Walt Grigg

DURING the 1930s, there were any number of kits for building zeppelins, or as you prefer, dirigibles. (They were really zeppelins, but here in America the latter name was used mainly because Zeppelin was a man's name, and the name of an existing German firm.) All these kits were inaccurate. I became fascinated with these graceful monsters after reading Richard K. Smith's beautiful book on the Akron and Macon. A plan of 1/200th scale was obtained from the National Air & Space Museum, but this just didn't seem large enough, so I was able to get a 1/100th size from the same source. Now we had something. The real airship was 785 ft. long and 132.9 ft. in diameter. Big enough.