Building an airship in the Zeppelin hangar, 1937

Scaffolding towers carry the open ring frames of an airship down the length of a vast hangar, the covered hull of another ship above them. A young worker in a neckerchief fits and rivets the lattice girders, another climbs a mast and edges along a beam high under the glazed roof. Engineers bend over a girder. At the change of shift men walk and cycle across the open airfield and an old worker wheels his bicycle out of a long rack; then the rounded doors of the hangar slide apart on the silver nose of an airship.

In 1937 the Zeppelin works were building LZ 130, sister ship of the Hindenburg. When the Hindenburg burned at Lakehurst on 6 May 1937, killing thirty-six people, the new ship was redesigned to fly on helium; the United States, the only producer, refused to sell it, and the age of the great airships came to an end.