They still make zeppelins.
I had scheduled a ride ($320) in an airship over the city where they’re made, Friedrichshafen, Germany. But two days before, the company cancelled, citing a forecast of high winds and temperature of 48 degrees F.
It was my only day in town, so I was out of luck. Nonetheless, I decided to do as much of the planned visit as I could.
Zeppelins are a one-two punch. There’s the zeppelin museum right at Friedrichshafen harbor that explores the history and technology of the airships created by retired Army officer and count Ferdinand Zeppelin. And half an hour away by bus is the Zeppelin hangar, where the “new technology” (NT) airships are moored. Each will tell you the two are not affiliated.
Friedrichshafen is partway down the other side of Lake Constance, Germany’s biggest lake. The fastest way there from Konstanz is an hour-long trip across by catamaran.
Why the lake? The first flights, made before 1900, started and ended at the lake to allow the airship to be positioned into the wind to get in or out of a hangar floating on the water.
The early flights in a 400-foot-long, 40-foot wide airship taught the fledgling company lessons about propellers, engines needed for control in high wind, horizontal and vertical stabilizing fins, and a strong tubular frame. The lessons were incorporated into each succeeding airship, and maybe that’s partly why zeppelins exist today.
Definitions
A word about words. An “airship” is any air vehicle that is 1) filled with a lighter-than-air gas and is 2) powered and 3) steerable. “Dirigible” (from a French word involving steering) means the same. Rigid airships like the Hindenburg (metal internal framework), semi-rigid like today’s Zeppelin NT and blimps like Goodyear’s can be called dirigibles.
A blimp’s shape is maintained by the gas within the balloon. It has no internal frame, and if the gas goes, it loses its shape.
In a rigid-frame ship, the shape of the craft is maintained by the frame instead of the lifting gas. A semi-rigid-frame air ship maintains its shape via the pressure of internal gas, but besides helping with shape, the frame provides key capabilities such as distributing loads and strength during maneuvering.
Lower-case “zeppelin” is often used because so many people refer to airships indiscriminantly that way.
Museum
The key element of the museum is a full-scale partial replica of the Hindenburg. Designers re-created 100 feet of the airship at full size and hung it under the ceiling, dwarfing everything below. The replica shows the frame and skin like an exploded diagram and simultaneously conveys a sense of how big it was.
The model on the left shows how the frame and skin looked on the Hindenburg. The frame on the right challenges you to lift it with one finger as testimony to how light a metallic frame can be.
Why the Hindenburg burned
The museum doesn’t shy away from discussing the burning of the Hindenburg, which ended the era of luxury trans-Atlantic travel in airships.
At right, a visitor examines a bench that survived the Lakehurst fire.
The Hindenburg, which burned at mooring in Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937, was 800 feet long, three times as long as a football field or a 747.
Witnesses said they thought they saw hydrogen leaking from the rear of the ship. But the Hindenburg burned completely in 30 seconds. How could the fire have spread over that distance and so quickly?
A professor at CalTech modeled the zeppelin’s outer surface in the lab. Last summer, he said his theory is that when the mooring ropes were dropped, electrons from the earth’s surface climbed to the ship. That created a capacitor between the positively charged skin and the negatively charged frame.
In his reckoning, any of the hundreds of places where the skin was close to the frame could have created a capacitor capable of creating a spark that would have spread the flames. He said it would have taken about four minutes to charge that big a skin.
Of course, helium was substituted for flammable hydrogen in airships, but America was Zeppelin’s supplier and that was the late 1930s. Relations between the U.S. and Germany were frail. By 1940, the last two big airships were decommissioned and scrapped. Even the hangars in Frankfurt were demolished.
Factory and hangar
The Zeppelin company sells rides on 11 routes, including the one I bought, a silent 30-minute ride, 300-1,000 feet above Friedrichshafen at about 40 mph. They’re usually offered from April to November.
My ride was canceled and it was a blustery holiday, but visitor reception was open with a skeleton staff.
Two airships were moored behind a chain-link fence around the restaurant patio.
Airships used to be used for military purposes, but today’s are mainly for advertising. What’s going to happen in the era of drones is yet to be seen.
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