Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  8. Litchfield’s lighthearted farewell note is printed in Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, p. 24.

  9. G. Robinson, “The Rentschlers Fly the Dollar,” p. 33, Anon., “Are the Rentschler Boys Good?” p. 31, editorial, “Capitalism at Its Damnedest,” p. 29, January 19, 1934, New York Daily News.

  10. The Air Mail scandal and Trippe’s financial arrangements are covered in Bender and Alschul, Chosen Instrument, pp. 239–41.

  11. Cochrane, Hardesty, and Lee, Aviation Careers of Igor Sikorsky, pp. 101–2; Davies, Pan Am, p. 36; “Three Spectacular Events Herald Aviation Progress,” Literary Digest, August 11, 1934, p. 39.

  12. R. Schwartz, Flying Down to Rio: Hollywood, Tourists, and Yankee Clippers (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), pp. 293–301, 314; Josephson, Empire of the Air, pp. 88–89; Brown Jr., “Pan Am: Miami’s Wings to the World,” pp. 151, 153; “Getting Acquainted with Winter Playlands,” Literary Digest, December 19, 1931, pp. 26–47; “Rolling Down to Rio—in Five Days,” Literary Digest, December 14, 1934, p. 28.

  13. I. I. Sikorsky, “The Development and Characteristics of a Long-Range Flying Boat (the S-42),” Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society 39 (1935), no. 292, pp. 263–81; Smith, “Intercontinental Airliner,” pp. 441–42, and Table 2, “Sikorsky S-42B Versus Short S.23.”

  14. Daley, American Saga, pp. 108, 489n.

  15. C. Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 (Philadelphia: 5 vols., 1849), volume 5, pp. 267–68.

  16. Quoted in Daley, American Saga, p. 136.

  17. S. Pickering, “Wake Island,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings 48 (1922), no. 12, pp. 2075–79.

  18. Bender and Alschul, Chosen Instrument, p. 230.

  19. Daley, American Saga, p. 139; Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, pp. 231–33.

  20. “Transpacific Air Service to Start Soon with Brazilian Clipper Heading Fleet,” The New York Times, October 15, 1934.

  21. Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, pp. 97–100.

  22. M. Lamm, “1932 Maybach Zeppelin Streamlined Limo,” Autoweek, June 9, 1997, p. 23; T. Powell, “Grand Classic,” Automobile Quarterly 43 (2003), no. 1, pp. 12–24.

  23. R. J. Overy, “Cars, Roads, and Economic Recovery in Germany, 1932–8,” Economic History Review 28 (1975), no. 3, pp. 466–83.

  24. N. Gregor, Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998).

  25. D. H. Robinson, The LZ-129 “Hindenburg” (New York: Arco Publishing Co., 1964), “Airship Diesels,” no page number.

  26. On Eckener’s building of LZ-129 with helium rather than hydrogen in mind, see Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, pp. 100–101; Duggan, LZ-129 Hindenburg, pp. 37–38; Meyer, “Problems of Helium and Spy Flights: The Brief Career of LZ-130,” pp. 211–12; M. Bauer and J. Duggan, LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin and the End of Commercial Airship Travel (Friedrichshafen, Germany: Zeppelin-Museum, 1996), p. 79.

  27. A. Colsman, Luftschiff Voraus! Arbeit und Erleben am Werke Zeppelin (Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1933), p. 135.

  28. Quoted in Meyer, “F. W. (Willy) von Meister,” p. 202.

  29. H. Braun, “Das ‘Wundergas’ Helium: Die US-Amerikanische Innenpolitik und Die Deutschen Zeppeline,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 53 (2005), no. 4, p. 575, n. 20.

  30. “Eckener on Way to Parleys Here,” The New York Times, October 12, 1934.

