Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  Tuan, K. “Aviation Insurance in America.” Journal of Risk and Insurance 32 (1965), no. 1: 1–22.

  Turner, C. C. Aerial Navigation of To-Day: A Popular Account of the Evolution of Aeronautics. London: Seeley & Co., 1910.

  Turnor, C. H. Astra Castra: Experiments and Adventures in the Atmosphere. London: Chapman and Hall, 1865.

  Vaeth, J. G. Graf Zeppelin: The Adventures of an Aerial Globetrotter. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958.

  ———. “Zeppelin Decor: The Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 15 (1990): 48–59.

  Van der Linden, F. R. Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002.

  Vantoch, V. The Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

  Van Vleck, J. Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013.

  Ventry, A., and E. M. Koleśnik. Airship Saga: The History of Airships Seen Through the Eyes of the Men Who Designed, Built, and Flew Them. Poole, Dorset, U.K.: Blandford Press, 1982.

  Vissering, H. Zeppelin: The Story of a Great Achievement. Chicago: Henry Vissering, 1922.

  Von Baumgarten, R. “Aviation Medicine: Its Past, Present, and Future.” In From Airships to Airbus: The History of Civil and Commercial Aviation, edited by W. M. Leary and W. F. Trimble, 71–90. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.

  Von Gleich, A. “Germany and Latin America.” RAND Corporation, Memorandum RM-5523-RC, 1968.

  Von Schierbrand, W. The Kaiser’s Speeches: Forming a Character Portrait of Emperor William II. New York/London: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

  Von Tschudi, G. Aus 34 Jahren Luftfahrt: Persönliche Erinnerungen. Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1928.

  Warner, G. “The Flying Boats of Foynes.” History Ireland 9 (2001), no. 1: 40–44.

  Warner, G. E., C. M. Foote, E. D. Neill, and J. F. Williams. History of Ramsey County and the City of St. Paul. Minneapolis: North Star Publishing Co., 1881.

  Warntz, W. “Transatlantic Flights and Pressure Patterns.” Geographical Review 51 (1961), no. 2: 187–212.

  Watkins, T. H. Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874–1952. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1990.

  Wegerdt, A. “Germany and the Aerial Navigation Convention at Paris, October 13, 1919.” Journal of Air Law and Commerce 1 (1930): 1–32.

  Weirather, L. “Romancing the Clipper: America’s Technological Coming of Age in Children’s Literature.” Studies in Popular Culture 13 (1990), no. 1: 27–45.

  Wells, H. G. Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. London: Chapman & Hall, 1902.

  Whalen, S., and R. E. Bartholomew. “The Great New England Airship Hoax of 1909.” The New England Quarterly 75 (2002), no. 3: 466–76.

  Wheeler, G. E. “The United States Navy and the Japanese ‘Enemy’: 1919–1931.” Military Affairs 21 (1957), no. 2: 61–74.

  Wilkes, C. Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842. Philadelphia: 1849.

  Wise, J. Through the Air: A Narrative of Forty Years’ Experience as an Aeronaut. Philadelphia, New York, Boston: To-Day Printing and Publishing Company, 1873.

  Wohl, R. A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908–1918. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994.

  ———. The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920–1950. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005.

  Woolf, V. The Question of Things Happening: Letters, 1912–1922. Edited by N. Nicholson. London: Hogarth Press, 1976.

  Zabecki, D. T. The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War. London/New York: Routledge, 2006.

  Zahm, A. F. Aerial Navigation: A Popular Treatise on the Growth of Air Craft and on Aeronautical Meteorology. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1911.

  Notes

  Prologue

  1. This section is based on “Hindenburg at Lakehurst,” October 8, “Dirigible to Visit Six States Today,” October 9, and “Hindenburg Soars over Six States,” October 10, 1936, The New York Times; H. C. Meyer, “F. W. (Willy) von Meister: Portrait of an Airship Businessman,” in H. C. Meyer, Airshipmen, Businessmen, and Politics, 1890–1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1991), pp. 209–10; “Zeppelin: Easy Rider in a Hurricane,” Literary Digest, October 17, 1936, pp. 17–18 (describes the fountain-pen trick); J. Toland, The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters (New York: Dover Publications, 1972), pp. 10–12. Of particular value is the full passenger list at airships.net/​hindenburg/​flight-schedule/​millionaire-flight/. For numbers and statistics, see Series K 239–245, “Air Transport—Aircraft Production and Exports: 1913 to 1945,” p. 224, Ser. K 246–256, “Air Transport—Scheduled Air Transportation, Domestic Only, 1926 to 1945,” p. 224, and Ser. K 265–273, “Air Transport—Accidents: 1927 to 1945,” p. 225, in Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Commerce, 1949); “Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities, 1900–2007,” at www.fhwa.dot.gov/​policyinformation/​statistics/​2007/​pdf/​fi200.pdf. On noise and other experiments, see P. R. Bassett, “The Hindenburg—Some Measurements,” U.S. Air Service 21 (December 1936).

