Time Machine: The Graf Zeppelin

The around-the-world flight of the hydrogen-filled German dirigible, Graf Zeppelin, was one of the biggest news stories of 1929.

The craft took off from Lakehurst, N.J., on Aug. 8, 1929, heading east over the Atlantic Ocean, carrying 16 passengers, 33 crew members and 600 pounds of mail.

On the last leg of its journey, it re-entered the United States, landing at Los Angeles on Aug. 26. It headed east again, with its Aug. 28 flight path planned from Kansas City to St. Louis. But it turned north over Hibbard, Mo., and sailed over Milton in Van Buren County in far southeast Iowa shortly before 12:30 p.m.

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“If the Graf continues on its northward course, it probably would pass west of Keosauqua and east of Fairfield, and should pass overhead near Washington, Iowa. At about that point, it was thought, Dr. Hugo Eckener would veer his great craft eastward, crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois somewhere between Muscatine and Clinton,” a United Press International report stated.

Catching a glimpse

The news inspired locals to race to observe the giant airship.

Ray Anderson, farm editor of The Evening Gazette, took off with a crew in a bus to try and see the Graf in the sky.

“We were 10 miles or so northwest of the tri-cities (Davenport, Rock Island and Moline) near Maysville on No. 76 and moving right along when first we discovered the elongated cloud parallel to us on the south horizon,” he wrote. “The speedometer gave up once or twice, but the old bus never missed a beat of her sturdy steel heart, and we arrived at Davenport almost at the same time as the great ship of the air: 2:10 p.m. according to the Sunday editor’s (Edward Dose’s) watch.

“Our look was not for long. All too soon the Zep was a mere speck in the distance again — gone to blaze the remainder of its historic trail.”

As the dirigible soared over Davenport on its way to Chicago, 13 airplanes from Iowa and Illinois buzzed around the huge blimp while factory whistles and boat horns blew in greeting.

Wind a factor

The Zeppelin’s detour over Iowa was likely due to the “adverse winds that the great airship struggled against on her way across the continent,” The Gazette reported. “It is likely that Dr. (Hugo) Eckener (chairman of the Zeppelin company) discovered he could avoid the stronger winds by veering northeast, or that he could gain time by taking a quartering course instead of flying directly against the wind.

“Whatever the cause of the visit, the farmers who paused in wonderment to stare at the huge vessel of the air were treated to a spectacle of great romantic and scientific interest.”

Fly-by

Two of the planes flying around the dirigible over Davenport came from Cedar Rapids’ Hunter Field — a Stinson Sr. flown by Cedar Rapids Airways Superintendent Dan Hunter and a Stinson Jr., owned by H.G. Beck of Manly, and flown by Karl Fischer.

The planes, which left Cedar Rapids at 1:50 p.m., couldn’t fly as slow as the huge airship, so they would pass by it and circle back to make another pass, waving at the dirigible’s passengers.

“They flew with it for half an hour, getting close enough to see passengers in the cabin that hung below the great ‘bag of air’ and to see the American flag that one of the men waved in greeting,” The Gazette reported.

As Hunter flew near the Graf, passenger Howard Hall, the famed Cedar Rapids industrialist, took motion pictures.

“The pictures were obtained when the envelope was 1,500 feet high and traveling at a rate of 65 miles an hour,” The Gazette reported.

Hunter and Hall were back in Cedar Rapids by 3:20 p.m.

“The passage of the Zeppelin marked the first time a lighter-than-air craft of the greater type has flown over Iowa soil,” UPI reported. “Some of the smaller-type, semi-rigid dirigibles have been in Iowa in the past, but since the disaster of the dirigible Shenandoah, which broke up over Ohio four years ago, the greater ships have steered clear of the treacherous cross currents and air storms of the Midwest.”

Pilot Fischer described the Graf Zeppelin as “a big silver bag of wind.”

“Underneath and toward the front hung the enclosed cabin, something like the cabin of a lake cruiser. Its flight was very smooth, but considerable slower than that of the planes circling around it like flies around an elephant. It nosed down over Davenport, like making a bow.”

Both planes flew within 300 feet of the Graf, a distance set by the Department of Commerce.

Trip completed

The Graf Zeppelin landed back in Lakehurst, N.J., the morning of Aug. 29, 1929. Flying time for the around-the-world flight was 12 days, 12 hours and 13 minutes. When the four stops were figured in, the trip took 21 days, 5 hours and 31 minutes.

By Aug. 30, Howard Hall was proudly showing his reel of moving pictures of the Graf Zeppelin.

The Graf and her new sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin II, were grounded in 1940 when the U.S. government denied Germany’ requests for helium, a product available only in the U.S.

Adolf Hitler ordered the Zeppelins destroyed in their hangars in 1945, calling them “useless military encumbrances.”

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