  45. The Medusa

  1. See correspondence between Henry Cord Meyer, who was friendly with Schiller and Meister, and Chester Lewis (director of the archives of The New York Times), dated June 3, June 24, July 8, September 5, 1974, in the Henry Cord Meyer Papers, Box 5, Folder 21. The quotation is Meyer’s paraphrasing of Schiller’s remarks. Meister said the same thing in an interview with Meyer, reprinted in Meyer, “F. W. (Willy) von Meister,” pp. 201–2. Eckener may have first met Ochs in 1929 during negotiations to sell the press rights (which eventually went to Hearst) for the Graf Zeppelin’s Round-the-World flight. On the occasion of the 1934 visit, the Times gave an enthusiastic review to a little book of photographs and poems extolling Nature by Eckener’s daughter, Lotte. It was a rather obscure volume to which to devote so much space, but it kept Eckener in the public eye and gave the Nazis pause with respect to any crackdowns they may have been mulling. For the review, see “New German Poetry and Prose,” The New York Times, October 7, 1934.

  2. “Federal Plan Is Seen to Aid Ocean Air Mail,” The New York Times, December 9, 1934; “Sea Dirigible Lines Win Federal Help,” The New York Times, October 30, 1934. Eckener’s complete testimony is published in Eckener, “The Rigid Dirigible and Its Possibilities,” The Airship 2 (1935), no. 5, pp. 1–9, 23. A week earlier, rather clumsily, Eckener and Litchfield had contradicted each other. Eckener, trying to avoid any entanglement in the Air Mail scandal revelations, was quoted as saying that “he depended in no way upon government mail subsidies for the success of his ambitious aim—the beginning of a North Atlantic transport of passengers and mail.” His proposition was a “purely business one.” Once he received the helium, he would pay for a new hangar in America, start constructing two new 100-passenger airships (LZ-130 and LZ-131) in Friedrichshafen, and have LZ-129 performing demonstration flights to New York by the summer of 1935. The very next day, Litchfield clarified that in fact building two airships in Akron and two in Friedrichshafen for a transatlantic airline would be “feasible” only if the government approved a loan to Goodyear and guaranteed an air-mail contract. “Eckener Seeking Air Terminal Here,” The New York Times, October 20, 1934; L. D. Lyman, “Ocean Lines to Fly Soon,” The New York Times, October 21, 1934.

  3. “Congress to Get Airship Program,” The New York Times, November 11, 1934.

  4. Figures based on the report America Builds: The Record of the Public Works Administration (Washington, D.C.: Division of Information, 1939), pp. 186–87, 191, and Table 13, “Summary of PWA Transportation Projects, Federal and Non-Federal Programs, March 1, 1939,” p. 281.

  5. On helium, see G. Fulton, “Helium Through World Wars I and II,” Naval Engineers Journal 77 (1965), no. 5, pp. 733–38; M. D. Reagan, “The Helium Controversy,” in American Civil-Military Decisions: A Book of Case Studies, ed. H. Stein (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1963), pp. 45–47; Braun, “Das ‘Wundergas’ Helium,” p. 575; Bauer and Duggan, LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin, p. 79. Eckener’s entire statement is printed in “The Rigid Airship and Its Possibilities,” pp. 1–8, 23. See also the Helium Control Act (H.R. 15344), P.L. 69-758, March 3, 1927.

  6. Reagan, “The Helium Controversy,” p. 46; Braun, “Das ‘Wundergas’ Helium,” pp. 573–74.

  7. “Sea Dirigible Lines Win Federal Help,” October 30, “Eckener Gets Landing Rights,” October 31, “Eckener Praises Air Field,” November 4, 1934, The New York Times. See also Eckener’s letter to Roosevelt, October 29, 1934, printed in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 312–13. On Eckener’s not applying formally for helium, see A. Krock, “In Washington: A Star Witness on Our Helium Export Policy,” May 12, “ ‘Smart-Aleck’ Talk on Helium Scored,” May 13, “German Hindenburg Committee Which Arrived Last Night,” May 14, 1937, The New York Times.

