An Officer in the American Union Army
Zeppelin “LZ-3” Over Count Zeppelin’s First Floating Shed October 1906.
Zeppelin “LZ-3” in First Temporary Land Shed.
Which was erected and used while the new double shed, completed in 1908, was being built at Friedrichshafen.
Here in America the Civil War was attracting the adventurous from all parts of the world and shortly after it started, Zeppelin came over to join the Union Army as a volunteer officer and thus to add to his military education, but Zeppelin was not only the officer. He loved to roam in out of the way places and whenever opportunity afforded he organized hunting parties and went off on long sojourns in the then sparsely inhabited regions of the Mississippi Valley. Here he played the explorer and wrote letters back home dwelling on the pleasures of exploration and the possibilities in store for him who could invent something that would take one to the far and inaccessible parts of the earth.