Where giant airships hibernate
Print Edition
DECKED out like a caver, Stefan Schnell uses a hoist to climb into the interior of a Zeppelin. With a head torch and special shoes, the mechanic inches along a temporary walkway to examine the structure of the airship.
At Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance in Germany, the 15 mechanics of the German Zeppelin Line are busy doing the annual inspection that occurs during the dirigibles’ winter flying break from November to March. Under the roof of the hangar two Zeppelins are suspended. They will be thoroughly checked before flights resume in the spring.
“First the helium is pumped out and stored in three airbags with 6,000 cubic meters’ capacity,” said Schnell. “Then the catwalk must be set up in the interior of the airship to reach 14 meters’ height inside the structure.”
Then the triangular skeleton of the 75-meter-long giant has to be examined for cracks. Nitrogen will be injected into the hollow longitudinal beams of aluminium to locate leaks, and the carbon fiber cross-beams will also be checked. The skin, which is made of up of three layers of special plastic, will be checked for holes made by pecking birds — every winter a few dozen such holes need to be repaired.
“Every winter we have a checklist that we work through and then send the report to the German Federal Aviation Authority,” said mechanic.
The balloon-like gas chambers that hold the helium must also be inspected for leaks before about 7,400 cubic meters of the gas is purified and pumped back into the airships in time for the start of the flying season in mid-March.
In 2014 the company flew about 16,000 passengers around Lake Constance, Upper Swabia and the Alps. A number of research flights were also undertaken: for example in May one for the Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam.
There are few Zeppelins in the world today; the name is a trademark of the Friedrichshafen manufacturer. Other airships, such as the blimps built by Goodyear, lack the semi-rigid frame that a Zeppelin has.
Zeppelins have been around for more than 100 years: In July 1900 the first one floated over Lake Constance. The accidental destruction of a pioneering craft, the LZ4, eight years later triggered a wave of solidarity and led to so many donations that count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was able to establish an airship company.
In the following years airship flights grew with a cumulative 35,000 passengers carried by the start of World War I. Then the military took over the 90 Zeppelins for wartime use, said Barbara Waibel of the archives section of the Zeppelin builder. Between 1914 and 1918 thousands of flights were carried out for the German army and navy.
“They were used as bomb carriers and as reconnaissance craft and escorts for the naval fleets,” she said.
In their heyday in the late 1920s, majestic airships flew to Africa, the United States and even the Arctic. For years a scheduled service operated between Friedrichshafen and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. An end to that came in 1937 when the 245-meter-long Hindenburg exploded at Lakehurst, New Jersey when its hydrogen caught fire and killed 36 people.
The Zeppelin company revived its airship business 60 years later in 1997, when one of a new generation of airships again took to the air over Friedrichshafen. Only half a dozen have been built so far, and they are mainly chartered for joyrides or to carry aerial advertising.
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