The Hindenburg was about as big as the Titanic. It traveled at eighty miles per hour, so the trip between Frankfurt, Germany, and Lakehurst, New Jersey, took two and a half days, half the time needed by the fastest ocean liner of the era. Passengers on the Hindenburg paid $400 for a one-way trip. They had sleeping compartments, sitting and dining areas, as well as a 200-foot promenade deck with a spectacular view of the ocean passing below. Passengers were free to roam about, to eat meals at a table on the best china, and to sample the best wines from France and Germany. The passengers could even dance to the music of a lightweight, aluminum grand piano, probably the only grand piano ever to provide entertainment for people in a flying machine.
The Hindenburg wasn’t the first airship to crash. There had been more than five crashes already. But the Hindenburg was the highest-profile crash, in part because the destruction was caught on camera.
Herb Morrison reporting, 72 years ago today.
Thirty-six were killed — 13 of the 36 passengers, 22 of the 61 crew, and one ground crew member.
The Hindenburg did not explode because it was filled with hydrogen as long thought. The outer skin of the big German aircraft — longer than three 747s — was painted with an iron oxide, powdered aluminum compound to reflect sunlight (to minimize heat build up). The powdered aluminum was highly flammable and was ignited by an electrostatic charge in the imperfectly grounded zeppelin.
How flammable is iron oxide and aluminum? It’s the fuel used to launch the Shuttle.
The oral myth about this, passed around in NJ when I was a kid, was that the ‘Pineys’ (the Pine Barrens are a soggy pine swamp that covers most of south-eastern Jersey) believed the Hindenburg was sent by the government to spy on their stills, and they pulled out their rifles and shotguns and put enough holes in the blimp to free a great deal of the hydrogen. So the static charge on landing, which should have been inconsequential, ignited the free hydrogen clinging to and leaking from the Hindenburg.
Residents of the Pine Barrens were commonly considered to be about as advanced as the extras in “Deliverance”. “Shoot them goldang revenoooooors …”
You should also be aware that when Germany began militarizing, the United States forbade the sale of helium to them, forcing the Hindenburg to rely on the much more dangerous hydrogen. This doesn’t make it “our fault”, but it’s an interesting detail that most histories don’t mention.
Good stuff Garret.
The extreme flammability of hydrogen is, however, a myth. The flames were red—hydrogen burns blue. And, as soon as the bladders holding the hydrogen were punctured by the flames, the hydrogen (lighter than air) would have escaped upward.
There was a helium-filled airship that burned with equal ferocity two years earlier.
Which isn’t to say the Pineys weren’t shooting at it. 🙂
Interestingly, according to DollarTimes converter – $400 in ’37 was roughly $6002 in 2009.
So they were paying roughly double what the Concorde cost when they shut it down. (one way vs round trip).
And 2.5 days – I extrapolate that to be LA to Newark in 30 hours – beats Amtrak