Ferdinand von Zeppelin

German aeronautical designer

• Born: July 8, 1838
• Birthplace: Konstanz, Baden (now in Germany)
• Died: March 8, 1917
• Place of death: Charlottenburg, Germany

Zeppelin developed the concepts and designs for the construction of the first practical airships capable of navigating over long distances. The success of Zeppelin’s rigid dirigibles, or blimps, served to stimulate experimentation in all areas of aeronautics and paved the way for military and commercial applications of airships.

Early Life

Ferdinand von Zeppelin (ZEHP-eh-lihn) was born into a family with a long history of military and diplomatic service. His grandfather, Ferdinand Ludwig Zeppelin, was minister of foreign affairs for the king of Württemberg; his father, Count Frederich von Zeppelin, was in the diplomatic service of a German prince. In 1834, Count Frederich married Amelie Macaire d’Hogurre, then living in her grandparents’ house in Konstanz, Baden; it was there that Ferdinand, his brother Eberhard, and his sister Eugenie were born. In 1840, Count Frederich retired from his diplomatic post, purchased a large estate near Girsberg, on the shores of Lake Constance, and devoted his life to managing his estate, rearing his children, and caring for his disabled wife.

Zeppelin’s mother and father were gentle, loving parents, and they provided for their children a home that was harmonious and completely free of ostentation. When Zeppelin entered a preparatory school in Stuttgart, he concentrated on studies in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, a course that was a significant departure from the one normally followed by boys intent on a military career. It was an early indication, however, that Zeppelin’s career would not follow a predictable pattern.

In 1857, at age nineteen, Zeppelin was graduated from the War Academy at Ludwigsburg and joined an infantry regiment as a lieutenant. After only a year, he became disenchanted with the monotony of the army’s discipline and asked for a leave of absence to continue his engineering studies at the University of Tübingen. He then elected to join an engineer corps stationed at Ulm a post considered inappropriate for a count, but one that he believed was more suited to his interests and sense of adventure. In less than a year, he was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant and was assigned to the general staff.

With little prospect of being involved in military action on the home front, young Zeppelin turned his attention to the Civil War being fought in the United States. He conceived the idea of acting as a military observer for the German army, ostensibly to study the organization of volunteer armies that were being used extensively in the American conflict; he believed, moreover, as he prophetically noted in his request to the king: “The Americans are especially inventive in the adaptation of technical developments for military purposes. I do not have to mention the benefits such a journey promises to have for the general enlightenment.”

In May of 1863, Zeppelin’s leave of absence was approved and he set sail for the United States. He obtained letters of introduction from President Abraham Lincoln that enabled him to travel freely among the Union armies; he also participated in several campaigns, including the battles of Fredericksburg and Ashby’s Gap in Virginia. Desiring to learn as much as possible about this new world, he then embarked on a journey westward, traveling first by train through the northeast from were chosen through Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, and Detroit. From Detroit he explored Lake Huron and Lake Superior by steamer. In Superior, Wisconsin, Zeppelin joined a small party intent on exploring the headwaters of the Mississippi River; after a journey of twenty-one days, the party arrived at Fort Snelling in St. Paul, Minnesota.

During his visit to Fort Snelling, Zeppelin was able to observe the flight of a captive hot-air balloon. The Union Army had been experimenting with the use of balloons as observation posts and, at Fort Snelling, was in the process of evaluating the merits of a new design. Zeppelin seized the opportunity for a flight and purchased enough gas to ascend several hundred feet. It was there that the military advantages of an aerial reconnaissance platform became evident to him; it was there, too, that he first started thinking of ways to control the flight of a free-floating balloon.

Life’s Work

Ten years would pass before Zeppelin began to work seriously on his designs for a controllable balloon, although he did continue to research the literature then available on the subject. He returned to Germany with a rank of captain and served on the personal staff of King Charles I of Württemberg during the war between Austria and Prussia. He received his first decoration for bravery the Knight’s Cross during the Battle of Aschaffenburg in 1866; he earned a second commendation the Royal Cross, First Class for his exploits during the war with France in 1870. During the siege of Paris, he again had the opportunity to observe the effective use of free-floating balloons during a military operation. The siege lasted for four months, but more than a hundred influential military and political leaders were able to escape from the city using a total of sixty-four hot-air balloons. Convinced that this exploit had seriously prolonged the war, Zeppelin renewed his studies of balloons and began developing some preliminary designs for a rigid dirigible.

