Rating: 
Summary: A great glimpse into a forgotten era.
Review: This book is a great look at a part of history that is all but forgotten to us now. We've all seen the Goodyear blimp flying over a Monday Night Football game and thought, 'that's pretty neat,' but few of us alive today can imagine a time when the great airships were seen by many as the future of air travel. This book is a fascinating glimpse into a forgotten era, when the sight of a giant zeppelin overhead could captivate an entire town like New York, and bring traffic to a stop. It was a time when the entire world was riveted by the around the world flight of the Graf Zeppelin as it made history. If you are merely curious about zeppelins, this will make you a passionate fan. If you're already a fan, this will put the struggle to create the zeppelins and their collapse during World War II into a greater contest that will show you how different flying could have been, if not for the time in which the zeppelins thrived.
Rating:
Summary: A great glimpse into a forgotten era.
Review: This book is a great look at a part of history that is all but forgotten to us now. We've all seen the Goodyear blimp flying over a Monday Night Football game and thought, 'that's pretty neat,' but few of us alive today can imagine a time when the great airships were seen by many as the future of air travel. This book is a fascinating glimpse into a forgotten era, when the sight of a giant zeppelin overhead could captivate an entire town like New York, and bring traffic to a stop. It was a time when the entire world was riveted by the around the world flight of the Graf Zeppelin as it made history. If you are merely curious about zeppelins, this will make you a passionate fan. If you're already a fan, this will put the struggle to create the zeppelins and their collapse during World War II into a greater contest that will show you how different flying could have been, if not for the time in which the zeppelins thrived.
Rating:
Summary: WHEN GIANTS ROAMED THE SKIES
Review: Today with stealth fighters and bombers, Concorde supersonic airliners and jumbo-jets, few people realize that from 1928 to May 1937 German zeppelins dominated trans-Atlantic passenger air travel. In the book, Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine, Douglas Botting takes the reader back to the time of "zeppelin fever" and using the Graf Zeppelin as the narrative vehicle, tells the story of the German zeppelins and the life of Dr. Hugo Eckener. The book opens with a account of the Graf Zeppelin's August 1929 flight from Friedrichshafen Germany to Berlin, the beginning of the Graf's 1929 round the world flight. Chapter 2 tells the story of Count Zeppelin and his invention of the rigid airship in 1900. Amazingly in 1910 zeppelins began carrying passengers on sightseeing flights over German cities. Chapter 3 narrates the zeppelin in WWI where great technical advances were made but the zeppelin had limited military utility. Virtually put out of business after WWI by the Inter-Allied Control Commission, the Zeppelin Company was revived in 1926 by supplying the LZ-126 (USS Los Angeles) to the United States as war reparations. Later funds were raised in Germany to build LZ-127, christened Graf Zeppelin on July 8, 1928. The Graf Zeppelin was a passenger airship test-bed and Dr. Eckener wrote that the Graf ". . .was to prove that passengers could now be carried across the Atlantic Ocean by air in speed and safety, and with all the comfort and pleasure which the modern traveler demands." Botting narrates the dramatic first Atlantic crossing of the Graf in 1928. The 1929 world flight was in reality two record flights, one originating at Lakehurst, New Jersey financed by Hearst Newspapers and the second starting at Friedrichshafen. Chapter five continues the world flight narrative noting it was not a world record that Eckener had in mind but considered it ". . .a proving flight to demonstrated the zeppelin's potential for a worldwide passenger air service." The book's account of the world flight is a fascinating well-written adventure story. The world flight of the Graf Zeppelin "provided incontroversible proof of the airship's capability as an intercontinental transport mode"; the author notes the world flight "had been brilliantly executed in both its planning and operations stages." However, the passenger zeppelin used dangerous hydrogen and was vulnerable to weather masses. The author writes "The Graf got away with it on the world flight partly because it was a first-class aircraft, but above all because of the masterly expertise of the crew." The text notes "In the autumn of 1930, as the Graf Zeppelin was completing its first series of commercial flights to South America," the Zeppelin Company began the design of LZ-129, later named the Hindenburg. In 1931 the Graf made an Artic exploration flight to the Soviet Union meeting a Russian icebreaker above the Artic Circle. The text notes that this was the last spectacular