French Derigible Butter Knife.

[Jack the Collector]

Folks,I am Koo Koo for Airships/Dirigible/Zeppelin's.You may or may not be aware that the French actually had  a fleet of airships that rivaled Germany.Here is a butter knife from one of them that was made in Germany!Unfortunately there isn't a paper trail ,I bought from another airship collector.

[Croix de Guerre]

Wow!  That is very, very cool!  I have started looking, (not collecting yet) menus and paper of the French Line of cruise ships during World War One.  I am interested in American ambulance drivers, aviators and Foreign Legion volunteers and you can sometimes learn a lot about them from which ship they sailed over on.  Anyway, very cool material!  Did the French ever have a Trans-Atlantic service?

[Jack the Collector]

The French government had basically total control of any airships made at the turn of the century.Which they used as transports(mainly to Algeria) and military purposes.They did have an attempt at passenger services before WW1 but design flaws grounded them more than they were in the air.After WW1 they did have a regular passenger service with 2 airships built by Zeppelin.These 2 ships were the LZ120 and LZ121 (Y-Class Zeppelin). The two ships were confiscated under protest by the German government. LZ 121 was awarded to France as war reparations.To my knowledge they never attempted any trans-Atlantic flights. 

 

As a side note,I too collect menus but mine are from the German KdF(Strength through Joy) cruises.