Whether this feeling spread to the German Government it is impossible to say. Nor it is easy to estimate how much official confidence was shaken by it. The government, even before the war, was singularly reticent about the Zeppelins, their numbers and plans. It is certain that orders were not withheld from the Count. Great numbers of his machines were built, especially after the war was entered upon. But he was not permitted longer to have a monopoly of government aid for manufacturers of dirigibles. Other types sprung up, notably the Schutte-Lanz, the Gross, and the Parseval. But being first in the field the Zeppelin came to give its name to all the dirigibles of German make and many of the famous--or infamous--exploits credited to it during the war may in fact have been performed by one of its rivals.
It would be futile to attempt to enumerate all these rivals here. Among them are the semi-rigid Parseval and Gross types which found great favour among the military authorities during the war. The latter is merely an adaptation of the highly successful French ship the Lebaudy, but the Parseval is the result of a slow evolution from an ordinary balloon. It is wholly German, in conception and development, and it is reported that the Kaiser, secretly disgusted that the Zeppelins, to the advancement of which he had given such powerful aid, should have recorded so many disasters, quietly transferred his interest to the new and simpler model. Despite the hope of a more efficient craft, however, both the Gross and the Parseval failed in their first official trials, though later they made good.
The latter ship was absolutely without any wooden or metallic structure to give her rigidity. Two air ballonets were contained in the envelope at bow and stern and the ascent and descent of the ship was regulated by the quantity of air pumped into these. A most curious device was the utilization of heavy cloth for the propeller blades. Limp and flaccid when at rest, heavy weights in the hem of the cloth caused these blades to stand out stiff and rigid as the result of the centrifugal force created by their rapid revolution. One great military advantage of the Parseval was that she could be quickly deflated in the presence of danger at her moorings, and wholly knocked down and packed in small compass for shipment by rail in case of need. To neither of these models did there ever come such a succession of disasters as befell the earlier Zeppelins. It is fair to say however that prior to the war not many of them had been built, and that both their builders and navigators had opportunity to learn from Count von Zeppelin's errors.
Among the chief German rivals to the Zeppelin is the Schutte-Lanz, of the rigid type, broader but not so long as the Zeppelin, framed of wood bound with wire and planned to carry a load of five or six tons, or as many as thirty passengers. No. I of this type met its fate as did so many Zeppelins by encountering a storm while improperly moored. Called to earth to replenish its supply of gas it was moored to an anchor sunk six feet in the ground, and as an additional precaution three hundred soldiers were called from a neighbouring barracks to handle it. It seems to have been one of the advantages of Germany as a place in which to manoeuvre dirigibles, that, even in time of peace, there were always several hundred soldiers available wherever a ship might land. But this force was inadequate. A violent gust tore the ship from their hands. One poor fellow instinctively clung to his rope until one thousand feet in the air when he let go. The ship itself hovered over the town for an hour or more, then descended and was dashed to pieces against trees and stone walls.
The danger which was always attached to the landing of airships has led some to suggest that they should never be brought to earth, but moored in mid-air as large ships anchor in midstream. It is suggested that tall towers be built to the top of which the ship be attached by a cable, so arranged that she will always float to the leeward of the tower. The passengers would be landed by gangplanks, and taken up and down the towers in elevators. Kipling suggests this expedient in his prophetic sketch With the Night Mail. The airship would only return to earth--as a ship goes into dry dock--when in need of repairs.
