TRANS-OCEANIC ZEPPELIN TRAVEL FROM AMERICA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19119, 11 July 1930, Page 8

TRANS-OCEANIC ZEPPELIN TRAVEL FROM AMERICA.

To-Day’s Signed Article

Specially written for the “ Star ”

By

P. W. Litchfield.

President Goodyear Rubber Company, U.S.A. Builder of Seventy-Fwo Dirigibles. Great American corporations are now willing to invest dollars and prestige in spanning the Atlantic by air, regularly, and as a commercial proposition. The author is convinced that airships will make Europe “ next door ” to America, that airships will cross the Pacific, and that air passage will become routine both as regards performance and financial structure.

W E ARE CERTAIN the dirigible can win through a pioneering period to commercial success. All questions are not answered, and all the studies are not finished; I cannot set up for you anything purporting to be a balance sheet of a dirigible in commercial operation. But we have gone far enough to know that the dirigible can be made a commercially practicable adjunct to the world’s transportation system. Associated Interests. It is significant that we have associated with us in International Zeppelin Transport such firms as National City Bank and United Aircraft and Transport. Of all the firms associated with us perhaps the latter is most jealous of its prestige, most anxious that this venture be soundly planned and executed. In the Atlantic line because we must have foreign co-operation and terminals, we have associated with us Dr Hugo Eckener, and the Zeppelin Luftschiffbau of Germany. We are organising also Pacific Zeppelin Transport; and as evidencing the new era in overseas air transport, we have on our board of directors a 100 per cent representation by the mail-carrying steamship lines of the Pacific. Steamship men co-operate because we are in no real sense a competitor of steamship lines, but supplement them. Legislation for Airships. We find that there exists no legislation covering airship operation. As another prelude to starting operations we are seeking in Washington legislation of three types. 1. The legal liabilities and duties of airship operators must be defined. This means the extension of legislation designed for aeroplane operation to cover airships. 2. During the pioneering stages we believe that trans-oceanic airship operation should be given the same governmental encouragement that is extended by air transport lines over land, through mail contracts, weather reporting, and the service of the aeronautical division of the United States Department of Commerce.

3. It is in the interest of national defence and of economy to extend to ships of the air the loan privileges extended to builders of ships of the sea in the Jones-White Act. An airship is a part of the American merchant marine and becomes available for naval use in war. The building and operation of commercial airships decreases the necessity for building and maintaining a reserve of naval airships. Larger than Graf Zeppelin.

When we have the guarantees which have been extended to ships and aeroplanes we are prepared to go ahead. We are building in the Goodyear plant two navy dirigibles almost twice as large as the Graf Zeppelin. Studies indicated that ships of the size of the Graf or of the Los Angeles cannot be put into transport operation on a sound commercial basis.

Military and commercial considerations alike dictate the size, lift, speed and design of the ships which will be known as ZRS-4 and ZRS-5 for which the great airship dock and factory at Adron was built. Passenger transports should be as large or larger. These ships, in design, construction and use are more analogous to ocean transport than to the present air transport. They are no more suited to “short hops” or coastal service than is the Leviathan or the Bremen. They will not be able to approximate the luxury and comfort of an ocean liner. The thing they have to sell is speed, but they will offer ease and comfort beyond anything an aeroplane can offer. The airship has an advantage over both the Ocean liner and the aeroplane in steadiness of flight and absence of seasickness. Aeroplane Ruled Out. Unless some invention revolutionises heavier-than-air flight the aeroplane definitely is ruled out of the trans-oceanic picture by economic factors. I mean, for distance flight the fuel load encroaches on the “pay load” capacity, until at some point beyond 2000 miles —varying somewhat with the ’plane—“pay load” vanishes entirely. As engineers estimate it, there is a probability of increasing the efficiency of the aeroplane perhaps as much at 20 per cent, through refinements. Theoretically, then, aeroplanes will be able to undertake flights eastward to Europe with a small margin of pay-load on a non-stop basis. But the gain which science can give the aeroplane will be just about enough to enable it to fight through homeward, against unfavourable winds, without any load. These things we considered and weighed before venturing this undertaking. Suitable for Over Land. The aeroplane has a clear economic superiority over land, where it can descend to an airport every four or five hundred miles, and it is our idea that the airship should make no attempt to compete with it in that field of transportation. In theory the ’plane of to-day can make a northern route or a southern route trip across the Atlantic, carrying load. To the north it would touch Labrador, Iceland, Greenland, the Orkneys. And to the south, it would make, as stages, perhaps Portugal, the Azores, Bermuda—but even then the “artificial island” or other landing stage is needed between Bermuda and the Azores. But we have studied practical transportation. Trans-Atlantic aeroplane travel, if feasible on a commercial basis, would have two insurmountable obstacles: circuitous route that would result in loss of time, and, second, the discomfort of aeroplane travel for such long distances. The ocean belongs to the ships and to the airships. With an airship about 800 feet long, we plan to carry eighty passengers, a crew of about fifty, and ten tons of mail and express.