luxurious German Hindenburg, crashed in New Jersey 1937.

               

Hindenburg over New York

complete with swastikas, 1937

The first airship was designed by German army officer Ferdin­and Graf von Zeppelin and made its initial flight from a floating hang­ar on Lake Constance in July 1900. This zeppelin was a rigid air­ship that was cigar-shaped, trussed and a cov­ered frame sup­ported by internal gas cells. Underneath a keel-like structure conn­ected 2 external cars, each of which had a 16-horsepower engine geared to two propellers. A sl­iding weight on the keel gave vertical control by raising or lower­ing the nose, while rudders were provided for horizontal control. 32 km/hour was top speed.

In WWI Germany had some success in long-range bombing operat­ions with the zeppelin, which reached higher altitudes than other pl­an­es. In 1917 German zeppelins made flights of 100 hours, leading many to bel­ieve that large air­ships could drive aviation progress, especially as some zeppelins went to the Allies in German post-war reparations.

The Hindenburg, powered by four diesel engines, had a maximum speed of 135 km/hour. A convent­ional zepp­el­in design, Hindenburg was laun­ched from Friedrichshafen in March 1936, inaug­ur­ating commerc­ial air serv­ice across the North Atl­antic. It carried 1,002 passengers on 10 sch­ed­uled trips between Germany and U.S. NB Though it was design­ed to be filled with helium gas, the ship was filled with highly flam­m­ab­le hyd­rogen because of ex­port restrict­ions by the U.S against Nazi Ger­m­any. 

The Hindenburg was the star of the Olympic Games

Berlin Stadium, Aug 1936

Hindenburg was the fastest and most luxurious plane to cross the Atl­ant­ic. Passengers travelled in deluxe lounge rooms; enjoyed meals in el­eg­ant dining rooms; heard piano in a modern lounge and slept  in 25 private twin-cabins. The cocktail bar was an attractive space and the promenades on two decks were spacious. Walls were lined with silk painted, with scenes depicting great historic voyages.

Sleeping cabin on board the Hindenburg

1937

     

Dining room, on board the Hindenburg, 

1937

Hindenburg began its last flight on 3rd May 1937, carrying 36 pass­en­gers and 61 crew. The ship left the Frankfurt airfield on its 63rd flight and flew over Cologne, and then followed the English Channel past the chalky cliffs, and headed out over the Atlant­ic shortly. Hindenburg followed a northern track across the ocean, passing south­ern Greenland and crossing the North American coast at New­foundland. Head winds delayed the airship’s passage across the Atl­antic, and the Lakehurst arrival was postponed. By noon on May 6th the ship had reached Boston, and by 3:00 PM Hindenburg was over Manhattan.

Flying south from New York, they arrived at the Naval Air Stat­ion at Lakehurst New Jersey, but the poor weather conditions at the field concerned both the Hindenburg’s Capt Pruss and Lakehurst’s commanding Officer Rosendahl who delayed the land­ing until the storm ended. But then there was a rush. Rosendahl asked for the earliest possible land­ing because the airship had to be back in Europe in time for King George VI’s coronation (12th May 1937).

As Hindenburg approached the field at Lakehurst in wild wind at an altitude of c600’, all their normal measures could not keep the ship in level trim, so 6 crewmen were ordered to add their weight to the bow. While landing at Lakehurst, witnesses saw the first visible external flames appear.

It instantly ended because of 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen gas. Decades of research and sc­ientific tests support the conc­l­usion reach­ed by the German and American accident investig­at­ions in 1937: the Hindenburg disaster was caused by an electrostatic discharge that ignited leak­ing hydrogen. The spark was ?caused by a dif­ference in electric potential between the airship and the sur­r­­ound­ing air: The differ­ence in elect­ric potential like­ly caused a spark to jump from the ship’s fab­ric over the ship’s framework. No evidence of sab­otage was ever found.   

The Hindenburg alight, 

Lakehurst Naval Air Station NJ, 1937. 

On the passenger deck promenades, where some passengers and crew had gathered before the landing, the rapidly in­creasing angle of the ship caused people to tumble up walls. The fire spread so quickly that survival depended where the people were located. Passengers and crew began jump­ing out the promen­ade win­dows to escape the burning ship, and most of them who were close to the promen­ade windows, surv­iv­ed. Those who were in the passenger cabins at the centre of the decks, died. Crew who were close to an exit generally surv­ived.

As the ship fell to the ground, so soon after the first flames, those who had jumped from the burning craft scrambled for safety, as did members of the ground crew below the ship. Mirac­ul­ously 62 of the 97 passengers and crew survived.

 
The glamorous, speedy airships had been warmly welcomed home despite a long list of earlier accidents. But this time the Hindenburg crash was captured on film. Mil­lions of international viewers saw the dramatic inferno. The 1937 disaster ended the use of airships in commercial air transport. But in any case, the remaining Zeppelins were des­t­r­oy­ed by Allied bombing dur­ing WW2, and the building of Zeppelins was never resumed.

Thanks to the documentary Hindenburg: Ten Mistakes

Photo credits: airships.net