In August 1929, about twenty people made history by completing the first circumnavigation of the world by zeppelin, starting and ending in the city of Lakehurst and stopping in Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York. Among the selected passage were the Spanish Jeronimo Megiasphysician to King Alfonso XIII, who later described in a book the flight over the San Francisco Bridge, Mount Fuji or the vision of the midnight sun from the Siberian taiga. “Everything is new; everything is unknown or almost unknown to the eyes of men,” said Megías after the twenty-day trip sponsored by magnate William Randolph Hearst.
That first flight around the planet was the culmination of a decade in which these giants of the sky had captured the collective imagination, so popular that photographs of their travels became an object of desire and were offered as a claim on cigarettes in Germany. The cartographer and science writer Alejandro Polanco Masa has found one of those complete lots with over 200 images of airships through a German collector and scanned it for the first time in high definition as part of a new book, under the title The first flight around the world with the Graf Zeppelinfunded through the Kickstarter platform.
“At that time zeppelins represented the future, they were the hope that flew”, points out the author of the project. “Airplanes were still seen as something between circus and dangerous, but airships could carry large loads and people, they were the ocean liners of the air.”
The collection, the prints of which were offered on cigarette packets of the brands 'Club' and 'Liga', consists of small-format photographic reproductions (13×18 and 18×24 centimetres), which were pasted into an album as trading cards. contained abundant historical and technical information about airships and was mainly focused on the voyages of the Graff ZeppelinAlthough this historic album is appearing in some auction houses, Polanco says very few copies are complete and well-preserved enough to digitize the material in high definition.
fly around the world
Among the images recovered for the project are aerial photographs taken during the flight over the Mediterranean in 1929, the transatlantic crossing between Spain, Brazil and the United States in 1930 and the famous flight over the pyramids of Egypt in 1931. A third (60) were taken during the famous world tour in August 1929. “They come from a time when affordable tourism did not yet exist, if you wanted to go around the world it cost thousands of marks, what did you do? Buy a packet of tobacco and with a bit of luck you get a good photo with which you can fantasize about Egypt or see Manhattan from the air, dream about what was out of your reach”, Polanco summarizes.
Among the most spectacular images were those taken by the airship's photographers as they flew over the taiga in the Tunguska Basin, a moment that Megías describes in his book The first voyage around the world with the 'Graf Zeppelin'. 'We are a thousand miles from the North Pole,' he wrote. 'Between the edge of the earth and the sky, at the extreme limit of our visible horizon, there is a blue band lighter than the rest of the firmament; this brightness announces to us that there, in the polar regions, we can enjoy the beautiful spectacle of the midnight Sun”. Later he was struck by the need to change the time as they moved east. “Twice a day we put the clock forward, until, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and on the appointed meridian, having lost 24 hours, we make up for the loss and find ourselves living two identical days,” the doctor wrote.
Images in the collection include the luxurious interior of the Graf Zeppelin and its illustrious guests, such as British journalist Lady Hay Drummond-Haywho became the first woman to complete a circumnavigation of the world in an airplane. It also includes photographs of the parties on board and the engine room of the airship. “We look down twenty meters, and it is a challenge for vertigo,” wrote Megías about his visit to the interior of those “colossal cetaceans.” “350 meters below our feet we see the waters of the Pacific Ocean stirring,” he was amazed. “Our monster is 236 meters from head to toe!” wrote another passenger, journalist Leo Gerville-Reache, in his book Around the world with Zeppelin.
In the three cities they stopped at during the voyage, the crew and passengers were lavishly cared for by their hosts. In Tokyo, in addition to the view of Mount Fuji and the Imperial Palace, travelers were greatly impressed by the geishas. “Before each guest, the charming geisha, dressed in embroidered kimonos of fantastic colors, kneels on the ground and hands the diner two long chopsticks, which form the cutlery,” Megías described.
The airship also stopped in Los Angeles, where they were entertained with a dinner attended by Charles Chaplin and Megías made a fleeting visit to Hollywood, during which he accidentally took part as an extra in a film shoot. “They filmed us as characters in the film, as free agents,” he said.
“O humanity!”
To conclude their adventure, they stopped in New York and flew over the city of skyscrapers. On August 29, 1929, they arrived in Lakehurst after having traveled 34,600 kilometers in just twenty-one days, a feat that was reported in the media around the world as the great achievement that opened a new era in communication between continents. “We have opened an admirable path for civilization, today and in the future; the enormous distances of the past no longer separate people,” Megías summarized. “Air communication will bring together countries separated by deserts and seas.”
The passengers did not yet know that dark times were coming for the world and for the zeppelins themselves. “All these images are from the time before the Nazis came,” says Polanco. “They are images of the zeppelin without the swastika that they painted on it later, they don’t even have German symbols.” “That was vital, because the issue is delicate,” he emphasizes. “Because the project aims to recall a piece of the glorious time before everything went to hell,” he summarizes. A few years later, and with the Nazis already in power, the fire broke out LZ 129 Hindenburg In 1937, the era of the giants of the sky ended, and the reporter who broadcast the event live uttered a warning cry that echoed throughout history: “O mankind!”