In some respects this was Von Zeppelin’s crowning voyage of the year, though effected with a hurriedly finished vessel, not yet thoroughly adjusted. In mechanical execution this journey was equaled on many other occasions; for those great air ships were kept in active service and were everywhere hailed with enthusiasm. Both the Emperor and his people were proud to number those grand cruisers among the nation’s aërial warships. With general commendation, therefore, was received the announcement that four large Zeppelins were ordered for the use of the German navy. And not surprising was the announcement that other inventors were at work on designs for dirigibles of the rigid type. The projects of these new rivals, who began to appear in 1909, are set forth in the following account:[17]
“Count Zeppelin, who proved that air ships have a practical future, is no longer undisputed ‘king of the air.’ His rivals have taken his pattern, and improved it until soon air ships will be able to keep afloat for many days and in that case to cross oceans. A type of this modern ship is the first Schütte leviathan of wood and steel bracing, now nearly finished at Mannheim. It is expected to lift its twenty-four and one-fifth tons one and a quarter miles, because its beam is sixty feet as compared with the forty-four feet of the Zeppelin II. The car is one hundred and thirty feet long, with a cabin to accommodate thirty passengers. The new ship displaces nineteen thousand cubic meters, as against fifteen thousand in the Zeppelin III. It is expected to carry a cargo of five to six tons supported by ten spherical sustaining chambers, and eight ring-shape reservoir chambers connected by a secret apparatus. These eight reservoirs automatically receive all expanding gas that escapes from the sustaining chambers, thus conserving the entire supporting power. Four motors of combined five hundred and forty horse power will drive the propellers. Expert opinion predicts a speed of thirty-seven to forty-three miles an hour, three miles faster than the Gross III, at this writing the fastest air ship in the world. The whole enterprise is backed by Mr. Lanz, a rich manufacturer, who is president of the German Air-Navy League. A wooden-braced ship of equal equipment and size, designed by the Engineer Rettich, is well under way.
“Another rival of the Zeppelin, so far only projected, has been designed by the Engineers Radinger and Wagner, and is intended to be an advance in endurance. It should float for fifty days without replenishing gas. It is planned to have a rigid hull of hollow paper tubes and steel bracing and to be thirty per cent lighter than a Zeppelin built of aluminum, in any equal size. Drum-shape compartments are to hold the sustaining hydrogen, none of which is to be lost through expansion by the sun, as any surplus will be compressed by automatic pumps into the hollow tubes.[18] Having six thousand meters less displacement than the Zeppelin III, it will carry a reserve of seven hundred cubic meters of gas. Thirty-two per cent of its weight-carrying capacity will be given up to passengers, fuel, and baggage. Engines of two hundred and forty-two combined horse power are expected to develop a speed of forty to fifty miles an hour. Larger craft of the same type would, of course, carry much heavier cargoes and have higher speed. This type of ship, soon to be placed in the construction cradle, is expected to cross the ocean easily with fifteen passengers.”
In keeping with the lively growth of these great ships was the formation of the German aërial transportation company, with a capital stock of $750,000, reported in l’Aérophile for December, 1909. A line of large Zeppelins was to connect Baden-Baden, Mannheim, Munich, Leipsic, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Dresden, Essen and Frankfort. The first two auto balloons of this line were to be the Zeppelin IV and Zeppelin V, to be put in commission in the spring of 1910. The Zeppelin IV was to cube 706,000 cubic feet, and carry twenty passengers in three cars, each containing a motor. The Zeppelin V was to be constructed of a remarkably light rigid alloy “electrometal,” and was to carry at least thirty passengers. This enterprise certainly formed an appropriate termination to the first decade of practical auto ballooning.
