Full Script 

Introduction

To anyone with an appetite for history, the city of Prague is a feast for the eyes. Everywhere I’ve been in the capital of the modern-day Czech Republic, there are visible reminders of stories that stretch back over 1,000 years. Prague Castle, the largest ancient castle in the world, saw construction start in the 9th century. Wi thin its walls, the masterpiece of Gothic architecture known as St. Vitus Cathedral had its foundation stone laid by King John of Bohemia in 1344, and it wasn’t officially completed until 1929, almost six hundred years later. Compared with the other major cities of Europe, Prague’s historic architecture survived World War II mostly unscathed, and along its streets you can see influences from the Baroque period all the way back to the Holy Roman Empire.

But when I looked east from the Castle, along the Vltava River, I saw something astonishing even amid the boundless variety of Prague. A massive, oval structure, over 130 feet long, rested on a sleek, modern building of glass and concrete. At a distance, the oval shape appeared to be precariously wrong, so unusual, my immediate thought was that something had crashed landed into a building.  But I was fairly certain that if something had crashed into a building in Prague, I would have heard about it.  Nevertheless, the combination of the known and unknown, created intrigue, a desire to learn more.

After walking for an hour, I arrived at this unusual building.  Its mysterious rooftop structure is called the Gulliver Airship. It’s not a real airship, but an auditorium with seating for one hundred, accessible via the roof of the DOX Contemporary Arts Center. The Center’s director described the Airship as “a dream of twelve-year old boys” and perhaps some who are just a few years older.  The museum hoped the shape might evoke some of the wonder and optimism of the heyday of airships in the early 20th Century.

I paid my fee and went inside.  Wandered through galleries of modern art…but the real attraction was an airship photo exhibit. One black and white picture especially stood out to me, an image of a giant cylinder, hovering over Zurich, Switzerland. The photo presents a strange contrast, this otherworldly technology looming over an ancient European city. It reminded me of purported photos of alien craft swarming around Roswell, New Mexico. But this airship was real, glistening in broad daylight in the year 1911.

What did it feel like, to see a sight like that at the dawn of the 20th century?

The world is full of mysteries where our knowledge just barely illuminates a problem, if at all.  To see an airship in the early 1900s was to see the dawn of a new age of technology but the experience also changed how one saw the world and its future.  Standing in the exhibit, pondering this photo, I wondered: How do people react to disruptions?  How do they respond to the unknown?  Does it create wonder or terror?  And why?

When we think of airships, we usually think of two things. Either we picture the Goodyear Blimp hovering over a sporting event; or we remember the catastrophic explosion of the Hindenburg in 1937.

But when I saw the Gulliver Airship, this audacious attempt to reclaim some of the old spirit of this invention, I was hooked. Suddenly, I had to know more of the story – not just about the invention of the technology but how it’s triumphs and disasters illuminated the human condition. 

***

Hi, this is MF Thomas the creator and host of My Dark Path.  I’m a futurist, author and a lifelong fan of strange stories from the dark corners of world. I grew up enthralled by exciting, forbidden knowledge that waited behind the events we learned in school. My first novel, Seeing by Moonlight, told a science fiction story that intersected with the real history of the Nazi rocketry program in World War II, and its ambitions to reach space. And these days, as my work takes me around the world, I always make time to get off the traditional tourist sites and find a destination that’s even more exciting.  At least to me!

This is the My Dark Path podcast. In every episode, we will explore the fringes of history, science and the paranormal.  What’s unique about My Dark Path?  Every topic, every destination is a place I’ve explored in person during my travels.  This podcast isn’t a retelling of a Wikipedia article.  Instead, we will explore unique topics that will intrigue and excite; and every once in a while, send a shiver down your spine.  

In this first season, we’ll explore the remnants of secret aerospace labs in western Europe, haunted hotels in Asia, UFO encounters in the USA.  Plus I’ll cover the artifacts from seances found in Paris’ Museum of Magic and we’ll trace the how counterfeit watches are made and sold in Shanghai.  In short, if you geek out over stories from the shadowy edges of history, science and the paranormal….you’re among friends here at My Dark Path. 

But we’ll also learn more about the human condition.  When something unknown intrudes into our well-organized, well-understood reality, how do we, as humans, think?  How do we feel, how we respond?  Is it with wonder and the desire to learn more or with terror and a desire to flee or fight?

Welcome, and thanks for coming along. To see content related to every episode, visit MyDarkPath.com.  I’ll post photography and other resources related to the topic.  Plus, you can register for a twice monthly drawing for cool books and other materials from my own cabinet of curiosities related to the topics I cover.  And don’t hesitate to reach out via email – explore@mydarkpath.com.  I really would love to hear from you.

