identical to the LZ 3 but much longer and able to lift 50 percent more. Zeppelin stood prepared to meet his quota as the LZ 4 took off on its maiden test flight.
             However, with the flight of the LZ 4 came the realization of the most infamous flaw in the Count's design – the use of hydrogen gas to fill the balloons inside. Each airship ever built under the Count's design would use the combustible gas. As the LZ 4 came in to land, it tore itself on a tree branch; the hull, made of rubberized cloth, generated static electricity when rubbed against itself, something Zeppelin and his engineers were not aware of. The LZ 4 burst into flames and was destroyed in moments.
             Count Zeppelin thought the incident would end him, but on the contrary the German public had so embraced the Count's unyielding determination that by the end of the day of the accident, more than enough funds to replace the downed airship had been mailed to him by private citizens.
             The Count took the money and renovated his LZ 3, which was purchased by the Prussian army in 1908. The German army agreed to buy his next ship, the LZ 5, before it was even completed in 1909. Though the LZ 5 made a phenomenal 38 hour flight over Germany, the Army concluded that the airship was simply too slow for military purposes.
             Left with no one to sell his airships to, the Count resigned his dreams of creating a military ship (for the time being) and turned to commercial possibilities. Indeed, Zeppelin's airships were to become the first commercial airliners. However, his design still needed to be reworked. Of the three ships piloted by his airline company, called the Zeppelin Company, all three crashed or burned as a result of a lack of defense against the wind through which they were intended to travel.
             It was at this point that Hugo Eckner, one of the Count's engineers that eventually became one of the best airship captains and the owne...