Dearborn independent. [volume], February 07, 1920, Page 10, Image 10

About Dearborn independent. [volume] (Dearborn, Mich.) 1901-1927

Image provided by: Central Michigan University, Clark Historical Library

                
10
A Passenger Zeppelin for A merica
i Sw
A L
ik
1 V
Robert J. Thompson on
board ihe "Bodensee."
IT IS just forty-eight years ago, this bright Novem
ber morning in the eventful year of 1919, that I
was dragged by the hand through a broken, frost
kissed cornfield, to witness the entry into my native
village of the first locomotive to arrive there. A
youngster of three years. I had never received, Up to
that time, any impression that has stuck to me as has
the picture of that awful monster, come to our settle
ment from some far place. 1 could see it in the dis
tance, above the corn, and recall that it
was with fear and trembling that I
came near the thing. That was
the day of prairie schooners
in those parts, and this
frightful phenomenon was
the wedge of civiliza
tion's great drive across
the rolling stretches oi
Iowa's fertile plains.
And this child
hood picture comes
back to me today as
I sit comfortably,
an ordinary passen
ger, skimming over
the foret tops, val
leys and hills of Ger
many in the Zeppelin
airship. "Bodensee." in
one of its regular mgnts
from Berlin to Switzer
land. I have a journey
hrt'ort' mi ai ftome four
hundred miles as the crow
flies; and as the pilot lays the
course for the airship, my trip
shall be a bee-line from the Ger
man canita! to the Alps.
ith Germany's crippled trans
portation facilities, the run by
rail. now. occupies about twenty-tour hours. In
fact it is i formidable undertaking, requiring breaks
on the way for sleep and refreshment. I shall make
the distance m four and a half to six hours, accord
ing as the wind is favorable or not.
Von reach the great Zeppelin hall, where the air
ship service starts, by automobile, a ten mile ride
from the center of the city. L'nter den Linden, or the
offices of the Hamburg-American Steamship Com
pany, which concern, if one might prophesy a bit,
may be expected, from its past performance in ocean
transportation, to do some pioneering in this (I am
sure) future method of rapid travel. The hour of
leaving is, at present, eight in the morning, the pas
sengers being assembled at the above offices at that
time. 1 had discovered, previously, that one had to
book his reservations some weeks in advance, to have
a place on the Zeppelin. In fact, the space about
the desk where these bookings were made was
crowded. It recalled old times when the Hamburg
Line was far and away the greatest ocean transporta
tion organization in the world, and one of the most
popular. For a moment a vague thought flashed
through my mind: "Is the spirit of Albert Ballin at
work here, and coming back, in the form of leadership
in the navigation of the air?" Ballin built the Im
perator and the Yaterland, the George Washington
and President Grant. It was his idea, too. to promote
Zeppelin travel ; and the passenger traffic of the air
ship concern is under the control of this steamship
company.
I had been unable to secure a place on the ' Boden
see" in her flight from Switzerland, though I explained
that I wanted to write about the trip for Thk Dkakhokx
INDEPENDENT. I had to telegraph a fortnight ahead,
from Montreux on Lake Geneva, engaging a seat for a
trip from Berlin back to Switzerland.
ARRIVING at the Zeppelin works and the great hall,
where these air cruisers are made, and where they
are housed during their resting hours, you find a vast
shed, of steel and cement construction, which is up
ward of five hundred feet in length, two hundred in
width and one hundred, or more, high.
Our airship was awaiting us. It was anchored to
some fifty bags of sand resting on the floor of the hall,
as well as several running trolleys attached by cables to
tracks extending out of the hall several hundred or a
thousand feet. The thing seemed small in its great
berth. Along the sides of this shed were numerous
flexible pipes for feeding the gas cells of the ship with
hydrogen gas. Both the Zeppelins and the gas are
manufactured on the place.
The gas cells of a Zeppelin there are eleven in the
"Bodensee" are placed in a row like peas in a pod,
By ROBERT J. THOMPSON
WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY T H I .WRITER
and inclosed in a tubular and pointed alun.numfranm
which is again covered b) an encasing velopc. TTu
Mssencer car. or aondol, being oi the greatest weight.
ErvS I kee. the ihip, and the motorj. a. he
screws, double, triple or more as the cae ma be, or
the air liner. The covering of these cells IS IM
Of what is called goldbeaters cloth. I his ma
terial is composed ot tne lining oi im
stomach of the cow, and is theoretically
imnermeable. These strips 0 skin are
about eight by fifteen inches m Site
and are glued OOC upon the Other
three or four thick, overlapping to
hrp;.k ioints. Nevertheless, when
the vessel ascends over five hun
dred feet, the expansion of gas
effects a loss which may be de