The projected passenger line of the German Air Ship Society was inaugurated the following summer with serene audacity and fairy-like magnificence. The first ship employed, Zeppelin VII, was a huge vessel of unusual power, speed and elegance of appointment. She was 485 feet long by 46 in diameter, cubed 690,000 feet, and carried three engines totaling 420 horse power and competent to drive her 35 miles per hour. Midway beneath her hull and rigidly joined to it, was a passenger car thirty-five feet long, having a vestibule at one end, a lavatory at the other, and five compartments between them, with seats for twenty persons. Beyond the ends of the car were open decks leading to the boats fore and aft containing the machinery.
At three o’clock on the morning of June 22, 1910, with Count Zeppelin in charge, and a dozen passengers aboard, this majestic auto balloon sailed from Friedrichshafen up the Rhine Valley for Düsseldorf, three hundred miles, and after a prosperous voyage of nine hours, made an easy landing. Next morning at eight thirty she voyaged from Düsseldorf to Dortmund, thirty-seven miles north, sailing at a general height of one thousand feet, over some of the finest industrial parts of Germany. Then she returned to Düsseldorf with her delighted passengers who were all enthusiasm for the new mode of travel so auspiciously begun. Of the thirty-two persons aboard, the majority were regular public passengers who had paid fifty dollars each for the trip, several of them tourists from various countries, and ten of them women.
The maiden voyage of this first air liner was a marvel and dream of delight to the fortunate few traveling in such celestial style. The comforts and splendors of the service quite surpassed their expectations. Seated in that fairy car of aluminum framing lined with mahogany and rosewood inlaid with pearl, they looked from spacious windows over the beautiful German landscape gliding beneath them, and enjoyed visions fit for itinerating gods. Along the shining waters of the Rhine, and over its castellated crags, and among its rolling hills terraced with luxuriant vineyards, now lapped in the glory of summer, and above stately cities murmuring with multitudinous life, they sailed in serenest comfort and security, marveling at their own strange career through the sky, and equally regarded with wonder by all the inhabitants below, not to say written and read about by millions in all parts of the civilized world. The delights of land and sea travel were happily mingled, without their inconvenience. Neither dust nor smoke was here, nor rattle of iron rails, nor lurching and rolling from heavy seas. Quite otherwise. The senses were charmed with the fanning of fragrant winds forever and uniformly blowing, with the melodious drone of the swift propeller wheels, with the green glories of the earth and purple splendors of the sky. When the tourist was sated with these he could turn to his book; when tired of his chair he could stroll to and fro in the car on a soft carpet, or along the trellised deck beyond; when his appetite called, he could answer with the choicest food and wine; for every convenience of an ample buffet was available. It was all so enchanting if only practical.
Encouraged by these trials the company announced, and hoped to make, voyages at frequent intervals. But in this they promptly encountered difficulties. On June 28th the Deutschland started from Düsseldorf on a four-hour cruise, with nearly a score of passengers, mostly newspaper representatives. But she remained in the air longer than intended. Passing Solingen she tried to reach Eberfeld, but ineffectually; nor could she find a landing place. Toward five o’clock she was caught in a great rising wind and carried one mile aloft like a passive balloon in a vortex or thunderhead. Here much gas was lost by expansion, and presently, as the ship emerged from a snow cloud in the upper vortex, with cooled gas and hull laden with precipitation, she descended at a terrible velocity. With crippled motive power, the vessel could not be supported dynamically by the impact of the air against her sustaining planes and against her canted hull, for lack of forward speed. At length with a terrific crash she struck upon the forest of Teutoberg, 80 miles from Dusseldorf, a great tree trunk piercing the rear boat and projecting among the terrified crew. Here the vessel lodged with her stern and controlling gear badly wrecked, and here she was abandoned by the passengers, with her huge hull resting on the branches forty feet from earth. Ere long she was retrieved by a company of infantry who sawed down the trees, dismantled the ship, and returned the parts on railway trucks to Friedrichshafen, to be used in building another vessel.
Thus in both civil and military aëronautics the pioneers had to endure many losses and grievous hardships; but the direst disasters often mark the way to the greatest victories.