ONE of the most vivid of childhood memories for Kevin Taylor was to see the giant Hindenburg airship fly low over the Barrow rooftops in 1936.

He was just four and busy playing in Cheltenham Street 80 years ago.

Mr Taylor, 84, who lives in Mallowdale Avenue, Heysham, said: “I was playing in the front of Cheltenham Street when I heard this noise.

“It looked to me like a large peanut coming towards me.

“I just stood in awe and looked at it. I was only four.

“It was coming down Abbey Road. It must have been only at about 300 feet.”

His family later moved to Morecambe but Mr Taylor returned to Barrow to serve his apprenticeship at Vickers as a shipwright.

He served in the RAF and the Merchant Navy.

Mr Taylor has visited where the German airships were built and his research into these technological marvels of their era raises an interesting point about exactly which of the German giants he saw in 1936.

The route of the Hindenburg would have brought it close to Barrow and the Morecambe Bay but this was a time of complex international politics as world war approached.

The German military authorities had another airship, Zeppelin 2, identified as number 128.

Its activities were not public knowledge and - just possibly - this was the airship snooping low over Barrow shipyard to take pictures of naval work.

The Barrow News of May 23 in 1936 noted: “Barrow had an unexpected visitor on Friday evening when the new German Zeppelin Hindenburg flew over the town on her return trip to America to Germany.

“The airship passed over Barrow at about 7.25pm flying at a moderate speed.

“She was very low and her registration number and name could be clearly read by people in Dalton Road and over towards Greengate Street.

“She was first sighted in this district from the vicinity of Bootle, coming from the direction of the Isle of Man and flying steadily towards the south.”

The airship made another trip across Furness at the end of June 1936. The Barrow News of July 4 noted: “The airship passed over Barrow on Tuesday in a north-westerly direction at 2.15pm. She then passed over the Isle of Man on her way to America.

“Earlier in the afternoon the Hindenburg provided a magnificent spectacle to the residents of Grange and also many visitors who saw the big aerial monster cross the bay about 2pm, flying towards Barrow.”

The Hindenburg, or LZ 129, flew from March 1936 until it was destroyed by fire on May 6 in 1937 – with the loss of 36 lives.

It was named after Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, president of Germany from 1925 to 1934.