Count Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf von Zeppelin He was born in Constance, Baden on April 8, 1838 and was the first large-scale constructor of the rigid airships that eventually became synonymous with his name.
The military career of von Zeppelin it was somewhat varied. During a leave of absence from the Prussian Army in 1863, he served in the Union Army during the US Civil War. More conventionally he served with the Prussian Army in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, during which he was praised for his bravery.
von Zeppelin in 1869 he married Isaballa Freiin von Wolff of Livonia; They had a daughter, Hella, born in Ulm in 1879.
Zeppelin He first conducted tests on hot air balloons while in the US as a military observer during the 1860s. He later founded an airship factory in Friedrichshafen using his own funds, retiring from the army in 1891 as Lieutenant General. . Zeppelin He dedicated the rest of his life to designing and building motorized airships.
The first successful test of one of their aircraft was carried out on July 2, 1900. Eight years later the zeppelins were flying. routine commercial, airmail and passenger, throughout Germany, with a remarkable safety record despite the risks in the use of highly flammable hydrogen gas to inflate aircraft.
Zeppelin managed to persuade the German military of the possibility of using airships in wartime. Consequently the LZ-3 model of the Zeppelin was accepted into service in the German army in March 1909 as the Luftschiff Zeppelin 1. At the event, during World War I, the German army deployed 115 zeppelins for a variety of missions, including reconnaissance and bombing missions, despite their vulnerability to attack and bad weather.
The Zeppelin ships were effectively withdrawn from front-line service at Verdun in 1916, because upgraded Allied aircraft were successful in achieving a higher rate of destruction. Despite this, newer models were introduced that could fly higher and higher, although this impacted on the accuracy of the bombardments. Its use was discontinued around 1917, when Allied bombers demonstrated a consistent ability to destroy aircraft.
Ferdinand von Zeppelin died on March 8, 1917 in Berlin.