The specifications that he chose for his airship were to remain practically unchanged over the course of his career. He envisioned an elongated, aerodynamically shaped airship with an internal, lightweight skeletal framework supported by a number of separate gas-filled cells attached to the framework. The payload and the engines would be contained in separate gondolas suspended below the main structure; the control surfaces, such as rudders, would be attached to the exterior of the airship in a position that would provide maximum control over direction and attitude. In 1887, he sent a letter to the king describing his designs and outlining the various applications that he could foresee for such an airship. Zeppelin believed that his invention would be very important in warfare, suitable for civilian transport, and beneficial for voyages of exploration and discovery.

Although his political and military career had flourished (he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1888), Zeppelin decided to devote more of his time to his family; thus, in 1890 he retired from the army and returned to his home in Stuttgart. This early retirement allowed him to continue the development of his airship.

His dream of powered, controlled flight would not be realized for another decade. He hired Theodor Kober, an experienced engineer, and together they began a series of tests on engines, propellers, and construction materials. The most serious problem confronting Zeppelin one that would continue to impede his work throughout the next fifteen years was financing the construction of his design. He appealed to his friends at court, but the government was not interested in funding his experiments; the war ministry believed that Zeppelin’s ideas were too radical. In 1896, Zeppelin sent a report on his designs and experiments to the German Association of Engineers with the request that they review his designs and perhaps support his request for funds from the government. The society reported favorably on the project; as a result, a company was formed for the construction of the airship, and solicitations were made to the public for support. Approximately 90 percent of the $250,000 required for the project was obtained through public subscriptions and the remainder came from Zeppelin’s personal funds. The Daimler Motorworks was contracted to design and build a lightweight gasoline engine. The company also needed to find a supplier of the then-scarce metal aluminum.

On July 2, 1900, Zeppelin’s dream became a reality: The first rigid, engine-powered airship was ready for its first flight. The floating hangar was turned into the wind and the airship was pulled out by a small steamer. To the crowd of spectators on the shore, it was an impressive sight. The LZ-1 was a cigar-shaped airship 419 feet long and thirty-eight feet in diameter, supported by seventeen gas cells containing eleven thousand cubic meters of gas. Suspended below the airship were two gondolas connected by a long gangplank; the rear gondola supported two Daimler gasoline engines turning four propellers. At 8:03 a.m. the airship was freed of its restraining ropes, and, driven by its propellers, the ship moved away at a speed of about eight miles per hour. The flight lasted about fifteen minutes, and the ship landed safely near Immenstaad. Although there had been some difficulties with the directional controls, Zeppelin declared that the flight was a success. In the next four months, the LZ-1 made two more flights, during which refinements to the engines and steering mechanisms were tested. Airspeed approached eighteen miles per hour and control of the airship improved. By then, however, the funds had become depleted and the company could no longer pay for material and gas. As a result, the LZ-1 was dismantled and the hangar torn down.

During the next five years Zeppelin used his entire personal fortune to begin construction of a second ship. Through lotteries and other public appeals he was able to raise enough money to finish the LZ-2. It flew successfully in 1906 and demonstrated the increased speed and control that the new eighty-five-horsepower engines provided. Unfortunately, the ship was destroyed by fire during a storm shortly after its first flight. Completely destitute and disheartened by the disaster, Zeppelin thought that his work was at an end. Public sentiment had turned in his favor, however, and, as a result, the Parliament voted to subsidize the construction of the LZ-3. It proved to be such a success that the government authorized a sum to be included in the annual budget for the construction and testing of airships.

For the next eleven years, Zeppelin worked tirelessly on the design and testing of more than a hundred airships. He was at the helm of the LZ-4 during its flight from Lake Constance to Switzerland. The airship carried eleven passengers at the amazing speed of forty miles per hour. In 1912, he piloted the navy’s first ship (LZ-12) on its historic trip of more than a thousand miles to and from Denmark. He helped to develop the airships used in the first commercial airline routes, and during World War I he supervised the construction of more than a hundred airships for the army and navy.