  1. The Aeronaut

  1. E. C. Belote, born in Ontario County, New York, in 1812, moved to Saint Paul in 1856 and managed the Merchants Hotel until 1861, when he took over the more upscale International (which would burn down in 1869). See G. E. Warner, C. M. Foote, E. D. Neill, and J. F. Williams, History of Ramsey County and the City of St. Paul (Minneapolis: North Star Publishing Co., 1881), p. 493. On the International Hotel, see H. A. Castle, History of St. Paul and Vicinity (Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1912), p. 417. The International had been built just a few years before—in 1856—and its five floors were crowned by some impressive crenellated battlements. It was one of the few brickwork buildings in Saint Paul. General Schurz, in his The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (New York: The McClure Company, 2 vols., 1907), volume 2, p. 340, notes that Zeppelin at the time “spoke English moderately well.”

  2. R. R. Gilman, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: A Study in Fact and Fable,” Minnesota History 39 (1965), no. 7, p. 282.

  3. R. R. Gilman, “Count Von Zeppelin and the American Atmosphere,” Smithsonian Journal of History 3 (1968), no. 1, p. 35; M. B. Dunn, R. R. Gilman, and F. von Zeppelin, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: The Count’s Own Story,” Minnesota History 40 (1967), no. 6, pp. 273–75.

  4. On Zeppelin’s background, see H. C. Meyer, Count Zeppelin: A Psychological Portrait (Auckland, New Zealand: Lighter-Than-Air Institute, 1998), pp. 18–19, 21, 23; W. R. Nitske, The Zeppelin Story (South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1977), pp. 15–17; H. Eckener (trans. L. Farnell), Count Zeppelin: The Man and His Work (Berlin and London: Massie Publishing Company, 1938), p. 6; L. Tittel (trans. P. A. Schmidt), Graf Zeppelin: His Life and His Work (Friedrichshafen, Germany: Zeppelin-Museum, 1995), p. 6. Zeppelin himself cracked the joke about his forebears gambling away all their lands; see E. A. Lehmann (ed. A. Sutton), Zeppelin: The Story of Lighter-Than-Air Craft (1937; repr. London: Fonthill Media, 2015), p. 145.

  5. Quoted in Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, pp. 22–23.

  6. Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 37, 14–17, 41.

  7. There are, as might be expected, conflicting versions of Zeppelin’s meeting with Lincoln. Carl Schurz claims that it was he who introduced the count (whom he leaves unnamed) to the president. See his Reminiscences, volume 2, p. 340. Schurz also relates the comic anecdote concerning Zeppelin’s bemusement at Lincoln’s remark, though Nitske believes “there
is serious doubt that the incident ever happened” as Zeppelin’s “superb storytelling ability and high sense of humor” would have prompted him to tell the tale himself, rather than leaving it to Schurz. See Nitske, Zeppelin Story, p. 25. Notwithstanding Zeppelin’s narrative skills, he took his family background very seriously and likely didn’t catch the irony.

  8. The most thorough descriptions of Zeppelin’s travels are Dunn, Gilman, and Zeppelin, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: The Count’s Own Story”; and Gilman, “Count von Zeppelin and the American Atmosphere,” pp. 29–40.

  9. On the high cost of balloons, see “Perilous Balloon Ascent in Lake Erie,” Daily News (England), July 9, 1857; R. Holmes, Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air (New York: Pantheon Books, 2013), p. 57.

  10. T. D. Crouch, The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 229–35. In the summer of 1853, Steiner experienced the terrible effects of flying into a thunderstorm when he took off from Camden, New Jersey. See his description in J. Steiner, “Press Release, 1863,” Minnesota History 40 (1967), no. 6, pp. 279–80, which transcribes a lengthy interview originally published in the St. Paul Pioneer of August 9, 1863. The article was intended to advertise his upcoming tour in the city. For the name of his balloon on his current tour, see his advertisement in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, July 24, 1863, p. 4; for the number of balloons he’d lost, see “Perilous Balloon Ascent in Lake Erie.”

