AERONAUTICS: Zeppelin's Failure

''You should have better sense. Love," cabled Mrs. Henry J. Pierce to her husband in Manhattan. He had pleaded with her over the telephone and cable and through the U. S. State Department not to sail on the Graf Zeppelin from Friedrichshafen. She did sail, early one fair morning last week, with Susi, female gorilla, 17 male passengers and the Zeppelin's crew of 40 (Dr. Hugo Eckener commanding).

The Graf Zeppelin made a sweet passage from Friedrichshafen (on the German-Swiss border), down the Rhone Valley, across the Gulf of Lions, toward Gibraltar. Then the crankshaft of one of her five engines broke. Near Cartagena, Spain, Commander Eckener turned her back towards Friedrichshafen.

And then began a night and day of struggle. Two more engines went out of commission. The ship reached the Rhone.

Rushing down and against her went the mistral, the draft which comes from France's coolish central plateau and ends over the warmish Mediterranean. The Graf Zeppelin bucked the mistral. The wind tossed and whirled the ship. A fourth engine went dead. Only one remained to drive her and that was not enough. Commander Eckener headed her south and floated with the wind.

At Cuers-Pierrefeu. about ten miles from Toulon, there is the mooring mast of the lost Dixmude, France's only dirigible, and her hangar. French officials, who before the flight had put many a peckish restriction on the Graf Zeppelin's crossing France, wirelessed Commander Eckener to try to reach Cuers-Pierrefeu. He succeeded. A company of Senegalese troops pulled the ship to earth and walked her into the hangar. Passengers, weary, pretended unconcern over their dangers. Most of them declared that they would wait until the ship's motors were replaced and she would start again for the U. S. That, it was apparent, would not be for several weeks.