Zeppelin airship travel reached its highest point with the LZ129 airship. Unlike an aircraft, the airship was able to link continents non-stop by air. The luxuriously appointed "Hindenburg" developed by Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin came to a tragic end: before the eyes of the world public the airship caught fire on the evening of 6th March 1937 as it approached the US airship port at Lakehurst. By some miracle 61 of the 97 passengers on board survived. The rigid airship LZ129 had a gas volume of 200,000 m³. Equipped with 4 Daimler-Benz 16-cylinder diesel engines each developing 1300 hp, it could reach a cruising speed of 130 km/h.