Empires of the Sky
Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World
(Sprache: Englisch)
The Golden Age of Aviation is brought to life in this story of the giant Zeppelin airships that once roamed the sky-a story that ended with the fiery destruction of the Hindenburg.
"Genius . . . a definitive tale of an incredible time when mere mortals...
"Genius . . . a definitive tale of an incredible time when mere mortals...
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The Golden Age of Aviation is brought to life in this story of the giant Zeppelin airships that once roamed the sky-a story that ended with the fiery destruction of the Hindenburg."Genius . . . a definitive tale of an incredible time when mere mortals learned to fly."-Keith O'Brien, The New York Times
At the dawn of the twentieth century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany's Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world's first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the remarkable airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades, in the quest to control one of humanity's most inspiring achievements.
And it was the airship-not the airplane-that led the way. In the glittery 1920s, the count's brilliant protégé, Hugo Eckener, achieved undreamed-of feats of daring and skill, including the extraordinary Round-the-World voyage of the Graf Zeppelin. At a time when America's airplanes-rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luck-could barely make it from New York to Washington, D.C., Eckener's airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury. What Charles Lindbergh almost died doing-crossing the Atlantic in 1927-Eckener had effortlessly accomplished three years before the Spirit of St. Louis even took off.
Even as the Nazis sought to exploit Zeppelins for their own nefarious purposes, Eckener built his masterwork, the behemoth Hindenburg-a marvel of design and engineering. Determined to forge an airline empire under the new flagship, Eckener met his match in Juan Trippe, the ruthlessly ambitious king of Pan American Airways, who believed his fleet of next-generation planes would vanquish Eckener's coming airship armada.
It was a fight only one man-and one technology-could win. Countering each other's moves on the global
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chessboard, each seeking to wrest the advantage from his rival, the struggle for mastery of the air was a clash not only of technologies but of business, diplomacy, politics, personalities, and the two men's vastly different dreams of the future.
Empires of the Sky is the sweeping, untold tale of the duel that transfixed the world and helped create our modern age.
Empires of the Sky is the sweeping, untold tale of the duel that transfixed the world and helped create our modern age.
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1. The AeronautOn August 17, 1863, America was engulfed in civil war. The battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg had been fought just six weeks earlier, but Mr. Belote, the manager of the International Hotel, the finest in the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota, didn t care about the Blue and the Gray. That night, he was more concerned about the brown the brown mud, that is being tracked into his establishment by the hollow-cheeked, rough-whiskered frontiersman claiming to be a Graf von Zeppelin.
He certainly didn t look like one of the fancy European aristocrats Mr. Belote had read about. Yet he sounded courtly, even if he spoke English, haltingly, with a strong German accent. Upon closer inspection, his clothes, too, were tailored, though torn and ragged and not altogether suited to the backwoods; he was evidently a man who purchased rather than shot what he wore. Still, at the International Hotel, they didn t let rooms to riff-raff or charlatans.
The man, sensing the manager s reluctance, explained that he had spent the last three weeks roaming the wilderness. Fueled by the romantic fantasies of deerslayers exploring primeval American forests he had picked up from reading too many James Fenimore Cooper novels, he had elected to travel along an abandoned fur-trade trail. It was a wonder he hadn t died. Having quickly run out of food and ammunition and beset by mosquitoes and heat, he had been saved by some Chippewa Indians who showed him how to hunt ducks, build a shelter, and gather eggs.
It had been quite an adventure, but he was ready for a comfortable bed, a bath, and a hearty dinner and had the money at hand. Once he saw the dollars, Mr. Belote relented: He d be only too pleased to offer such a distinguished gentleman his best accommodations. Due to return east on the next day s train, the man paid for a single night s stay.
The following morning, August 18, woken by a commotion outside, Zeppelin drew the curtains and surveyed the
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open lot across the street. And there he spied a large silken balloon, gaily painted and patchworked, and fitted with a small wicker basket. He d heard of these legendary, magical things, of course everyone knew of them but never had he encountered one.
Right there and then, Zeppelin decided to postpone his trip back home.
Zeppelin was indeed a fancy European aristocrat and not a charlatan, but how he ended up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is something of a roundabout story.
He could trace his ancestry back to a minor thirteenth-century baron named Heynrikus de Zepelin from Mecklenburg in northern Germany whose kinsmen served as mercenaries in the Swedish, Danish, and Prussian armies that occupied their time ravaging and ravishing their way across Europe. For the next five hundred years, successive Zepelins did little other than demonstrate a prodigious talent for drunkenly gambling away the family s estates, ultimately obliging an impecunious, teenaged Ferdinand Ludwig to roam far south and enter the military service of Duke Frederick of Württemberg in the late eighteenth century.
When all-conquering Napoleon upgraded the duchy of Württemberg into a kingdom in 1806, Ferdinand was promoted to count and changed his name to Zeppelin (the Württembergers preferred a double p). In 1834, his son Friedrich did very well, marrying Amélie Macaire d Hogguer, the daughter of a wealthy Franco-Swiss cotton manufacturer, and Ferdinand our count came along four years later.
He was born into a world of international nobility, where a title served as passport to the elites in Saint Petersburg, Vienna, London, and Paris or even, in a pinch, Berlin, a backwater. Following the family s martial tradition, Zep
Right there and then, Zeppelin decided to postpone his trip back home.
Zeppelin was indeed a fancy European aristocrat and not a charlatan, but how he ended up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is something of a roundabout story.
He could trace his ancestry back to a minor thirteenth-century baron named Heynrikus de Zepelin from Mecklenburg in northern Germany whose kinsmen served as mercenaries in the Swedish, Danish, and Prussian armies that occupied their time ravaging and ravishing their way across Europe. For the next five hundred years, successive Zepelins did little other than demonstrate a prodigious talent for drunkenly gambling away the family s estates, ultimately obliging an impecunious, teenaged Ferdinand Ludwig to roam far south and enter the military service of Duke Frederick of Württemberg in the late eighteenth century.
When all-conquering Napoleon upgraded the duchy of Württemberg into a kingdom in 1806, Ferdinand was promoted to count and changed his name to Zeppelin (the Württembergers preferred a double p). In 1834, his son Friedrich did very well, marrying Amélie Macaire d Hogguer, the daughter of a wealthy Franco-Swiss cotton manufacturer, and Ferdinand our count came along four years later.
He was born into a world of international nobility, where a title served as passport to the elites in Saint Petersburg, Vienna, London, and Paris or even, in a pinch, Berlin, a backwater. Following the family s martial tradition, Zep
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Autoren-Porträt von Alexander Rose
Alexander Rose
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Alexander Rose
- 2021, 640 Seiten, mit Abbildungen, Maße: 14,3 x 21,1 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Random House Trade Paperbacks
- ISBN-10: 0812989988
- ISBN-13: 9780812989984
- Erscheinungsdatum: 05.08.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
[An] exhilarating history of the dawn of modern air travel. Publishers WeeklyTo say that [Alexander] Rose s new book, Empires of the Sky, is about the Hindenburg is to diminish the genius of the narrative Rose has crafted here. Keith O Brien, The New York Times
An obsessive, decades-long struggle between two equally matched people is always fascinating, and especially when the prize they are fighting for is nothing less than the future of flight. We take the airplane s defeat of the Zeppelin for granted, but in the Roaring Twenties and Dark Thirties it was anything but, and now, in a world aiming for carbon neutrality, we might even regret who won. Alex Rose is a historian with a scintillating prose style and an eye for the insightful, and often amusing, detail. Whereas dirigibles were heavy, ponderous, and full of gas, this book is the precise opposite. Andrew Roberts, author of Leadership in War
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