Transport: Bolognas

Like two great bolognas, the Graf Zeppelin and the new Hindenburg (LZ-129) last week floated over Germany on a propaganda tour. While the Graf hovered above Bavaria sprinkling election handbills, the Hindenburg drifted beside it with a mammoth loudspeaker bleating: “The Führer’s purpose is peace and honor!” By day, Reich broadcasting stations relayed special programs from a short-wave studio aboard the Hindenburg. By night, special searchlights at each major city fingered the huge sausages floating above.

Back at Friedrichshafen after four days of high-altitude stumping, the Hindenburg underwent a swift overhaul, to prepare the brand-new ship for its real test—a voyage to South America under Captain Ernst August Lehmann. On its first transatlantic trip the Hindenburg, carrying 30 passengers, was scheduled to reach Rio de Janeiro in 80 hours. The voyage will be no novelty to Captain Lehmann. He grew up with the science of airship operation, was for years Dr. Hugo Eckener’s right-hand man.

A seamy, saturnine man of 50, Captain Lehmann’s career makes him fully equipped to command Germany’s greatest airship. A naval architect on Count Ferdinand Zeppelin’s staff, he was operating the dirigible Sachsen when the War began. As a raider, he bombed Antwerp once, London twice, afterwards claimed he could have destroyed the British capital completely if the Germans had so desired. Once he went home with 400 bullet holes in his ship’s fabric. Continuing in the profession after the War, he rose to be assistant director of the Zeppelin works, alternated with Dr. Eckener as commander of the Graf. For four years (1923-27) he worked for the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. in Akron, almost took out U. S. citizenship papers. He thinks the Hindenburg is roughly his 100th command.