Lighter-Than-Air

Like a globe-trotting dowager, self-sufficient and completely self-assured, the Graf Zeppelin barged into and out of the U. S. last week on a schedule adjusted to suit herself. Having completed her 50th crossing of the Atlantic, she rolled up from Rio with 21 passengers including a 10-month-old baby, picked up Miami's Mayor Sewell, and made for Akron, Ohio. It was after dusk when Dr. Hugo Eckener pointed the ship's nose down through driving rain into the floodlights of the Good-year-Zeppelin dock at Akron. A sharp gust whipped her tail (which now sports the Nazi swastika). Safe-playing Dr. Eckener knew the ship could not be docked in such a ground wind; rather than ride the night out at the mooring mast, he let his passengers ride it out aloft.

Next night the Graf set out with a load of distinguished deadheads for the much-publicized objective of her northern voyage--Chicago's Fair. She was to fly over the city about 9 a. m., but bad weather threatened. While most Chicagoans lay abed--before 7 a. m.--the ship slipped into Curtiss-Reynolds Airport where a ground crew of 250 soldiers hauled her to earth. She stayed long enough for a reception committee to escort Dr. Eckener ashore, cast off 25 minutes later, flew over the Fair on her way back to Akron.

Dr. Eckener spent the day in Chicago, visited the Fair, received a dinner in his honor at the swank Union League Club where German Ambassador Hans Luther loudly flayed critics of Hitler. Before re turning to Akron to pilot his Graf home to Friedrichshafen via Seville, he had a ride in the three-wheeled, streamlined Dymaxion automobile which Gulf Refining Co. had been driving around Chicago for publicity. Luckily for him, he did not ride at the same time as two of his Graf passengers, Col. William Francis Forbes-Sempill. Master of Sempill, British soldier and flyer; and Charles Dolfuss, attache of the French Air Ministry. Speeding them out to Chicago's airport to rejoin the Graf, the Dymaxion skidded and overturned near Soldier Field, killed its driver Francis T. Turner, badly injured the two passengers.

As he does every time he visits the U. S., bluff old Dr. Eckener assured newsmen they would see transatlantic airship service as soon as U. S. bankers round up enough money. In Friedrichshafen the LZ-129 bigger than the Macon and twice as big as the Graf Zeppelin, has its skeleton nearly complete. In Akron the designing staff of Goodyear-Zeppelin is working on plans for a similar commercial ship to be built there and operated alternately with LZ-129 But bankers and builders know that no service will start without assurance of substantial U. S. mail subsidies.

P:Only source in the world developed to produce helium in sufficient quantities for airship purposes is a Government-owned natural gas field at Amarillo, Tex. Last week Navy officials awaited confirmation of a report from California, that an oil well in Madera County was yielding nearly pure helium. Scientists were skeptical for two reasons: 1) Exhaustive tests had convinced them that California gases are not helium-bearing. 2) When tested for lift, "helium" often turns out to be nitrogen or carbon dioxide.

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