page_title: Rigid airship
section_title: 1919–1939
hierarchical_section_title: Rigid airship / History / 1919–1939
context_page_description: A rigid airship is a type of airship in which the envelope is supported by an internal framework rather than by being kept in shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope, as in blimps and semi-rigid airships. Rigid airships are often commonly called Zeppelins, though this technically refers only to airships built by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company.
  Rigid airships were produced and relatively successfully employed from the beginning of the 1900s to the end of the 1930s; their heyday ended when the Hindenburg caught fire on May 6, 1937.
context_section_description: At the end of the war two British airships of the R33 Class were nearing completion. R33 became a civilian airship, finishing her career doing experimental work. The R34 became the first aircraft to complete a return Atlantic crossing in July 1919 but was severely damaged in January 1921 and was subsequently scrapped. R36 was the only airship of the R35 class to be completed; it entered civilian service but was damaged three months after its first flight and was never repaired. Four airships of the R38 Class were started but only one completed: it was sold to the US Navy and renamed ZR-2. In June 1921 it broke up in the air over Kingston-upon-Hull before it could be delivered, killing 44 of its Anglo-American crew. The last airship that had been ordered in World War I was the R80; it was completed in 1920 but was tested to destruction in the following year after it was found to have no commercial use.
  After the end of World War I Zeppelin resumed building and operating civilian airships. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles they were prohibited from building airships of over a million cubic ft capacity, but two small passenger airships, LZ 120 Bodensee and a sister ship LZ 121 Nordstern were built, intended for use between Berlin and Freidrichshafen. They were subsequently confiscated and handed over to Italy and France as  war reparations in place of wartime Zeppelins which had been sabotaged by their crews in 1919. The Zeppelin company was saved from extinction by an order for an airship from the US Navy. This, the USS Los Angeles (ZR-3), was delivered to the US Navy in October 1924.
  In 1924 the British Government initiated the Imperial Airship Scheme, a plan to join the British Empire with airship routes. This involved the construction of two large airships, the R100 and R101, paid for by the government. The R100 was privately built by Vickers-Armstrongs using existing commercial practices, with a design team led by Barnes Wallis who had co-designed the R80. After her first flight in December 1929, R100 made a successful round trip to Quebec in Canada in July and August the following year. The competing R101 was designed and built by the Air Ministry and was supposed to encourage new approaches. R101 was severely overweight, largely due to the decision to use diesel engines to reduce fire risk, and it was decided to lengthen the airship's hull to increase lift.  In October 1930 R101 set off to Karachi on its first overseas flight but crashed in northern France in bad weather killing 48 of the 54 people on board, including the Secretary of State for Air and most of the design team. Following this disaster, the R100 was grounded and was finally scrapped in November 1931, marking the end of British interest in rigid airships.
  In 1926 Zeppelin Lufftschiffbau began construction of LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. Completed in 1928, this was the most successful passenger airship to be built.
  The United States rigid airship program was based at Lakehurst Naval Air station, New Jersey.  USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) was the first rigid airship constructed in America, and served from 1923 to 1925, when it broke up in mid-air in severe weather, killing 14 of the crew. USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) was a German airship built for the United States in 1924. The ship was grounded in 1931, due to the Depression, but was not dismantled for over 5 years. The sister ships Akron and Macon both crashed. The Akron was flown into the sea in bad weather and broke up. Over seventy were killed, including one of the US Navy's proponents of airships, Rear Admiral William A. Moffett. Macon also ended up in the sea when it flew into heavy weather with unrepaired damage from an earlier incident, but the introduction of life-jackets following the loss of the Akron meant only two lives were lost.
  LZ 129 Hindenburg carried passengers, mail and freight on regularly scheduled commercial services from Germany to North and South America. These were stopped after the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, with only some thirty European test and government-sponsored flights of its com
caption: The British R34 in Long Island during the first ever return crossing of the Atlantic in July 1919
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