Luftschiffbau Schütte-Lanz

Schütte-Lanz (SL) is the name of a series of rigid airships designed and built by the Luftschiffbau Schütte-Lanz company from 1909 until the S.L.22 was delivered in 1917. One research and four passenger airships were planned for post-war use, but were never built. The Schütte-Lanz company was an early strong competitor of the more famous airships built by Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

When the Zeppelin LZ 4 met with disaster at Echterdingen in 1908, Professor Johann Schütte started to consider the problems of airship design. He decided, with the co-operation of his students to develop his own scientifically designed, high performance airship. In partnership with Dr Karl Lanz, an industrialist and wood products manufacturer he started the Schütte-Lanz Luftschiffbau on 22 April 1909. The ships were successful at first, and introduced a number of highly successful innovations.

Wood composites had a theoretical superiority as the structural material in airships up to a certain size. After that, the superiority of aluminum (and later duralumin) in tension was more important than the superiority of wood in compression. Schütte-Lanz airships until 1918 were composed of wood and plywood glued together. Moisture tended to degrade the integrity of the glued joints. Schütte-Lanz airships became structurally unstable when water entered the airship's imperfectly waterproofed envelope. This tended to happen during wet weather operations, but also, more insidiously, in defective or damaged hangars. In the words of Führer der Luftschiffe Peter Strasser:

Most of the Schütte-Lanz ships are not usable under combat conditions, especially those operated by the Navy, because their wooden construction cannot cope with the damp conditions inseparable from maritime service...

The decision was made to compensate the company for the unusable wooden ships, and in response the company started work on a tubular aluminum-framed ship which was probably not completed.

The German Navy had bases closer to the sea, and thus more humid. They were reluctant to accept wooden composite craft. As a result, the primary customer for Schütte-Lanz airships was the German Army. The German Army decided well before the German Navy that airship operations were futile in the face of land-based heavier-than-air opposition.

...
Wikipedia