Zeppelin Production of Airplanes
In 1916, the airship building personnel conducted experiments with airplanes made of airship duralumin girders covered with fabric. The object was to secure a plane which would meet the technical requirements of aerial photography. Though their activities were devoted to the airship building programme, the engineers managed to produce an experimental machine of that type. On its first trials, it proved so superior to existing types that the army urgently requested early delivery of a number of machines. There was little time to do the work, however, and at the end of the war only twenty had been completed. They were destroyed, afterward, under the terms of the Versailles treaty.
“DELAG” Passenger Zeppelin “Bodensee”.
There were other airplane enterprises organized by Count Zeppelin, which remain today leaders in their respective fields. Zeppelin was the first person to conceive of the giant all-metal flying boats ([Plates 21] and [22]), and all-metal airplanes.