The Zepplin

Seemingly harmless, the German Zeppelin was built during the early 20th century by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, and was originally designed to be a passenger plane. The first Zeppelin was square shaped and did not last more than eighteen minutes in flight before it came crashing down to earth. This large blimp was slightly difficult to navigate, rudders and elevator fins had to be constantly adjusted in order to make the plane fly on course. Over time during the 1920’s, the Zeppelin was adapted and turned out to be a better cargo plane than passenger plane. With its metal alloy skeleton and large but cramped space towards the bottom of the plane, the Zeppelin was able to stack more cargo than passengers in its base. In order to ensure a safe flight, crew or cargo often filled out the bottom of the airplane for stability reasons alone, since this large airborne craft was less than agile.

During World War I, the German army no longer viewed the Zeppelin as a passenger or cargo plane. Recognizing a great opportunity to use the air-borne monsters for viewing ground activity from a distance, as well as using the planes to drop bombs on unsuspecting towns, the Zeppelin suddenly became a looming threat. Only able to fly via an outer shell that contained numerous hydrogen filled “balloons,” the Zeppelin turned out to be an inadequate war time airplane and became highly susceptible to gun fire. Eighty-eight Zeppelins were built during World War I, and sixty of them were lost – most likely being shot out of the sky and falling to the earth in a dusty explosion.