Lastly, thank you for listening.  You have more choices than ever about where to spend your time.  I’m grateful that you’ve chosen to spend some time here, with me, walking my Dark Path together. 

And if that photo of the airship over Zurich in 1911 sounds interesting to you, make sure you visit mydarkpath.com. I’ll tell you about an opportunity to get a framed copy at the end of this episode.

***

By the time humanity was ready to fly, we had already been dreaming about it for centuries. Ancient Greeks told the tale of Icarus, and the wings of feathers and wax made by his father Daedalus. In the 3rd Century B.C., Alexander the Great reported seeing a flying craft, shaped like a silver shield. Thousands of his soldiers reported the same strange vision; it’s one of the first documented UFO sightings.

In the 3rd Century A.D., there are records of the Chinese experimenting with hot air lanterns to send signals in the sky. Over a thousand years later, Leonardo Da Vinci sketched ideas for flying machines that used the same principles as modern helicopters. Thoughtfully, as he was doing this, he also sketched a prototype for a parachute.

But it wasn’t until 1783 that a series of technological advances first took people into the skies. And it wasn’t the Chinese, or the Greeks, or an Italian genius of the Renaissance, that got us there. It was two French brothers — one an inventor, one a businessman.

We’re not talking about airships yet. Just as different species in the animal kingdom evolve from a common ancestor and then diversify, these first inventions are ancestors of the airship, but branched off in different directions as they became more specialized. What the Montgolfier (Montgolfi yay) brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne, invented, was the hot air balloon.

Their theory was that burning smoke contained a special gas that had the power to generate lift; if it could only be harnessed. In 1782 they attached a small box to a primitive cloth envelope or “crown”, and when it caught the rising smoke, it lifted off the ground. The brothers were astounded, seeing their experiment succeed – at least until seconds later, when their balloon collided with the roof of their workshop.

Now, their underlying science was wrong – there is no magic, special gas contained in burning smoke. But they had stumbled onto a true principle that made everything which came after possible – hot air creates buoyancy. For the first time in history, the idea of humans taking to the sky wasn’t a myth, or a dream sketched in a genius’s notebook; it was a scientifically-proven concept. 

It only took a year for the Montgolfier brothers to advance their invention so far that they could test it with living passengers. In September of 1783, a hot-air balloon containing a sheep, a duck, and a rooster rose up 1,500 feet in the air, and flew across the skies of France for eight minutes, before landing two miles away. Later, reportedly, they sent up a giraffe.

And just one month later, on the 19th of October, the Montgolfier brothers put three men — Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, Jean-Baptiste Reveillon, and Giroud de Villette — in the air. Their balloon was on a tether, for safety, but it rose, it floated, and it flew. Humanity was in the sky. The following month, the tether was removed, and on November the 21st, François Laurent le Vieux d'Arlandes joined de Rozier, and the two successfully completed the first free flight of any human beings in recorded history.

The Montgolfier Brothers’ invention was a sensation, and copycats soon followed. The revolutionary potential of hot air balloons captivated the French, and while it was a popular pastime for the wealthy, there were clear limitations – the baskets couldn’t carry much weight, the balloons were fragile, and once you went up, you didn’t have any control over where you went, or where you came down.

In 1785, French inventor Jean-Pierre Blanchard took the first evolutionary step towards giving humanity control in the air. He combined a hydrogen-powered balloon with a hand-powered propeller. Now, with a lot of exhausting effort, and a favorable wind, a balloon passenger could exercise a little control over their flight. To really put his invention to the test, Blanchard flew this rickety contraption all the way across the English Channel!

This is the first branch in the development of flight which led to the airship, that desire for control; but manual propellers were severely limited in power. 

Not to mention, the people of France soon had something else occupying their time: The French Revolution, and soon after, the Napoleonic Wars.

If the balloon was inspiring to the imagination of the public; on the battlefield, it immediately expanded an army’s power. Remember, this is a time without satellites, without airplanes, without even radios. The power to send scouts into the air to observe enemy armies over miles of land upended centuries of military strategy. The French used military balloons in engagements like the Battle of Fleurus in 1794, and the Siege of Mainz (May onze) in 1795. A French painter named Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse (moo zez) commemorated the Battle of Fleurus, and in the background of his painting, a dark balloon looms over the battlefield on the French side. The painting, depicting the moment that warfare took to the sky, hangs today in the Gallery of Battles at the Palace of Versailles.

Before there was such a thing as science fiction, there were authors that dabbled in what was called speculative fiction; telling stories that extrapolated wild scenarios from new technologies and current events. Multiple stories at this time imagined the terrifying sight of a French Army under Napoleon invading Britain, leading a fleet of hot air balloons.

But balloons still faced the same problems Blanchard had in crossing the English Channel. You couldn’t carry much, had almost no power, and if the weather didn’t cooperate, you could end up dead. In order for flying to progress, science had to make a few leaps.

