Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  47. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 139–40; Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 194–95.

  22. China Show

  1. Goldsmith, Zeppelin, pp. 227–28, 231–32; Robinson, Giants of the Sky, pp. 117–20.

  2. Goldsmith, Zeppelin, p. 229.

  3. Goldsmith, Zeppelin, p. 235.

  4. Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, pp. 117–18; Goldsmith, Zeppelin, p. 238; Topping, When Giants Roamed the Sky, pp. 45–46.

  5. W. Kaempffert, “What Zeppelin Really Achieved as a Pioneer Aeronaut,” The New York Times, quoted in Current Opinion, May 1917; Anon., “Zeppelin in Success and Failure,” Literary Digest, March 24, 1917.

  6. Anon., “Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin,” Aviation and Aeronautical Engineering, March 15, 1917; Anon., “Count Zeppelin,” Outlook, March 21, 1917.

  7. Letter, Eckener to Johanna, February 12, 1918, printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 156.

  8. In a letter to Johanna dated October 26, 1917, Eckener wrote, “After the war? Yes, dear wife, the DELAG will probably come back in some form or another, as Colsman says….I’ll be there, of course, but I’ll leave the traveling to others.” Printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 152. Eckener would actually do more traveling than others.

  9. D. H. Robinson and C. L. Keller, “Up Ship!”: A History of the U.S. Navy’s Rigid Airships, 1919–1935 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1982), p. 1.

  10. Instruction printed in Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 110.

  11. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 143.

  12. P. W. Baker, “Why the Airship Failed,” p. 17, paper delivered to the Historical Group of the Royal Aeronautical Society, November 26, 1974, in Henry Cord Meyer Papers, Box 2, File 19.

  13. On backgrounds, see Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 193–95; “Lehmann Trained Years for Career,” The New York Times, May 9, 1936; J. A. Sinclair, “Capt. Ernst August Lehmann,” The Airship 4 (1937), no. 14, p. 21.

  14. For Lehmann’s claims, see Goldsmith, Zeppelin, p. 226, and Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 139n. Lehmann’s bragging was occasioned by the construction of the last of the wartime Zeppelins, L-72, though Robinson points out that L-72 was actually intended for long-range reconnaissance in the North Sea.

  15. Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 174–77; Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, p. 107; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 250–51.

  16. Details of the L-59 story in this section are based on Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 252–55; Lehmann, Zeppelin, pp. 182–88; Nitske, The Zeppelin Story, pp. 107–9; letters, Eckener to Johanna, October 5 and October 19, 1917, printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 148–49, 150–51; R. Gaudi, African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914–1918 (New York: Caliber, 2017), pp. 8–14, 360–73.

  23. The Beginning or the End?

  1. R. J. Evans, “The Defeat of 1918,” in Evans, The Third Reich in History and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 29.

  2. Topping, When Giants Roamed the Sky, p. 88. The official is quoted in Kuhn, “Zeppelin und die Folgen,” Henry Cord Meyer Papers, Box 3, Folder 2, p. 30.

  3. Topping (ed. Brothers), When Giants Roamed the Sky, p. 59. The report is quoted in Kuhn, “Zeppelin und die Folgen,” p. 31; on the events in Friedrichshafen, see pp. 33–36. Troops were eventually dispatched to clear Friedrichshafen of Socialists and Communists. See “Rioters in Halle Kill 55 Persons and Wound 170,” New York Tribune, March 18, 1919.

  4. Meyer, “Building Rigid Airships,” p. 88.

  5. J. C. Segrue, “Barbed Wire and Bored Dog Only Guards at Zep Plant,” New York Tribune, January 16, 1919.

  6. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 182.

  7. Letter, Eckener to his brother, Alex, October 27, 1918, in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 177–78.

  8. Meyer, “In the Shadow of the Titan: Thoughts on the Life and Work of Naval Engineer Johann Schütte,” in Meyer, Airshipmen, Businessmen, and Politics, 1890–1940, p. 68.

  9. Swientek, “Alfred Colsman,” p. 117; Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 130.

  10. Meyer, “Building Rigid Airships,” p. 101; R. Köster, “Zeppelin: The Airship and the Need for Diversification After World War One (1918–1929),” paper presented at the 12th Annual Conference of the European Business History Association, August 2008, pp. 3–7; Meyer, “Eckener’s Struggle to Save the Airship for Germany, 1919–1929,” in Meyer, Airshipmen, Businessmen, and Politics, pp. 135–38.

