Hindenburg

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In 1936, the future looked bright for rigid airships, the hydrogen-filled, lighter-than-air behemoths also known as dirigibles or zeppelins. The Hindenburg, Nazi Germany’s pride and joy, spent one glorious season ferrying passengers across the Atlantic in its luxurious belly. The following year, the airship era screeched to a spectacular halt when the Hindenburg burst into flames while landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The disaster claimed the lives of 36 people and received an unprecedented amount of media coverage. The Hindenburg was a 245-meter (804-foot-) long airship of conventional zeppelin design that was launched at Friedrichshafen, Germany, in March 1936. It had a maximum speed of 135 km (84 miles) per hour and a cruising speed of 126 km (78 miles) per hour. Though it was designed to be filled with helium gas, the airship was filled with highly flammable hydrogen owing to export restrictions by the United States against Nazi Germany. In 1936 the Hindenburg inaugurated commercial air service across the North Atlantic by carrying 1,002 passengers on 10 scheduled round trips between Germany and the United States. Did you know? The Hindenburg was originally made to use helium gas. On May 6, 1937, while landing at Lakehurst, N.J., on the first of its scheduled 1937 trans-Atlantic crossings, the Hindenburg burst into flames and was completely destroyed. Thirty-six of the 97 persons aboard were killed. The fire was officially attributed to a discharge of atmospheric elec...

In 1937, the fiery destruction of the “It ... says to me, as a producer, don’t let anyone tell you that there’s nothing new to be learned,” Gary Tarpinian, an executive producer of the documentary, tells the The German airship, seen as a luxurious new form of travel, was attempting to dock at Naval Air Station in New Jersey when it As Mindy Weisberger reports for In 2012, Schenck approached Hindenburg and showed him the footage. "You can never safely operate a flying bomb," says historian Dan Grossman. “My reaction was just—wow. I can’t believe we have this angle,” Grossman tells Live Science. “The footage begins earlier than any other film footage, so it shows more of the accident from an earlier point.” The basic outline of the disaster is straightforward. Airships at the time were made of metal frames covered with treated cotton and inflated with hydrogen—a gas that is highly flammable when mixed with oxygen from the air, wrote Donovan Webster for Smithsonian magazine in 2017. “It was never going to be ‘safe,’ you can never safely operate a flying bomb,” Grossman tells Live Science. “But the Germans had developed very deliberate and careful protocols for how to operate an airship, and many of those were ignored.” The disaster most likely involved a hydrogen leak. Thunderstorms also created charged air that increased the chance of sparks caused by static electricity. Meanwhile, the Hindenburg’s crew members were probably under stress, While Schenck’s footage does not sho...

Photograph of the Hindenburg descending in flames Accident Date May 6, 1937 Summary Caught fire during landing; cause undetermined Site 40°01′49″N 74°19′33″W / 40.03035°N 74.32575°W / 40.03035; -74.32575 Total fatalities 36 Aircraft Aircrafttype Hindenburg-class airship Aircraftname Hindenburg Operator D-LZ129 Flight origin Destination Passengers 36 Crew 61 Fatalities 35 total; 13 (36%) of passengers 22 (36%) of crew Survivors 62 (23 passengers, 39 crewmen) Ground casualties Ground fatalities 1 The Hindenburg disaster was an Hindenburg ( Luftschiff Zeppelin #129; D-LZ 129) was a German commercial passenger-carrying Hindenburg class, the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) and was operated by the German Zeppelin Airline Company ( The disaster was the subject of Flight [ ] Background [ ] The Hindenburg made 10 trips to the United States in 1936. Hindenburg departed from Hindenburg to shuttle the passengers from Lakehurst to Newark for connections to airplane flights. Except for strong Hindenburg was unremarkable until the airship attempted an early-evening landing at Lakehurst three days later on May 6. Although carrying only half its full capacity of passengers (36 of 70) and crewmen (61, including 21 crewman trainees) during the flight accident, the Hindenburg was fully booked for its return flight. Many of the passengers with tickets to Germany were planning to attend the Hindenburg over Manhattan, New Y...

