Sadly this booklet, to say the least, leaves much to be desired. Most of the Zeppelin and Schutte-Lanz photographs are well-known and of mediocre quality. However, there are three rare pictures. The Hanlein’s non-rigid airship of 1872, the 1909 Steffen non-rigid and the Veeh.I. of 1911 are relatively unknown and these are valuable photographs. Written from the German viewpoint, many observations tend towards exaggeration regarding performance and capabilities or are simply incorrect. This is never more obvious than in the following statement: ‘the catastrophes of the R100 and R101 in England’. The R100 was quite successful! Similar errors abound and are too numerous to mention.

As a small, mainly photographic record of, as its title suggests, German Airships it has a certain merit due to the pictorial content. Anything which furthers the now almost extinct lighter-than-air field must be encouraged and for the pictures/diagrams alone it is worth the money.