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R100
over Lowestoft
late 1920's or 1930

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This is a very interesting card. When I first bought it I thought, "Goodness! that airship is small!" and then I looked with my loop at the number on the side and looked it up. It's D-LZ127...the Graf Zeppelin!, one of the most famous airships ever built! Wow!!! The Graf Zepplin was in Lowestoft!!!

And then my eagle-eyed better half pointed out that the Graf Zeppelin was not only in Lowestoft, it was semi-transparent!

Look closely and you'll see a line through it that is the South Pier. Look even closer and you can see the faint images of another airship peeking over the top center of the Zeppelin.

Now, Dear Reader, take a look at this photograph, K0229, also taken by the Claremont Photo Stores.

Look familiar?

So not only is this NOT the Graf Zeppelin and the famous airship was never nose down on the beaches of Lowestoft, but it's also not the R100, which someone wrote on the back of the card. Look at the shape of the airships, the rudders, the gondola, etc. and the more you look, the easier it is to see the differences between the three airships.

Now why on earth would someone at the Claremont Photo Stores create a fake image? I think that the real image, which he really, truly took, simply didn't sell well with such a small, faint airship and he was trying to tart up the picture with something a bit more marketable. I doubt if anyone was really fooled and that's why this card didn't sell well, either.

Date? The original photo was taken in 1925. Graf Zeppelin was in service between 1928 and 1937. Given the very high anti-German sentiment between the wars and that the last thing a holiday maker would want to buy was a picture of a German airship, it's entirely possible that this card was marketed as an English airship, even with the model number still emblazoned on the side. In early 1936, the Graf Zeppelin was impressed by the Nazi regime and swastikas were painted on it. This tells me this image was created, not shot, between 1928 and 1935 and it's my opinion that the image was made very early in that window.