Wrong way Zeppelin
On a summer’s night in August 1929, the eyes of Oklahoma were directed skyward in hopes of glimpsing the Graf Zeppelin, Germany’s great airship, as it was completing a round-the-world flight.
Oklahoma’s U.S. Senator Elmer Thomas, along with Stanley Draper, manager of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, and former congressman E. B. Howard, had extended a formal invitation for the Zeppelin to visit Oklahoma City enroute to Lakehurst, N.J. The State Chamber of Commerce sent an invitation on behalf of 237 local chambers saying ”that a decision to pass over Oklahoma would add impetus to aviation in the state that has progressed more rapidly than any other of the United States.”
The Zeppelin, while it could be steered, was still subject to the whims of the wind, and when it arrived at Oklahoma’s borders on Aug. 28, 1929, the wind and its crew sent it to the northeast, bypassing Oklahoma City.
The Oklahoman reported on Aug. 29, 1929, ”at least a dozen towns in Oklahoma got a glimpse of the Zeppelin. Entering the state in southwestern Beckham county, the big ship flew over Carter, Elk City, Clinton, Arapaho, Thomas, Watonga, Kingfisher, Hennessey, Perry, Mulhall, Ponca City and Fairfax” before it left Oklahoma headed for Kansas City.
When it was realized that the Zeppelin would miss Oklahoma City, an Oklahoman reporter and staff photographer took
This photograph, copied from The Oklahoman, shows the Graf Zeppelin as it flew over the Osage Hills in Oklahoma. It was taken from an airplane by Roy Sisk, Oklahoman staff photographer.
an airplane and caught up with the Graf Zeppelin near Fairfax. WKY radio fielded calls from all over the area and distributed the “best information available” to its listeners.
In a story published Sept. 6, 1929, W.B. Estes, general manager of the State Chamber of Commerce, received a letter from Dr. Hugo Eckener, commander of the Graf Zeppelin, in which he admitted, “I was lost, but then I was lost since we left Los Angeles two hours behind.” He said he had tried to maintain a course that would lead him over Oklahoma City, and he thought he was circling El Reno on the morning of the 28th, with a wide enough circle that those watching in the city would catch a glimpse, when actually he was over Perry, Marshall and Mulhall.
In his letter, he expressed his delight over a telegram Estes had sent him in German, telling him that “2,000,000 persons in Oklahoma hoped to see him.”
Local aviators were inspired by the flight as indicated by this statement from the Nov. 15, 1987, newspaper report: “Post (our Wiley Post, of course) like other Oklahomans watched from the ground in 1929 when Germany’s Graf Zeppelin flew over the Sooner state in 1929 on its way to a record voyage around the world in 21 days. With navigator Harold Gatty, Post flew the Winnie Mae from New York’s Roosevelt Field June 23, 1931, landing eight days, 15 hours, 51 minutes later with a new round-the-world record.”
The Graf Zeppelin was grounded in 1937 after the explosion of the Zeppelin Hindenburg and in 1939 an explosion attibuted to the Nazis destroyed the Zeppelin and the hangar where it was stored.
Mary Phillips
mphillips@opubco.com
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The Graf Zeppelin flyover Marshall in 1929 is one of the highlights of my father’s life – he still talks about it and the night his father woke up the family to see it fly over.