The airship Frenchman Henri Giffard constructed the first successful airship in 1852. His hydrogen-filled blimp carried a three-horsepower steam engine that turned a large propeller and flew at a speed of six miles per hour. The rigid airship, often known as the “zeppelin” after the last name of its innovator, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was developed by the Germans in the late 19th century. Unlike French airships, the German ships had a light framework of metal girders that protected a gas-filled interior. However, like Giffard’s airship, they were lifted by highly flammable hydrogen gas and vulnerable to explosion. Large enough to carry substantial numbers of passengers, one of the most famous rigid airships was the Graf Zeppelin, a dirigible that traveled around the world in 1929. In the 1930s, the Graf Zeppelin pioneered the first transatlantic air service, leading to the construction of the Hindenburg, a larger passenger airship. On May 3, 1937, the Hindenburg left Frankfurt, Germany, for a journey across the Atlantic to Lakehurst’s Navy Air Base. Stretching 804 feet from stern to bow, it carried 36 passengers and crew of 61. While attempting to moor at Lakehurst, the airship suddenly burst into flames, probably after a spark ignited its hydrogen core. Rapidly falling 200 feet to the ground, the hull of the airship incinerated within seconds. Thirteen passengers, 21 crewmen, and 1 civilian member of the ground crew lost their lives, and most of the survivors suffere...

San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives On the evening of May 6, 1937, spectators and reporters gathered at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey to catch a glimpse of the cutting edge of air travel. The German airship LZ-129—better known as the The first experiments with using hydrogen and helium to lift vehicles into the sky were conducted in the late 18th century, but it took more than a century for the technology to become viable for commercial and military use. In 1900 During After the war, engineers turned their attention to building airships for long-distance transportation, launching the first transatlantic flight in 1919. Only 10 years later, in 1928, the era of commercial airship travel seemed to begin in earnest with the completion of the Graf Zeppelin, a massive airship capable of carrying dozens of passengers in accommodations similar to those found aboard a luxury ocean liner. For several years the Graf Zeppelin executed mainly well-publicized demonstration flights, including an around-the-world tour in 1929. In 1931 the airship began regularly scheduled commercial service, making nonstop flights between Germany and South America. In 1936 an even larger airship—the Hindenburg—began transatlantic service. In its first year of operation it carried hundreds of passengers across the ocean in 10 round-trips between the United States and Germany and 7 trips between Germany and Brazil. The fabric skin of the airship was covered with a paint that contained aluminum...

When the giant German dirigible Even before the ashes had cooled, rumors were flying. Three days later, the New York Daily News listed five leading theories: 1. Lightning 2. A backfiring motor 3. Ground crew negligence 4. A “cold spark” 5. An act of God The following day, the paper added a sixth possibility: sabotage. The list wouldn’t end there. In the ensuing days and weeks, international experts, well-meaning amateurs and assorted crazies bombarded investigators with theories of their own. The Hindenburg Crash: 30 Seconds of Terror Seen Worldwide The Hindenburg had made its first flight from Germany to the U.S. a year earlier, in May 1936. This trip was intended to inaugurate its 1937 season, an event considered noteworthy enough to draw newspaper and newsreel photographers to Lakehurst. They would record unforgettable images of the ship bursting into flames and crashing to the ground as passengers and crew tried to leap to safety. From the first sign of fire to the Hindenburg coming to rest on the ground, the disaster lasted roughly 30 seconds. The newspaper photographs appeared that night on front pages all over the world. The newsreel footage hit movie theaters the next morning. Hitler Gets the Bad News German Chancellor Hugo Eckener, a German airship pioneer and head of the company that built the Hindenburg, first acknowledged the possibility of sabotage but then backtracked, saying that a stray spark probably ignited the ship’s highly flammable hydrogen gas. Nazi H...

Survivors of the Hindenburg disaster far outnumbered the victims. Anyone who has seen the graphic newsreel video of the Hindenburg plunging to earth in flames may be amazed to know that of the 97 passengers and crew on board, 62 survived. The disaster’s 36 deaths included 13 passengers, 22 crewmembers and one worker on the ground. Many survivors jumped out of the zeppelin’s windows and ran away as fast as they could. The Hindenburg disaster wasn’t history’s deadliest airship accident. Thanks to the iconic film footage and the emotional eyewitness account of radio reporter Herbert Morrison (who uttered the famous words “Oh, the humanity!”), the Hindenburg disaster is the most famous airship accident in history. However, the deadliest incident occurred when the helium-filled USS Akron, a U.S. Navy airship, crashed off the coast of New Jersey in a severe storm on April 4, 1933. Seventy-three men were killed, and only three survived. The 1930 crash of the British military airship R101, which claimed 48 lives, was also deadlier. The Hindenburg disaster wasn’t broadcast live on radio. Morrison was on the scene to record the arrival of the Hindenburg for WLS in Chicago, but he wasn’t broadcasting live. His wrenching account would be heard in Chicago later that night, and it was broadcast nationwide the following day. His audio report was synched up with separate newsreel videos in subsequent coverage of the Hindenburg disaster. U.S. law prevented the Hindenburg from using helium ...