THE ATLANTIC AIRWAYS

Evening Star, Issue 21992, 30 March 1935, Page 2

THE ATLANTIC AIRWAYS

THE GRAF ZEPPELIN'S RECORD The following "Mole -.to tire Berr lin correspondent of ine runes, takes on additional interest from the fact that it was published only four days before the destruction of the American airship Macon in a storm. , , A, year ago the first regular transatlantic air mail service to be operated entirely by aeroplanes was opened when a German machine set off with mail tor South America. Since that time tne aeroplanes of the Deutsche-Lufthansa Company have crossed the Southern Atlantic fifty-six times. . Transoceanic flying by German airship and aeroplane has become a commonplace, and in this branch of aviation Germany, with fewer opportunities than other countries, leads the world, forethought, systematic organisation, and tenacity in overcoming difficulties nave combined to produce 100 German transatlantic flights. While an ocean flight i* still a noteworthy event in most countries, the airship Graf Zeppelin regularly plies between Germany and Brazil, and German flying-boat pilots on the South American mail service feel their way towards each other by wireless and converse as they pass over the Southern 'Atlantic. ■ ' Little more than six years ago the Graf Zeppelin began her first transatlantic flight, watched by an anxious world. The Atlantic, which had devoured many aeroplanes that had tried to conquer it, had been crossed twice by a British airship many years before, once by a German. One or two airship disasters, due mainly to the size of the machines involved, had left _ public opinion unduly distrustful of this type of aircraft. The commercial German airships before the war, which between 1910 and 1914 carried some 37.000 passengers without loss of life or limb, had ! been forgotten. ' In 1935. twenty-five years after the : launching of Count Zeppelin’s first airship. the record of the Graf Zeppelin • stands at over sixty ocean crossings, : In the last three years a service between Germany and Brazil has he.® 1 ] run to a regular time-table. Chief among the Graf Zeppelin’s other achievements stands the memorable twenty-day flight of 1929. which included a successful battle with a typhoon in the Pacific, while flights in the tropics and Polar regions were made with the same precision and sureness. These six years have left Germany with a sum of experience in airship navigation, a personnel, and a card-index of ocean weather conditions which no other country can approach. THE LESSON OF RlOl. The record of the Graf Zeppelin, whose slender shape never fails to fascinate the most earth-bound layman, makes the disappearance of the airship difficult to imagine. It removes the main source of opposition to airships by proving that they are as safe as other means of transport, and shows that the decision to abandon airships, which Great Britain took after the wreck of RlOl, was false if it arose from the conviction that airships could not offer the necessary degree of safety. Whereas Great Britain abandoned airships completely, Germany, pausing only to profit from the lessons of the disaster, wont quietly ahead after revising the whole constructional principle of her new airship. Thus LZI29 trill have a far greater safety margin than even the Graf Zeppelin, since the risk of fire and explosion has been practically banished by the substitution of crude-oil engines for the present gas-fuel engines, and of ■ helium for hydrogen. The German airship has established itself during a period of unexampled difficulty. After the war foreign poh--1 ticians opposed the development of the Zeppelin works, and when this opposition ceased disasters to other airships, the general international tension, and the impending world crisis made capitalists unwilling to invest money in airships. During the most difficult times the flights of the Graf Zeppelin were an invaluable asset to German prestige abroad, and if better times now come the Zeppelin concerns will undoubtedly be given ample support at home. The decision to make Frankfurt-on-Main the future German airship base shows that Germany still hopes to become the centre of a network of internatimial airship services, and if the dirigible can maintain its place in the field of air transport, Germany has a load which other countries will scarcely be able to overcome. AIRSHIP AND AEROPLANE. The friends of the airship believe that it has certain permanent advantages over the aeroplane for long-distance flights. With its greater fuel capacity it can fly a direct day-and-night course without intermediate landings, and it can carry a fair number of passengers in comfort. The advocates of heavier-than-air machines argue that during the next ten or twenty years the size and •range of the aeroplanes will increase so much that, in view of its rival’s superior speed, the airship will have nothing to offer- ... Those who support the airship reply that technical progress may bring the dirigible new advantages, and that it will always remain the better vehicle for luxury travel, since the comfort and size of its sleeping and living accommodation will far surpass those of any conceivable aeroplane. At present the fatigue which attends long aeroplane journeys is notorious. In Germany there is no dispute between the advocates of

airship and aeroplane. Germany believes there may be a place for both types of aircraft, and is developing them side by side. The main thing is to establish Germany in the air, to improve and expand her airship and aeroplane services, to accumulate experience, and to bridge the oceans. The aeroplane mail service between Germany and South America shows how hard the aeroplane is already pressing the airship even on the long-distance routes. Years of patient experiment and planning (while France was experimenting with air transport across the South Atlantic) preceded the opening of this service in February,_ 1934. Now a weekly service, which_ flies with clockwork regularity, carries 30,000 postal packets on each flight in an average of about four days between Germany and Brazil. Probably this year, certainly in 1936. the German transatlantic air mail will he flying to time-table between Berlin and Rio in three days. The faster aeroplanes and flying boats, though they land frequently, already cover the route almost as quickly as the airship, but they carry no passengers. British Gambia, the ideal base for a British service across the South Atlantic, sees the regular arrival of the German machines. Off the African and South American roasts the depot ships Westfalen and Schwabenland wait to receive and despatch the flying boats. With their trailed landing aprons and catapults, these vessels are the primitive forerunners of the seadromes, those great steel islands of the future, and they are constantly being improved in the light of practical experience. On the South American side German aeroplanes receive the incoming mail and distribute it over their Brazalian and Argentinian routes. By means of the airship Germany established a long lead in the Southern Atlantic air trade, just as she is foremost in the organisation of European commercial air lines. The Graf Zeppelin’s record supports the hopes of those who maintain that transoceanic passenger air travel will belong to the airship. The record of the German mail service to South America shows wdiat can already be accomplished with aeroplanes by patience, ingenuity, and energy, backed by the conviction that the opening-up of the air, in which Germany should have a foremost place, is at hand. The 100 transatlantic crossings constitute an impressive achievement, and it is strange in 1935 to recall that a British airship and a British aeroplane blazed the Atlantic trail years ahead of all competitors.