Airship Ideas
A good science fiction story featuring a super dirigible is Philip Jose Farmer's "The Dark Design" (The Dark Design). This features a real beast of a rigid airship called The Parseval. It has all sorts of super whizzy stuff like torpedo launchers, bombs, on board helicopters, steam powered machine guns, etc. Good source of ideas for a combination of retro and high tech.
Come to think of it, there are probably stats and descriptions for it in GURPS Riverworld. The blurb on the SJG website would seem to suggest that there are... GURPS Riverworld . Sounds like an ideal source to me!