The Graf Zeppelin was the most successful of all Zeppelin airships, making several hundred trips across the Atlantic between Europe and the Americas. In 1929, a new age of air travel dawned when the Graf Zeppelin flew around the world in just three weeks. On its circumnavigation, the Graf Zeppelin left New York and took in Friedrichshafen, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. As Zeppelin's star commander, Hugo Eckener, promised: "You don't fly in an airship, you go voyaging" (Archbold, 102).
Completed in 1928, the airship LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was named after the founder of the company, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838 to 1917). The LZ 127 measured 775 feet (237 m) in length, had a diameter of 100 feet (30.5 m), and a gas volume of 3.7 million cubic feet (105,000 m³). The airship would have been even bigger, but its final design was limited by the size of the hangar in which it was constructed.
The Graf Zeppelin had a top speed of 80 mph (128 km/h). Power came from five 550 hp Maybach VL2 engines, which used gas for fuel. This was an important innovation since previously, the use of liquid fuel meant that as that fuel was consumed, the loss of weight necessitated some of the airship's hydrogen gas to be released to compensate. With the new system, as the gas fuel was only slightly heavier than air, when the fuel was consumed, it could be replaced by simply admitting more air into the fuel cells, and the precious hydrogen was preserved. The special gas fuel was called 'Blau Gas' after its inventor, Dr. Hermann Blau.
The gondola suspended beneath the airship could carry 20 passengers and measured 98.5 feet (30 m) in length and 20 feet (6 m) in width. It had the control room forward and included a map room, radio room (essential for weather reports), an electric-powered galley equipped with a refrigerator, and a central lounge-dining area with panoramic windows on both sides. Each passenger cabin had its own window, and its couch folded up to provide two bunks, much like in train sleeping cars of the period. Toilet and washing facilities, separated for men or women, were located at the end of the accommodation corridor. Space was at a premium, and each passenger was only permitted to bring on board 50 lb (22.7 kg) of luggage. The crew of 43 slept in cabins built inside the hull and had separate washrooms from those available to the passengers.
The airship was christened on 8 July 1928 on what would have been Count Zeppelin's 90th birthday. After a series of test flights, Graf Zeppelin crossed the Atlantic in October 1928, where, upon arrival in New York, it received a rapturous welcome and a ticker-tape parade. The maiden voyage had hit bad weather in its final stages, but a normal run of 2 to 3 days meant passengers could now cross the Atlantic faster than any contemporary ocean liner.
Wherever it flew, the Graf Zeppelin caused a sensation. Once, at London's Wembley Stadium, a football cup final had to be halted while the Graf Zeppelin flew over the crowd. The giant Zeppelin certainly captured the public's imagination. As the contemporary journalist Lady Grace Drummond Hay (1895 to 1946) remarked: “The Graf Zeppelin is more than just machinery, canvas and aluminium. It has a soul" (Archbold, 102).
Admiration, even adoration, could not fund an airship. The Graf Zeppelin was a hugely expensive endeavour. Ticket prices were only affordable to the very wealthy, but the running costs were tremendous: a large crew on board and an even bigger number of ground staff for each landing, tons of fuel, expensive gas, and non-stop maintenance between flights all meant the airship needed to be flying more often than not. The German authorities were reluctant to provide any further investment beyond what they had provided to help build the airship, and so Zeppelin's owners had to seek funding from unusual sources. The answer to the cost problem would be found in two places: the press and stamp collectors.
Hugo Eckener (1868 to 1954), Zeppelin director and commander of the Graf Zeppelin, had the idea that a publicity trip might gain valuable future investment in the company, and what could be more exciting than an airship that went around the world? The American newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (1863 to 1951) bought into the idea and offered $100,000 for the exclusive right to report on the circumnavigation, at least in the English-speaking press. Eckener still needed another $150,000 to cover the costs of the trip. A German newspaper paid $12,500 to be able to report on the trip. Stamp collectors paid huge sums to have postcards and letters franked on board the airship and posted from its various stopping points around the world. Even rarer, at some places where the airship did not land, a quantity of letters was dropped from the air in special envelopes weighted with sand. The most prized letters of all were those that had been carried all around the world.
Finally, there was the ticket price for the 20 passengers. Each ticket cost $2,500, but in the end, only two passengers actually had to pay since the others were guests invited for publicity, such as diplomats and journalists. Eckener was convinced that by getting the right people on board with the project, both literally and in a business sense, the Graf Zeppelin would become so famous that it would easily sell out all future passenger flights.
For the circumnavigation, the Graf Zeppelin was again commanded by Eckener, now aged 61, who led the most experienced crew of fliers Zeppelin could put in the air. The passengers included Sir Hubert Wilkins (1888 to 1958), the famed Arctic explorer, photographer, and pioneer aviator. The US Navy was represented by Charles Rosendahl, the captain of the Zeppelin LZ 126 Los Angeles. There was one representative each of the governments of Germany, Russia, and Japan. Hearst sent two of his top reporters along for the ride: Drummond Hay and Karl Henry von Wiegand (1874 to 1961). There were also five journalists representing the German, French, and Japanese press.
