The beginning of the airships

Graf Zeppelin and a handful of staff built the technically more advanced LZ 2 in 1905. After its disappointing demise due to engine failure, LZ 3 proved the fundamental functionality of the Zeppelin airship. The increasingly extensive flights in 1908/09 with the airships LZ 4, LZ 5 and LZ 6 were dangerous undertakings due to the insufficiently developed technology, and the airships and crews survived often only by good fortune. But they provided valuable information for improvements. Graf Zeppelin, by now seventy years old, usually assumed command personally. These flights transfigured him in the public eye to the "ruler of the skies".