> what I assume was quite a big population of airships That might be a bad assumption. Hard to find numbers for all producers but based on the various lists of

> what I assume was quite a big population of airships That might be a bad assumption. Hard to find numbers for all producers but based on the various lists of airships (links below), it looks like total number of airships produced was probably in the "few hundred" range, and only a small portion of those were in use at any given time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zeppelins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zeppelins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airships_of_the_United_States_Navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airships_of_the_United... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sch%C3%BCtte-Lanz_airships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sch%C3%BCtte-Lanz_airs...