An early flight of LZ-7, the first Deutschland. before the name was painted on. This first commercial zeppelin had a short, nine-day life. Open cars or gondolas were for the crew, and the enclosed passenger cabin was amidships.

'8sterdaJ's WingS Early ZEPPELIN Cruises

dodo The first flight from that city, by PETER M. BOWERS / AOPA 54408 on June 28, was a press flight with 23 •• From 1910 until the outbreak of invited aboard for what was planned to World War I, German zeppelins were be a representative three-hour pleasure the only consistently successful, com• flight, complete with an in-flight cham• mercial passenger-carrying aircraft in pagne breakfast. the world. While there were no sched• Unforeseen troubles developed, how• uled airline operations, regular sight• ever. Because of poor planning, Deutsch• seeing and other pleasure flights were land got caught a long way downwind set up by an organization that owned of its base and encountered a violent and operated zeppelins commercially. storm because no one had checked the This was DELAG, an acronym for the weather in that area. Finally, it lost one German name of the German Airship of its engines. The short pleasure flight Transportation Co., founded in Novem• had turned into a nine-hour ordeal that ber 1909. ended with a crash landing in the trees In June 1910, DELAG acquired its of the Teutobura Forest. There was no first zeppelin, appropriately named fire, fortunately, and only one minor ,. Deutschland. This ship was also known injury. Nevertheless, Deutschland was by its factory number, LZ-7, that indi• a total loss. .""'" ,.".~., cated it was the seventh zeppelin airship In a remarkable demonstration of the .1 built since 1900. While it had two open extremely high popularity of zeppelins cars-one fore and one aft for the in Germany at the time, DELAG was eight-man crew, and the three Daimler not only able to finance an immediate engines that drove the four outrigger replacement, LZ-8-the Ersatz (substi• propellers-the 24 passengers rode in tute) Deutschland, sometimes referred plush style in an enclosed central cabin. to as E-Deutschland, or iri recent his• DELAG undertook some shakedown tories, Deutschland II-but four addi• and familiarization flights before start• tional ships as well. The inside of the 24-passenger cabin of ing paid passenger service and trans• The replacement fared only slightly Deutschland shows the lightweight ferred its ship from the factory at Fried• better than the original. Delivered on wicker chairs and ornate woodwork. richs~hafen to its new base at Dussel- March 11, 1911, it was wrecked on May Hot meals could be served in flight.

74 THE AOPA PILOT I APRIL 1976 remammg three zeppelins continued of the 30th, LZ-S was only 80 miles their passenger-hopping until the day from home when Count Zeppelin recog• EARLY COMMERCIAL ZEPPELINS after war broke out. Then they were nized the completely fatigued condition drafted by the army and served as train• of the crew (he was then 70 years old Specifications and Performance ers until dismantled as obsolete. himself) and ordered a landing in a In its four years of operations, suitable field at Goppingen. LZ-7 Deutschland LZ·17 Sachsen DELAG carried 10,197 paying passen• Because of fatigue from flying 37 (1910) (1913) gers on 1,S88 commercial fligh ts with• hours and 39 minutes, the helmsman out a single passenger injury other than misjudged his landing, in an otherwise Length 486 ft 466 ft the broken leg suffered by the reporter completely open field, and hit the only Diameter 46 ft 48 ft 6 in on the first Deutschland when he tree there, pushing in the nose almost Gas volume 683,000 cu ft 690,000 cu ft Powerplant(s) 3 120-hp Daimler 3 170-hp Maybach jumped out of the cabin. back to the forward gondola. There was High speed 37 mph 48.9 mph An earlier zeppelin accident is worth no fire; the ship was secured; and a mentioning. Count Zeppelin had built repair crew was rushed up from the his fifth ship, LZ-S, for the German factory. Army, but wanted to make a spectacular Within a day, the damaged girders, 16 when a crosswind caught the ship public demonstration of its performance the forward gas cells, and the forward as it was being walked out of its han• before delivery. He planned a 36-hour engine had been removed, and a nose gar. endurance flight, a long cruise from the cone of sorts had been jury-rigged on Number three was on the way, how• floating factory on the shores of Lake the bobbed nose. The LZ-S was then ever: LZ-10, Schwaben, was delivered Constance. flown back to its base. It was soon re• on June 26; followed by LZ-ll, Viktoria The fligh t started at 9: 30 p.m. on paired and accepted by the army, but Luise (named for the Kaiser's daugh• May 20, 1909, and the first leg covered had a short life of only 16 subsequent ter), on Feb. 2, 1912; LZ-13, Hansa, on 264 miles against the wind in 14 hours flights. It was destroyed on Apr. 2S, July 30; and LZ-17 Sachsen on May 3, 2S minutes for a ground speed of 17 1910, when a strong wind ripped it out 1913. Schwaben was lost on ·the ground mph. After more cruising and with fuel of the hands of the ground crew and to a fire believed to have been caused running low, LZ-S headed back to base slammed the unmanned LZ-S (now re• by static electricity in the rubberized• with a tailwind averaging 32 mph for designated Z-11) against the side of a silk gas cells. No one was hurt, and the a time. After flying through the night small hill. D