AERONAUTICS: Zeppelining

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The names of the Americans are important. Paul Weeks Litchfield is chief of the U. S. lighter-than-air ship industry. He began with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in 1900 as a factory superintendent and built Goodyear's first tire with his own hands. Before the War he persuaded Goodyear's Founder-President Frank A. Seiberling to build spherical balloons for the U. S. air services. Before, during and since the War, Mr. Litchfield built sausage balloons and nonrigid dirigibles (blimps; for the Army and Navy. In 1924 he and Edward G. Wilmer, Mr. Seiberling's successor as Goodyear president, were at Friedrichshafen, inspecting the Zeppelin works. They at once made a deal with Dr. Eckener for exclusive North American manufacturing rights. Hence the formation of the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp.

Those Americans were Dr. Eckener's hope for his Ersatzgas. The only lifting gas which he has available in Europe is hazardous hydrogen. Helium, non-inflammable, although not as efficient a lifter as hydrogen, is the only substitute which he knows of, although industrial scientists are searching for others. Helium is a natural U. S. monopoly. By devious corporate interrelations and by performing an air service for the U. S. public, he expects his U. S. collaborators to get him his gas substitute.

Getting dollars to replace pfennigs is almost as devious and difficult. The Graf Zeppelin was built by pfennigs. In 1925 the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin was virtually bankrupt. Two ships which it had built, the Nordstern and Bodensee (since wrecked) were confiscated by France and Italy for War damages. The Los Angeles the U. S. forced it to build. Dr. Eckener, great publicist,* organized the Zeppelin- Eckener Spends (gifts, alms) and despatched collectors with small boxes to German street corners, theatres, beer halls, to collect pfennigs from money-pinched patriots. The pfennigs totalled enough to build the Graf Zeppelin.

Last week, Dr. Eckener and most of the Akron group sped to Manhattan. There they conferred with representatives of G.M.P.-Murphy & Co. and of Lehman Bros., and feted with National City Bank officials. Those houses are bankers for Continental plane lines— North, Central and South America. By making connections with them Dr. Eckener and Mr. Litchfield foresaw a possible world air linkage—Zeppelins by sea, planes by land.

But the bankers were not carelessly openhanded. Said they, in effect: "You can have all the dollars you need, if you get mail contracts, if you start to build your ships. Show us the prospects of profits. And German bankers must co-operate."

Relatively easy, though not simple, were those stipulations for Dr. Eckener. With passengers, plus air mail, plus ex- press, Zeppelins can be made to pay handsomely he thinks. He tightened his tie, which slips loose on his thick neck, looked at his Manhattan timepiece (he carries three watches, showing Friedrichshafen. Greenwich and New York time), arched his mephistophelian brows, and hastened to the first Hamburg-American liner available for Hamburg. A Hamburg-American it had to be, for that company aided Graf Zeppelin in her world flight. The first boat was the slow New York, which takes ten days for the crossing. As the indom- itable, tired oldster (he is 61) boarded her, his grey pants wrinkled from much conference sitting, his black lisle socks drooping from the legs of his white long-drawers he sighed