Mr. HARDESTY. I certainly do. I would take Dr. Schuette's reputation as the designer of that airship, because Dr. Arnstein never designed an airship until he came here.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Do you understand that Dr. Arnstein had to do with many Zeppelins?

Mr. HARDESTY. He did not design them.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. What did he do?

Mr. HARDESTY. I have his record here. I am sorry to have to say this, because when Mr. Litchfield was making his report before the committee, he said that 12 designers had been brought over from Germany.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. What department did you understand Dr. Arnstein had to do with?

Mr. HARDESTY. He was a calculator. Let me give you a little history of the airship. I went into this in 1920

Representative DELANEY. You promised to give a record there first. You said that you would give Dr. Arnstein's record. Do you have it there?

Mr. HARDESTY. Yes, sir.

Representative DELANEY. It might be illuminating at this time. Mr. HARDESTY. In this case, let me explain a little bit. I do not know Dr. Arnstein, but I had hoped that when the Akron was floated, it was going to solve the problem of the airship and therefore I was terribly disgusted and disappointed in what happened. What I have to say is this: Let me go back a little bit. I do not know that it is very important.

Representative DELANEY. Will you hand that record to our counsel? Is it a long record?

Mr. HARDESTY. Yes, sir. Here is what I mean to say, and I can give it to you in a few words. Here is an extract from a book by Dr. Alfred Colsman, managing director of the Zeppelin Co. in Germany today, and with them for years, in a book published in 1933 he makes this statement, and I will have to read to you a little of the history:

Already in 1920 the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., in Akron, in the State of Ohio, came into prominence. With this company we had started to negotiate through the intermediary of the Stockholm bankers Wallenberg. However, the position of this company was at the time of our visit not a favorable one, owing to the sudden drop in the price of rubber; when we were just hoping to conclude the negotiations successfully with the company a collapse occurred. After the financial affairs of the concern were put on a healthy basis later on, Eckener was able to come to an arrangement with her, which led to the transfer of Dr. Arnstein and other experts of the LZ to Akron.

I am not certain whether Arnstein is entirely satisfied with the success of his first (air) ship. Nor have I arrived at a definite estimate as to whether it has become too heavy, and its speed be not sufficient, as has been charged. At all events the ship shows some valuable innovations.

Representative DELANEY. I still say that you have not given us the real angle as to Dr. Arnstein's qualifications.

Mr. HARDESTY. I will give that to you. Here is what I will go back to. The Imperial Germany Government in 1912 ordered this Dr. Schuette to design and build an airship. He was a naval architect and a marine engineer. He built two, and the second ship was the queen of the fleet that bombed London and Paris. She was a supership, larger than anything that the Zeppelins had at that time. Then, in 1915, the Zeppelins had endeavored to build up 60 ships,

which had proved inefficient in altitude, and the German Government ordered the Zeppelin Co. to take over the design of the Schuette ship. At that time aluminum was not very strong, so Schuette figured out the airship in plywood, and built 20 of them; they were very efficient.

Representative DELANEY. How large were they?

Mr. HARDESTY. They were from a million to two and three-quarters million cubic feet.

Representative DELANEY. About one quarter the size of this ship

here.

Mr. HARDESTY. The largest Schuette ship at that time was about the size of the Los Angeles.

Schuette had an order from the German Government in 1915, when duralumin was developed, so he turned to duralumin tubes, as the Zeppelin had turned from aluminum to sheet-metal duralumin construction, as they have today, and necessarily the calculations in the metal skeleton had to be worked out. The man that did that was Dr. Claude Dornier. It is a fact, well known in Germany, that until 1914 there existed neither a research, project, nor static bureau of competent engineers within the organization of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin (Zeppelin Airship Building Co.). The post-war officials of that company openly asserted that their designs and construction depended largely upon empirical rules and experience.

Under pressure of the German Government in 1913 Count Zeppelin made urgent requests upon Claude Dornier to organize and assume direct charge of a new department of research, project, and static engineering for construction of superairships for the Zeppelin Co. Claude Dornier was an experienced engineer in steel building construction. He firmly maintained that in airship construction it was necessary to depend more and more upon exact calculation and that empirically guided work must come to an end. He made all the investigations, experiments, and calculations concerned in all possible factors and conditions, which would essentially affect the efficiency of the airships.

Representative DELANEY. I still have not heard about Dr. Arnstein. That is what we want to get into the record.