There’s an incident in 1808 that, I think, perfectly captures both the grip balloons had on the popular imagination, and their hazardous limitations. It’s the story of what was likely the first-ever duel fought in hot air balloons. Two gentlemen, the story goes, were competing for the affections of a young dancer from the Paris Opera, and decided to settle their dispute in the skies. Each, carrying a blunderbuss and accompanied by a second, ascended in balloons. The first one fired and missed. The other gentleman decided not to aim at his rival; instead, he aimed at the rival’s balloon. He succeeded in puncturing it, and his rival, along with his rival’s poor second, plummeted to their deaths. History doesn’t record what that young dancer thought of all this.

***

It was a half-century before the next breakthrough that made airships possible. We’re still in France, only now we’re with a 27-year old engineer named Henri Giffard (g fard). It’s 1852, and Giffard has built an envelope measuring 300 cubic meters, enormous for the time, and filled it with hydrogen gas. Only he’s added something new to the equation. A steam engine. Finally, we have more than just human muscle in the air. With the steam engine working, Giffard can fly his invention at a top speed of 6 miles per hour. He gives it a simple name; the French word meaning “directable”. He calls it, “Dirigeable”.

While the dirigeable is a radical advance on the simple balloon, it, too, has only so many uses. Steam would not be enough. For the power it needed to evolve again, we need to leave France and go next door, to Germany.

Most of the world’s cars are powered by the same technology, the internal combustion engine. Its basic design dates all the way back to the revolutionary four-stroke engine created by German inventors Nicolaus Otto and Eugen Langen in 1876. Remarkably, Nicolaus Otto didn’t even think it was useful for transportation. He disagreed about it so vehemently with his factory manager that the manager quit to found his own company. That manager was named Gottlieb Daimler, and the company he founded still exists today as Daimler AG, makers of the Mercedes Benz, and the world’s oldest automobile company.

But back to the internal-combustion engine, which was lighter, more efficient, and much more powerful than the steam engine. It was inevitable someone would see what these new engines could do to power humanity through the skies.

And in 1898, it was a Brazilian inventor, Alberto Santos-Dumont, who constructed the world’s first true gasoline-powered airship. 

At the time he was doing this, the Wright Brothers in America were still flying kites. And before they could create their pioneering airplane and fly it at Kitty Hawk, the airship took a dramatic leap forward in size, in power, and in global fame, thanks to a man who had been dreaming of them, and working on his plans for them, for decades.

It’s time to meet the one, and only, Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin.

Part 2

There’s a reason why Zeppelin’s name became literally synonymous with airships, so let’s dig into his story. Ferdinand von Zeppelin was born on July 8, 1838 in the Kingdom of Württemberg, on today’s maps an area of Southern Germany near the border with Switzerland. He attended a military academy near Stuttgard, becoming an officer in the army of Württemberg in 1858. Then, he took leave from the military to study science and engineering at a nearby University.

It’s this combination of a soldier’s and a scientist’s schooling that makes von Zeppelin the ideal candidate to help the airship continue its evolution. The question is, when did get his first inspiration? When did he have his own first flight? 

As is common for famous historical figures, many people want to claim their city, street or building as the source of inspriration that person’s world-changing work.  This is true for Zepplin as well as many would like to claim to be the location of his first balloon ride.  

For example, in the state of Virginia in the United States, the Newport News Daily Press on May 30, 1965, reported on the construction of an airport runway, which they claimed was being built over the site of von Zeppelin’s first balloon ride. He was in America, the article says, in 1862, studying modern battlefield tactics up close during the Civil War.

Let’s explore this further.  We do know that von Zeppelin visited America during the Civil War, and we also know that balloons were in use. From 1861 to 1863, the Union Army had an official Balloon Corps, using balloons as observation platforms the way Napoleon had. An old coal barge was converted into a Union naval vessel, the USS Washington Parke Custis. A Union balloon could be anchored to it and steered to where it was needed. The pilots were called aeronauts, but they were not commissioned as soldiers. If captured, they would not be prisoners of war, but tried and executed as enemy spies. 

The Confederates hoped to do the same, and there are even references here and there to a Confederate dream of bombing Union cities from a great army of balloons, like in those fictional stories about Napoleon. But the Confederacy was so short of the necessary materials, that the only balloons we know they successfully completed were made out of dress silks.

Now, as to that story in Newport News, Virginia. It claims that Zeppelin, quote, "received permission from Union officers to make the ascent and while in the air he came under fire from Confederate troops." Then, needing to abandon the balloon, he had to, quote "slide down a restraining cable and burned the flesh from his hands during the emergency descent — an injury which prevented him from making another ascent but somehow left him with a lifelong interest in balloons.”

