AERONAUTICS: Blue Gas & Hydrogen

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Near Yarmouth last week Englishmen early one evening heard a disagreeably familiar purring sound. Then they saw the first Zeppelin to appear over England since the War.

In Bremen night-revelling Germans heard the same sound, rushed into the streets and put up such a shout that high above them passengers aboard the ship, shivering between scant blankets in unheated cabins, could hear.

In Berlin early risers crowded to the rooftops to cheer this "symbol of German invincibility." Work ceased for the morning. On one rooftop the widow of a former Zeppelin officer, who had kept watch since dawn, dropped dead as the glistening monster drifted overhead.

At Friedrichshafen the same evening Dr. Hugo Eckener, pilot and designer of the Count Zeppelin, announced that the ship had passed successfully her final 35-hour test.

Blau Gas. Used in the trial flight of the ship is a gas fuel weighing no more than air itself. It can be contained in bags and permits the ship to carry a paying load in place of the many tons of gasoline which used to be an essential weight. Furthermore, as its specific gravity is nearly the same as air, its consumption does not necessitate a constant shifting of ballast as in the case when tanks of liquid fuel are being emptied.

It has nothing to do with lifting the ship, that being the work of the hydrogen gas. and is not, as is commonly supposed, a new and mysterious discovery. The same gas, known as Pintsch gas, has been used in a less pure form to light railroad cars and farmers' stoves in this country for a decade. Herman Blau of Augsburg, Germany, simply refined upon the initial work of his friend Julius Pintsch and gave his name to the product.

During a trial flight of the Count Zeppelin the Blau gas was alternated repeatedly with the ordinary mixture of benzol and gasoline without causing the slightest trouble to the new type Maybach motors, the first time in the history of aerial navigation that a gas had been used as fuel. "Our passengers," said Dr. Eckener, "did not even know that we had been running on gas until I told them."

Waiting. While the about-to-be passengers waited, keyed up and impatient, Dr. Eckener poured over maps of high and low pressure areas and the crew made a few salutary adjustments in their sleeping quarters.

"The Graf Zeppelin is not a fair weather ship," Dr. Eckener explained. "She demonstrated that . . . but I am not going to pick out the worst day to start for America. . . . Moreover the weather will determine whether we travel 4,000 miles or 6,000 miles. . . . Naturally I would like best to choose the northern route which is the shortest. . . . From the moment we reach the European coast we will need from 45 to 80 hours for the actual crossing. . . . After the fortieth hour don't worry if you do not hear from us for a long time. . . ."