1931

The Graf Zeppelin continued making headlines in 1931 with a number of high-profile flights. The season began with a landing flight to Budapest, Hungary, which was followed closely by another landing flight to Cairo, Egypt. After a handful of local flights, the LZ 127 ventured north on a flight marking the Baltic Sea Year, making a mail drop over Copenhagen, Denmark. In June, the ship visited Vaduz, Liechtenstein, where two special Liechtenstein zeppelin stamps were issued for use on the voyage. An ambitious trip to Iceland followed, with the airship dropping mail over the capital of Reykjavik and hauling aboard Icelandic mail franked with three specially overprinted zeppelin stamps.

The ship’s crowning achievement for the 1931 flight season was the Polar Flight, a scientific expedition that saw the airship rendezvous with the Russian icebreaker Malyguin off the coast of Hooker Island in Franz Josef Land, about 600 miles from the North Pole. There the two vessels exchanged mail that was ferried across the water on the Malyguin’s rowboat. The Russian mail was franked with special zeppelin stamps that were issued for the occasion. Germany similarly issued special Polar Flight overprints of the 1, 2, and 4 Reichsmark zeppelin stamps.

After a flight to London, England, the year concluded with a trio of demonstration flights to South America that would usher in regular zeppelin passenger and mail service to that continent beginning in 1932.