A German airship lifts off from New Jersey to fly around the world
In 1929, no airplane could cross an ocean, let alone circle the globe. On August 8, the German airship Graf Zeppelin lifted off from Lakehurst, New Jersey, under Hugo Eckener's command, bound for Friedrichshafen, Tokyo, and Los Angeles before returning to Lakehurst. William Randolph Hearst had bankrolled half the venture and demanded the trip both start and end on American soil. Twenty-one days, seven hours, and thirty-four minutes later, the ship set a new record for circling the globe by any means of transport.
Hearst's newspapers turned a German engineering feat into an American media event by financing half of it and requiring the flight to open and close at Lakehurst. That contractual demand meant the record-setting circumnavigation belonged as much to American front pages as to German ones, and it stoked "zeppelin fever," the brief period when American planners bet on airships over airplanes for intercontinental travel.
QHow much did it cost to mail a letter on the entire round-the-world flight?
A single piece of US-franked mail carried the whole Lakehurst-to-Lakehurst route required $3.55 in postage, worth roughly $67 in 2025 dollars. Stamp collectors and philatelic societies snapped up space on the flight specifically to get their letters postmarked at each stop along the route: Friedrichshafen, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. Those covers are still traded today as some of the most prized items in airship philately, a niche the Graf Zeppelin more or less created single-handedly.
QWhat kept the Graf Zeppelin's ballast water from freezing at altitude?
Engineers mixed calcium chloride into the 3,500 kilograms of ballast water the ship carried, a simple trick that kept it liquid even when the airship climbed into freezing air over open ocean. The ship also hauled 650 kilograms of spare parts, including a full extra propeller, in case something failed mid-crossing with no runway for thousands of miles in any direction. The ballast and spare parts weren't glamorous, but a mid-ocean failure without them could have stranded the ship.
QWhat did Lady Grace Drummond-Hay say the airship felt like to fly in?
She called it "a ship with a soul," telling anyone who asked that you only had to fly in the Graf Zeppelin once to know it was "a living, vibrant, sensitive and magnificent thing." It was an odd thing to say about eighteen 28-sided duralumin polygons and sixteen kilometers of girders. She meant it, and by the time she landed back at Lakehurst she had logged more time aboard than almost anyone alive, becoming the first woman to circle the globe by air.