Significance

The first decade of human flight is representative of human ingenuity in its most adventuresome and audacious form. In particular, the sight of the massive airships that appeared in the skies over Germany, Great Britain, France, and the United States seemed to symbolize the inevitable mastery of humankind over the forces of nature. It is not often remembered that three years before the flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Zeppelin and a crew of three had piloted a four-hundred-foot-long airship on a flight over southern Germany for a distance of four miles and at an altitude of thirteen hundred feet. Furthermore, in the year 1910, when a single American pilot took forty-nine days to fly thirty-two hundred miles across the United States, Zeppelin’s dirigible (LZ-6) had flown thirty-four trips carrying a total of eleven hundred passengers for a distance of thirty-one hundred miles.

The technological innovations that accompanied the development of the airship found applications in aircraft design and other areas of engineering. Zeppelin was responsible for the development of the alloy Duralumin in his search for lighter and stronger structural materials. Zeppelin was convinced that his airships would be an important asset to the army in the event of war but, ironically, it was the German navy that derived the most benefit from his zeppelins. At the outbreak of World War I, several of Zeppelin’s airships were armed with machine guns and fitted with bomb racks, but they proved to be susceptible to the vagaries of the weather and attacks by enemy aircraft; thus, they were only marginally effective as weapons. Yet the navy found that their long range made them ideally suited to scout the location of enemy warships and eventually had more than sixty airships in service during the war. In January, 1915, two army airships did succeed in crossing the English Channel to discharge their small loads of bombs on two English cities, but the damage was more psychological than real. This air raid demonstrated one important fact: Cities and civilians could no longer rely on fortifications or oceans to protect them from feeling the effects of war. The zeppelins were perceived to be more of a threat than they actually proved to be, but their existence prompted the British to develop more effective antiaircraft weapons and stimulated the development of high-performance aircraft capable of flying to the high altitudes at which the airships operated.

On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Zeppelin expressed the hope that one day his airships would provide the means to bring together the peoples of the world; in fact, he did live long enough to see the establishment of regular air routes between a number of cities in Europe. His airship, the Victoria Luise , made nearly five hundred scheduled flights carrying a total of ninety-eight hundred passengers. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the great flights of the 1920’s and 1930’s: the flight of the British R34 across the Atlantic Ocean in July of 1919, of the Norge, four thousand miles across the North Pole in 1926, and of the Graf Zeppelin around the world in 1929.

The culmination of Zeppelin’s work was the magnificent airships the Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin. From 1928 to 1937, they carried a total of forty thousand passengers on regularly scheduled flights between Germany, New York, and Buenos Aires, providing accommodations and service comparable to those of the finest ocean liners. For a time it appeared that the airship would dominate long-distance air travel, but the explosion of the Hindenburg at the naval air station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, ended that possibility; thereafter, production of rigid airships ceased.

Bibliography

Goldsmith, Margaret. Zeppelin: A Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1931. A general biography containing many personal anecdotes that illustrate Zeppelin’s unique personality.

Hoyt, Edwin P. The Zeppelins. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1969. An abbreviated account of the development of the zeppelins with an emphasis on the use of the airship as a military weapon.

Lehman, Ernst A., and Howard L. Mingos. The Zeppelins. New York: Sears, 1927. An account of the wartime activities of Germany’s airship squadrons by two of Zeppelin’s associates.

Nitske, W. Robert. The Zeppelin Story. South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1977. A general history of the development of the rigid airship, beginning with the experiments with free-floating balloons and concluding with the development of successful long-range airships capable of transoceanic travel.

Stephenson, Charles. Zeppelins: German Airships, 1900-1940. New York: Osprey, 2004. Provides a detailed history of zeppelins.

Syon, Guillaume de. Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship, 1909-1939. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. History of Zeppelin’s airships, tracing them from development to production and their impact on German culture and society. De Syon maintains the zeppelin was important to Germans because it embodied the ideal of German culture combined with state-of-the-art technology.

Ventry, Lord, and Eugène M. Kolesnik. Airship Saga: The History of Airships Seen Through the Eyes of the Men Who Designed, Built, and Flew Them. Poole, England: Blandford Press, 1982. A pictorial history of the airship, containing numerous personal accounts of the inventors and aviators who flew them.