Zeppelins Operated Safely
All of the flights listed in the following table were made without a single injury to passengers or crew. The Deutschland had been repeatedly damaged while entering or leaving her shed and was rebuilt. The “Schwaben” was burned at her moorings during a severe storm. It is now known that all these accidents could have been avoided, in view of the progress that has been made in the science of lighter-than-air. Experience has materially increased the performance and qualities of safety in airships. Better motors, controls, gas bags and other parts of the Zeppelin have been so improved as to preclude possibility of accidents such as those which occasionally hindered the operations of “DELAG” before the war. Each of the flights listed here averaged two hours, 68 miles (109 kilometers), traversed with 22 passengers. All the flights aggregated 107,180 miles (172,535 kilometers), more than four times the girth of the earth at the equator.