Zeppelin - Cigars of the air
Visit my German bookshop for Christmas shopping! Based on a tv-movie about the airship "Hindenburg" and the disaster over Lakehurst my interest about zeppelins and airships arised. This Zeppelin site should offer you some interesting sites to this subject. If you have any suggestions or criticism to this page please mail me.I had to close my forum and my linklist because I just got to much Spam. Sorry, but I have not enough time to delete all that and will not start again before I did not found a spam safe / free solution.
If you want to leave a message please wirte me an email.
Contents:
- Luftschiff Hindenburg
- Zeppelin/Airship - History
- Airships today
- Zeppelinmuseum
- Private Zeppelin-Pages
- Dates and figures
- Literatur about airships, Graf Zeppelin, etc.
Book Recommendation (paid link): The Phoenix: A Novel About the Hindenburg by Henning Boetius, John Cullen
Luftschiff Hindenburg
- www.luftschiff.de
- Airships.net - lots of information, photographs and discussions about the Hindenburg
Zeppelin/Airship - History
Back to the topAirships today
- An English pottery, has just unearthed a piece of airship and aircraft history, which
has lain forgotten for over seventy years.
The moulds for an airship teapot have been discovered in the stores of a Stoke-on-Trent pottery, Racing Teapots. The discovery was made after the pottery's managing director, Peter Wood, was sorting through old company records and came upon some musty notes and newspaper clippings from the 1920s, about the long distance journeys of the Graf Zeppelin. There is a small note on one of the newspapers, written in pencil, which says, "Shall we make an Airship Teapot?" There is another note which says "Airship in Canada. Get the teapot into production." Another note reads, "Release the Airship in October, in time for Christmas. Put lustre on the fins, lid, spout and windows. Look at adding transfers" This note is dated July 1930. The last note says, "Send the ten Airships to Germany as promised. Do not offer these teapots for sale elsewhere (R101)!” This is dated October 1930.
So it was concluded that moulds had existed for an Airship Teapot which was withdrawn from production, following the R101 crash. Peter noted the mould's reference number and after looking for nearly 6 hours, the Airship Teapot master mould was finally located, covered in dust.
Peter decided to try and salvage the mould to make an Airship Teapot. "You can imagine how emotional we all were, at the factory, when the Airship emerged (in one piece) from the kiln; the first teapot from the mould in over 70 years," says Peter.
Racing Teapots' top decorator then applied bright platinum lustre, which contains real silver, as directed by the notes of 1930.
Racing Teapots has now put the Airship Teapot back into production, along with the world's first aeroplane teapot (first made in the 1920s) and a number of other Art Deco designs, which are all transport based.
At the auction house Lempertz you can find A tea service made for the airship "LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin" - Solar Airship Lotte
- Cargolifter AG - Zeppelin to carry very heavy weights
An association founded in 1974 with the purpose: To further the development of Lighter-Than-Air (LTA) flight by providing a forum for discussion of the history and technology of LTA and a resource for LTA researchers, designers and builders. Emphasis is on engineering and technology.
Zeppelinmuseum
- Balloon and airshipmuseum Zepp/allon Airship Plaza in Holland
- Aeronauticum Nordholz - Information about the Deutsche Luftschiff- und Marinefliegermuseum in Nordholz
- Zeppelinmuseum Frankfurt - A lot of documents and exhibits of the history of airships and flight.
- Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen - This museum shows a zeppelin exhibition with a 33 meters part of the LZ 129 Hindenburg and an art exhibition.
- Deutsches Museum Luftfahrt - Part of the German Museum in Munich about flight. Connected to this is an air and space museum in Schleißheim - unfortunately both are just in German.
Private Zeppelin-Pages
- Belgium Balloon Pages - the first real Balloon Community with lots of interesting features
- Jens Luftschiffseiten - Jens Schenkenberger's Airship-Gallery gives you lots of information about zeppelins, museums, collectibles and some interesting links
- Homepage zur History of the airship weapon of the army - A very interesting collection about army airships (and more) from Harry C. Redner now also in English
- Airship and Blimp Resources - Great, I like this background! Besides, you can find lots of information concerning zeppelins.
- The Home Page for Luftschiffbau Zeppelin - This is in my opinion the best page about zeppelins. Here you can find everything what you like to know and besides, there are great pictures! Thanks John!
- Book a Zeppelin Flight
Dates and figures
Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (DELAG) - German Airship Corporation- 7 airships were built from 1909 to 1913
- 1588 flights
- 172500 kilometers
- 34028 people and 10197 paying passengers
At the end of 1996 three airships were licensed in Germany. The producer of those zeppelins is the northrhine-westfalian company WDL Luftschiffgesellschaft mbH at the airport Essen/Mühlheim. With 60 meters length and 7200 cubicmeters volume the WDL1B is at the moment the biggest flying airship of this kind. WDL airships are flying in Germany, the U.S.A. And Japan.
In this year the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH in Friedrichshafen, a company which is based on Graf Zeppelin, will start a hightech zeppelin with 75 meters length and 8200 cubicmeters volume. This new ship can carry 12 passengers or will be used for science.
To compare: airship LZ1 from 1900 had a volume of 11300 cubicmeters and a length of 128 meters. The 'Hindenburg' LZ 129 had a volume of 217000 cubicmeters and a length of 245 meters. It could carry 200 tonnes.
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Literatur about airships, Graf Zeppelin, The Hindenburg, etc.
- The Hindenburg (paid link) by Patrick O'Brien
- Hindenburg, 1937 (paid link) by Cameron Dokey
- Inside the Hindenburg (paid link) by Mireille Majoor, Ken Marschall (Illustrator)
- American Airship Bases & Facilities (paid link) by James R. Shock
- Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships : Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg (paid link) by Harold G. Dick, Douglas H. Robinson (Contributor)
- The Zeppelin in Combat : A History of the German Naval Airship Division 1912-1918 (paid link) by Douglas H. Robinson
- The Zeppelin Reader : Stories, Poems, and Songs from the Age of Airships (paid link) by Robert Hedin (Editor)
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