termined exactly according to
the altitude.
But to our journey. You
pass through a gateway, and
your baggage is checked and
weighed. Each passenger is al
lowed thirty pounds free, the ex-
mti ii titan in I' tttlldRiMBMWiEffa I
The pursuing shadow on pine forest.
cess being charged at the rate of ten cents per pound.
A truck full of large trunks was loaded up (note the
distinction) into the hold, along with the petrol and
oil for the thousand odd horsepower motors.
The passenger gondol of the latest style of Zep
pelin is placed well forward under the body of the
flyer. It resembles a Pullman chair car very much, not
only in size but in convenience. The capacity is twenty
five passengers, and there were that number of up
holstered willow-work chairs, with places n nbered
set along the walls of the interior. The wind 1Hxt'
t, each chair, were removable, so one could it n'js
head out and look directly down on tin- , v j
thought these windows were glass, and took oi n to
find It as light as paper. I lifted my chair w! h was
large and com f ortable. to find it also astoi ihiogk
light. There were substantial appearing coin- m ex.
tending up and down along the inside of th ir. j
tapped one of them with, my pipe. It was as ancj
hollow as a paper tube. The floor seemed sol- L0th
and was carpi ted w ith a dark red material. , tnt
ceiling and walls were draped with similar terial.
NetWork racks wire placed over each seat f hail(
baggage and parcel, everything was there, an every
thing was Complete. At the front of the goi I (the
technical term lor the passenger carriage), and cut off
by a partition, is the navigation and officers' leering
room. In the rear, also cut off from the passenger
compartment by a partition, are the entrain . . Way.
a kitchenette, and toilet conveniences.
The full complement of passengers was a! 1. Jn
addition to the number in the passenger gond then
was a crew of sixteen men, chiefly above in thi hold
of the ship, whence they could swarm down the shroud
like braces to tne motor gondols. We had entered by
means of a movable set of stairs leading u to the
gangway. 1 found my seat, which was number nine.
and at the same moment discovered
that we were floating out of the hall
drawn by the trolleys already re
ferred to. As soon as we were in
I I -"..I .
-1, tne open, i removeu my window and
put my head out. There wi re about
one hundred men holding the mon
ster by ropes and hand-railing! fas
tened to its sides. Just as looi as
we were free from the hall, the ship
was veered by the wind to face the
south and it became apparent that
there was a very healthy head-wind
on. to combat. This caused a delay
ol half an hour in our getting off,
through the necessity of taking on
additional petrol. They put up into
the hold an extra six large tanks of
this fuel.
AT TEN o'clock we were away. Im
i mediately the airship wai un
leashed the motors were started, and
we sensed at once the complete con
trol of the thing. Rising by the force
of the propellers, more than through
the lifting power of the gas, the ship
was off. like a great fly in. -wan.
direct to the southwest.
It may not be too much oi an ex
aggeration t say that in one'l first
Zeppelin flight, minutes imprest you
as seconds and heurs pass liki min
utes. Almost instantly, it appeared, we wen racing
above Potsdam and the famous Sans Souci of 1 drich
the Great, at a speed of seventy miles an hoi. The
ship was navigating the lower strata of air and was
only about four hundred feet above the tips of the pine
trees. The palaces of Potsdam were spread out be
neath us like souvenir cards and could be Ti -:nized
easily from our windows. This picture gave . ay al
most instantly to something else equally in1 itinfl
and below, diagonally off to the north, sharp' visible
on the uneven surface of the dark green spnu forest
over which we were traveling, there came, darting
along, like swift-running shadows over ripem wheat
fields, a great black object, never losing us, keeping
equal pace, crossing lakes, fields, and woods, like some
sinister pursuer the shadow, the simulacrum of the
"Bodensee,"
I had the good fortune to have as fellow-p.. engers
an American aviator, Colonel Hensley, and B fl von
Gemmingen Goettingen, the nephew and mana g suc
cessor of the late Count Zeppelin. Colonel ettW
was making his thirty-first trip on the MBod e ." as
I was informed, and in the way of negotiating ith the
Zeppelin people for the purchase, for the American
finvprnmcnt of on iirtio d-iJ ! c vt :u)SS1D'1'
that by the time this article appears, we ma
ow ners of the very latest thing in this line, a
graceful creature, three times the size of tin
see," described in this letter.
This new ship, already constructed, but not
sembled, is of a capacity (hydrogen gas) of 100.W
cubic meters, considerably larger, I believe, than gOT
thing built during the war. It has been calculated to a
nicety (and there are no errors in the Zeppelin ealcula-
An old style Zeppelin
over Lake Constance.
be the
ist and
Bodeo-
m I iu" a
Airship halls at Friedrichsbafen, Germany.