Zeppelin LZ 1 (1900): Count Zeppelin's First Rigid Airship

Zeppelin LZ 1, the first rigid airship built by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, rose from a floating hangar on Lake Constance in southern Germany on 2 July 1900. The flight lasted only about 18 minutes and exposed serious weaknesses, but it proved that a huge airship with a rigid metal frame could fly. From this modest start came the zeppelins that carried the world’s first airline passengers, bombed cities in the First World War and crossed oceans in the 1920s and 1930s.

Background: the dream of a steerable balloon

Balloons had carried people since 1783, but they drifted with the wind. Inventors sought a “dirigible”, meaning steerable, balloon. In 1852 the Frenchman Henri Giffard flew a cigar-shaped balloon driven by a small steam engine, and in 1884 Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs flew the electric-powered La France on a closed circuit near Paris. These were non-rigid craft: their shape depended on gas pressure, which limited their size.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838–1917), a cavalry officer from Württemberg, made his first balloon ascent at St Paul, Minnesota, in 1863, while observing the American Civil War. After retiring from the army as a lieutenant general in 1890, he devoted himself and much of his fortune to airships.

His interest had a military edge. Zeppelin had taken note of the balloons used during the siege of Paris in 1870–1871, when the French flew mail and passengers out of the encircled city, and he believed large airships could serve as long-range scouts and transports. He had sketched ideas for a large airship as early as 1874.

Designing a rigid airship

Zeppelin’s idea was to give the airship a rigid skeleton. A long framework of light aluminium girders would hold its shape, while hydrogen sat in separate gas cells inside, so that damage to one cell would not doom the craft. The frame would be covered with fabric and carry engines and gondolas beneath. A rigid hull could be made much larger than a non-rigid one, and size meant lift.

Experts were sceptical, and a government commission found early plans unconvincing. The engineer Theodor Kober worked out the detailed design, and Zeppelin received a German patent in 1898. That year he founded the Society for the Promotion of Airship Flight, putting in a large share of the capital himself. Its components were made by the industrialist Carl Berg, a supplier of aluminium, who had earlier provided metal for David Schwarz’s all-metal airship, which crashed in Berlin in 1897.

The floating hangar at Manzell

LZ 1 (Luftschiff Zeppelin 1) was assembled in a wooden hangar floating on Lake Constance at Manzell, near Friedrichshafen. The floating shed could be turned to face the wind, and the lake offered a soft surface for landings.

The airship was about 128 metres long and 11.7 metres in diameter, with 17 gas cells holding roughly 11,000 cubic metres of hydrogen. Two Daimler petrol engines of about 15 horsepower each drove propellers mounted on the hull. To point the nose up or down, the crew moved a heavy sliding weight along a cable beneath the ship, a clumsy arrangement.

Two small gondolas hung beneath the hull, one towards each end, each carrying an engine and crew. The outer covering was cotton fabric, and the frame was built of polygonal rings joined by long girders running the length of the ship. The design was a pioneering piece of engineering, but the aluminium of the time was weak by later standards, and the long, thin hull flexed noticeably in flight.

The flights of 1900

On the evening of 2 July 1900, before a crowd of spectators on the shore and in boats, LZ 1 was towed out of its hangar and released with five men aboard, including Zeppelin. It rose to about 400 metres and travelled several kilometres. The winch for the sliding weight broke, the ship could not be properly trimmed, and the frame bent slightly. After about 18 minutes it came down on the lake, and the hull suffered further damage during recovery.

After repairs, LZ 1 flew again on 17 October and 24 October 1900, reaching speeds estimated at roughly 28 to 32 km/h. The results were still disappointing. The ship was slow, structurally weak and hard to control, and it attracted no buyers. Zeppelin’s company had used up its funds, and LZ 1 was dismantled in 1901.

From failure to national symbol

Zeppelin persisted, helped by a state lottery and his own money. LZ 2 flew only briefly before being wrecked in a storm in January 1906. LZ 3, with stronger engines and proper control surfaces, flew successfully in 1906 and was later taken over by the army.

The turning point came with LZ 4. In August 1908, during an attempted 24-hour endurance flight, it landed at Echterdingen near Stuttgart and was destroyed by fire after a storm tore it loose. Instead of ending Zeppelin’s career, the disaster triggered a wave of public sympathy: Germans donated some 6 million marks. The money founded the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company and the Zeppelin Foundation in Friedrichshafen. The engineer Ludwig Dürr, who had joined Zeppelin in 1899, became chief designer.

In November 1909 the company created DELAG, the world’s first airline. Before 1914 its airships carried roughly 34,000 passengers on around 1,500 flights between German cities without a fatal accident. Hugo Eckener, a former journalist, became its leading pilot.

Zeppelins also served the military. The German army and navy bought airships before 1914, and during the First World War around a hundred were built for reconnaissance and bombing. Many were lost to weather, accidents and, increasingly, to fighter aircraft firing incendiary bullets, which ignited the hydrogen. After the war the company returned to passenger flights, and the Graf Zeppelin, launched in 1928, flew more than a million miles in regular service, including scheduled flights to South America.

Key people

• Ferdinand von Zeppelin provided the vision, determination and much of the early money.
• Theodor Kober designed LZ 1 and later founded his own aircraft company.
• Ludwig Dürr was chief designer of zeppelins for decades, from LZ 2 onwards.
• Hugo Eckener later commanded the Graf Zeppelin on its round-the-world flight of 1929.

Myths and facts

Myth: Zeppelin invented the airship. Steerable airships had flown in France decades earlier. Zeppelin’s contribution was the large rigid airship, which became so associated with him that “zeppelin” came to mean any rigid airship.

Myth: LZ 1 was a success. It flew, which mattered, but its performance was poor and it was scrapped within a year. Success came only with LZ 3 and later ships.

Timeline

• 1863: Zeppelin makes his first balloon ascent at St Paul, Minnesota.
• 1898: Zeppelin receives a patent and founds his airship company.
• 1900, 2 July: LZ 1 makes its first flight over Lake Constance.
• 1900, 17 and 24 October: LZ 1 makes two further flights.
• 1901: LZ 1 is dismantled.
• 1906: LZ 3 flies successfully.
• 1908, 5 August: LZ 4 is destroyed at Echterdingen; public donations save the project.
• 1909, 16 November: DELAG, the first airline, is founded.
• 1917, 8 March: Count Zeppelin dies in Berlin.

Why it matters

LZ 1 began the age of the rigid airship, a technology that for about three decades seemed the future of long-distance air travel. Zeppelins later became weapons in the raids on Britain from 1915, and the era of passenger airships effectively ended with the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, as aeroplanes descended from the Wright brothers’ first flight took over.