english multi-part question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.
Requirements: 150 word minium
The Golden AgeChapter 9: Flying Boats and AirshipsPart 3
Graf Zeppelin•As the era of long-distance passenger air travel took shape, airships and flying boats competed for transoceanic routes
•The performance of zeppelins during WWI, although militarily ineffectual, had made German airship technology an object of fear and envy for the country’s enemies. •At the end of the war, the victors were determined to procure zeppelins for themselves and deny them to the Germans. In 1919 a promising attempt to resurrect DELAG, the company that had operated an airship passenger service in Germany before the war, was nipped in the bud when its two zeppelins were seized as reparations.
Alliance with the US•The Zeppelin company also sought survival through an alliance with the US. In 1923, Goodyear formed a joint corporation with Zeppelin, obtaining rights to its patents.
Imperial Airships •The British experience with rigid airships was even less encouraging. The postwar period started promisingly with an impressive flight by the R 34, a British copy of the German L 33 that had been shot down over England. •With 31 people, including a stowaway, it flew nonstop from Scotland to New York, in July 1916, in four and a half days and then flew back.
The Graf Zeppelin•In the end, the Germans were the only Europeans with the knowledge and experience required to design and operate airships. The German people continued to see their zeppelins as proud symbols of the country’s technological prowess. •In 1925 when Hugo Eckener decided to build an airship capable of operating a transatlantic passenger service, he raised the money by public subscription, appealing to national sentiment.
The Hindenburg•The first of these airships, the Hindenburg, came into service in 1936, sporting Nazi swastikas. Powered by four 1,100hp diesel engines, it could carry 50 passengers at over 80mph with unparalleled luxury. •Where the Graf Zeppelin had crammed its passengers into a gondola, the Hindenburg used part of the massive hull for passenger accommodation on two decks.
Flying Boats•The failure of airships left air-passenger transportation over the oceans exclusively to flying boats. In the 1930s these machines enjoyed a brief golden age as the aristocrats of long-distance airplane travel. The ascendancy of flying boats made sense in the conditions of the time.
Empire Building•Thanks largely to the extensive business contacts and lobbying skills of youthful entrepreneur Juan Trippe, his company Pan American, which had begun airmail services to Havana under a contract with the Cuban government in 1927, won a monopoly of US government contracts for routes throughout the Caribbean.
•With longer routes and expanding business, Trippe sought flying boats with a larger payload and greater range. The next to be introduced, developed direct in collaboration with PanAm, was the 40 passenger Sikorsky S-40.•The S-40s were the first Pan American airplanes to be called clippers. They attempted to match the romantic name with elegant style, boasting spacious compartments, upholstered chairs, backgammon tables, and hot meals served by a uniformed steward.
Sikorski S-42•Trippe ordered two powerful new flying boats to pioneer and survey the route. Once again Trippe’s contacts in Washington stood him in good stead. •He not only won the transpacific airmail contract but also induced the government to put Wake Island under US Navy administration, so that it could act as a stepping stone for flying boats crossing the Pacific, along with Midway and Guam.
Pacific Crossings•Equipped with the new radio-navigation equipment, the S-42 with Pan American’s star pilot at the controls set off from San Francisco in April 1935 on the first experimental flight to Hawaii.•To maximize its range, the S-42 had been stripped of all superfluous weight and packed with extra fuel tanks. Even so, disaster was only narrowly averted.
•There was no denying the glamour of the image of flying-boat travel. Pan American’s Pacific passenger operation, for example, was an unashamedly exclusive service, with a round trip ticket from San Francisco to Manila costing over $1,400 – about equal to an average workers annual pay.
Bigger and Better•Undeterred by these setbacks, Juan Trippe pressed ahead with introducing a fleet of six Boeing 314s. Twice the size of the Martin 130s, these extraordinary aircraft were the biggest airliners to fly until the age of the jumbo jet, and probably the most luxurious fixed-wing passenger aircraft ever built.
•The stately elegance of the flying boats belonged to an era in which long-distance air travel was only for the wealthy, and style seemed a better selling point that functionality.
