The American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst was the major commercial backer of the project. The airship flight had nine passengers. The Graf LZ 127's "Round-the-World" (Weltrundfahrt 1929) flight began in August 1929. It officially began and ended at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey.
As with many of the airship's other flights, however, its expenses were also heavily offset by the carriage of souvenir mails to and/or from Lakehurst, Friedrichshafen, Tokyo, and Los Angeles.
A U.S. franked letter flown on the whole trip from Lakehurst to Lakehurst, for instance, required US $3.55 in postage or the equivalent of roughly $ 45 in current dollars if based on the CPI.
The $200,000 Hearst paid for exclusive media rights would currently be the equivalent of $2.5 million if figured on the same basis.
Lady Grace Drummond-Hay was on board making her the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air.
The Graf Zeppelin flew back across the Atlantic to Friedrichshafen to refuel before continuing across Eastern Europe. It flew on over Russia, and the vastness of Siberia to Tokyo (Kasumigaura Naval Air Station). This was flown in a 101 hour, 49 minute nonstop leg covering 7,297 miles (11,743 km).
Although the Soviet government had formally requested by radio to the "Graf" for the airship to overfly its capital, Moscow, Dr. Eckener declined because of the necessity to take advantage of the tailwinds necessary in order to reach Tokyo nonstop. This was a decision which resulted in considerable disappointment and annoyance on the part of the Russians.
To make up for this, the "Graf" a year later made a special two day round trip flight from Friedrichshafen to Moscow on September 9-10, 1930. Landing briefly to collect souvenir mail at Moscow's "October Field" where it was greeted by a crowd of some 100,000 people.
Crossing the inadequately mapped Stanovoy Mountains in Siberia proved to be a precarious venture with the Graf eventually being forced to climb to 6,000 feet in order to clear the range through a high mountain canyon with barely 150 feet to spare.
After five days in Tokyo, the Graf continued across the Pacific to California crossing the coast at San Francisco before landing at Mines Field in Los Angeles thus completing the first ever nonstop flight of any kind across the Pacific Ocean, covering 5,986 miles (9,634 km) in 79 hours and 54 minutes.
The 2,996-mile (4,822 km), 51 hour 13 minute transcontinental flight across the United States took the Graf over 13 states and such cities as El Paso, Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit before arriving back at Lakehurst from the west on the morning of August 29, three weeks after it had departed to the east on August 8. Flying time for the four Lakehurst to Lakehurst legs was 12 days, 12 hours and 13 minutes while the entire circumnavigation (including stops) took 21 days, 5 hours and 31 minutes and covered 33,234 km (20,651 mi).
Source: Wikipedia
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