Historic Americana
"First Flight Graf Zeppelin" Dirigible Flight From the United States to Germany Flown Fully Postmarked Card
October 27, 1928-Postmarked, Flown Postal Card, "First Flight Graf Zeppelin "being the First Dirigible Flight United States Return Voyage to Friedrichshafen Germany, Original Used, Choice Very Fine.
Ornately written multiple Airmail stamped Postal Card, sent from Brooklyn New York to Stuttgart, Germany, via the First Flight of the famed Airship GRAF ZEPPELIN. Postmarked Brooklyn N.Y. October 27, 1928, this Flown Card arrived in Friedrichshafen, Germany and was postmarked received on November 1, 1928. Size measures 3.25" x 5.5" in very good condition, nice large purple "First Flight" stamp superimposed.
Upon first arriving to America's shores, and after a detour flying over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, to show Graf Zeppelin off to the wildly enthusiastic American public, Captain Eckener brought his damaged ship to a safe landing at the United States naval base at Lakehurst, New Jersey on the evening of October 15, 1928.
The Graf Zeppelin was overdue, damaged, and had run out of food and water, but Eckener, his crew and his passengers were greeted like heroes with a ticker-tape parade along New York City's Broadway. After two weeks of repairs to a damaged fin, Graf Zeppelin departed Lakehurst on October 29, 1928 for its return to Germany. The return flight took 71 hours and 49 minutes, or just under three days; the ocean liners of the day took twice as long to carry passengers across the Atlantic. An amazing, attractive historic piece of Aviation and Postal history.
Christened, "Graf Zeppelin" by the daughter of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin on July 8, 1928, which would have been the late count's 90th birthday. Certainly the most successful zeppelin ever built, LZ-127.
By the time of Graf Zeppelin's last flight, nine years later, the ship had flown over a million miles, on 590 flights, carrying thousands of passengers and hundreds of thousands of pounds of freight and mail, with safety and speed. Graf Zeppelin circled the globe and was famous throughout the world, and inspired an international zeppelin fever in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
In 1929, Graf Zeppelin made perhaps its most famous flight; a "Round-the-World" voyage, covering 21,2500 miles in five legs from Lakehurst to Friedrichshafen, Friedrichshafen to Tokyo, Tokyo to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Lakehurst, and then Lakehurt to Friedrichshafen again.
It was the first passenger-carrying flight around the world and received massive coverage in the world's press.
The flight was partly sponsored by American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, who paid for about half the cost of the flight in return for exclusive media rights in the United States and Britain.
Graf Zeppelin was over the Canary Islands on the last day of a South American flight from Brazil to Germany when it received news of the Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Captain Hans von Schiller withheld the news from his passengers, and told them of the disaster only after the ship's safe landing in Germany.
Graf Zeppelin landed in Friedrichshafen on May 8, 1937, and never carried a paying passenger again. The ship made only one additional flight, on June 18, 1937, from Friedrichshafen to Frankfurt, where she remained on display " all her hydrogen removed " until she was broken up on the orders of Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe in March, 1940.