  11. Köster, “Zeppelin: The Airship and the Need for Diversification After World War One (1918–1929),” pp. 2, 9, emphasis added.

  12. Köster, “Zeppelin: The Airship and the Need for Diversification After World War One (1918–1929),” pp. 2–8; Swientek, “Alfred Colsman,” pp. 118–19; De Syon, Zeppelin!, p. 112; Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 52; Meyer, “Eckener’s Struggle to Save the Airship for Germany, 1919–1929,” pp. 135–38. For Eckener’s views of Colsman as “impulsive and rash [and] downright dangerous,” see his letter to Friedrich Maass, February 18, 1921, in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 200–201.

  13. Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 53.

  14. Treaty of Versailles, June 28, 1919, Clauses 198–210.

  15. Quoted in Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 256.

  16. Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 198; Nielsen (trans. Chambers), The Zeppelin Story, pp. 132–33.

  17. Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 198. On the bombing rumor about Lehmann, see “Building Zeppelin for the United States,” The New York Times, August 26, 1923.

  18. Nielsen (trans. Chambers), The Zeppelin Story, pp. 132–33.

  19. Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 199.

  20. J. Hunsaker, “The Present Status of Airships in Europe,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 177 (1914), no. 6, pp. 633–35; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 182–84.

  21. Quoted in R. Maksel, “Airplane Versus Zeppelin in 1917,” Air and Space, March 3, 2016, at airspacemag.com/​daily-planet/​l-49-180958236/.

  22. Anon., “The New Zeppelins,” Scientific American, December 29, 1917, p. 411; Anon., “Some Super-Zeppelin Secrets,” Scientific American, November 24, 1917, pp. 386, 392, 394; L. d’Orcy, “The Modern Zeppelin Airship,” Aviation and Aeronautical Engineering, December 15, 1917; W. Mitchell, “Memoirs of World War One,” in The Zeppelin Reader, ed. Hedin, pp. 101–5; Topping, When Giants Roamed the Sky, p. 54.

  23. Robinson and Keller, “Up Ship!” pp. 10–11, 13–14; “Globe-Circling Zeppelin Plan of U.S. Navy,” New York Tribune, June 16, 1919.

  24. Robinson and Keller, “Up Ship!” p. 117; Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 57.

  25. Robinson, Giants in the Sky, p. 256; Memorandum, “Hafenanlagen für die Weltluftfahrt,” February 1919, printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 228–29.

  26. Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 199.

  27. Robinson and Keller, “Up Ship!” pp. 119–20; Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 59; Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 153.

  28. Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 57; Robinson and Keller, “Up Ship!” p. 118.

  24. Bringing Back the Dead

  1. W. Hensley, “America and Air Transportation,” Aircraft Journal, January 17, 1920, p. 11.

  2. “How It Looks and Feels to Fly in an Air-Pullman,” Literary Digest, March 13, 1920. On passenger numbers, see Robinson, “Passenger Flying in the Big Zeppelins,” in Robinson Papers, Box 10, Folder 4, p. 5.

  3. Hensley, “America and Air Transportation,” p. 11.

  4. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 186; on Johanna never flying, see p. 120. See also “Germany’s Passenger Service Ceases,” Railway Age, October 24, 1919.

>   5. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 185–86; E. Klein, “The Log of a Zeppelin Journey: Lake Constance to Berlin in Five Hours,” The Living Age, April 10, 1920, p. 82, originally published in Neue Freie Presse, January 1920.

  6. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 86.

  7. Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 85–86.

  8. Letter to Johanna, October 2, 1919, in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 187.

  9. Meyer, “In the Shadow of the Titan,” p. 65.

  10. De Syon, Zeppelin!, p. 114.

  11. Klein, “The Log of a Zeppelin Journey,” p. 84.

  12. “A Europe–South America Airship Scheme,” Aviation and Aircraft Journal, December 5, 1921.

  13. Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, Appendix 3, “Operating Statistics of Rigid Airships,” p. 198.

  14. Klein, “The Log of a Zeppelin Journey,” p. 85.

  15. Lehmann, Zeppelin, p. 161; Robinson, Giants of the Sky, pp. 120, 162–63, 174–75; “The Super-Zeppelin,” Railway Age Gazette, November 10, 1916; “Gigantic Airships to Link Continent,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1919. See also the puff piece by E. M. Maitland, a leading British airshipman, “The Airship for Commercial Purposes,” Aviation and Aeronautical Engineering, February 1, 1919; “Foresees Airships in Overseas Trade,” The New York Times, January 23, 1919; and “The Commercial Future of Airships,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 68 (1920), no. 3524, pp. 461–75. Also interesting is A. H. Ashbolt, “An Imperial Airship Service,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 70 (1921), no. 3605, pp. 102–21.

