by Richard Foss
The only thing Japanese about this menu for the Graf Zeppelin’s flight to Tokyo was the cover, which mimics the classic eighteenth-century ukiyo-e graphic style used in traditional woodblock prints.
In the course of its round-the-world flight, the Graf Zeppelin inspired songs in Trinidad and Tennessee,13 started a craze for zeppelin-themed toys, and had at least one food named after it. Contrary to some reports, the zeppole, a deep-fried filled doughnut, was not. Though the name is similar, the pastry was invented in the middle ages, though it became more popular when the giants of the air started flying. The airship-themed food is from much further north; in Lithuania fat potato flour dumplings stuffed with meat came to be called cepelinai (singular is cepelinas). The dumplings are often served with cream sauce and bacon and are also popular in northeastern Poland. They are time-consuming to make and are regarded as a special-occasion dish. It certainly makes sense that a food named after zeppelins was a luxury item, because that was the signature of the travel experience aboard.
Image provided by Imperial Hotel, Tokyo
Another culinary reference to zeppelins is less glamorous—the book Soldier and Sailor Words, published in 1925, lists “zeppelin in a cloud” as slang for a sausage covered in mashed potatoes. Similarly, Margery Allingham’s novel Look to Lady has a passage in which a host proclaims “I’ll bring yer a spot o’ coffee and a couple o’ Zepps in a smoke screen.”
There were no food items and little glamour associated with the airship operations of other nations and companies. It is worth noting just how far behind other nations were in airship technology, particularly with regard to passenger comfort. America’s navy embarked on an ambitious construction program that seemed successful at first. In 1924, the USS Shenandoah traveled nine thousand miles from New Jersey to San Diego and back. The sole member of the culinary staff was a Filipino messboy who made sandwiches and served hot soup. That journey was the high point of American airship flights—a year later, the ship was torn to pieces by high winds. Two other airships, the Akron and Macon, suffered the same fate within a year of their launch, and as a result the program was canceled.
Italian explorer Umberto Nobile had a vision of piloting an airship to the North Pole. Errors by his crew resulted in the loss of the ship in a crash, but he decided to build a bigger and better airship. The Norge reached its goal in 1926 and eventually made a forced landing in Alaska, where it was destroyed. It was not a comfortable trip; despite the fact that the ship was built for an Arctic expedition, there were no facilities for heating food. The crew had hot coffee and soup in thermos bottles, but after these ran out the rest of their food was cold. The trip from Svalbard Island to Alaska took three days, and the crew in the unheated ship with cold food was cranky and irritable.
The British were Zeppelin’s sole competitors when it came to passenger airships, and they did manage to turn out one magnificent and airworthy craft, the R-100. That ship could carry one hundred passengers on three decks and had a well-appointed galley, and it had the largest passenger capacity and most spacious quarters ever provided in an airship. In 1929 a journalist for Flight Magazine who had taken a ride wrote that “there was nothing to suggest that we were in an aircraft and actually in the air. We might have been in some well-appointed restaurant.” His only complaint was that “some passengers may find that in the saloon of the R-100 there is too much of a smell of cooking before and after meals.”14
The Los Angeles Times published an article about the R-100’s flight from London to Toronto that was lyrical when it came to the dining experience.
The British dirigible R-100 tonight is sailing over the tossing Atlantic. . . . Those aboard are enjoying the flight. When the breakfast of ham and eggs with coffee was served this morning, quite in hotel fashion, hardly a movement of the ship could be felt. . . . As darkness fell tonight the electric lights were switched on and a bell summoned the hungry passengers to dinner. Plates of hot soup awaited them in the dining room. . . . The printed menu cards, the glittering silverware and spotless linen made the scene resemble Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue rather than mid-Atlantic.15
The R-100 might have been a serious competitor for the Zeppelin Company, but in 1929 the spectacular crash of another British airship, the R-101, soured the government on commercial lighter-than-air travel. After one round-trip to Canada in 1931, the R-100 was grounded for political reasons and never flew again. Britain had the technical skills to build an airship, but not the commercial acumen to fly one profitably. In contrast the Zeppelin Company was a viable commercial concern.
The dining room aboard the Graf Zeppelin could be mistaken for any fine restaurant of the era. Steward Heinrich Kubis, the first professional to serve food in flight, is on the right in the dark jacket.
Historic photo used by permission from Airships.net
Though aircraft were becoming more reliable by 1930 and could travel much faster than airships, they were seen as too uncomfortable to compete for luxury passenger traffic. In an editorial in Flight Magazine on September 26, 1930, Stanley Spooner stated,
Most travelers still prefer a fortnight in a P&O steamer to a week in an aeroplane, even though the aeroplane lands for meals and for the night. It may well be in the future most passengers will prefer traveling in a 70 or even 60 mile an hour airship to remaining day and night in a 100 or 90 mile an hour aeroplane. It is technically impossible to provide ample comfort in an aeroplane without an extravagant loss of payload per horsepower.
