The “DELAG” Passenger Zeppelin “Bodensee.”
View of Berlin in Winter.
Many of the problems in commercial airship operations or design will be solved shortly after actual operations are started. The aim of Zeppelin engineers has been to increase the efficiency of the airship as it has been proven that the financial returns from airship transport are, or should be, proportionately increased by the use of larger ships. The Zeppelin efforts, therefore, is to secure greater efficiency which will allow better financial returns with smaller units and less expense.
Commercial Operations Data Compiled
While this has been one of the principal objectives of the engineering branch, the operating staffs have developed new methods of handling the big ships commercially; improved organizations, and methods and apparatus for making coast and geodetic surveys by airship, forest fire patrol, and scientific explorations.
Their investigations of weather and technical conditions have extended throughout the world; one of the principal surveys of proposed routes being between Spain and Buenos Aires, in which it was learned that a normal schedule can be maintained regularly with ninety-six hours allotted for non-stop flights between the two terminals.
The Public will Accept Airship Transportation Here as Abroad
Of course, the public must be converted to the use of the airship, just as the people of Germany were converted—by actual operations. There probably exists no other field of human endeavor so essential to our civilization as that of transportation. The traveling public has accepted other mediums of conveyance after they had demonstrated inherent qualities of safety and reliability. So it is with aircraft. Heavier-than-air machines have gradually popularized flying. Persons are riding by the air route in constantly increasing numbers, here and abroad. Their faith in commercial aviation is due solely to the BRAVE pioneering efforts of a few men of vision these last twenty years. Popularity and general use depends on the efficiency of the organizations which now carry on the work so well begun.
PLATE 59
Zeppelin Fountain at Friedrichshafen.
Dedicated by the townspeople to the memory of Count Zeppelin.