Finished Photos of Lindberg Graf Zeppelin Airship

Modeling Subjects Airliners and Civil Aircraft
1

Greetings Fellow Modelers,

Below are photos of my Hawk/Lindberg 1/245 scale (38.5” length) German 1930’s civilian airship Graf Zeppelin. The kit was first issued in the late 1960’s by Hawk Model Company, and featured thin vac-formed main hull halves and soft vinyl plastic engine parts. In 1976, Testors Corporation re-issued the same kit in a different box. I always wanted to add this great looking zeppelin to my collection, but the vac-form parts never let me get past the dreaming stage. In 2007 Lindberg’s newly tooled “re-issue” of the same kit that replaced the vac-form hull with hearty injection molded plastic, although the soft vinyl engine parts remained. It is a very simple kit with only a few pieces (53 total) and the details are not very accurate. Most of the time I put in the project was in correcting the toy-like gondola and engines. Listed below are several things I did to improve the kit:

Modified and cut down the kit gondola

Replaced the kit engine struts with small diameter wire

Added small diameter guy wires to the engine housings/tailfins

Scratch built gas-shaft/air vent covers located on top of the hull

Scratch built engine propellers

Added photo-etched access ladders to the engine housings

Used Woodland Scenics dry transfer decals in place of the kit decals

In painting the hull it was first covered with Model Master primer to produce a uniform finish and conceal any tiny scratches. Alclad II dull aluminum was applied for the base color since it had a “gray tone” look. The “patch-panel” effect was achieved by masking various size squares and rectangles randomly all over the hull, then painting them Alclad II aluminum, Alclad II polished aluminum, Alclad II dark aluminum and Model Master dark anodonic gray. Finally, an overspray of dull aluminum was added to make the patch-panel effect more subtle. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Phillip1

2

Nice job! I bought the Testor’s reissue but never got it assembled due to being “vacuform challenged”. I always thought this would have been the ultimate form of air travel. Did you purposely leave off the tail markings?

3

Hey wow, she came out great!!!

Love the more to scale work on the nacelles and the patch effect! [Y]

I wish someone would bring these back with modern technology, a ticket would probably be out of my budget but they were so cool.

4

Looks great!

I had built that model a couple of years ago. I thought it would look good hanging from ceiling, so had it hanging from a ceiling light fixture. Unfortunately, a knot in the hanging thread gave way a couple of months ago, and the Graf Zeppelin crashed! It was fairly banged up, so I ended up discarding it, but at least I got a few good pics before I hung it.

5

Nice work, Don. Do you just mask off the rectangles when you go to paint them? How does the underlying Alclad take the tape?

Gene Beaird,
Pearland, Texas

6

Hi Phillip ;

Question . Is there a reason you chose to leave off the Swastika markings ? If it’s personal preference I understand . Darn nice build though . T.B.

7

I did not use alclad. The zeppelins were fabric covered and finished with aluminum dope. I did, however, mask a few panels and varied slightly the shade of the aluminum {Testors enamel), since the photos show some variations in the dope. Those variations may have made it look like metal, but they were in fact doped fabric. In fact, doped fabric is so flammable that some folks blame that for greatly increasing the blaze in the Hindenberg crash.

Took a picture and photoshopped it with a picture of the sky.

8

Beautiful models, gentlemen!

I googled the Graf Zeppelin. She entered service in 1928, several years before swastikas started to be in painted on German…stuff. So a model of the Graf with or without swastikas would be correct (though I have no idea what other features of her may have changed between 1928 and 1933 (or whenever the swastikas were painted on).

I did a little web digging to try to find out exactly when swastikas started appearing on German vehicles, but I came up empty. Maybe there was no official universal date. Does anybody out there know?

That makes her an unusual subject: an interwar German vehicle that wasn’t built by the Nazis. About the only other one I can think of is the Graf Spee, which was commissioned in 1934 - a little before the Nazis took over the government completely.

Note: the automatic censor deleted my references to the party of Hitler.

9

Now thats somthing a bit differant and a really nice build. Thanks for posting.

10

Bucksco/Gamera/CrashTestDummy/Tanker-Builder/Dan Stauffer/jtilley/Bish-Thanks for the compliments. They are appreciated.

Don-Your Graf Zeppelin looks nice. I especially like the sky and cloud backdrop-very appropriate (too bad about the hard, final landing).

Bucksco/Tanker-Builder-The markings shown on the model are pretty much all Graf Zeppelin carried during its operational life. For the most part there were no markings on the tailfins. The exception being when (for a very short period) the upper and lower tail fins were painted red with black swastikas (inside a white circle). Only one side of the fins was painted this way with the other side being painted with different color horizontal stripes! I think this was done for a special event, but I am not sure. This is the only time I know of where Graf Zeppelin carried swastikas. I personally have no problem adding that symbol to any historical model I am building.

Below is a brief history and a few statistics I should have included in the original post.

Launched in October 1928, Graf Zeppelin was the largest airship in the world at the time. It was originally built for demonstrations and to show that airships could be a viable means of regular travel. However, during its operational life it did carry passengers and mail to cover its operating costs. In August 1929, Graf Zeppelin circumnavigated the globe. The entire voyage took 21 days, 5 hours and 31 minutes. In May 1930, it was decided to open the first regular transatlantic passenger line. Despite the beginning of the Great Depression and growing competition by fixed-wing aircraft, Graf Zeppelin transported an increasing number of passengers and mail across the ocean every year until 1936.

Graf Zeppelin was retired from service and turned into a museum in 1937, one month after the Hindenburg disaster. In March 1940, Hermann Goring, the German Air Minister, ordered the destruction of Graf Zeppelin and all other remaining dirigibles, so their aluminum parts could be supplied to the German war industry. During its career, the ship flew more than one million miles, made 590 flights and 144 ocean crossings. It carried 13,110 passengerswith a perfect passenger safety record, making it the most successful rigid airship ever built.

Designation: Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127)

Length: 776 ft.

Overall Height: 110.6 ft.

Engines: 5 Maybach 550 HP

Maximum Speed: 80 m.p.h.

Range: 10,400 miles (at 68 m.p.h.)

Crew/Passengers: 40/20

Thanks

Phillip1

11

Nice indeed. The Hawk vacuform model was pretty much unbuildable.

LZ 127 was an interesting intersection with polar navigation. She was in part justified as a civilian research aircraft for a trip to the North Pole in 1930, our hero George Wilkins in Nautilus intended to rendevous with here there.

Wilkins eventually made it there, she never did.

(Podean fans trivia question: how did he?)

The airship Norge had made an overflight of that pole, most probably the first expedition of any kind, in 1926.

I would suspect that the swastika only appeared, if at all, after 1935.

12

I also remember reading how the crew on off watch times would climb out onto the top of the airship, which was ploddind along, and sun themselves on the deck, protected by a kind of boundary layer.

13

Here’s what a dirigable’s skin looks like. You may have to excuse the condition, the pieces are a bit old and have been through some abuse.

While doing some research for a report for a college class I found out that the zepplins were allowed to fly as long as they agreed to drop propaganda leaflets on their runs. Of course the proper markings had to be worn. The Hindenberg would not have even been built otherwise.

14

That piece of skin reminds me of one critism with the kit. The fabric weave for the exterior skin is ridiculously coarse. In scale it would make the thing look like it was covered with crocheted wool rather than fine linen. I used a thick primer and sanded several coats, but it still looked pretty gross.

15

Lovely.

16

GMorrison/Sailor Steve-Thanks for the compliments.

ikar01-Very interesting images from very historic ship.

Phillip1