MAN-MADE BIRDS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21404, 21 February 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

MAN-MADE BIRDS

You read in "The Press" last week about the loss of the American dirigible Macon, the largest airship in the world, vWth the loss of two lives. No doubt you heard people who remembered the tragic loss of earlier airships, such as the Macon's sister-ship Akron, say that this finally proved that big airships are not safe, and that the Americans were wise to give up experimenting with them. Most people think that is so; but it is not fair to decide without seeing what airships have done. You probably remember that in the first two or three of these articles on flying we talked of early experiments with .hot air and hydrogen balloons. The trouble with these was that they could not be steered and had to go wherever the wind was blowing. Some inventors tried to row their balloons with oars, or to fit sails to them, but neither of, those ideas will work. Towards the end of last century

AIRSHIPS AND ZEPPELINS Success of the Germans

men had some success with balloons —long-shaped instead of round—to which small engines were fitted. Santos-Dumont, the young South American who had early successes with aeroplanes, was also a balloonist, and a very good one. But in Germany a retired army officer named Von Zeppelin, decided that the ordinary type of balloon, with its one flimsy bag, was not much good. His idea was that a balloon' should have a stiff framework of light metal, containing a number of small gas-bags. If one of these leaked it would not matter much, whereas with any ordinary balloon a leak usually meant a crash. Count von Zeppelin (he did not get his title till later) launched his first dirigible in 1900, and though it was slow and clumsy it showed that his idea was a good one. But with this first Zeppelin and with the three or four that followed it in the next few years, he had very

bad luck. His company Vent bankrupt in the end, but the public was convinced that the Count was right, and subscribed enough money for him to go on with the work. His ideas were sound, and by 1909 a Zeppelin had stayed in the air continuously for 38 hours, covering nearly 1000 miles. A big steamer company saw that there was a chance to make a profit out of airships so it used four of them to make specjal excursion flights and to operate regular services between certain towns —the first regular air services in the world. Between 1910 and 1914 these dirigibles travelled more than 100,000 miles, carrying 14,000 passengers. Not one passenger was injured. The history of the German Zeppelins during the war is well known They were feared and hated in England, for, like aeroplanes, they were made weapons of destruction.

After the war Germany was not allowed to go on with her commercial airship work till 1927, when the Graf Zeppelin was launched. That airship has been a great success. She was flown round the world, to the Arctic, and nearly 100 times across the Atlantic. Now she is flying regularly between Germany and Brazil, making the double journey once a fortnight. Passengers book their fare by the great airship just as they do by steamers, and make a quicker and more comfortable passage. This year another airship, considerably bigger, the LZ 129, will share the work with the Graf. Most people think that all rigid airships are dangerous in storms, and unweildy to handle. This is certainly true of British, American, French, and Japanese airships, but it cannot at present be said to be true of German airship?. The Germans seem to hold the very valuable secret of airship success.