  16. See “Preparations for the Transatlantic Flight,” Aviation and Aeronautical Engineering, April 1, 1919; “Flight Delayed Across Continent,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1919; “Americans Off First?” Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1919; “Navy Fliers Ready for Transatlantic Start Tomorrow,” The New York Times, May 5, 1919; “All Three Navy Planes Nearing the Azores; Halfway Point Passed in Seven Hours,” New York Tribune, May 17, 1919; “30-Minute Lead Beat Fog to Finish,” The New York Times, May 18, 1919; “Final Jump to Plymouth Expected Today,” New York Tribune, May 28, 1919; E. Magnani, “The NC-4, First Across the Atlantic,” Aviation History, November 2002, at historynet.com/​aviation-history-three-us-flying-boats-were-the-first-to-fly-across-the-atlantic-in-1919.htm.

  17. E. M. Maitland, The Log of H.M.A. R34: Journey to America and Back (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920), p. 24; Robinson, Giants in the Sky, pp. 164–66; “The Trans-Atlantic Dirigible,” Scientific American, July 19, 1919, pp. 58–59, 66–68, 70, 72. For the official Royal Air Force report, see “Trans-Atlantic Flight of R.34,” undated, in Henry Cord Meyer Papers, Box 2, Folder 19.

  18. The New York Times, July 7, 1919; Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 64.

  19. De Syon, “Turning a National Icon into a Business Tool: The Zeppelin Airship, 1924–1933,” in Third International Airship Convention, ed. G. Khoury (London: The Airship Association, 2000), p. 3.

  20. “Two Notable Airship Voyages,” Aviation and Aeronautical Engineering, March 1, 1919; S. Johnson, “Britain’s Conquest of the Skies,” The Forum, March 1919, p. 333. See also, among many others, L. d’Orcy, “The Case for the Airship,” Journal of the Society of Automotive Engineers 4 (April 1919), p. 304; A. C. Lescarboura, “Hitch Your Wagon to a Gas Bag,” The Independent, June 7, 1919, p. 359.

  21. Anon., “Count Zeppelin,” Aircraft, May 1, 1917.

  22. A. Euler, “The Internationality of Aviation,” March 15, 1919, printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 183–84.

  23. W. J. Abbott, “From New York to Chicago by the Air Mail,” Munsey’s Magazine, February 1918, pp. 47–55.

  25. The Visionary

  1. R. E. Bilstein, Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 32–37, 42, 74–75; Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, p. 46; Hallion, Taking Flight, pp. 375–77, 388–91. See also B. Williams, “The War Aeroplane Here and Abroad,” Scientific American, November 4, 1916, p. 412; on Curtiss production, see F. Eppelsheimer, “Where Wings Are Made for Fighting Men: How the War Has Stimulated the Aeroplane Industry in this Country,” Scientific American, September 4, 1915, pp. 204–5.

  2. Bilstein, Flight in America, pp. 74–75.

  3. Bilstein, Flight in America, pp. 60–61; Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, pp. 46–48; J. Van Vleck, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 42.

  4. D. A. Pisano, “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Confrontation Between Utility and Entertainment in Aviation,” in The Airplane in American Culture, ed. D. A. Pisano (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), p. 51.

  5. Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, pp. 49–50.

  6. J. D. Snider, “ ‘Great Shadow in the Sky’: The Airplane in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and the Development of African-American Visions of Aviation, 1921–1926,” in The Airplane in American Culture, ed. Pisano, pp. 134–36.

  7. Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, pp. 48, 52; Pisano, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” p. 52.

  8. Pisano, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” p. 57; Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, pp. 52–53. On Jack Chapman, see J. J. Corn, The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), photo insert.

  9. R.E.G. Davies, Airlines of the United States Since 1914 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), pp. 17–19, 25; D. L. Rust, Flying Across America: The Airline Passenger Experience (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), p. 23; F. R. Van der Linden, Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation Industry (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), pp. 1–8.

  10. Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, p. 64; “How the Airplane Will Speed Up Business,” Literary Digest, March 30, 1929, p. 18; Van Vleck, Empire of the Air, p. 41.