This article offered no evidence to support this action movie scenario, and we do know that it got one key fact wrong. Von Zeppelin’s visit to Virginia was in the summer of 1863, not 1862. And by then, the Union Army Balloon Corps had all but ceased operations. So we may just have to chalk this version up to local storytelling. Fake news, it seems, is not just a new concept.  The answer to the mystery, it happens, comes from von Zeppelin, himself.

We know he arrived in New York on May 6th, 1863, and stayed in Philadelphia for a few days, then continued to Washington, D.C. His military pass to observe Union forces was apparently arranged personally by President Lincoln after he met the young officer.

Von Zeppelin joined up with the Army of the Potomac, in camp near Falmouth, Virginia. He spoke very little English, and his ornate European uniform clashed with the simpler dress of the Union soldiers. As a noncombatant, von Zeppelin was barred from taking part in fighting, but he observed several engagements. On June 20th he joined a cavalry detachment carrying messages to General Pleasonton.  He saw early skirmishes around Fredericksburg.  But by the time of the battle of Gettysburg in early July, he had already returned to New York.

He boarded a train, headed for the western frontier; what we’d today call Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He explored the rapidly-developing territory for two months, several weeks of them in a canoe. On August 17th, 1863, he checked in to the opulent St. Paul’s International Hotel. And, according to a letter to his father, it was here, not on a Civil War battlefield, that von Zeppelin flew for the first time.

Across the street from the hotel, a German-born traveling balloonist named John Steiner was offering rides, $5 per passenger. That’s about $105 today, not a joyride just anybody could afford. But on August 19th, von Zeppelin bought his ticket. Afterwards he wrote to his father, “Just now I ascended with Prof. Steiner, the famous aeronaut, to an altitude of six or seven hundred feet.”  

He went on to describe his excitement about the military potential of balloons; and in interviews later in life, von Zeppelin confirmed: “While I was above St. Paul I had my first idea of aerial navigation strongly impressed upon me and it was there that the first idea of my Zeppelins came to me.”

It would take a long time for his vision to become a reality. Over ten years later, entries from his diary show him developing designs for massive airships – he’s attending lectures, watching the progress and inventions of others. A designer named Heinrich von Stephan presented a new innovation, a large, rigidly-framed outer envelope containing a number of separate gasbags inside.

But it wasn’t until von Zeppelin’s forced retirement from the military in the early 1890’s, a full 30 years from his balloon ride in St. Paul, that he could devote his time, passion, and considerable monetary resources, to making the powered airships that would eventually bear his name.

Now over those 30 years, Zeppelin had studied every development in the field, and he knew the necessary formula for success – efficient fuel, lightweight materials.  Yet he also recognized that he had to have the capacity to test, and fail, as often as it took to find a reliable design.  

He took von Stephan’s innovation of a rigid frame, and made his semi-rigid – a lightweight aluminum skeleton with durable fabric. This would better protect the dangerous gas envelopes inside from wind and weather. With two gasoline-fueled engines, a pitch elevator, and forward and aft rudder, von Zeppelin’s design was a stunning leap forward in capability and sophistication. 

Part 3

The German military has a history of keeping things simple in naming equipment, and von Zeppelin had picked up the habit. His groundbreaking, game-changing dirigible, taking a year and a half to build, measuring a record-smashing 420 feet long and 38 feet in diameter, he called, the “Zeppelin LZ 1”.

And on July 2nd, 1900, almost 37 years after that balloon ride in Minnesota, the LZ1 had its inaugural flight, carrying five passengers four miles in just 17 minutes. An emergency engine failure cut the journey short, but the flight itself could hardly be called a failure. It was a dawn of a new era. 150 years of imagination and labor by geniuses from so many nations, trying to create a controllable, powerful aircraft from the principles of the balloon, had produced the Zeppelin. 

Von Zeppelin successfully flew the LZ1 two more times until he had to halt and secure more funding. Other inventors were pushing ahead on their own designs, but it was dangerous work. In 1902, a Brazilian inventor named Maranhão (maran how), along with his mechanic, died when their dirigible exploded over Paris. The pioneering silent filmmaker Georges Méliès (mel-e-ayez  )) recreated the disaster with special effects for a newsreel.

But von Zeppelin would not be denied. He persuaded the King of Württemberg not just to hold a national lottery for funds, but to mortgage his wife’s estates. The Count put everything he had learned back to work, and by April 1905, he had produced his follow-up. It was called, naturally, the LZ 2. Unfortunately, it only managed one flight before severe wind damage crippled it.

Von Zeppelin was undaunted, and the LZ 3 had its first flight on October 9th, 1906. It broke all previous airship speed records by reaching 36 miles per hour. But von Zeppelin knew that speed alone wouldn’t achieve the possibilities he dreamed of for his airships. The next challenge would be to give his Zeppelins the power to transport large numbers of people over great distances, LZ 3 needed to make room for LZ 4.

