or shortly after the beginning of the war, it was brought down to Johannestown, near Berlin, where I organized for the Army their training organization, which was at that time still employing airships in their organization.

Senator Durry. May I interrupt? You say several thousand passenger flights with one ship. About what would be the average length of those flights with passengers?

Mr. HEINEN. Those ships, being limited in radius because they were small, were about 20,000 cubic meters or 600,000 cubic feet. The length of these flights varied between 1 hour and 24 hours.

Senator DUFFY. And they would average about how much?

Mr. HEINEN. I should say they averaged about 3 hours, or 2 hours to 3 hours.

Representative HOPE. Were you flying a regular schedule in making those flights?

Mr. HEINEN. Not at that time. The development of the trips in her regular schedule came only after the war, after the development of the airship qualifications had reached a very great height as compared with those ships. Those were the first activities of our company before the war. They were more or less of a searching nature. We had not yet satisfied ourselves that the qualifications that the ships had were sufficient. We knew they were not sufficient to fly them on any regular schedules anywhere. But we saw the line of development we had to follow until we reached that point. After about five months of this activity of training for the Army, I was reclaimed by the Zeppelin Works at Friedrichshafen in order to test and help develop their construction of their ships and to deliver them to the Army and to the Navy, who were crying for them at that time. I followed this activity until the end of the war.

Representative HOPE. That is, training flyers?

Mr. HEINEN. No, sir; testing airships and helping them to acquire knowledge in the general work.

After the armistice the activities of this company, the Delag, were resumed in August 1919. Then a new commercial airship was built in Friedrichshafen, of which I was made captain.

The intention was to show that the development of the art had reached the point where regular schedules commercially could be maintained. And we quite well succeeded in that respect.

Representative HOPE. You mean with this Zeppelin?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir; with this Zeppelin. The size of the ship was again about 20,000 cubic meters, or nearly exactly the size of the Hansa, which I commanded before the war, but its speed had doubled, its useful load had trebled, and its safety factors in construction had nearly doubled also.

With this ship we succeeded in making daily flights on the stretch between Friedrichshafen and Berlin, which is about 350 miles.

We found that the payload was insufficient for the demand. The useful load or the pay load of this ship could be improved considerably, nearly 50 percent, by increasing only slightly the volume of the ship.

The second ship which we had intended to put into service had had this alteration, and in the middle of November 1919, just as the Bodensee, which I commanded, was taken out of commission in order

to perfect this alteration. At that time the allied nations took those two ships away from Germany, and this very promising development had to be stopped.

The CHAIRMAN. That is to say, you were going to take a ship that you had been flying for some time and increase its size?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you expect to cut it in two and increase the size of it?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir; we did.

The CHAIRMAN. You had girders?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir; the same way as this [indicating].
The CHAIRMAN. And rings?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And you cut it in two?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And changed it?

Mr. HEINEN. By corresponding longitudinals and the rings, as was already explained in the testimony.

In order to bring out a certain vital point in the investigation I might say that we had some such lengthening out of the ship at a specified point during the war. In our secondary works in Staaken, near Berlin, we had one standard size 55,000 cubic meter ship ready for test flights on a certain Saturday morning. Then we got orders from the navy department in Berlin to take this ship and lengthen it out two compartments in order to increase its pay load, because it was intended to be used to help our sorely pressed troops in East Africa.

The CHAIRMAN. When was that? Was that in 1919?

Mr. HEINEN. No, sir; that was during the war.

The CHAIRMAN. I thought you said it was in 1919.

Mr. HEINEN. It is another story that I am relating now, in order to bring out a vital point in the investigation.

The CHAIRMAN. By lengthening it two compartments, do you mean two ring sections?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that a compartment?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir. And it was to fit out this ship in a special way in order to carry large amounts of cargo and to do this as speedily as possible. We therefore stopped this test flight on Saturday morning, got the order through at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday, and I had this ship up for a test flight on the following Thursday morning. This ship was sent down to Bulgaria, and later on to Africa, on the succeeding Tuesday, if I am not mistaken. It took slightly more than 1 week to have this ship fitted out for special purposes, which was of a startling magnitude. And we had it ready in 1 week.