proving flight for the Graf. In 1931 the Graf made three scheduled advertised flights carrying passengers and mail to South America, the first scheduled transatlantic air passenger flights in history. In 1932 scheduled passenger flights to South America in the Graf Zeppelin continued and plans were initiated to establish zeppelin travel throughout the world. The author's account of this critical period in zeppelin history is excellent. In 1933 the Graf continued transatlantic passenger flights and the Nazi came to power. The 3rd Reich helped to fund construction of the Hindenburg, but at a price. The government took over zeppelin passenger operations and moved it to Frankfurt Germany with the Zeppelin Company left solely as a manufacturer. Having criticized the Nazi, Dr. Eckener was declared a non-person and could not command the Hindenburg when it was completed. The book tells how in 1936, Eckener's dream came true as the Hindenburg made ten scheduled round trips from Germany to America, plus seven round trips to Brazil while the Graf made thirteen round trip flights to Rio. The financial results were impressive with Eckener noting that they were an "agreeable surprise." On May 3, 1937 the Hindenburg, LZ-129, left Frankfort for Lakehurst, N.J. under the command of Captain Max Pruss, Eckener still a Nazi non-person was not on board. Three days later at 7:25 P.M. EDT, while landing at Lakehurst, the Hindenburg exploded. The account of the Hindenburg catastrophe is excellent. Most interesting are several direct quotes from on-board passengers and crew. The total number of dead totaled thirty-six-thirteen passengers out of thirty-six on board and twenty-two of the sixty-one crewmembers plus one civilian ground crew. The book states that the Hindenburg disaster marked the first passenger fatalities in commercial zeppelin operations since their beginning in 1910, zeppelins having made twenty-three hundred flights carrying more than fifty thousand passengers with a blameless safety record. After May 1937, commercial zeppelin operations ceased. However, as one of the last commanders of passenger zeppelins noted, "It was not the catastrophe of Lakehurst which destroyed the Zeppelin, it was the war." During WWII, the Zeppelin Company assembled V-2 rockets. In less than ten years, the Graf Zeppelin had made 590 flights traveling 1,060,000 miles safely carrying 13,000 passengers; a record not exceeded by an airplane for many years. When the Hindenburg's successful passenger flights are added in, this was a remarkable accomplishment, as transatlantic airplane passenger flights didn't begin until 1939 with large flying boats making numerous enroute-refueling stops. Not until 1957, twenty years after the Hindenburg's nonstop passenger flights to North America, did scheduled direct nonstop service begin with DC-7s from New York to London. This is a well-written history and those interested in aviation history will find it refreshing to read an account of German zeppelins where the book's primary focus is not the Hindenburg disaster.
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Summary: Without question currently the best book on the subject
Review: [BEFORE YOU RATE MY REVIEW ON THIS BOOK, PLEASE TRY TO UNDERSTAND - I DON'T NORMALLY REVIEW BOOKS. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE REVIEW, I'D PREFER YOU IGNORE IT INSTEAD OF GIVING IT A NEGATIVE VOTE.] I have always been fascinated by the concept of the rigid airship, and I have searched high and low for the perfect book on the subject. This book isn't what I'd call perfect, but to date it is the best one I have found. Read on to see what makes it such. Another reviewer referred to this book as a "History book that reads like a poignant novel." In other words, unlike other books on rigid airship history, this is a fact-based novel. It covers everything from the birth of Count Zeppelin, creator of the rigid airship, to the dismantling of the Graf Zeppelin II, the world's final rigid airship, and everything in between. That's nearly a hundred years of airship history. The primary focus is, obviously, the Graf Zeppelin (pictured on the cover.) In this book, you'll learn all of the following: -Why Hugo Eckener preferred the title of Dr. instead of captain.
-What really started the fire in the LZ-4.
-What really happened on Hugo Eckener's first flight as an airship captain. -The only real advantage to using Hydrogen over Helium.
-Why there was never an airship called LZ-128.
-The fate of just about every rigid airship, including American and British ones.
-And a whole lot more. There really isn't much more to say, except that I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in rigid airship history. My only complaint is the lack of photographs, but this is easily overcome in that this book makes learning about the history of the rigid airship more accessible than most other books of the type. If you're interested, give it a read.
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