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.
The Zeppelin-Dornier Metal Monoplanes
He organized a small group within the parent company, Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin, in 1912. It was the first concern exclusively engaged in all-metal airplane construction. Today the great plant of Dornier Metallbau G.m.b.H. at Seemoos, near Friedrichshafen is noted the world over for its remarkable development in heavier-than-air craft, which are named Dornier, after the manager and chief engineer. From the first Count Zeppelin placed at the disposal of Claude Dornier ample funds with which he was able to follow utterly new and original methods in developing all-metal planes on a strictly scientific basis.
It had never been done before. The plant in six years developed from a small experimental workshop to one of the largest in the world. At Seemoos there are located a great hangar, office buildings, workshops, turntables, slips and other facilities for landing and withdrawing the huge Dornier flying boats. Another great factory was erected at Lindau in 1918 but has not been used for reasons of economy.
PLATE 39
