Did any aircraft serve in both the First and Second World War and if so are any such aircraft surviving today?

my_baby_love

Interesting question. The closest I could find was that the Germans used Zepplins for intelligence gathering purposes just months prior to World War II, the Zepplins were of course used quite extensively in World War I. This intelligence gathered in the summer of 1939 help the Germans plan and carry out their invasion of Poland. "The career of Graf Zeppelin (LZ130) was not ended. It was assigned to the Luftwaffe and performed about 30 test flights prior to the start of World War II. Most of those test flights were carried out near the Polish southwestern border; first in the Sudetes mountains region and later in the Baltic Sea region. During one flight LZ130 crossed the Polish border near Hel Peninsula where it was intercepted by a Polish Lublin R-XIII plane from Puck naval airbase and forced to retreat beyond Polish territorial waters. During this time LZ130 was used as an electronic scouting vehicle and was equipped with various telemetric equipment. From May to August 1939 it performed flights near the coastline of Great Britain in an attempt to determine whether the 100 meter towers erected from Portsmouth to Scapa Flow were used for aircraft radiolocalisation. Tests included photography, radiowave interception, magnetic analysis and radio frequency analysis but were unable to detect operational British Chain Home radar due to poor quality of the German equipment. The conclusion was that the British towers were not connected to radar operations, but formed a network of naval radiocommunication and rescue." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin Dec 05 05, 7:03 AM

my_baby_love

Are there any of the original Zepplins around today - no, but similar type aircraft do exist: In the 1990s, the successor of the original Zeppelin company in Friedrichshafen, the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH, reengaged in airship construction. The first experimental craft (later christened Friedrichshafen) of the type Zeppelin NT flew in September 1997. Though larger than common blimps, the "Neue Technologie" (new technology) Zeppelins are much smaller than their giant ancestors and not actually Zeppelin-type in the classical sense, but only semi-rigid high-tech hybrid airships. Apart from the greater payload, their main advantages compared to blimps are higher speed and excellent maneuverability. Meanwhile, the Zeppelin NT is produced in series and operated profitably in joyrides, research flights and similar applications. In June 2004, a Zeppelin NT was sold for the first time to a Japanese company, Nippon Airship Corporation, who will be using it for tourism and advertising mainly around Tokyo. It will also be given a role at the 2005 Expo held in Aichi. The aircraft made a slow journey from Friedrichshafen to Japan, stopping at Geneva, Paris, Rotterdam, Munich, Berlin, Stockholm among other European cities and in Russia before reaching its destination in August 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin Dec 05 05, 7:41 AM