LZ 4 was made up of 17 individual gas bags, with a central crew cabin underneath. A ladder running up the side took you to an observation platform on top, so you could navigate by the stars. It required a more effective steering mechanism than its predecessors; and the finned rudder on its stern became an iconic element of airship design for decades to come.

The LZ 4 had its maiden voyage on June 20th, 1908. It was a short hop of 18 minutes, but it was just the precursor to voyages that would destroy any doubts about the range of the Zeppelin. On July 1st, the LZ 4 completed a staggering 12-hour flight, crossing over from Germany into Switzerland and returning again. The public, and the German government, were astounded, and von Zeppelin decided to push the boundaries even further. He announced that the LZ-4 would complete a full 24-hour flight.

After a few false starts, the attempt began at 6:22am on August 4th. Crowds of people gathered along the flight path, and looked to the skies to watch this astonishing invention floating through the heavens.

Now, before I tell you about the all-important outcome of the LZ 4’s 24-hour flight, I want to take a moment with these people witnessing this event. They knew what they were seeing in the skies, perhaps we can call these airships Identified Flying Objects or IFOs. You might recall earlier in this episode, I told you about the early UFO sighting reported by Alexander the Great over 2,000 years ago. But there is a fascinating, and not entirely solved, era of UFO sightings coincides with the exact time period we’re discussing, the era of the Zeppelin. But while the one would seem to explain the other, these sightings were taking place in areas with no airships at all.

In November 1896, a newspaper in Sacramento, California, ran an article about reported sightings of a lighted shape moving slowly through the sky at about 1,000 feet elevation. One witness swore he heard voices coming from the craft, and saw the shapes of two men operating it from underneath with pedals. Just two days later, a newspaper in nearby Stockton told of a man’s claim that he had spotted a strange, metallic craft on the ground, and that three tall, slender beings who were, quote, “emitting a strange, warbling noise,” attempted to force him aboard their ship!

Sightings like these, sometimes referred to as the “cigar-shaped craft”, became a sensation in America, with thousands of sightings reported over the next two years. Speculation reached such a fevered pitch that the inventor Thomas Edison felt pressured into publishing a declaration that he had no high-tech secret project roaming our skies.

As I said, this was from 1896 through 1897. But von Zeppelin doesn’t finish his first airship until 1900, and it only flies in Europe. So what is it that people are seeing in the skies over America? Many of the sightings have been explained by natural phenomena, but the fact that there was such an accelerating trend of sightings just as both the airplane and the Zeppelin were becoming viable seems like one of those uncanny moments where humanity’s imagination was synching up with scientific progress.  We won’t answer this today, but I have a fascinating case of a UFO sighting I’ll cover in the first season of My Dark Path.

Now, back to the LZ 4, and its attempt to stay aloft for 24 hours. It turns out, it has a tragic end; but a tragedy that turned into a triumph.

Engine difficulties forced the airship to land for repairs in the German city of Echterdingen (ecterding). And there, for reasons that we don’t fully know, the airship’s gasbags exploded into flames. The primary theory is that, when a gust of wind pulled it from its moorings and a crew member tried to steer it back to the ground, some of the gas bags were torn on trees, with the rubberized fabric creating a static discharge which ignited the hydrogen. 

The LZ 4 was gone, and in front of the watching eyes of two nations. But rather than being the end of von Zeppelin’s dream, it elevated his work, and the technology of the airship, to new heights.

German investors, businesses, even individual families, poured money into Zeppelin’s company, more than $30 million by today’s currency. And Germany collected on the investment it made in him – the LZ 5 would be the first airship officially accepted into military service. Meanwhile, a professional airline, the German Airship Travel Corporation, started transporting passengers by Zeppelin in June of 1910. Before the outbreak of the first World War, some 37,250 passengers were carried on over 1,600 flights, with a 100% safety record.

***

Soon, construction of Zeppelin-style semi-rigid airships was happening in France, Britain, Spain, Italy, America, and more. The idea was more popular than ever. In 1908, legendary sci-fi author H.G. Welles wrote a book called The War in the Air, in which a mad German conqueror invades America by crossing the Atlantic with a fleet of airships. One of them hovers over New York City like a flying saucer in the movie Independence Day.

Back in the real world, an American explorer, Walter Wellman, was the first to attempt crossing the Atlantic Ocean. His airship, the America, departed Atlantic City on October 10th, 1910, and flew for 40 hours, until an engine failure left it adrift in the skies.

Wellman made history, but not in the way he’d planned. He placed the very first air-to-sea radio distress call, and successfully evacuated the crew of the America to a British steamship. 

