Lehman Ernst - On Air Patrol and Around the World (1936) (Original edition)
On Air Patrol and Around the World (Auf Luftpatrouille und Weltfahrt)
Author: Airship Captain Ernst A. Lehmann · Edited by: Leonhard Adelt · Publisher: Volksverband der Bücherfreunde, Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin · Year: 1936 · Contents: Memoirs of a Zeppelin commander in times of war and peace, 39 illustrations. 369 pages. In German.
Published in 1936 in Berlin, this book brings together the memoirs of Captain Ernst A. Lehmann, one of the leading Zeppelin airship commanders, from his early days in the Imperial Navy through to the great voyages of the ‘Graf Zeppelin’. The book opens with an episode from November 1935: at the helm of the ‘Graf Zeppelin’, the author operated the transatlantic postal service between Africa and South America, replacing the Lufthansa mother ships. Whilst flying over the Atlantic, he was informed by radio of a military uprising in Recife, Brazil, where he was due to refuel: the radio telegraph exchanges with ground stations, reproduced in the text, punctuate several days of waiting above the ocean, before the mail is dropped by parachute in Maceió and the airship is finally able to land.
The narrative then shifts back in time. As a young naval officer, Lehmann volunteered for the airship service in 1915 and learnt his trade on the LZ 12; he describes the tentative beginnings of the air force, the first patrols over the North Sea, dead reckoning navigation without radio, and night sorties in bad weather. Promoted to commander, he served successively on several airships, including the LZ 90 with the High Seas Fleet: he recounts reconnaissance flights over the North Sea, his participation in the Battle of Skagerrak in 1916 – where his airship illuminated the British fleet for the German fleet – and the bombing raids on London, during which the airships, having become too vulnerable to aeroplanes and anti-aircraft fire, suffered increasing losses. The war continued until the very end; the final chapters of the military section describe missions in the Baltic and the Balkans, including the resupply of Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops in East Africa, followed by the demobilisation of the air force and the internment of the surviving airships.
The second part of the book is devoted to the post-war years. Lehmann took part in the delivery of the LZ 126 ‘Los Angeles’ to the United States as part of war reparations in 1924, and subsequently in the early days of the ‘Graf Zeppelin’, of which he became one of the regular captains alongside Hugo Eckener. He describes the first Atlantic crossing in 1928, the collision with the cliff in Senegal, the round-the-world flight in August–September 1929, the cruises to South America and the regular transatlantic service, as well as the 1931 polar cruise over the Soviet Arctic. The final chapter opens with the founding of the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei on 22 March 1935, in the presence of the Minister of Air, Hermann Göring, and concludes with the commissioning of the ‘Hindenburg’, which Lehmann was to command: the book, published in 1936, ends before the Lakehurst disaster of 6 May 1937, which claimed the author’s life.