Passenger Dirigible

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OPENING: What is a dirigible? What is a passenger Dirigible? What is our Time Frame? What are we focusing in on? Major Themes/Conclusions?

Dirigibles During the War

The rigid airship, although a product of many strands of research and design, is most directly tied to German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the namesake of the Zeppelin Company that produced German airships. Balloons as travel devices had existed earlier, but Zeppelin, during his time serving in both the German Army as well as the American Union during the American Civil War, wished to make the balloons 'dirigible,' meaning a steerable, powered craft. Although a military man by trade, Zeppelin conceived of the dirigible not as a war machine, but as a device "providing long-range transportation for the peaceful service of mankind" (Rosendahl 47). It was the rise of the first World War that prompted his invention to become linked to war.

The use of airships, primarily by Germany, during World War I was met with respect and perhaps fear by the Allied forces. This is most evident in the post-war restrictions placed on German production of airships, as well as the growing expansion of airship production in America and Britain. Following WWI, Allies hoped to (and in many ways succeeded in) crippling Germany's power by forbidding the construction of German airships of ocean-going size. Many German airships used during the war were taken and divvied up by the Allied forces, most being destroyed in the process (Rosendahl 50).

Although Germany eventually was able to return to airship production in a commercial sense, most importantly with the Graf Zeppelin completed in 1928, the long-range effects of the Allied blockade of German research into airships in immense. In fact, one of the possible reasons for the downfall of airships as a viable and more developed transportation in general is this "retarding influence of the Treaty" (Rosendahl 51).

Dirigible Flying Experience

In the post World War 1 context, dirigibles began to take on a completely different context: they were not to be viewed as instruments of war and terror, but as the transportation form of the future.

Cross Oceanic Travel

The interest in airships as a passenger transportation form was of particular relevance for cross-oceanic travel (Hunsaker 434). Capable of sustained travel for distances of up to 5,000 miles at about a mile a minute(or faster), the airship could “easily make voyages of three or four thousand miles with a good commercial load” according to Dr Edward Warner of MIT, writing in 1924 in The Scientific Monthly (Warner___). While the airplane was convenient and cheaper for distances below 1000 miles, it was actually less economical for larger distances as the airplane had to transport large quantities of fuel (Hunsaker 434). Consequently, as __ C__ Rosendal said in __, it was widely believed that “the field of long range aerial transport belongs to the airship” (Rosendahl 321).

Passenger Dirigibles and the Steamship

As the new form of cross-oceanic travel, the passenger dirigible, evident simply in it’s popular name “the airship”, took much of it’s identity from steamships, the main form of long-distance travel up to that time. The design of the airship, to the attention paid to comfort and luxury, were all ideals inherited from the steamship in which travel was as much as about the journey as the direction. While dirigibles traveled much faster than a steamship, and Atlantic crossing times typically ranged from only two to three days (depending, of course, on the wind), the trips were still long enough that much care needed to be given to the comfort of the passengers, from the food they would eat, to where they would socialize, the activities planned, and finally, where they would sleep (Vaeth 48).

Comfort and Luxury in the Air: Graf and the Hindenberg

The similarity of dirigibles to steamships aesthetically and ideologically is particularly evident through the two most notable passenger dirigibles: the Graf Zeppelin and the famous HIndenberg, both German airships.

The Graf, which took its maiden voyage in 1928, introduced the world to the passenger airship with the first cross-Atlantic flight, traveling from Friedrichshafen, Germany to the US Naval Air station in Lakehurst, New Jersey. This maiden voyage was followed with a series of demonstration trips, including one around the world, before eventually beginning regular trips between Friedrichshafen and South America (Vaeth 48).

The Hindenberg, which followed the Graf in 1936, was the crowned jewel of the German passenger dirigible industry. The 118th airship built by the Lufschiffbau-Zeppelin Company, it provided service between Frankfurt and Lakehurst, and measured in at a staggering 803 feet by 135 feet. At that point, the Hindenberg was the largest manmade object to ever fly (Vaeth 48).

While they lacked some of the amenities available on the luxury steam ships of the time, both the Graf and the Hindenberg offered its passengers the most comfortable and luxurious experience yet offered on an aircraft. As Rosendahl, a airship traveler an enthusiast expressed:

“In the matter of comforts in travel, airships can provide the best. In modern airships you ride in a sheltered structure, there is no noise, vibration, dirt, smoke, and the motion, when there is any, is usually only a very mild pitching. I have never seen any seasickness in an airship. There are ample comforts for sitting, sleeping, reading, writing, card playing, walking about and exercising and the new passenger airships contemplate even ball rooms.” (Rosendahl 329) Overall, as shall later be discussed (See Communicative….) the design and experience of passenger airships reveal a commonly held attitude at the time towards travel: that travel was an experience of indulgence, luxury and pleasure.

Graf Dining Room
The Graf accommodated twenty a passengers in a dirigible sized ninety eighty feel by twenty feet. The airship was accommodated with a room about sixteen square feet, decorated with curtains and red wine colored carpets that rotated as the dining room and lounge. Passengers on the Graf ate off expensive linens, silver and white china which displayed the Lufschiffbau-Zeppelin monogram (Vaeth 38). While quarters were close, with two people to a small sized cabin, each cabin had a window with an outside view, a small closet, table, stool and settee (Vaeth 53).

General


The Hindenburg

The Menu aboard the Hindenburg

Empire State Building: Mooring Mast

ESB Under Construction

Dirigibles as Communicative Force

Travel: More than Point A to Point B

International Symbol of Peace: Death Machine to Luxury Machine

The Urbane: Cities Meet the Sky

Bibliography

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