But no one gave up on the idea of crossing the Atlantic in the air. It promised a revolution in travel. If you needed to cross an ocean, you could book passage on a ship. But ships were slow, and the oceans were dangerous. The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was enough to give one pause; but as the world went to war, ocean travel had even more potential to be deadly.

Travelers were looking to the skies. But the war was already there.

 Part 4

The First World War is considered the first war defined by the use of modern technology. This is especially true when it comes to military aircraft. Fighters, bombers, and scout planes all have their origins in that terrible conflict.

And airships had their place, as well. At the beginning of the war, they could fly high above the range of any fighters or anti-air guns, and drop bombs at will. While bombing from a Zeppelin was wildly inaccurate, it was a potent psychological weapon, and Germany took full advantage while they could.

But as the Allies developed better fighter aircraft and explosive ammunition, and improved their night-fighting tactics, German usage of Zeppelins as warships dwindled; with their last raid taking place in March, 1918. Before that happened, though, Zeppelin LZ 104, nicknamed “The Africa Ship”, set a military record that still stands today, staying in the air for 95 consecutive hours in a supply run to German East Africa that came to an unexpected end. That story is worthy of a My Dark Path episode all by itself, we hope to bring it to you someday.

Sadly, it was during the war that the Zeppelins lost their namesake, the man who had shepherded them from experimental vision to thriving reality. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin passed away in March of 1917.

***

After the war, airships and airplanes seemed locked in a battle for which would be more useful to humankind in peacetime. The first transatlantic flight was completed by airplane on June 15th, 1919; but an airship from the British Royal Air Force completed the crossing just three weeks later. And it carried paying passengers. Airplanes could only cross the ocean by staying small; but with an airship, members of the public could fly thousands of miles. And, they could do it in style.

For awhile, German Zeppelins were out of the picture. The Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War actually forbid Germany from constructing airships. It was only the persistence of one man that kept the Zeppelin story from ending right there. His name is Hugo Eckener.

Eckener started his career as an author and journalist. He covered the flights of the original Zeppelins, LZ 1 and LZ 2. Although he praised von Zeppelin’s ambitions and genius, he was ruthless in criticizing the shortcomings and limitations of these early designs. Von Zeppelin’s response was an unusual one – he offered Eckener a job.

Eckener became a publicist for his company, immersing himself in airship knowledge. He even studied the process of flying them, and earned his airship pilot’s license in 1911.

Eckener inherited the company from von Zeppelin, but his primary product was legally prohibited. He came up with an ingenious solution. Germany owed reparations to the countries it had fought against in the war, including America. But its economy was in shambles. Eckener proposed building a Zeppelin for the United States Navy, which would help Germany pay its debts, as well as loosen the ban. The two governments accepted his proposal, and LZ 126 was built and christened the USS Los Angeles. In 1924, Eckener personally captained the ship across the Atlantic to deliver it to the United States.

Eckener was determined to bring the Zeppelin back to prominence not as a weapon of war, but an icon of adventure and luxury. He solicited investments from all over the world; William Randolph Hearst even put money in. His next Zeppelin, LZ 127, was designed from the start to make an overwhelming impression. 776 feet long, it was the largest possible ship that could still fit in the company’s hanger. Running on a unique fuel called blau gas, very similar to propane, it could fly at an astonishing 73 miles per hour. The interior was built to attract a high-class clientele, with sleeper cabins, a main sitting room with viewing windows and Art Deco furniture, and a galley that could make three hot meals a day. Pilots were even instructed not to pitch the craft more than 5 degrees up or down except in an emergency; so as not to disturb the wine bottles.

LZ 127, re-christened the Graf Zeppelin, was an ocean liner in the sky, and faster than leading ships of the day. Eckener, not just a former publicist, but holding a doctorate in psychology, created a worldwide atmosphere of Zeppelin fever. He piloted the Zeppelin himself on its first Transatlantic flight in 1928; and survived a terrifying storm which tore off the covering of the tail finn. Eckener’s own son Knut ventured out onto the fin with a rigging team to repair it mid-flight. The airship successfully reached America. Flight time, 111 hours.

Then, in 1929, the Graf Zeppelin took off from Lakehurst, New Jersey, on an attempt to fly all the way around the world. The Hearst media empire helped underwrite the voyage. Passenger tickets sold for nearly $50,000 in today’s currency. Eckener also rented out space aboard the airship for another lucrative service – carrying mail. People would pay handsomely just to send a commemorative postcard aboard the miraculous ship.

The Graf Zeppelin’s journey was every bit the global sensation Eckener envisioned. Crowds greeted it as it stopped at major cities; it’s claimed that nearly a quarter of a million people gathered in Tokyo. And, just 21 days, 5 hours, and 31 minutes after it took off, it landed right back where it started, in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The fastest trip around the world.

