The airship count turns to aeroplanes

By 1914 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin had made his name synonymous with airships, but he could see their limits. Around the outbreak of war he turned to the opposite idea, a very large aeroplane able to carry a 1,000 kg bomb over 600 km. With the industrialist Robert Bosch he financed a private venture, the Versuchsbau Gotha-Ost, renting space in Gotha and hiring Professor Alexander Baumann to lead the design. Hellmuth Hirth and Gustav Klein, who had dreamed of a transatlantic giant before the war, joined the team. The army and navy grew interested; the War Office did not.

The largest aeroplane in the world

Design work began in September 1914 and the VGO.I flew on 11 April 1915. It was, at that moment, the largest aeroplane in the world, with a 42.2 m wingspan and engine nacelles big enough for a mechanic to climb into in flight. It was also badly underpowered and plagued by its new Maybach engines. In 1916 the works moved to Staaken outside Berlin, where Zeppelin had built an airship yard on drained marshland, and took the name Flugzeugwerft GmbH. Everyone called it Zeppelin-Staaken.

Giants over London

Its masterpiece was the R.VI, the only German Riesenflugzeug, or giant aircraft, built in any numbers. Eighteen were made, most of them by Schütte-Lanz, Aviatik and Albatros because the job was too big for one firm. Each needed a ground crew of 50. Flying alone on moonlit nights and using the Thames as a signpost, the R.VIs of Rfa 501 made 11 raids on Britain between September 1917 and May 1918. On the night of 16 February 1918 one dropped the first 1,000 kg bomb to fall on England, on the Royal Hospital Chelsea. None was shot down over Britain.

A tragicomedy of engines

Behind the achievement lay endless mechanical trouble, what the historian Jack Herris called a tragicomedy of errors. The VGO.I force-landed in December 1915 after two engines failed, did the same in a pine forest in September 1916, and finally crashed into a hangar in March 1917 when its rudder jammed, killing both pilots. The R.VII crashed on operations after a clutch failure. Yet the engineering was bold: one R.VI, R.30/16, became the earliest known aircraft to fly with a supercharger, driven by a fifth engine in the fuselage.

The airliner the Allies broke up

Peace turned the works to civil flying. Adolf Rohrbach designed the E.4/20, an 18-passenger airliner with four engines, a stressed-skin metal wing, a galley and a lavatory, the first four-engined all-metal stressed-skin airliner. It flew from September 1920, but the Inter-Allied Commission judged it a potential bomber and in 1922 ordered it broken up. Rohrbach founded his own metal aircraft company that year. The Staaken field became a Lufthansa base and, in 1935, the stage on which Hitler unveiled the Luftwaffe.

Továrny

• Gotha-Ost · Gotha, Thuringia — Rented facilities, 1914–1916
• Staaken works and airfield · Staaken, west of Berlin — Zeppelin airship yard bought July 1915; aircraft works from 1916

Lidé

• Ferdinand von Zeppelin · founder — Airship pioneer who backed giant aeroplanes from 1914
• Robert Bosch · co-founder and financier
• Alexander Baumann · chief designer — Led the VGO giant aircraft project
• Adolf Rohrbach · designer — Designed the E.4/20; founded Rohrbach Metall-Flugzeugbau in 1922

Rekordy a prvenství

• VGO.I was the largest aeroplane in the world in 1915
• R.30/16 was the earliest known supercharged aircraft to fly
• First 1,000 kg bomb dropped on England, Royal Hospital Chelsea, 16/17 February 1918
• E.4/20 was the first four-engined, all-metal, stressed-skin airliner