I bring out this point particularly in order to show the enormous speed of replacements for use in war or otherwise.

The CHAIRMAN. How much did you add to the length of it?
Mr. HEINEN. We added two bays.

The CHAIRMAN. Approximately how many feet?

Mr. HEINEN. We added 90 feet.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, you did not enlarge the diameter?

Mr. HEINEN. No, sir. This was a piece put in. Of course, it disturbed totally the dynamic qualities of the ship and made it very difficult to handle and very delicate, but in order to get the proper dynamic qualities it would have been necessary to change the whole aspect of the ship.

The CHAIRMAN. You did not increase the motive power?

Mr. HEINEN. No, sir; we did not increase the motive power. We only wanted to increase the cargo carrying capacity of the ship for one special purpose. We were sufficiently confident as to our ability to handle these ships to take this ship down to Africa and perform this special mission.

In passing, it might be interesting to say here that when this ship was recalled by general headquarters and was brought back, it was brought back to Bulgaria and afterwards it was there used for other war purposes. But the log of this trip is quite interesting if you realize the magnitude of this flight expressed solely in lengths of journey in comparison to the R-34 flight over to America. It is about 1 to 4, meaning that this ship, if it had employed only fuel for long distance flights, could have made the trip over the ocean and back.

The CHAIRMAN. That is quite different from the Akron, which went from Lakehurst to the Pacific coast and had to be refueled when they got out in California, because the greater part of the fuel had been exhausted.

Mr. HEINEN. It was, of course, nothing but a mathematical calculation and quite within the keeping of the intended flight.

After the completion of this campaign in 1919 the activities of the airship in Germany perforce stopped.

The CHAIRMAN. You did not tell us what became of the Bodensee. Mr. HEINEN. I stated the Bodensee had to be delivered to Italy. The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes; I beg your pardon.

Mr. HEINEN. Shortly after that-and I think it was in 1920-the condition of the peace treaty of Versailles became imminent, which imposed upon the German nation the duty to deliver the ships left from the war to the allied powers, and I was entrusted with this rather disagreeable duty, which I carried out during that summer of 1920.

The CHAIRMAN. How many ships did you have left out of all of the fleet which had been constructed since 1911, when your first ship was built.

Mr. HEINEN. I am not quite certain as to how many there were. but the figures have been quoted already here in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. It was 6 or 7, was it not?

Mr. HEINEN. No, sir. There were a few more.

The CHAIRMAN. What sizes were they?

Mr. HEINEN. They were the sizes of the last type of ships, meaning 55,000 cubic meters, or corresponding to a size slightly less than the Shenandoah, with the exception of the L-71 and L-72.

The L-71 was delivered to England and the L-72 was later the Dirmide.

The CHAIRMAN. She was later known as the Dirmude?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir; in France.

The CHAIRMAN. What was the name of the ship that was given to Great Britain?

Mr. HEINEN. It was not named.

The CHAIRMAN. Did that become the No. 100?

Mr. HEINEN. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What became of that ship, if you know?

Mr. HEINEN. I am not quite certain about it, but they hardly used it.

The CHAIRMAN. You say they hardly used it?

Mr. HEINEN. They hardly used it. I know for certain that the second ship I delivered to Great Britain, the L-64, was at sometime destroyed, in order to make room for another ship of their own at a certain date that they had to house.

The CHAIRMAN. It was destroyed?

Mr. HEINEN. It was dismantled. It was delivered and dismantled.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, obviously, it was so imperfect, as measured by their own ship, that they preferred to destroy this and keep their own?

Mr. HEINEN. Absolutely. I do not blame them.

