Hindenburg class airship

Hindenburg class
Hindenburg at NAS Lakehurst
Role	Passenger airship
National origin	Germany
Manufacturer	Luftschiffbau Zeppelin
Designer	Ludwig Dürr
First flight	March 4, 1936 (LZ 129) September 14, 1938 (LZ 130)
Retired	1937 (LZ 129) 1939 (LZ 130)
Status	Destroyed by fire (LZ 129); Scrapped (LZ 130))
Primary user	Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei
Number built	2

September 14, 1938 (LZ 130)

1939 (LZ 130)

The two Hindenburg-class airships were hydrogen-filled, passenger-carrying rigid airships built in Germany in the 1930s and named in honor of Paul von Hindenburg. They were the last such aircraft ever built, and in terms of their length and volume, the largest Zeppelins ever to fly. During the 1930s, airships like the Hindenburg class were widely considered the future of air travel, and the lead ship of the class, LZ 129 Hindenburg, established a regular transatlantic service. The destruction of this same ship in a spectacular and highly publicized accident was to prove the death knell for these expectations. The second ship, LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin was never operated on a regular passenger service, and was scrapped in 1940 by the order of Hermann Göring.

The Hindenburg class were built to an all-duralumin design. The leader of the design team was Dr. Ludwig Dürr, who had overseen the design of all Zeppelins except LZ-1 (on which he was a crew member), under the overall direction of Hugo Eckener, the head of the company. They were 245 m (804 ft) long and 41 m (135 ft) in diameter, longer than three Boeing 747s placed end-to-end, longer than four Goodyear GZ-20 "blimps" end-to-end, and only 24 m (79 ft) shorter than the RMS Titanic. The previous largest civilian airship, with a length of 237 m (777 ft) and a width of 40 m (130 ft), was the British R101, which was completed in 1929. The US Navy's Akron and Macon were 239 m (785 ft) long and 44 m (144 ft) wide.

The design originally called for cabins for 50 passengers and a crew complement of 40.

Construction of the first ship, LZ 129, later named Hindenburg, began in 1931, but was suddenly stopped when Luftschiffbau Zeppelin went bankrupt. This led Eckener to make a deal with the Nazi Party which came to power in 1933. He needed money to build the airship, but in return he was forced to display the swastikas on the tail fins. Construction then resumed in 1935. The keel of the second ship, LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin was laid on June 23, 1936, and the cells were inflated with hydrogen on August 15, 1938. As the second Zeppelin to carry the name Graf Zeppelin (after the LZ 127), she is often referred to as Graf Zeppelin II.

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Wikipedia