Airships were seen as the equivalent of ocean liners of the air, and the designers of the R-100 and the zeppelins did their best to deliver on that promise. The Hindenburg (official registration number LZ-129) carried a team of fifteen cooks and servers under the watchful eye of Heinrich Kubis, who had begun his career aboard Zeppelin airships as the first steward aboard the Schwaben in 1912. Passengers dined in a bright modern room adorned with murals painted on each panel of the cream-colored walls, seated on aluminum-framed chairs that were light but comfortable.
Douglas Robinson, in his book about the Hindenburg, described the dining room and service in detail:
To port, occupying an area measuring 15 x 50 feet, was the dining room. Here, with all the luxury and refinement of a small restaurant, were seats for 34 passengers—at four small tables for 2 persons along the inboard wall, and at six larger tables outboard. The tables—and chairs likewise—were of a special lightweight tubular aluminum design—‘as light as possible, as stable as possible’—created for the “Hindenburg” by Professor Breuhaus. . . . the colorful paintings in the dining room represented “Graf Zeppelin” on a South American journey. . . . Meals in these surroundings were an unforgettable experience. Passengers were assigned seats by the chief steward. . . . The tables were laid with white linen napkins and tablecloths, fresh-cut flowers, fine silver, and the special china service created for the “Hindenburg.” . . . the chief steward and three waiters served meals prepared in German style. Breakfast appears to have been a standard affair of rolls freshly baked in the ship’s ovens, with butter, preserves or honey; eggs (served boiled in the shell for German passengers, fried or poached for Americans); Frankfurt sausage, ham, salami, cheese, fruit, coffee, tea, milk or cocoa. On Monday, August 17, 1936, “Hindenburg’s” passengers ate for luncheon: Strong Broth Theodor, Fattened Duckling, Bavarian Style with Champagne Cabbage, Savory Potatoes and Madiera (sic) Gravy, Pears Convent Style, Mocha. For dinner there was: Cream Soup Hamilton, Grilled Sole With Parsley Butter, Venison Cutlets Beauval with Berny Potatoes, Mushrooms and Cream Sauce, Mixed Cheese Plate. All this was served with tall bottles of Rhine and Moselle wines . . . as well as a few French red wines and an assortment of German champagnes . . . (some 250 bottles of wine were carried on each crossing).16
The Hindenburg made its first flight in March 1936, carrying fifty passengers in lavish comfort to Rio de Janeiro. On that first transatlantic commercial flight, there was at least an attempt t
o reflect the destination in the cuisine. Morning poached eggs on toast were served with “Sauce Brasilienne,” probably a mix of peppers, rum, vinegar, and parsley. In case that was too exotic, passengers could also request porridge a la crème, coffee, fruits, and butter (presumably bread too, unless the butter was for the porridge). After meals, passengers could adjourn to the bar, where bartender Max Schulze served LZ-129 cocktails of gin and orange juice and a cocktail called the Maybach 12 after the zeppelin’s engines. (The recipe, alas, is unknown.) The trip from Germany to Brazil was completed in four days, a vast savings in time compared to the fastest ship, and passengers remarked wistfully that they wished it had taken longer.
The Hindenburg made a round-trip from Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey, in early 1936 that was very well documented since most of the passengers were journalists. United Press International journalist Webb Miller mentioned in his report that the dining room was forty-six feet long and had two tables seating twenty-five people. He also mentioned that at breakfast “the tables bore vases of fresh flowers and exquisite blue and white china.”17
After meals passengers could adjourn to a salon to enjoy music from the world’s first aluminum piano and sip wine from one of the 250 bottles carried aboard. The piano was removed after the second flight so that more cabins could be added, bringing the airship’s capacity up to seventy-two people.
The stability of the giant ship compared to all that had gone before was remarkable, and journalist Miller remarked that even as the airship flew through a severe storm in the Atlantic, the vases of carnations and sweet peas on his dining table did not fall over. Diners’ comfort was explicitly referenced in standing instructions to the pilots to never let the ship’s inclination exceed five degrees, since wine would spill at ten.18 It was an order that no officer aboard the zeppelin’s competitors, the luxury cruise ships, could ever give.
The Hindenburg made seventeen commercial round-trips between Germany and the Americas in 1936, alternating between New Jersey and Brazil. She carried 2,798 passengers and transported 160 tons of freight and mail, and became the global standard for luxury and speed. In the popular 1937 film Charlie Chan at the Olympics, a criminal takes a fast steamship to Europe, but the Chinese detective and a pair of witnesses beat him there by taking the Hindenburg. The film was released on May 21, 1937—two weeks after the Hindenburg met a fiery end in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The investigating team that looked into the disaster did not have the freedom to investigate crimes that was granted to the fictional detective. They were told specifically not to consider sabotage as a possibility, so the true reason will never be known.