Mr. HARDESTY. Dr. Arnstein's position in 1920, as reported by William Knight of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was this:

The following are the head men at the Zeppelin concern:

Mr. Alfred Colsmann, business manager.

Mr. Ludwig Durr, technical director.

The men in charge of the various departments of the technical section are: Technical department, Maj. Oscar Wilcke, assisted by Dr. Max Munk. New projects, Mr. Paul Jaray.

Technical bureau, Mr. Karl Stahl.

Calculations, Dr. Karl Arnstein.

Representative DELANEY. What does that mean?

Mr. HARDESTY. He was a computer.

Representative DELANEY. And a designer?

Mr. HARDESTY. Not a designer. He never had had any experience when he went to the Zeppelins. He went to them as a hangar builder.

Representative DELANEY. This ship was designed by Dr. Arn

stein?

Mr. HARDESTY. Yes, sir.

Representative DELANEY. And he had never had any experience? Mr. HARDESTY. So far as I can find.

Representative DELANEY. Can't you run down that statement to find out whether it is true or not?

Mr. HARDESTY. I have run it down from every possible source. Dr. Colsmann makes the statement straight that his first job was the Akron, and Colsmann is the managing director of the company today.

Senator DUFFY. Can you give us a general idea, on a ship of the size and shape of the Akron, how much difference in weight it would make between the triple ring that was used and the kind that formerly had been used in the German ship?

Mr. HARDESTY. The Schuette design submitted in competition was, weight of the ship, 182,000 pounds, and the ZRS-4 design was 221,000, he had 12 transverse braced rings against the Zeppelin in this ship of 1011⁄2 rings. I want to make one statement clear, that there are two patents involved in this ring of the Akron. One is Dr. Arnstein's and the other is Dr. Schwengler's. Arstein's patent covers this ring, but in his patent specification he provides for transverse bracing, although he has omitted it in this ship. In the patent he calls for the braced ring, and it is a narrow ring, inherently heavy. If you had 15 of those rings on that ship, he could not fly-too heavy.

Schwengler, a German engineer who was associated with Dornier, and one of the calculators of the Zeppelin ships, had a large ring, which was the same shape, but in that case you were to put a gas bag through it, and the gas bag would be sufficient to carry to relieve the ship of its weight. It was not used; it is not used in that, nor the British ship.

Dr. Schuette commends the Schwengler ring, but he did not use it in his own design.

Senator DUFFY. You do not lay any stress on the fact that the ring is used in the Macon and the Akron as wires, which act as a bulkhead.

Mr. HARDESTY. They are not bracings. They are merely a net that cause about a 7-foot bulge, and those rings are 74 feet apart. If you put them closer together, it would add greatly to the weight of the ship. In the Schuette design, he showed the weight of the ship with 12 of those rings, and in those rings is where he saved his weight. The Schuette ring is a truss structure, well known in the Los Angeles and all other ships of that type.

I have no desire to get into the technique of this thing, but I do point out that our Government put $8,000,000 in the hands of a concern which claimed in its hearings, in all of its testimony, that it had 12 experts.

The CHAIRMAN. Twelve German experts.

Mr. HARDESTY. Twelve German experts, leaders, and in the Congressional Record, in 1928, when we had this controversy here-I was never mixed up in it before-Congressman Begg gave the names of those men, and their records, and three of them were employees of the Zeppelin Co. in Germany during the war, and the rest came later.

The point that I make about it is this: That this airship is not a Zeppelin airship, as we understand it, like the Los Angeles or the

Graf Zeppelin, and I doubt whether the ship that is building in Germany today follows these lines. In 1926, after the Shenandoah broke up, the Navy Department sent Commander Hunsaker to London as naval attaché, and in the hearings before Congress at that time it. was brought out plainly, and it is in this presentation to Mr. Jahncke, that his object was to get the designs of British ships and to bring them back here. Mr. Hunsaker some time afterwards resigned from the Navy and shortly after that went into the employ of the Goodyear-Zeppelin Co. The R-101 appears to be the basis for the design of the Akron and Macon, and the no. 3 design-here is a picture of the skeleton of the ship showing the axial boom running through the center of it, which as shown is the same as the enlarged Los Angeles type-these are the transverse bracing wires that hold the ring in tension.