  8. H. B. Miller, “The Violent Death of America’s Last Dirigible,” reprinted in Hedin (ed.), The Zeppelin Reader, pp. 230–41, originally published in True Magazine, August 1963; “Dirigibles in Disrepute After Macon’s Loss,” Literary Digest, February 23, 1935, p. 8; “Launching a Campaign for New Dirigibles,” Literary Digest, April 20, 1934, p. 18; “The Future of the Airship Revived,” Literary Digest, April 7, 1934, p. 50; “Airship Building Will Come to a Halt,” The New York Times, February 14, 1935. See also Series L 265–73, “Air Transport—Accidents: 1927 to 1945,” in Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945, p. 225. On German reactions, see “Berlin Impressed b
y Macon Disaster” and “Eckener to Carry Out Flight,” The New York Times, February 14, 1935. In the summer of 1936, Rosendahl provided updated figures for the Graf Zeppelin (up to December 1935): “More than fifty round trips to South America, 111 ocean crossings and 505 flights covering 847,420 miles. She had carried 78,600 pounds of mail, 111,500 pounds of freight and 32,962 persons.” See “Rosendahl Urges Dirigibles for U.S.,” The New York Times, May 9, 1936. On the cost of the U.S. airships, see Robinson and Keller, “Up Ship!” Appendix E, “Airships’ Performance Data and Chronology,” pp. 204–7.

  9. “Will Shift Air Terminal,” December 28, 1934, “Plan Zeppelin Line Circling the Globe,”January 6, 1935, The New York Times.

  10. Duggan, LZ-129 Hindenburg, pp. 5–8; Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, pp. 148–49; Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 204; De Syon, Zeppelin!, pp. 187–88; Vaeth, Graf Zeppelin, p. 167. For the photograph, see Bauer and Duggan, LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin, p. 18. Eckener’s “lackadaisical” saluting is quoted in Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 327. On the Luftwaffe, see “Reich’s Air Force Becomes Official,” The New York Times, March 12, 1935.

  11. De Syon, Zeppelin!, pp. 179–80; Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, p. 158. On rumors of Adolf Hitler, see H.-J. Maurer, “A Dissident Nazi: Hans-Jörg Maurer’s Würzburg Diary,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 50 (1967), no. 4, entry of April 16, 1936, p. 367. As early as June 1934, there were rumors the name would be Hindenburg; see O. D. Tolischus, “Big Airship to Carry 50,” The New York Times, June 10, 1934. By the spring of 1935, it was confirmed when The Airship, a British periodical, referred to it as such in “News and Notes,” The Airship 2 (1935), no. 5, p. 22. On Eckener’s relief, see B. Fromm, Blood and Banquets: A Berlin Diary, 1930–1938 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), entry of March 26, 1936, p. 219.

  12. Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, p. 156.

  13. Duggan, LZ-129 Hindenburg, pp. 22–30, 47; Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, pp. 102–4.

  14. There are sparse details available on Arpke, but see de.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Otto_Arpke. On Breuhaus, see fritz-august-breuhaus.com/​breuhaus-biography.html; W. Lambrecht, “A Flying Hotel,” Scientific American, June 1934, p. 288; W. R. Storey, “Furniture That Tells Its Own Story,” March 23, 1930, and Storey, “Harmony and Color in Table Settings,” August 23, 1931, The New York Times Magazine. The interiors are covered in Vaeth, “Zeppelin Decor,” p. 56, and especially airships.net/​hindenburg/​interiors/. On the lightness of the chairs, see “Tour of Dirigible an Airy Adventure,” The New York Times, May 12, 1936; the china is described in Robinson, LZ-129 Hindenburg.

  15. Duggan, LZ-129 Hindenburg, pp. 60–63; Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, pp. 105–8.

  16. Wagner’s process is detailed in his recollections of the event at typografie.info/​3/topic/​30940-der-hindenburg-schriftzug/. Bismarck, stout old nationalist that he was, had refused to read any document not printed in Fraktur, though a rival font, Antiqua, descended from medieval Latin scripts, was easier to read and was preferred, for political reasons, by the more cosmopolitan Goethe and Nietzsche. The Nazi government, for its own political reasons, insisted on Fraktur, though in one of Hitler’s more bizarre decisions, he would ban Fraktur in 1941 as being a sneaky “Jewish” font, as opposed to Antiqua, which was now seen as representing the true European heritage as defined by the Wehrmacht. In an embarrassing mix-up, the resulting edict, printed in Antiqua, would be circulated on official notepaper still letterheaded in Fraktur.

