Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, 1893-1940

In Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, 1893-1940, Peter Brooks traces the entire development and service history of all the 163 rigid airships ever built. Beginning with Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's first rigid airship, which flew from Lake Constance on 2 July 1900, the author goes on to describe all the airships built in Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and France in the years up to the Second World War. From the first primitive airship, Zeppelin went on to develop the passenger aircraft operated by DELAG, the world's first airline. During the First World War, Zeppelins were in service with the German Army and Navy and were employed in raids on the United Kingdom. Between the wars, the Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg provided the first transocean air services, between Germany and both North and South America. The book covers all fifty types of rigid airship, illustrating each with photographs, and, for the first time in a single volume, a side elevation. Extensive appendixes provide a mass of information on the airships themselves, their sheds, and the transatlantic Zeppelin schedules.