Graf Zeppelin could reach seemingly anywhere. It even rendezvoused with a Soviet icebreaker just 500 miles from the North Pole. A future of world travel by airship lay ahead. When the Empire State Building was constructed in 1930 and ‘31, its rooftop spire was built in the hopes that Zeppelins from across the ocean would dock there, dominating the city sky just as they did in H.G. Welles’s book.

But even while the Zeppelin was one of the most visible and beloved examples of German ingenuity, the company was falling out of favor with its country. Eckener was vocally opposed to the rise of the Nazi Party, and given his heroic status with the public, he was even encouraged to run for President in 1932 against Hitler. He chose not to run, instead supporting the incumbent – President Paul von Hindenburg. Von Hindenburg won the election, and blocked an attempt by the Nazis to arrest Eckener in 1933, but his power was already waning. In a doomed effort to unify his country, he had appointed Hitler Chancellor, and he would be dead just a year later, leaving the Nazis to rule unchecked.

The new German government seized control of Eckener’s company, and began to overrule safety procedures in the interest of making flights that had the greatest propaganda value. For a while they even banned newspapers from mentioning his name. Under Eckener’s leadership, Zeppelins had carried passengers for over one million air miles without a single serious injury. But now, everything was changing.***

Part 5

When we remember the Hindenburg airship, we remember the flames. That raging storm of fire consumed the great vessel in just 35 seconds. To this day, we don’t know for certain what ignited the flames; some have dramatically suggested sabotage. But the dominant theory is the same cause which doomed the LZ 4 – static discharge. The reason it was so vulnerable to fire was that it was lifted by hydrogen – the lightest, most plentiful gas in the world. If it had used helium, it likely would have landed safely, and Zeppelins would have continued to thrive as an alternative to airplanes for many years.

Helium, though, was controlled in a near-monopoly by the United States. Breakthroughs in capturing helium from natural gas meant that America was creating nearly 90 percent of the world’s supply; and they had banned export of it. 

The LZ 129, christened the Hindenburg in honor of the late President, was designed for helium. But when it launched in 1936, it was lifted by affordable, but extremely flammable, hydrogen.

The Hindenburg continued pushing the boundaries of luxury. For awhile, its lounge contained a specially-designed baby grand piano. Every pound counts in air travel, and this piano, made mostly of aluminum alloy, only weighed 400 pounds. The airship, despite the dangers of hydrogen, even had a smoking lounge. You had to pass through an airlock to get into the pressurized chamber, and could only smoke the cigarettes and cigars sold on board.

The Hindenburg made 63 successful flights, and along with its sibling the Graf Zeppelin, was the pride of Germany. When heavyweight boxer Max Schmeling won the title by knocking out Joe Lewis, his triumphant flight home was on the Hindenburg. But it’s the tragedy of May 6th, 1937, that we remember today.

When the Hindenburg left Frankfurt, Germany, on May 3rd, it was a seasoned, well-maintained craft, the pinnacle of decades’ worth of design improvements and field testing. Its captain, Max Pruss, was a veteran airship pilot who had crossed the Atlantic 171 times; and Eckener’s own longtime right-hand man, Ernst Lehmann, was aboard as an observing senior officer.

At 7:21pm, it arrived at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Landing lines were tossed out, to be caught by the ground crew to tie the airship down. And then, four minutes later, it exploded.

The legendary commentary by Herbert Morrison was not broadcast live, he was simply recording a report for radio station WSL in Chicago. Listeners that evening were the first to experience his narration of the horrifying event. Later, newsreel film shot of the event was synched up to his commentary, and moviegoers all over the nation were able to see the disaster on the big screen. When Georges Méliès (mel-e-ez) made his short film about the 1902 dirigible explosion, he needed special effects. But this was the disaster itself, captured by the mass media with a visceral power few people had ever experienced.

The power of those seconds of film and audio wiped away all the other stories about the Hindenburg, and about airships in general. The fact that 61 of the 97 people aboard survived didn’t register. The heroism of Captain Pruss, continuing to guide the burning ship towards the ground, then carrying his own radio operator out of the wreckage while being scarred for life by the flames, was forgotten. This was not the greatest loss of life even in the history of airships, and it paled in comparison with the death toll of the Titanic. But the global shock wrought by that footage became the story.

The Graf Zeppelin was in the midst of its own transatlantic voyage when news arrived of the Hindenburg’s destruction. It landed safely in Brazil one day later. This was the last overseas commercial flight of any airship. The Nazis melted down its airframe to build military aircraft. 

