Untold history: New book reveals tales from the first airship voyage around the world

On 15 August 1929, the Spanish doctor Jerónimo Megías fulfilled his dream by embarking on the first trip around the world in the Graf Zeppelin.

It was not the first time that Megías, King Alfonso XIII's personal physician, had boarded the famous aircraft. In May of that year he obtained a seat on a trip that would take him and 17 other passengers from Friedrichshafen (Germany) to Lakehurst (New Jersey, United States).

On that occasion, the zeppelin had to turn back due to engine failure while flying over the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

This time, however, the challenge was much more ambitious: it would be the first round-the-world flight of a passenger airship.

The trip was a success: the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin departed from Friedrichshafen towards Tokyo, where it made a stopover after flying over the Soviet Union. It crossed the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles for a second stopover and flew over the United States to Lakehurst, on the east coast.

After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the airship returned triumphantly to Germany on 4 September 1929, a journey that lasted 20 days, 4 hours and 14 minutes.

Now, cartographer and science writer Alejandro Polanco has revisited the historic event in an illustrated book: ‘The first flight around the world in the Graf Zeppelin’.

A book to rescue the history of zeppelins

The initiative was paid for by a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The result is a book, in digital and print versions, which tells the story of the Graf Zeppelin through a large collection of restored images of the time, as well as the testimony of Jerónimo Megías, who wrote a book about his experience on the round-the-world voyage.

“The project consisted of scanning the small photographs in high resolution, translating the technical text of the album from German into English and adapting it to create a high quality hardcover book, adding fragments of Megías' travel diary,” Polanco explained to Euronews Culture.

The restored album includes more than 200 scenes of these airships, from their beginnings in the late 19th century to the 1930s.

“In the 1920s, small photographs of zeppelins were sold in Germany in cigarette packs so that people could complete an album with them,” says Polanco, who acquired the album from a private collector.

It has been a century, but the photographs have been well preserved as they are reproductions on silver bromide paper. The album provided each miniature with a description.

Around the world, told from the inside

The format of the original images is small, but they are highly detailed and show different zeppelins flying, views captured from them and details of their interiors. Audiences of that time could use small devices with lenses to enlarge the scenes, even giving a sense of three-dimensional vision.

It was the easiest way to get close to an experience that was only accessible to a few: Dr Megías had to pay 7,000 dollars to get his ticket around the world.

“I didn’t shy away from flying to London and I didn’t skimp on radiograms to Berlin, Hamburg and Friedrichshafen. The competition was fierce and the battle between the applicants was intense,” Megías said in his memoirs of the trip.

Megías compared the experience on board the Graf Zeppelin to a luxury hotel. The airship had all the necessary amenities: a kitchen with a chef, a communications room that allowed passengers to send and receive telegrams by radio, and a lounge that served as a dining room, living room and office.

The cabins had electric lights and could accommodate two passengers. During the day, the beds could be folded to make a sofa. There were also folding tables by the windows, some folding chairs and compartments with curtains to store belongings.

There was enormous public expectation for the round-the-world flight. American news magnate William Randolph Hearst knew it well and sponsored the trip in return for his media outlets having exclusive rights to chronicle it.

Among the 20 passengers on the aircraft was the British journalist Lady Hay Drummond-Hay, sent by Hearst to the zeppelin, who reported the adventure while becoming the first woman to fly around the world.

The symbol of an era

Polanco's book not only details the great voyage of the LZ 127, but also the origin of zeppelins, their historical context and the technology they used.

It includes short biographies of key people, such as the founder of the company, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, and the engineer Hugo Eckener, who commanded the airship on its most emblematic flights.

“The LZ 127 was a symbol of the Weimar Republic, before Germany fell under the absolute power of the Nazis in 1933,” Polanco writes.

In addition to the famous round-the-world journey, the Graf Zeppelin made hundreds of trips, including a regular route across the Atlantic to South America, carrying passengers, cargo and mail without any significant mishaps until it was retired in 1937.

It even made a ‘triangular’ trip between Europe, South America and the US, in 1930.

The tragic accident of the LZ 129 Hindenburg, the zeppelin that exploded in New Jersey on 6 May 1937, marked the end of these aircraft’s golden age. Besides, the rapid development of aeroplanes accelerated their decline.

“Nowadays the new airships fly thanks to non-flammable helium. But I don’t think helium would have saved the old zeppelins either, it was just that the Hindenburg disaster hastened an end that the arrival of improved aircraft had already heralded,” says Polanco in the book that pays tribute to these giants of the sky.