WONDER ZEPPELIN.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13182, 14 February 1936, Page 3

WONDER ZEPPELIN.

BARS AND DANCE FLOORS. NEARLY COMPLETED. The largest aircraft ever built waits in a long, high building at Friedrichshafen, on the shores of Lake Constance, Germany, for its journey across the world, says the Dominion. It is still known as the Zeppelin LZI29. There is every prospect that it will be called A dolt Hitler. Half a million cubic feet of gas is being pumped into it—the last process in its two years of construction. This great hangar has seen its birth from a design on a drawing board to the mighty skeleton, dwarfing the workmen who swarmed among the maze of girders. For the past few weeks men and women have been busy stitching the great silver envelope. The 839-feet-long “ship of the air’’ will carry 80 passengers and a large crow. It will be driven by four mighty oil-burning engines at more than 80 miles an hour. Passengers will not be accommodaitecl in cramped compartments. Long promenade decks, glass-win-dowed, will give them views of the lands and seas thousands of feet below. They will eat in extensive dining saloons, servbd by stewards, with food prepared by first-class chefs. There will be sinart cocktail bars and dancing floors. Passengers will be able to smoke—the helium gas is n o n-i n flam m a b le. They will sleep in luxuriously-ap-pointed staterooms. Only a faint humming sound will tell them that the great sky-liner is being driven by powerful, roaring engines, each housed in a gondola outside the hull. Even if they flv at heights where the sleet and snow are born, through the driving clouds of ice crystals tour miles above the earth, the travellers will be warm, kept at an even temperature by centi al heating and air conditioning. If the maiden voyage is to New York, passengers will do the journey in less than three days. If it is to Brazil, across the South Atlantic, they will halve the time taken by the fastest ship. Every cabin is booked for the maiden voyage. Hugo Eckener, veteran of the airship lines, will command her. Among his officers will be men who bombed London from the Zeppelins in 1913.