A rare personal account of life aboard a WWI airship, based on the letters of Robert Wichard Pohl, which have never before been translated or published.



Based on the original letters of physics professor Robert Wichard Pohl, who spent several years flying on zeppelins during World War I, this book tells the story of the first flight to exceed 100 hours in the air. Along the way, it recounts the stories of those men responsible for the flight, as well as the history of both airship development and the continuing interest in transatlantic flight.



The particular flight described in Pohl's account was captained by Ernst August Lehmann, Germany's foremost airship captain, who was killed on the Hindenburg in 1937. It shows how this flight put into operation the lessons learned in the development of airships and their use in the First World War, to prove that these fragile giants were capable of flying across the Atlantic. In doing so, it fills a gap between the two great areas of interest in airships.



This is a book for aviation history enthusiasts that tells the full story of a well-known, but little-described, chapter in aviation history.