After this duty had been performed I was called by the American Navy to come over here and assist the Navy in organizing the training of personnel in contemplation of the construction of the Shenandoah at Lakehurst. I arrived here on May 31, 1922, 11 years ago. May I state that after about 3 years, in the middle of July or 1st of July 1924, I left this position in order to try to make a living on the outside.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How many ships have you flown, Captain; that is, airships?

Mr. HEINEN. I never counted them. It was a rather hectic activity during the war. But they are in the official files of the company. I should say that during the war I had charge at different times of 80 ships.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Did any of those ships suffer destruction in your command?

Mr. HEINEN. No, sir. I did not have the slightest accident to any of them.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Have you experienced storm conditions in your life aboard airships?

Mr. HEINEN. The telling of my life's story proves that I flew through all kinds of seasons, days and nights. Therefore it is rather obvious that no kind of weather escaped my attention.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. What are your observations on the handling of airships in storms?

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Mr. HEINEN. There is no such thing, in the ordinary sense of the word storm", which is always used and which was used considerably in this investigation. There is no such thing as a storm for an airship, inasmuch as the airship leaves the concrete connection with the ground which makes it a part of the body of the air, and it is quite obvious that no such thing as a strain by the air on this body can be noticed.

The only strain that can be put to the ship's structure is the strain that it supplies to itself by its own motive power.

The obvious conclusion of this, of course, will be that as soon as irregularities in the air properly compare with conditions on the

surface of the water which makes for sea going, this strain is simply minimized by decreasing its motive power.

The CHAIRMAN. You have seen kites in the air just torn to pieces? Mr. HEINEN. The kite is not an airship in that sense.

The CHAIRMAN. I just wanted your comparison.

Mr. HEINEN. This is very important, and it is just the opposite of what I said.

The kite is not a part of the air; it is a part of the ground.

The CHAIRMAN. The testimony before us shows that an airship, especially an elongated airship, may be caught between an upward current and downward current, so that, without any dynamic force in the sense that it is utilized as its own power, it may be rent asunder.

Mr. HEINEN. I deny that in its totality. This airship all of a sudden, and being stationary in the air, certainly cannot be subjected to a force in this direction and a force in that direction [illustrating].

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. For the record, Captain, you mean one force up and one force down?

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir. Or it might be in any plane of the circle. This is obviously impossible so long as this ship is a part of any floating body of air, which might in itself be undisturbed, and it can not be brought into such a condition by the action of the air as such. The CHAIRMAN. The wind might cause it to be flying without dynamic force.

Mr. HEINEN. Yes, sir. But we are going to come to that. If this ship is brought into such a condition where an up current and a down current come together, I deny again, as has been asserted, that there can be any clear cut line between the two currents in the atmosphere.

If, now, the ship under its own power, which might create a speed of, let us say, 65 to 70 miles an hour, and there is such a division line suddenly, it would be quite clear that it has to enter such a condition head-on, that is, the nose of the ship first. And the result will be that these two opposing forces in the atmosphere will very quickly pass over the whole length of the ship and, therefore, affect any one part of the ship only for a very small amount of time.

To my personal knowledge, it is entirely impossible that an airship properly constructed, handled, and cared for can be destroyed by forces in the air, from the outside. It would be exactly the same as though you tried to break this lead pencil by this motion in the air [illustrating] without breaking it over an obstacle.

Only the amount of mass momentum of the total weight of the parts in such an airship, including, by the way, all of the air masses surrounded by the outer cover-only this amount of mass momentum offers a resistance to this dynamic force described above.

Senator DUFFY. Then, why would not the solution of every storm be to stop the engines and just float around in the air currents?

Mr. HEINEN. It has been done in practice under certain conditions, which have to do with the calculations as to which is the more favorable course of action to attain the goal of the flight.

It might be quite possible to find a more favorable course of action, to stop at a certain condition where you find the air current facing you to such an extent that you do not make more speed through the air than is necessary in order to stand on the spot.