Airship type LZ 126 in the form of a paper cutout. The scale of the model is 1:200. The difficulty of the cut-out is high and is therefore suitable for advanced modellers.
Model dimensions: 1000 x 140 x 160mm
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The airship LZ 126 was built in 1924 for the US Navy by the Zeppelin Company in Germany. After a successful crossing of the Atlantic, she was handed over to the US Navy and renamed ZR-3 "USS Los Angeles". It was probably the most successful American airship, which served for the next 16 years without accidents.
The production of the airship LZ 126 was a diplomatic success of Hugo Eckener, who managed to offer the construction of the airship to the American government (as part of war reparations) despite the fact that England and France were against it. After losing the war, Germany was prohibited from building airships, and even had to dismantle all airship hangars. The concession was the reduction of the airship's volume from the originally planned 98,000 m³ to 70,000 m³ and the fact that it was built as a civilian. Construction began in 1922.
The airship took off for the first time on August 27, 1924. After testing, it took off on the morning of October 13 to cross the Atlantic. The flight was commanded by Hugo Eckener. First, the airship flew to the Azores, then ran into headwinds that threatened to run out of fuel before reaching America. Rescue ships have even left the US. Based on the data from these ships, Eckener decided on a northerly course, and the airship took a huge arc down the low-pressure edge almost to Newfoundland. On October 15, 1924, at 9:52 a.m., she arrived at the airport near New York.
In the US, the hydrogen with which the airship made the trip across the Atlantic was released and the airship was filled with safer helium, which was recovered from the airship USS Shenandoah (ZR-1). Helium was rare at the time, so the lack of it had to be solved in this way - by grounding one airship so that the other could operate.
After being handed over to the US Navy, she served as a training airship. It was very popular among aviators, because its original civilian purpose provided the crew with unusually comfortable conditions. Among other things, it was used to test take-offs and landings of aircraft (later used in the construction of the Akron and Macon airships). On this occasion, the Consolidated N2Y-1 training two-seater biplane landed and took off from the USS Los Angeles. In 1930, experiments were conducted with the launch of the Prüfling glider, which was specially purchased for this purpose from Germany. The purpose was to devise a way to bring a trained officer to the ground during the landing of an airship to direct the landing parties on the ground. Although the tests were successful, it was not used in practice. On October 17, 1931, the Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighter landed on the airship for the first time as part of tests.
It was decommissioned in 1939 and dismantled in August 1940.