  11. S. Hopkins, “Daredevil Balloonist John Steiner: America’s Champion Aeronaut in the Civil War,” Military Images 33 (2015), no. 4, pp. 42–44. On Steiner’s service at Island No. 10, The Times (London) of April 14, 1862, has a report, quoted in C. H. Turnor (ed.), Astra Castra: Experiments and Adventures in the Atmosphere (London: Chapman and Hall, 1865), p. 287.

  12. Dunn, Gilman, and Zeppelin, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: The Count’s Own Story,” pp. 275–76.

  13. R. von Baumgarten, “Aviation Medicine: Its Past, Present, and Future,” in W. F. Trimble (ed.), From Airships to Airbus: The History of Civil and Commercial Aviation (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2 vols., 1995), volume 2, pp. 75–76.

  14. In Steiner’s July 24, 1863, advertisement in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, he stated that “the weather should be perfectly calm in order to make the Army Ascensions.”

  15. Among the earliest popularizers of the term was Jean-Pierre Blanchard, one of the most famous of the early aeronauts. See his definition in The Principles, History, and Use of Air-Balloons (New York: J. Fellows, 1796), p. 3.

  16. Letter, Zeppelin to his father, August 19 postscript, printed in Dunn, Gilman, and Zeppelin, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: The Count’s Own Story,” pp. 276–77.

  17. Gilman, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: A Study in Fact and Fable,” p. 279. On the number of passengers the Hercules could handle, see Steiner’s July 24, 1863, advertisement in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel. The interview is carried in full in The Bemidji Daily Pioneer, February 9 and 10, 1915.

  18. Letter published in Dunn, Gilman, and Zeppelin, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: The Count’s Own Story,” pp. 276–77. The original letter to his father is dated August 18, but Zeppelin added a postscript dated August 19 after his ascent with Steiner.

  19. Quote from Zeppelin’s 1915 interview, in The Bemidji Daily Pioneer, February 10, 1915.

  20. Gilman, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: A Study in Fact and Fable,” p. 285.

  21. Hopkins, “Daredevil Balloonist,” pp. 43–44. The last mention of him in a newspaper was in 1875, when it was reported that he was trying to build a gigantic airship to cross the Atlantic. “Steiner’s Balloon,” The Inter-Ocean, May 27, 1875; “A Big Balloon,” Crawford County Bulletin, June 17, 1875.

  22. On his itinerary, see Dunn, Gilman, and Zeppelin, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: The Count’s Own Story,” pp. 277–78. In the count’s own words, “While I was above St. Paul I had my first idea of aerial navigation strongly impressed upon me and it was there that the first idea of my Zeppelins came to me.” Quoted in Gilman, “Zeppelin in Minnesota: A Study in Fact and Fable,” p. 285. This recollection came much later, obviously: At this time, Zeppelin was introduced only to the problem of aerial navigation and some rudimentary design ideas.

  23. Tittel, Graf Zeppelin, p. 19.

  24. A. Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 17, 20.

  25. Tittel, Graf Zeppelin, p. 73.

  26. Confino, Nation as a Local Metaphor, pp. 17, 20–21.

  27. Tittel, Graf Zeppelin, p. 73.

  28. Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 100, 106–7.

  29. Letter of October 15, 1869, quoted in M. Belafi, The Zeppelin (Barnsley, U.K.: Pen & Sword, 2015), p. 9.

  30. Recollection of Oskar Wilcke, printed in R. Italiaander, Ferdinand Graf Von Zeppelin: Reitergeneral, Diplomat, Luftschiffpionier: Bilder und Dokumente (Konstanz, Germany: Verlag Friedr. Stadler, 1980), pp. 140–41.

  31. Belafi, The Zeppelin, pp. 9–10; Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 109–17; “Zeppelin and His Troopers,” Cincinnati Daily Enquirer (reprinting the New York Evening Post), September 5, 1870, has an exciting account of the raid. On the medal, see Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 43.

  32. Holmes, Falling Upwards, pp. 251–93, has a terrific narrative of the siege; J. Stamp, “Aero-Static Warfare: A Brief Survey of Ballooning in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Siege Warfare,” Journal of Military History 79 (2015), no. 3, p. 780.