  11. Bilstein, Flight in America, p. 53; Davies, Airlines of the United States Since 1914, p. 21.

  12. Bilstein, Flight in America, p. 53; Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, p. 56.

  13. M. R. Stearns, “All Aboard by Air,” World’s Work, April 1929, pp. 34–41, 144, 146, 148, 150.

  14. Bilstein, Flight in America, p. 53. On Smith’s telegram, see W. B. Courtney, “Mail from the Moon,” Collier’s, November 24, 1928, p. 8.

  15. Courtwright, Sky as Frontier, pp. 58–59.

  16. Davies, Airlines of the United States Since 1914, p. 28.

  17. Davies, Airlines of the United States Since 1914, pp. 1–15; W. M. Leary, “At the Dawn of Commercial Aviation: Inglis M. Uppercu and Aeromarine Airways,” Business History Review 53 (1979), no. 2, pp. 180–93.

  18. On Trippe’s background, see M. Bender and S. Altschul, The Chosen Instrument: Juan Trippe, Pan Am—The Rise and Fall of an American Entrepreneur (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), pp. 19–29, 36, 57; M. Josephson, Empire of the Air: Juan Trippe and the Struggle for World Airways (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1944), pp. 22–23.

  19. R. Daley, An American Saga: Juan Trippe and His Pan Am Empire (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 7; Josephson, Empire of the Air, pp. 22–23.

  20. On Trippe’s personal habits, see Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, p. 104; Josephson, Empire of the Air, pp. 78–79; B. S. Trippe (R.E.G. Davies, ed.), Pan Am’s First Lady: The Diary of Betty Stettinius Trippe (McLean, Va.: Paladwr Press, 1996), p. 2.

  21. Quoted in Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, pp. 13–15.

  22. Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, p. 31; Daley, American Saga, pp. 6–7; Trippe, Pan Am’s First Lady, p. 6.

  23. Josephson, Empire of the Air, pp. 24–25.

  24. Daley, American Saga, pp. 10–11.

  25. Daley, American Saga, pp. 7–8; Josephson, Empire of the Air, p. 24.


  26. Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, p. 61.

  27. S. Johnson, “Britain’s Conquest of the Skies,” The Forum, March 1919, pp 328–34; G. C. Westervelt and H. B. Sanford, “Possibilities of a Trans-Pacific Flight,” Aviation and Aeronautical Engineering, September 1, 1920; L. d’Orcy, “Airship Versus Airplane,” Scientific American, February 1, 1919, pp. 98–99, 104.

  28. “The Rigid Airship Is Not a Failure,” Current Opinion, March 1919, p. 173.

  29. L. d’Orcy, “The Case for the Airship,” p. 306. D’Orcy had been discussing the subject since at least 1916: see L. d’Orcy,”Possibilities and Conditions of Crossing the Atlantic by Airship,” Scientific American, August 26, 1916, pp. 188, 196.

  30. A. Klemin, “With the Men Who Fly,” Scientific American, January 1924, p. 72.

  31. Josephson, Empire of the Air, p. 24. Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, pp. 44–45, has it as “gigantic game.”

  32. On Lawson, see Corn, Winged Gospel, pp. 40–41.

  33. M. Simon, “Fantastically Wrong: The Inventor of the Airliner Also Invented This Hilariously Absurd ‘Science,’ ” Wired, October 8, 2014, at wired.com/​2014/​10/​fantastically-wrong-lawsonomy/.

  34. Giovanni Caproni, the Italian builder of larger bombers during the war, exerted a similar influence on young Trippe. In April 1919, a month before Trippe’s article appeared, Caproni had claimed that in a matter of years “you will be able to climb aboard an airplane in New York, have the porter take your luggage to your berth, stretch out for a comfortable siesta, spend a few pleasant hours with fellow-passengers in the lounge, dine in regular Ritz fashion, and be in London the following evening in time to enjoy your supper at the Savoy.” His prediction was widely regarded as fantastical—and, indeed, proved to be so. In early 1921, he finally unveiled his creation: a nine-winged (in three sets, placed forward, midway, and stern, of three), eight-engine, 77-foot-long Goliath of a flying boat that could carry 100 passengers sitting in pairs on wooden benches. Wide panoramic windows allowed passengers to view the most marvelous scenery. Such a complex machine was predictably plagued by technical and mechanical problems, and on a test flight it crashed into a lake a few moments after taking off. It was too expensive to even consider building another one. Caproni quoted in W. Hart Smith, “Via Air-Line, Now: The New Skyways of the World,” Forum, April 1919; J. Binns, “Marvels of Aerial Progress to Be Seen This Year; Monster Aircraft Are Going In for Transatlantic Service,” New York Tribune, April 25, 1920.