. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 65; “Big Airship Flies,” The Washington Post, June 21, 1908.
16. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 35; Belafi, The Zeppelin, 65; Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, p. 39.
17. Interestingly, Eckener was one of the very few who noted the September flight in an article for the Hamburg Foreigners’ Paper, following it up with a look at the problem-prone progress of Parseval’s balloon. Both pieces were, as might be expected, skeptical as to their merits, but one wonders, since these vehicles were secret, who the source of his information was: leaked by Zeppelin, no doubt. Eckener, “The Thirteen-Hour Flight of the Military Airship,” September 15, 1908; and “An Expert About the Accident,” September 17, 1908, in the Hamburg Foreigners’ Paper. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 104.
12. Conquerors of the Celestial Ocean
1. Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 70.
2. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 103, 106.
3. Quoted in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 108.
4. This section is based on the following accounts: Hergesell, “With Zeppelin in His Airship,” The Globe, July 29, 1908; Hergesell’s Die Woche narrative in Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 65–66; “Makes Flight of 12 Hours,” Boston Daily Globe, July 2, 1908; E. Sandt, “A Trip in the Zeppelin Airship,” Scientific American, Supplement, August 15, 1908.
5. A description and illustration of the Bassus device is in A. Hildebrandt (trans. H. W. Story), Airships Past and Present (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1908), pp. 306–7. See also T. Kramer and H. Stadler (eds.), Eduard Spelterini: Photographs of a Pioneer Balloonist (Zurich: Scheidigger & Speiss, 2008).
6. Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 70; Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 133; “Kaiser Greets Zeppelin,” The New York Times, July 3, 1908; “King and Queen Aeronauts,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 4; “A King in an Airship,” The Guardian and Observer, July 5.
7. Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, pp. 70–71.
13. The Flames of Hell
1. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 36.
2. “Zeppelin’s Airship Disabled, Descends After 12-Hour Sail,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 4, 1908; “Air Conquered; Zeppelin Flies in His Machine,” Atlanta Constitution, August 5, 1908.
3. “On Last Leg of Journey,” Courier-Journal, August 5, 1908; “People Awed by Monster of Air,” Nashville American, August 5, 1908.
4. “On Last Leg of Journey.”
5. Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers, p. 9.
6. “People Awed.”
7. H. Eckener, Im Zeppelin über Länder und Meere (Flensburg, Germany: Verlagshaus Christian Wolff, 1949), p. 404. The Island of the Blessed of Greek mythology, sometimes known as Elysium, was an earthly paradise populated by the righteous and the heroic.
8. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 37–39; Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 70–71.
9. Quoted in Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers, p. 13.
10. Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers, p. 13.
11. Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 136–39.
12. “Sympathy with Count Ze
ppelin,” Manchester Guardian, August 7, 1908. See also the photograph of Zeppelin’s departure in Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 73.
13. “Tragic End for Monarch of Air,” Boston Daily Globe, August 6, 1908; Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 139–40.
14. “Germany Rushes to Zeppelin’s Aid,” The New York Times, August 7, 1908.
15. D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (London: Odhams Press, 2 vols., 1938 ed.), volume 1, p. 19.
16. “Sympathy with Count Zeppelin,” Manchester Guardian.
14. The Miracle
1. Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 139–40.
2. Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 71–72.
3. Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers, pp. 15–17; Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 75; Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 140–42; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 41; Georg Hacker, Die Männer von Manzell (Frankfurt am Main: Societäts-Druckerei, 1936), p. 104. On currency conversion, see measuringworth.com and history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/currency.htm. I have used an approximate exchange rate of 4 marks to the pre-1914 dollar. An article in Machinery, June 1, 1909, states that Zeppelin received $1,300,000.
4. On LZ-3, see H. Eckener, “The Remodeled ‘Zeppelin III’ Airship,” Scientific American, Supplement, December 12, 1908, pp. 380–81.
5. Quoted in Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 130.
6. For Wilhelm’s speech, see Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, p. 107.
7. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 43; Meyer, Count Zeppelin, p. 67; photos in Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, p. 145, and Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 153.
8. As referenced in “Monument to Zeppelin,” The New York Times, October 18, 1908.
9. Goldsmith, Zeppelin, pp. 143–44; Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers, pp. 17–18.
10. Advertisement (Thermos) in Life, August 18, 1910, p. 257; Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers, pp. 36–37 (games), 20 (large Zeppelin); M. Cutler, “New Christmas Toys,” Harper’s Bazaar, December 1909, p. 1223 (see also “Airship Toys,” Crockery and Glass Journal, July 22, 1909, p. 10); The Youth’s Companion, October 20, 1910, p. 575 (mini-Zeppelins).
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