17 Amazing Vintage Photos of Airships and Zeppelins in History

Here's a gallery of beautiful air vehicles of the past.

Pax, a colorful airship, constructed by a Brazilian inventor named Augusto Severo. The inventor was killed in Paris in 1902 when the airship rose steeply and exploded. (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Getty Images)

A Spencer Airship ascending at Ranelagh, watched by a fashionable crowd, 1903 (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

Clement-Bayard dirigible in shed, France (via Library of Congress)

A German zeppelin flies over the Balkans, 1916 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The British R33 in its hangar before its first flight in Barlow, Yorkshire, March 1919 (Photo by R. Humphrey/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

A Soviet airship, built by some factory workers in Moscow, 1924

The Norge, designed by Umberto Nobile, first flown in 1924 under the name N1. The ship was rebuilt one year later for Arctic conditions. (Photo by Kirby/Getty Images and Norsk Polarinstitutt)

The construction of a new nose for the R33, 1925 (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

A pair of Gloster Grebe fighter planes, tethered to the underside of the British Royal Navy airship R33, October 1926

USS Los Angeles, upside down after a turbulent wind from the Atlantic, Lakehurst, New Jersey, 1926 (AP)

The LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, a German airship, built between 1926 and 1928, made 590 flights and retired in 1937, over Guanabara Bay, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 1930

Four airships on the ground (USS Akron, USS Los Angeles, Goodyear RS-1, Pony Blimp) (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

His Majesty's Airship R100, built by the Airship Guarantee Company in 1929, first flew in November 1929. It made some trial flights, but in October 1930 it was broken up for scrap.

The Slate All-Metal Dirigible, 1929 (via Fox Photos/Getty Images) 6

R101, a British airship completed in 1929, crashed on 5 October 1930 in France during its very first overseas voyage. 48 of the 54 people were died on board.

The USS Macon inside Hangar One at Moffett Field, Sunnyvale, California, on October 15, 1933, following a transcontinental flight from Lakehurst, New Jersey. (via Moffett Field Historical Society)

LZ 129 Hindenburg, built in 1936, flew for only 14 months (63 flights) between March 1936 and May 1937, when thirty-six people died in a fire named the Hindenburg disaster, which occurred while landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey.

(via io9)