***

What is the feeling of wonder? Maybe it’s the sensation we experience from something that seems both real, and impossible. A sight which defies reason, in the right moment, can flood us with the joy of knowing our world has become a little bigger, a little more magical. What was going through the heads of hundreds of thousands gathered to see the Graf Zeppelin soar over Tokyo? What was the feeling in the hearts of the people in Zurich in that picture I saw, watching the future loom in the skies, outfoxing the laws of nature?

I think there was wonder. I also think that the flip side of wonder, is terror. When things we cannot comprehend are a threat, or even seem like it, the terror can echo forever.

It only took a moment. 35 seconds over Lakehurst, New Jersey. To science, to the military, airships were a useful machine with a lot of upside. To the public, they were no longer a sight of wonder. After 35 seconds of fire, the feeling of wonder had flipped to it’s dark twin, terror.

***

Despite the public’s sudden shift in confidence, airships were active on both sides in the second World War. With their plentiful supply of helium, the American Navy built over 100 blimps. Two of them actually served as flying aircraft carriers, with hangars that could carry, launch, and land up to five small fighters. 

The so-called K-class patrol blimps were one of the greatest tools available for locating and tracking enemy submarines. They would accompany patrols and convoys, logging tens of thousands of flights. Through the entire war, only one convoy ship was ever sunk by a submarine while a blimp was watching over. And only one blimp was ever shot down, blimp K-74; hit by one of the very submarines it was hunting. All of the crew survived except one. He was eaten by a shark.

***

And what comes after? Count von Zeppelin’s LZ1 launched in the year 1900, and airships seemed like they would be there every step of the 20th century as humans invented, discovered, and further explored the globe. Instead, after World War II, the story felt effectively done.

Goodyear, which had helped build the K-class blimps in World War II, kept building airships. Their blue-and-gold fleet is iconic for carrying the corporate logo through the skies over sporting events. But it seems so disconnected from the airship story, it’s appearance is like a ritual we’ve forgotten the origins of.

But there are signs that the story isn’t as over as we think. In 1993, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, the very company Count von Zeppelin founded, and handed to Hugo Eckener before being seized by the Nazis, was revived from its dormant assets. Taking the records and designs left behind, and applying modern materials and avionics, they have built what they call the Zeppelin NT, New Technology. Zeppelin NT’s are still launching today, and have been used for flight training, advertising, surveying...and, carrying tourists. 

Meanwhile, a UK company called Hybrid Air Vehicles has created what it calls the Airlander 10. A semi-rigid helium airship in a cutting-edge design, it can carry 10 tons of cargo into places where there are no airport runways, and do it with 75% fewer carbon emissions. The next airship on their drawing board, the Airlander 50, could fit up to 200 passengers. So maybe there’s another chapter yet to the Zeppelin story. Maybe, slowly but surely, that sense of wonder can be reborn.

But only if we can talk them into installing a baby grand.

It’s odd, really that a topic that seems so mundane, so far in the past could have so many threads.  But at that moment when I first saw the Gulliver Airship in Prague, the topic of airships started to unfold in my mind and imagination.

My team and I continue to research the topic.  Now that we’ve got a foundation in their history, we’re already at work on three more episodes!  Did you know that the US was subject to multiple balloon based attacks during WW II?  I’ve already visited the site, just outside of Thermopolis Wyoming, of the first Japanese Fugo balloon attack on the United States.  This topic is a grand slam – elusive military technology, abandoned mining town, airships and WWII. Also, I’m preparing a trip to study and explore the history of the German Africa Ship and its 95 hour mission.  And another…the lost of Airship Italia as it attempted to get to the North Pole.  So, there’s more to come on this fascinating technology and it’s history in future seasons of My Dark Path.

***

Conclusion

Thank you for listening to or reading My Dark Path. I’m MF Thomas, creator and host. 

Please take a moment and give My Dark Path a 5 star rating wherever you’re listening. Lastly, thank you for listening.  You have more choices than ever about where to spend your time.  I’m grateful that you’ve chosen to spend some time here, with me, walking my Dark Path together.   And don’t hesitate to reach out via email – explore@mydarkpath.com.  I’d love to hear from you.  I really would!

I want to thank Alex Bagosy for contributing research to this episode, and our story editor, Nicholas Thurkettle, for helping me put it all together.

As I mentioned at the beginning, you can get a framed copy of this photo of the airship over Zurich.  I’m giving them away to the first 10 people to leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. Just send me an email to explore@mydarkpath.com with a picture of the review, and we’ll arrange to get you your very own airship picture.  Plus, be sure to register on MyDarkPath.com.  Every two weeks, I’ll do drawings and ship out fascinating books and other materials that illuminate the topics I cover here.  If you love these topics, you might be interested in my novels as well.  Learn more about them…and the upcoming release of Like Clockwork at mydarkpath.com as well. 

Again, thanks for walking the dark paths of history, science and the paranormal with me, your host, MF Thomas.  Until next time, good night