Deutsches Bundes Post 75th Death Anniversary of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin

DEUTSCHE BUNDES POST on 6 February 1992 issued a first day cover stamp marking the 75th death anniversary of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.  This postcard features that stamp with FDC postmark cancellation originating from Berlin. It also includes a Friedrichshafen (Baden Wūrttemberg) postmark of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin under a photo of Zeppelin LZ-127 flying over Cologne, Germany.

LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin (Deutsches Luftschiff Zeppelin 127) was a German passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. Graf Zeppelin made 590 flights totalling almost 1.7 million kilometres (over 1 million miles). It was operated by a crew of 36, and could carry 24 passengers. It was the longest and largest airship in the world when it was built. It made the first circumnavigation of the world by airship, and the first nonstop crossing of the Pacific Ocean by air; its range was enhanced by its use of 'Blau' (blue) gas as a fuel. It was built using funds raised by public subscription and from the German government, and its operating costs were offset by the sale of special postage stamps to collectors, the support of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and cargo and passenger receipts.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was the inventor of the rigid airship or dirigible balloon. He was born July 8, 1838, in Konstanz, Prussia, and educated at the Ludwigsburg Military Academy and the University of Tübingen. Ferdinand von Zeppelin entered the Prussian army in 1858. Zeppelin went to the United States in 1863 to work as a military observer for the Union army in the American Civil War and later explored the headwaters of the Mississippi River, making his first balloon flight while he was in Minnesota. He served in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and retired in 1891 with the rank of brigadier general.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin spent nearly a decade developing the dirigible. The first of many rigid dirigibles, called zeppelins in his honor, was completed in 1900. He made the first directed flight on July 2, 1900. In 1910, a zeppelin provided the first commercial air service for passengers. By his death in 1917, he had built a zeppelin fleet, some of which were used to bomb London during World War I. However, they were too slow and explosive a target in wartime and too fragile to withstand bad weather. They were found to be vulnerable to antiaircraft fire, and about 40 were shot down over London.

After the war, they were used in commercial flights until the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin died on March 8, 1917.

Source: Wikipedia