The Best of the Best
Born on 10 August 1868 in Flensburg, Prussia (now Germany) Hugo Eckener was a German aeronautical engineer and commander of the first lighter-than-air aircraft to fly around the world.
As a member of the firm operated by Ferdinand, Count von Zeppelin, Eckener helped to develop the rigid airships of the early 1900s. During World War I, Eckener trained airship pilots and directed the construction of 88 Zeppelins for the German navy. Returning to commercial construction in November 1918, Eckener succeeded Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who died on 8 March 1917 and he succeeded in popularising airship travel.
He commanded the airship ZR-3 on its flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1924. The ZR-3 (later named Los Angeles) had been built for
the United States as a war reparations’ payment. Eckener also commanded the Graf Zeppelin on its epic around-the-world flight in 1929 and on its polar-exploration flight in 1931.
On 1 August 1929, Dr Hugo Eckener commanded the first airship flight to circumnavigate the globe when the flight left Friedrichshafen, Germany. ‘Graf Zeppelin’ arrived back at Friedrichshafen on 4 September having flown 21,000 miles in 12 days, 12 hours, 20 minutes, making him the most successful airship commander in history. He was also responsible for the construction of the most successful type of airship of all time. A master of publicity as well as a master airship captain, Eckener used the Graf Zeppelin to establish the Zeppelin as a symbol of German pride and engineering. An anti-Nazi who was invited to campaign as a moderate in the German presidential elections, he was blacklisted by that regime and eventually side-lined.
Eckener was popular internationally, but not within Adolf Hitler’s government, which had relieved him of airship command prior to 6 May 1937, when the Hindenburg, successor to the Graf Zeppelin, burned at Lakehurst, New Jersey, with 36 deaths, a tragedy that ended international passenger airship flights.
In 1938, Eckener was sent to the United States in an unsuccessful attempt to buy helium for German dirigibles, which had been using the dangerous hydrogen. He spent his last years as head of a machine factory. He died on 14 August 1954 in Friedrichshafen just after his 86th birthday.
Eckener was undoubtedly one of the ‘best of the best’ aviators at that time in aviation.