Senator DUFFY. How many keels did those British ships have? Mr. HARDESTY. I do not know; maybe two or three. In the Los Angeles I think there were two; in the Shenandoah there was one. The Shenandoah was extraordinarily well built, and, frankly, I was in a concern that was ready to go ahead with a million and a half dollars, and when the Shenandoah cracked up, we all got sick. We had made an investigation as to the commercial possibilities of the airship, and the financiers were all ready to handle the project; with the assurance of President Coolidge at the time, we were ready to go ahead, even after the Shenandoah cracked up. We sent for one of the survivors and had him come to Boston at a luncheon of bankers, and General Mitchell came down here and started this investigation, and the Morrow board. Then we all cooled off. Admiral Moffet sought some help for building of the ship by the Goodyear Co. We had nothing against it. I came down here and gave some information, and I told Admiral Moffet that when the Navy demonstrated the efficiency of these airships, and not until then, could money go into it. It was a $30,000,000 project then, but we were not asking for a subsidy at any time.

Now, today, unless the Navy Department is the promoter and given broad latitude in the designing and building of airships, instead of one exclusive type controlled by one industry, I do not believe anybody is going to feel very safe in going into the commercial airship line.

I am saying this because we charge definitely that the airship Akron was too heavy. I would like you to listen to Dr. Alfred Halsted of the Bureau of Standards. I called on him yesterday, after I had read the testimony before this committee, and I asked Dr. Halstead to figure the static ceiling for various altitudes and how far the Akron could go with a typical load under normal conditions. There seems to be some question regarding the subject. I had him give the figures up to 16,000 feet when the ship would not have a soul aboard-no ballast. no fuel-I think you need that information. The Akron, as far as any check shows, would blow gas at 1,600 feet-because with 245,000 pounds weight and 406,000 gross lift and in a typical flight cited, requiring 118,000 pounds fuel for 120 hours' trip with 6,000 pounds ballast, you will have to make some discharge of fuel at a 3,000-foot altitude.

Here are reports that I have had since 1925, opinions by Dr. Schuette and Dr. Bleistein, two eminent German engineers who designed ships that were a success in Germany, on the accident of the Shenandoah. Dr. Schuette makes one statement, and that is—

With ships of war the reaching of high altitudes was, as is well known, one of the principal conditions without which the ship was absolutely worthless. For traffic airships this question is secondary for the reaching of high altitudes is, as it were, eliminated by consideration for the loss of gas. warships the tendency was to restrict fixtures and equipment to the lowest possible terms. In place of perfecting such features they were rather entirely omitted.

For

Dr. Schuette emphasizes that fact, and in the translated report of Mr. Karl Stahl, of the Zeppelin Co., by the National Advisory Committee, his whole history of the Zeppelin development all the way through is altitude

The CHAIRMAN. Do you not agree with some of these experts? Mr. HARDESTY. I do not.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me complete my question. You do not agree with those experts that altitude is important?

Mr. HARDESTY. Absolutely. I do not feel that I am an authority on that question, but an airship should be lighter than air as well as have power enough to use her dynamic force, and the sum and substance of it is, after having read all of this testimony that has gone on before you, and I have checked it back and forth and had it checked, that speed is an important factor and should not be below 78 miles. What I mean is that this airship, from the testimony given here, went out of Lakehurst, according to Commander Wylie's statement, 2,000 pounds light.

Representative ANDREW. What do you mean by that?

Mr. HARDESTY. In other words, she could just have that much buoyancy between the weight and the ground. By dynamic force, her engines took her up, and he said that at 2,000 feet she was 12,000 pounds heavy.

The CHAIRMAN. That was without the rain, too.

Mr. HARDESTY. Yes.

Now, it is my belief, and I assume from my study that the bags of that ship, where she cracked, were leaking, because here is a statement by Deal, that he took the reading of the gas cells that morning, and the average percentage of fullness was about 85 percent. When Commander Wylie stated that he had 73,000 pounds of fuel, 20,000 pounds of ballast, and other figures, he is just about right.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. No; he said the average of all of them. Mr. HARDESTY. No; he said the average of all of them.

Now, Commander Fulton the other day stated, in checking the thing, that he checks that to a degree. He said that Deal could not have observed the cracking up of those girders unless that particular cell was 80 or 82 percent filled.

Now, to take the average of all the 12 cells, and then take the buoyancy of the gas at .062 against it, you have a dangerous condition, and when she struck that storm she was heavy and he says she had 6,000 pounds of rain on top of her. Her dynamic force was not capable of lifting her.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How did she go up after the first descent? Mr. HARDESTY. By dynamic force.