Bavarian Fighters

The semi-frozen waters hold the famous Bavarian lion which guards the harbour and the lighthouse. Far away in the haze of the opposite coast is Switzerland. Like all medieval European towns,plaques on walls describe various worthies who burnt the town down through the turbulent centuries,the last being Napoleon. The lighthouse which is the pride of the town,is the only functional one in Bavaria. Lake Constance is a Zungenbecken (tongue-basin),a symbol of the defeat of the glaciers during the Ice Age. A Roman geographer,with a delightful name Pomponius Mela,was the first to describe it in great detail. The lake is surrounded by and is a part of Germany,Austria and Switzerland and all three nations debate where the frontiers are. We stop for lunch at the Hotel Peterhof,which is filled with tourists enjoying the sunshine. With Teutonic efficiency,the buskers have stopped for lunch leaving behind CD players which continue to crank out their tunes.

After lunch,we travel to Friedrichshafen,a half-an-hour drive. The lake continues to perform its delightful alchemy to the light suffused with a deep golden glow. Here,I part with my friends. I want to investigate the Dornier Museum,at the airport. They decide to wait for me at a lakeside cafe while I take the bus.

The modern glass-and-steel structure of the Dornier Museum glitters in the sunlight. Its soaring interiors evoke the space of an aircraft hangar. The Dornier Flugzeugwerke was established at the dawn of the aviation age by Claudius Dornier. He pioneered building all-metal aircrafts which broke numerous aviation records.

Like all boys at a certain age,I had been enthralled by Commando comics. In those pages,the sun had never set on the British empire,Germans were forever shouting Gott im Himmel or Achtung! as the mood possessed them. After all these years,it is a shock to see the actual aircraft,which inhabited my boyhood dreams for so long,a menagerie from long forgotten youth. They rest quietly now,with no hint of the passions that propelled them in the air.

I immediately recognise the contours of the Messerschmitt BF 109,the most produced fighter aircraft in history and the backbone of the Luftwaffe. Seeing it,is like seeing some mythical beast come to life. I run my fingers on the metal skin of the 109. I wonder about the battles it has seen. I imagine it diving out of the sun,raining death on the RAF high above the chalk cliffs of Dover. Or perhaps amidst the icy wastes of the Ostfront,hunting the armoured Sturmoviks of the Soviets. In accordance with German law,the World War II fighters on display have been scrubbed clean of Nazi logos giving them a silvery finish,like angels.

During the Second World War,Dornier’s aircraft designs were valued highly by the Fuhrer and his planes took a vital part in the Reich’s war effort. So much so that the Dornier production facilities and Friedrichshafen town endured some of the heaviest bombing raids in the entire war. Friedrichshafen was so heavily bombed that the attack on it has its own Wikipedia page. I pause at black and white photographs taken in 1945 that show the extent of destruction.

The museum is excellently designed with a compelling mix of aircraft on static display and information screens and artefacts. I admire the sleek lines of Dornier’s masterpiece,the Do 335 Arrow,a twin-engined fighter known for its innovative design and speed. Nearby is an example of the horrific cost. With more and more Germans pressed into the Wehrmacht to fight the Soviets,the Reich’s heavy industry became reliant on slave labour. There are documents showing the life and fate of Ukrainian workers who lived and died building these technical wonders.

Of course,it would be unfair to mention only the wartime designs. There is also a quaint propeller-driven aircraft in Lufthansa livery,the Merkur,one of the first to join their fleet. It can carry eight passengers. Claudius also built the legendary Dornier X in the late 1920s. Weighing over 50 tonnes and capable of carrying over 100 passengers,it was far ahead of its time.

The “X” was of the flying boat design,meaning it did not need runways but rather landed on water,usually lakes. Eventually,the idea was to establish services spanning the globe. I follow the proposed Dornier X plan and see that it included Chilka Lake in Orissa. If history had taken a different turn,perhaps Chilka would have become an aerotropolis,a way-station on a route that would gird the earth.

Evening has set in and great coils of mist unspool from Lake Constance. The sun has disappeared into the haze,a landscape straight out of a Turner painting. As if on cue,my iPod shuffles into the ghostly arias of avant-garde Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson’s The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black. The brooding mists part to reveal the white tower of the Zeppelin museum,located in a converted railway station. The shadow of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin falls over the city. His success can be seen in that zeppelins became the generic name of rigid airships much like Xerox did for photo-copiers. Their sheer size is staggering,the later models were nearly 1,000 feet long and had a diameter of about a 100 feet. In comparison,a Boeing 747,for example,is about 250 feet long. Photographs taken from the top of the craft show the surface curving away,making the zeppelin look like a floating island in the sky. In combination with the size was its silence,with just the thrum of the Maybach engines that pushed it through the air. The museum includes a reconstruction of the interiors of the Hindenburg,whose fiery end is perhaps as iconic as that of the Titanic. With its elegantly panelled restaurants and observation decks,it is a veritable flying palace.

Outside on the pier is a high launch tower where zeppelins were once moored. Somewhere in the shrouded lake,the sound of fog horns. The lake is mysterious,beautiful,moody. It has outlived many races,many species and perhaps,our own civilization matters as much to it as the momentary shadow of a bird on moving water. It was once home to giants,Ice Age Plesiosaurs disported in its depths. Its water reflected the titan reflections of the Count’s children.

As the mist spirals around the tower,I wonder if Count Zeppelin’s spirit has been resurrected in Friedrichshafen. A new design,called the Zeppelin NT,incorporating modern technological advances has been built. In an age of carbon footprints,escalating fuel costs and expense of building airports,the zeppelins’ day might have returned. Perhaps the waters of the lake will see them again.