  33. Eckener, Count Zeppelin, p. 125; Tittel, Graf Zeppelin, p. 75.

  2. The Fever Dream

  1. Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. i.

  2. Meyer, Count Zeppelin, p. 39; Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 155–56; Tittel, Graf Zeppelin, p. 25; D. Robinson, Giants in the Sky: A History of the Rigid Airship (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), p. 13. Stephan’s conclusion is quoted in Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 43.

  3. Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 155–56; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 13–14; Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 14.

  4. See diary entry, printed in Eckener, Count Zeppelin, p. 157; Belafi, The Zeppelin, p. 15.

  5. Quoted in Eckener, Count Zeppelin, p. 158.

  6. Diary entry of June 12, 1876, quoted in Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 130–31.

  7. Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 132–33, 159. The memorandum is printed in Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 14.

  8. This section based on Meyer, Count Zeppelin, pp. 31–37; Eckener, Count Zeppelin, pp. 138, 142–51; Tittel, Graf Zeppelin, pp. 25, 77.

  3. The Government of the Air

  1. Quoted in Holmes, Falling Upwards, pp. 17–18.

  2. H. Pückler-Muskau, “Frail Aerial Bark,” in Lighter-Than-Air Flight, ed. C. V. Glines (New York: Franklin Watts, 1965), pp. 49–50.

  3. J. T. Alexander, “Aeromania, ‘Fire-Balloons,’ and Catherine the Great’s Ban of 1784,” The Historian 58 (1996), no. 3, pp. 497–516.

  4. P. Keen, “The ‘Balloonomania’: Science and Spectacle in 1780s England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39 (2006), no. 4, pp. 510–11, 520–21.

  5. “Aerostation,” The Scots Magazine 46 (1784), pp. 560–61.

  6. Letter, Washington to Louis Le Bèque du Portail, April 4, 1784, in The Writings of George Washington: From the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799, ed. J. Fitzpatrick (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938), 27, p. 387; for a general overview, see S. I. Pomerantz, “George Washington and the Inception of Aeronautics in the Young Republic,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 98 (1954), no. 2, esp. pp. 131–32.

  7. John Adams to Abigail Adams, September 7, 1783, at Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, masshist.org/​digitaladams/.

  8. Letter, Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson,
February 18, 1784, in Founders Online. National Archives, founders.archives.gov/​documents/​Jefferson/​01-06-02-0402.

  9. Crouch, The Eagle Aloft, pp. 60–66.

  10. Quoted in Alexander, “Aeromania,” p. 502.

  11. Letter, Robert Morris to Jay, in a letter of November 27, 1783, printed in The Life of John Jay: With Selections from His Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, ed. W. Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 2 vols., 1833), volume 2, p. 138.

  12. Quoted in Crouch, The Eagle Aloft, p. 26.

  13. M. R. Lynn, The Sublime Invention: Ballooning in Europe, 1783–1820 (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 45.

  14. Holmes, Falling Upwards, pp. 30–31.

  15. Alexander, “Aeromania,” pp. 510–12.

  16. A. M. Josephy, Jr. (ed.), The American Heritage History of Flight (New York, 1962), p. 44, cited in Alexander, “Aeromania,” p. 516.

  17. Crouch, The Eagle Aloft, pp. 97–102.

  18. The phrase “aerial phrenzy” was coined in the anonymous work London Unmask’d: Or the New Town Spy (1785), quoted in Keen, “ ‘Balloonomania,’ ” p. 510. Tiberius Cavallo, one of England’s leading scientific advocates of ballooning, was particularly irritated by the cheap jokes. See his remarks, printed in Turnor (ed.), Astra Castra, p. 81.

  19. Keen, “ ‘Balloonomania,’ ” p. 517; letter, Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, December 2, 1783, printed in P. Cunningham (ed.), The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Oxford (London: Richard Bentley and Sons, 9 vols., 1891), volume 8, p. 438.

  20. Keen, “ ‘Balloonomania,’ ” p. 517.

  21. On Martyn, see his Hints of Important Uses, to Be Derived from Aerostatic Globes, with a Print of an Aerostatic Globe, and Its Appendages (London: T. Martyn, 1784), p. 15; R. Gillespie, “Ballooning in France and Britain, 1783–1786: Aerostation and Adventurism,” Isis 75 (1984), no. 2, p. 262.