  46. The Labyrinth

  1. Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, pp. 109–10; De Syon, Zeppelin!, p. 181, Duggan, LZ-129 Hindenburg, pp. 66–77; Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, p. 309, Eckener’s memorandum to the seven captains, pp. 332–33; Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, pp. 155–56; Vaeth, Graf Zeppelin, p. 169.

  2. This section based on Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, pp. 151–54, 158–61; Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 342–43, the identification of Undersecretary Berndt as Goebbels’s informant, p. 446; Vaeth, Graf Zeppelin, p. 170; Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, p. 117; Duggan, Commercial Zeppelin Flights to South America, pp. 71–72; Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, pp. 211, 213; “Nazis Put Eckener in Coventry,” Literary Digest, April 11, p. 15, “Praise for Eckener Ceases,” April 1, “Eckener Refused Election Plea for Hitler; Name Barred from the Press as a Result,” April 3, “Is It Envy?”, April 4, “Orders Barring Eckener’s Name,” April 4, “Eckener Read About Ban,” April 11, “Eckener Seeks End of Clash with Nazis,” April 14, “Eckener Command Unaffected in Row,” April 16, “Eckener and Officials Confer,” April 19, “Eckener Will Lose Honor of a Street Name,” April 23, “Eckener Is Strengthened by Roosevelt Invitation,” April 25, 1936, The New York Times. For Eckener’s ploy to get Roosevelt’s attention, see Dodd, Jr. and Dodd (eds.), Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, entry of April 16, 1936, p. 339; and letter, Dodd to R. Walton Moore, April 18, 1936, in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, ed. E. B. Nixon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 3 vols., 1969), volume 3, pp. 290–91. For rumors that Eckener had been executed or had committed suicide, see Lady Drummond-Hay, “Mass Will Be Said in the Hindenburg,” The New York Times, May 6, 1936. In his memoirs, Eckener is curiously forgetful on how many times he’d met FDR, saying of his February 1936 meeting, “I was not yet acquainted with President Roosevelt.” See also Eckener (trans. Robinson), My Zeppelins, p. 159; Meyer, “F. W. (Willy) von Meister,” p. 203. For Eckener’s description of Goebbels as Mephistopheles, see Braun, “Das ‘Wundergas’ Helium,” p. 581.

  47. Here Be Dragons

  1. “Pan American Airways,” Fortune, April 1936, p. 167; “Aerial ‘Causeway’ Across the Pacific,” Literary Digest, March 23, 1935, p. 15; Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, pp. 142–43; Holland, Architects of Aviation, pp. 185–86; Daley, American Saga, pp. 234–35.

  2. “China Clipper,” Time, December 2, 1935, pp. 46–51.

  3. Daley, American Saga, pp. 157–64; R. Gandt, China Clipper: The Age of the Great Flying Boats (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press), p. 77.

  4. Daley, American Saga, pp. 165–73; Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, pp. 247–51; “Tomorrow’s Airplane,” Fortune, July 1938, p. 64 (Martin’s loss of $850,000). On Van Dusen’s Cosmopolitan article, see quote in “America’s Aerial Bridge to the Orient,” p. 28.

  5. Daley, American Saga, pp. 176–80; Beaty, Water Jump, pp. 116–17; Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, pp. 251–53; “Pan American Airways,” Fortune, pp. 79–80, 171–74. On delays, see “Clipped Clippers,” Time, February 24, 1936; for prices and orders, see Davies, Pan Am, pp. 42–43; on the 314’s toilets, see R. J. Serling, Legend and Legacy: The Story of Boeing and Its People (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), pp. 38–41. On the pro-airship arguments, see “Is the Hindenburg to Be the Final Answer?” The Airship 3 (1937), no. 12, p. 50. The M-130 interiors are covered in Hühne, Pan Am History, Design, and Identity, pp. 104–7. On the “blue-ribbon” route, see W. B. Courtney, “You Fly the Atlantic,” Collier’s, January 9, 1937, p. 8.

