Mercedes-Benz Whensday: The Great Bodensee

What Was The First Motorized Airship With A Combustion Engine?

The Wright Brothers were perhaps two of the most famous aviators in American history, but they were not solely responsible for air travel. Their popularity is still so great, however, that other aviation accomplishments are often overlooked. One of these accomplishments is the first motorized airship with a combustion engine, which was built fifteen years before the infamous Wright Brother’s flight in North Carolina.
The SUV Fit For G

The year is 1888. You are Gottlieb Daimler and your 2-stroke combustion engine has already successfully powered a car and a boat. What’s your next move? The obvious step is air travel. Dirigibles have already been around for some hundred years, but have so far only been powered by the wind or steam engines, making them barely, if at all, controllable.

Friedrich Wolfert And Gottlieb Daimler

Like the Wright Brothers, Friedrich Wolfert was not always an aviator. He studied philosophy in school and ran a publishing company until 1879 when he met Georg Baumgarten. Georg Baumgarten was testing air balloons. After deciding this was his future, Friedrich teamed up with Georg and they began work on an airship that could be steered with a hand crank. Like many before them, they realized that man would never be strong enough to power an airship under his own power. They needed help.

Bodensee

When Gottlieb Daimler found out what Wolfert and Baumgarten were doing, he found his opportunity to try out his engine on an airship. The “Bodensee” was almost 56 feet long and more than 16 feet wide, so it needed something powerful. At the time, Daimler’s two-horsepower combustion engine was just about the strongest machine on the planet for the size and weight.

Maiden Flight

On August 10th, 1888, the Bodensee separated from the ground with Gottlieb’s engine and reconnected with Earth about 6 miles away. It was lifted with hot air and steered with propellers underneath and behind the ship. Today, the story is forgotten, but the engine lives on in our cars and our hearts. Can you imagine testing an airship in 1888?