Even this disaster did not eliminate the demand for zeppelin flights, and a sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin II, flew for the first time in 1938. Though it made thirty flights, none carried paying passengers; the Nazis had always had a hostile relationship with the Zeppelin Company, especially after the company’s director Dr. Eckener announced his intention to run against Hitler in the next election, and the government responded by nationalizing the airship. In an ironic twist, the great airship named after the pioneer of commercial flight was used only for propaganda and espionage. In April 1940, with World War II already in progress, Hermann Goering ordered the airship scrapped and the metal used to build warplanes. The era of airship travel was over, and it would be decades before anything resembling luxurious food was served aloft again.
chapter 3
The Early Days of the Airplane Age (1920–1930)
Unlike the hydrogen balloon or zeppelin, it isn’t easy to pinpoint the first meal eaten or served aboard an aircraft. It’s hard to imagine what food might have tempted even a starving man in an open-cockpit aircraft, enveloped in the stink of exhaust and lubricating oil and concentrating on keeping a fragile wood and canvas machine aloft. Inflight refreshment before World War I was probably limited to sips of water from a canteen, if even that was available.
The war spurred aircraft development, and by the end of the conflict the Germans, Russians, British, and Italians were all operating multiengine aircraft with closed cabins. The British built more of these than anyone else, and the Royal Flying Corps, predecessor of the RAF, set a global standard for reliable long-distance operations. Huge bombers like the Handley-Page O-series aircraft had a one-hundred-foot wingspan, a crew of five, and could stay in the air for eight hours. In the course of flights of up to seven hundred miles the crew drank soup or tea from thermos bottles and ate military rations that had been packed in wicker hampers.1 These were probably the first full meals eaten in a fixed-wing aircraft, but history does not record what was supplied or where it came from. Details of these missions were classified at the time, and the British public learned very little about these aircraft beyond the mere fact of their existence before one of the big bombers fell intact into German hands after a forced landing.
The war was nearly over when the Royal Air Corps first flew the Handley-Page V/1500, a twin-engine biplane behemoth that carried a crew of up to nine and could stay aloft for seventeen hours. That was intended to allow a round-trip from England to Berlin with up to two thousand pounds of bombs going only one way. The first sortie by three aircraft was actually taxiing down the runway when word arrived that an armistice had been signed. Only two months later, one of the aircraft that had been in that aborted bombing run made the first flight from England to India, covering almost five thousand miles with only four stops. Others had already been converted to passenger service and carried as many as forty passengers for flights between Croydon, near London, and Paris. The French Compagnie des Grands Express Aériens began scheduled service between Paris and London’s Croydon airfield in 1920, using fourteen-passenger Farman Goliaths. The flight typically took just over two hours.
At the end of the war the British had both the largest fleet of multiengine transport aircraft and the most experienced aircrew; the only large American aircraft manufacturer, the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, built fighter aircraft and small seaplanes, but had never designed an aircraft that would carry more than three people. The Wright Brothers had suppressed domestic competition by aggressive lawsuits to protect their very broad patents, so Curtiss-Wright had no serious competition until 1917 when a court ruled the patents invalid.
The lack of appropriate aircraft and trained pilots stunted the growth of airlines in the United States, and those that did come into existence were mostly air taxis that crossed narrow bodies of water to provide an alternative to ferryboats. An example was America’s first successful airline, Chalk’s International Airline, founded in 1919. Despite the grand name, they only flew one route, the fifty-three miles from Fort Lauderdale to Bimini, The Bahamas, carrying three passengers per trip.
The dense network of rail lines in the United States promised fast, efficient transportation in almost any weather, while the English Channel was a barrier to rail travel that would not be conquered until the opening of the channel tunnel in 1994. Given the commercial ties across the channel and economies that were reawakening after years of war, the potential for passenger air travel in Europe was obvious. The armistice with Germany was signed on November 11, 1918, and only one week later, Reuters carried an article predicting imminent cross-channel service with “cabins which will be electrically heated and lighted, and will be as comfortable as Pullman cars.” The very same week the Sydney Morning Herald carried an article predicting flights from London to New York in twenty-four hours and Australia to London in five days, an audacious estimate given the long sea and desert crossings along the route.
In 1919 anything seemed possible, including this “flying hotel”—a biplane with a thousand-foot wingspan and multiple dining rooms. Apparently nobody considered what might happen to dishes, glasses, and passengers in one of those wingtip restaurants when the aircraft banked to make a turn.
Image from TROVE Australia, Australian National Library
The first barrier to cross-channel commercial air
service was neither technical nor financial, but bureaucratic. The British government had prohibited all civilian flights over its territory in 1914, and the ban was not officially rescinded until 1919. The world’s first scheduled daily air service began between London and Paris on August 25 of that year aboard twelve-passenger Handley-Page W-8 airliners operated by Air Transport and Travel. These services were followed almost immediately by French competitors Messageries Aeriennes and others. Those early flights took about two and a half hours, and “lunch baskets” were offered at one shilling, three pence each. These were made by local hotels and contained “luxury sandwiches” and other cold items.2
Air Transport and Travel was taken over by Daimler Airways in 1920, and that company hired the first inflight staff—a “cabin boy” named Jack Sanderson, who was chosen mainly because he was lighter than an adult. Sanderson greeted passengers with glasses of fruit juice as they boarded, though apparently no food was offered at this time.