Mark I 1/720 Zeppelin LZ127 Graf Zeppelin German Airship Kit

Rigid airships were produced and employed in the period from the early 1900s to the end of the 1930s. During WWI the Zeppelin company built nearly one hundred military airships both for army and naval service. 

Certainly the most successful zeppelin ever built was the civilian LZ127, christened "Graf Zeppelin". Its construction began in 1926 and it was launched in September 1928. The LZ127 airship consisted of a structural metal framework covered in doped fabric containing cells filled with hydrogen lifting gas. It was fitted with vertical tailfins and horizontal tailplanes with control surfaces. Forty crew members and 20 passengers were carried in a contiguous gondola built into the forward ventral portion of the airship, while five suspended gondolas (cars) mounted Maybach engines with pusher propellers.

During its nine year career, the LZ127 made the first commercial passenger flight across the Atlantic and around the world and it began regularly scheduled commercial service between Germany and South America. The airship also participated in a scientific mission over the North Pole and aroused intense public enthusiasm around the globe. The airship flew over 1.6 million kilometers on 590 flights, carrying over 34,000 passengers without a single injury.