  48. Master and Commander

  1. Courtney, “You Fly the Atlantic,” pp. 8–9.

  2. The preceding section is based on Wordsmith (pseud.), “Notes on the International Zeppelin Transport Co. and Pacific Zeppelin Transport Co.,” Part 2, p. 4; Duggan and Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, p. 211; W. Miller, I Found No Peace: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1936), pp. 306–16; Duggan, LZ-129 Hindenburg, pp. 120–21, 125; Robinson, LZ-129 Hindenburg, no page numbers, but an excellent resource; M. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany, 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 47; Daley, American Saga, p. 183 (Gone with the Wind); Fromm, Blood and Banquets, p. 204, entry of July 28, 1935; Nixon (ed.), Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, volume 3, p. 291n;
on crew routine and food, see E. Bentele (trans. Dixon), The Story of a Zeppelin Mechanic: My Flights, 1931–1938 (Friedrichshafen, Germany: Zeppelin-Museum, 1992), pp. 61–64; on the Bund, see Dick and Robinson, Golden Age, p. 135; on Frankfurt airport, see J. Breithaupt, “Possibilities of Universal Airship Traffic,” The Airship 3 (1936), no. 11 (Fall), p. 33; L. P. Lochner, “Aboard the Airship Hindenburg: Louis P. Locher’s Diary of Its Maiden Voyage to the United States,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 49 (1965–66), pp. 101–21; L. Gardner, “Aboard the Hindenburg,” Buoyant Flight 9 (1962), no. 4, pp. 2–5, has details of his later trip, including a description of the staterooms’ lack of drawers and wardrobe space as well as comments on the lack of vibration, noise, and spillage; W. B. Courtney, “Sky Cruise,” Collier’s, May 8, 1937, pp. 12–13, 45–48, mentions uninspired food and the library being all in German; for letters between Eckener and Lehmann, see Italiaander, Ein Deutscher Namens Eckener, pp. 338–40. The following articles all appeared in The New York Times in 1936: “Airship Schedule Set,” May 3; L. D. Lyman, “Rival Wings over the Ocean,” May 3; Drummond-Hay, “Zeppelin to Avoid Racing New Liner,” May 5; Drummond-Hay, “Mass Will Be Said in the Hindenburg,” May 6; Drummond-Hay, “Hindenburg Begins First U.S. Flight,” May 7; “Planes Must Keep from Airship,” May 7; “Several Thousand See Take-Off,” May 7; “Lakehurst Ready to Dock Zeppelin,” May 8; Drummond-Hay, “Hindenburg Covers Half Ocean Flight; Is Due Tomorrow,” May 8; “Eckener Is Gleeful,” May 8; “Broadcast from Zeppelin,” May 8; “Radio Greetings Sent from Airship,” May 9; “Lakehurst Ground Crews Ready to Moor the Hindenburg Quickly,” May 9; “Airship Largest, Fastest of Kind,” May 9; “Eckener a Symbol of Success in Air,” May 9; “Big Decrease in Fare Since Graf Zeppelin Trip,” May 9; “Lehmann Trained Years for Career,” May 9; “Thrilled by Mass in Air,” May 10; “Wellman Survivor Hails Air Conquest,” May 10; F. R. Daniell, “Crowds View Dirigible; Record Pleases Eckener; Off Tomorrow Night,” May 10; “Throngs at Dawn Greet Big Airship,” May 10; “8,000 at Field Get Close View of Ship,” May 10; “Eckener Belittles His Rift with Nazis,” May 10; “Eckener Not Mentioned in German Flight News,” May 10; “Lakehurst Is Glum as Bonanza Fails,” May 11; “Zeppelin’s Home Ready,” May 11; “Luther Stresses Our Aid to Air Line,” May 11; “Zeppelin Flies over City, Then Heads for Germany; Racing for New Record,” May 12; “Statue of Liberty Blinks Her Salute to Airship,” May 12; “Woman, 87, Seeks Thrill on Zeppelin,” May 12; “Tour of Dirigible an Airy Adventure,” May 12; “Turkeys and Spinach Put Aboard Zeppelin,” May 12; “Nazis to Welcome Eckener,” May 13; “300,000 Words Wired on Zeppelin,” May 14; “Frankfort Honors Eckener with Cup,” May 15; O. E. Dunlap, Jr., “Broadcasting from the Sky,” May 17; “No Fun Found in Airship,” May 23; L. D. Lyman, “Ocean Air Routes Sought by Powers,” May 24; “Eckener to Command Flight to U.S. Today,” June 19.