AERONAUTICS: Blue Gas & Hydrogen

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. . . .”

Conspicuous among the passengers booked for the Atlantic trip were C. E. Rosendahl, commander of the Los Angeles; Count Brandenstein Zeppelin, 30n-in-law of the late great Count; Herr Brandenburg, chief of the German Air Ministry; Lady Drummond Hay,* Hearst correspondent, who will be the first woman ever to have made such a crossing. During the trial flight she wrote: “It is a strange sensation, sleeping in cabins attached to gas bags swinging 7,000 feet in the air between the full moon and the glassy North Sea. . . . We have a million cubic feet of gas but no heat. . . . Merciless cold driving through the canvas walls of this flying tent. … I have visualized myself gracefully draped over a saloon window ledge romantically viewing the moonlit sky. The men . . . have reminded each other not to forget evening jackets and boiled shirts in their baggage. We have drawn ourselves lovely pictures of dining elegantly in mid-air with Commodore Eckener at the head of a flower-decked table . . . but . . . leather coats, woollies and furs will be our evening dress. Hot soup and steaming stew more welcome than cold caviar and chicken salad.

After several postponements the Graf Zeppelin stood ready, its 18 hydrogen bags prepared to lift 121 tons into the air for its motors to drive over the Atlantic at from 70 to 84 miles per hour.

Meanwhile officials at Lakehurst made ready to receive their guest; New Englanders remembered how they had slept too late the last time three years ago when the German-built Los Angeles arrived, resolved upon a wary eye this time; wealthy Manhattanites talked about booking passage for the return trip.

*Lady Grace Hay-Drummond-Hay, formerly Grace Marquerite Lethbridge, is the young widow of the late Sir Robert Hay-Drummond-Hay, C. M. G., His Majesty’s Consul General in Syria, whose second wife she became in 1920 when he was 74 years of age. With Karl H. Von Wiegand, Lady Drummond-Hay will keep Hearst papers in constant touch by radio with the progress of the trip.