USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) in the context of "Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst"

LZ 129 Hindenburg (Luftschiff Zeppelin #129; registration: D-LZ 129) was a German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of its class, the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. It was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) on the shores of Lake Constance in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and was operated by the German Zeppelin Airline Company (Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei). It was named after Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who was President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934.

The airship first flew from March 1936 as a Nazi propaganda vessel until it burst into flames 14 months later on May 6, 1937, while attempting to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service. This was the last of the great airship disasters; it was preceded by the crashes of the British R38, the US airship Roma, the French Dixmude, the USS Shenandoah, the British R101, and the USS Akron.

A rigid airship is a type of airship (or dirigible) in which the envelope is supported by an internal framework rather than by being kept in shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope, as in blimps (also called pressure airships) and semi-rigid airships. Rigid airships are often commonly called Zeppelins, though this technically refers only to airships built by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company.

In 1900, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin successfully performed the maiden flight of his first airship; further models quickly followed. Prior to the First World War, Germany was a world leader in the field, largely attributable to the work of von Zeppelin and his Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company. During the conflict, rigid airships were tasked with various military duties, which included their participation in Germany's strategic bombing campaign. Numerous rigid airships were produced and employed with relative commercial success between the 1900s and the late 1930s. The heyday of the rigid airship was abruptly ended by the destruction of the Hindenburg by fire on 6 May 1937. The disaster not only destroyed the biggest zeppelin in the world, but the film caused considerable reputation damage to rigid airships in general. Several nations had ended military rigid airship programs after serious accidents earlier in the decade, but widespread public safety concerns in the wake of the Hindenburg disaster led several nations to permanently ground their existing rigid airships and scrap them in subsequent years.

The R.38 class (also known as the A class) of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of the First World War, intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four similar airships were originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of these (R.39, R.40 and R.41) were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and R.38, the lead ship of the class, was sold to the United States Navy in October 1919 before completion.

On 24 August 1921, R.38 (designated ZR-2 by the USN) was destroyed by a structural failure while in flight over the city of Hull. It crashed into the Humber Estuary, killing 44 out of the 49 crew aboard and one black cat named Snowball. At the time of its first flight it was the world's largest airship. Its destruction was the first of the great airship disasters, followed by the Italian-built US semi-rigid airship Roma in 1922 (34 dead), the French Dixmude in 1923 (52 dead), the USS Shenandoah in 1925 (14 dead), the British R101 in 1930 (48 dead), the USS Akron in 1933 (73 dead), the USS Macon in 1935 (2 dead), and the German Hindenburg in 1937 (36 dead).

Dixmude was a Zeppelin airship built for the Imperial German Navy as L 72 (c/n LZ 114) and unfinished at the end of the First World War, when it was given to France as war reparations and recommissioned for service in the French Navy and renamed Dixmude. The airship was lost when it exploded in mid-air on 21 December 1923 off the coast of Sicily, killing all 52 (42 crew and ten passengers) on board. This was one of the earliest of the great airship disasters, preceded by the crash of the British R38 in 1921 (44 dead) and the US airship Roma in 1922 (34 dead), and followed by the destruction of the USS Shenandoah in 1925 (14 dead) the British R101 in 1930 (48 dead), the USS Akron in 1933 (73 dead) and the German Hindenburg in 1937 (36 dead).