The Graf Zeppelin set off from New York on its global voyage on 7 August 1929. The airship had actually begun its trip, as usual, from the Zeppelin HQ at Friedrichshafen three days before, but for the "official" circumnavigation trip, Hearst wanted the journey to begin in New York. Graf Zeppelin then recrossed the Atlantic and landed back at Friedrichshafen for refuelling and supplies. The next leg of the voyage from Friedrichshafen to Tokyo set the record for the longest unbroken airship flight yet undertaken, a distance of 6,980 miles (11,233 km). The airship flew over Central Europe, the heart of Russia and the Ural Mountains, Siberia, Yakutsk, across the Stanovoy Range, and over the Sea of Okhotsk. When winds became too strong and a potential threat, the airship simply raised or lowered its altitude to avoid them. The days were spent gazing at the endlessly shifting panorama below, and the nights playing cards, listening to gramophone records, or Ernst Lehmann, second-in-command, playing his accordion.
Crossing Asia was risky since there were vast uninhabited areas where a forced landing would leave the aeronauts without help of any kind. As Eckener remarked:
The whole region gave the impression of a dreadful waste, uninhabitable for man or beast…In grotesque contrast to all the deadly silence, the airship sailed, its cabins lighted, its care-free occupants dining and enjoying themselves; and yet, if for some reason it had been necessary to land in these swamps, escape from those black-green waters would not have been possible.
(Archbold, 114)
Crew member Heinrich Bauer was similarly awed:
In the first rays of the morning sun the marshland lay below us, water with solid terrain. How endlessly small we were at that moment and what pride filled us to be able to contemplate a land that no human eye had seen before.
(Archbold, 114)
This Asian stint took four and a half days, and the airship landed on 19 August at the Kasumigaura Naval Air Station near Tokyo. A crowd of perhaps 250,000 welcomed the circumnavigators to Japan. The Graf Zeppelin took on fuel, topped up its hydrogen gas cells, replenished its water ballast tanks, and restocked the galley with food and drinks.
The next leg saw the airship cross the Pacific Ocean, the first to do so non-stop. This stage covered 5,000 miles (8,000 km) but took just 68 hours. Landing at San Francisco, the airship then skipped down to Los Angeles. The heat in California did cause some problems as the hydrogen expanded and began to seep out of the vents designed to prevent the skin from bursting. Leaving Los Angeles on 26 August, the Graf Zeppelin had to be relieved of some of its water ballast, fuel, and several crew members to make the ship buoyant enough for the crossing of the United States.
The airship safely returned to New York's landing site at Lakehurst on 29 August. On its three-week voyage, the airship had spent 12 days in the air and flown some 19,500 miles (31,400 km). The Graf Zeppelin then headed for home, landing at Friedrichshafen on 4 September, nicely completing the world tour from a German perspective.
The globetrotting tour caused a sensation in the world's press. Zeppelin mania resulted in all sorts of merchandise being produced to cash in on the Graf Zeppelin's trip, such as posters, biscuit tins, adventure books for children, a round-the-world card game, and yet more postage stamps. Investors, as Zeppelin had hoped, were now coming forward in droves to fund a potential fleet of airships that crisscrossed the Atlantic. The timing was wrong, though. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 hit, deflating investors' enthusiasm like a punctured balloon, and the brash promises of money vanished in the financial chaos.
The media, at least, remained enthralled with air travel. After the global trip, newspaper and magazine writers speculated on a bright new future where fleets of giant airships carried passengers for holidays on other continents. This report was typical of the time and appeared in The American Magazine with the title Two Days to Europe in a Flying Hotel:
Man-made monsters, as big as our greatest skyscrapers, will ride the ocean skyways like mighty silver-plated hotels magically floating on high. London will be within two dawns of Broadway…Paris and Berlin, Barcelona and Cairo will be way-stations on two-week vacation tours out of Cleveland and Kokomo, Pittsburgh and Hackensack. We shall skim the icy rim of the world in week-end sightseeing jaunts to the North Pole and roar around the earth in a week, amid the luxury of a Louis le Grand in his royal household.
(Stephenson, 97).
The Graf Zeppelin might not have been joined by a fleet of cousins, but LZ 127 was a huge success all on its own. In 1930, the Graf Zeppelin crossed the Atlantic and reached Brazil, a destination it would ferry passengers to very often since the liners of the period took a burdensome two weeks to make a crossing to South America, while the airship could do it in under 80 hours. The world's most famous airship also returned to regularly crossing from Germany to New York, made short sightseeing flights across Germany, squeezed in trips to Buenos Aires, made an unforgettable appearance at the World Fair in Chicago in 1933, and even visited the Arctic in its long and illustrious career. In 1935, the airship was still going strong and made 16 round trips to Brazil. In 1936, the Nazi regime in Germany used the airship, now bearing giant swastikas on its tail fins, to drop propaganda leaflets urging voters to endorse (again) Adolf Hitler as chancellor and Germany's occupation of the Rhineland, which had been demilitarised at the end of the First World War (1914 to 18). In total, the Graf Zeppelin made 590 flights, which included 144 ocean crossings. The airship carried a total of 13,110 passengers and flew a total distance of well over 1 million miles (1.7 million km).
The success of the Graf Zeppelin did eventually lead to Zeppelin building two more, even bigger airships in the mid-1930s: LZ 127 Hindenburg and LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II. Unfortunately, the Hindenburg disaster of May 1937, when the Zeppelin crashed to the ground after its hydrogen gas cells caught fire, effectively ended the use of airships for passengers. The LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was promptly retired in July 1937 and thereafter welcomed visitors as a permanent and very popular museum attraction in Frankfurt. The underused Graf Zeppelin II was dismantled in 1940. The German authorities then decided to definitively turn their back on the Zeppelins when they blew up their giant airship hangars, using dynamite. The Second World War witnessed the development of the jet engine, and so in the 1950s, it was airplanes that took over from airships as the quickest way to travel around the world.