The Hindenburg Disaster
The Truth Behind History's Most Famous Zeppelin's Creation and Crash
The crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 has been engrained into the human psyche for more than 60 years. Not all are fully aware of the true history of this disaster.
Along with the Titanic and the Challenger, the very name of the Hindenburg is practically synonymous with disaster. This comparison, however, is not entirely warranted, as there are a great many things that most people do not realize about the events surrounding this 1937 disaster.
The Hindenburg, of course, was a German Zeppelin – a lighter-than-air ship with rigid construction (differentiating it from a modern-day blimp), capable of carrying nearly 100 people on long, trans-Atlantic flights. It was built by a German Airship company, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin and began operations in 1936, being named in honor of Paul Von Hindenburg, the previous President of Germany.
Some Popular Misconceptions
Many people believe that, like the Titanic, the Hindenburg disaster occurred on its maiden voyage, when in reality the ship had been traveling almost non-stop for nearly a year before the accident, which occurred in 1937. During this first year, the airship crossed the Atlantic seventeen times from its point of origin in Germany; ten to the United States and seven to Brazil, all without incident.
Second, anyone who has seen the video of the Hindenburg disaster probably fails to realize that the tragedy was not actually not nearly as bad as it appeared to be. While anyone viewing the video would most likely assume that the explosion and crashing of the enormous ship killed everyone on board, they would be wrong. In fact, of the 97 people on board at the time of the accident, only 34 were killed (nearly 40 fewer than had died in the crash of the USS Akron, a US Naval helium-filled airship, 4 years earlier).
Those who survived the disaster are those who jumped off the ship and were dragged to safety before the flaming wreckage could come down on top of them. Those who remained on the ship or who jumped while the ship was still too high were among the casualties. Clearly, however, the death rate was not as high as it would have been if the explosion had taken place any sooner.
The Cause of the Accident
So what actually caused the Hindenburg disaster? No one really knows for sure. Theories abound to this very day about possible sabotage, about poor construction of the ship's metal-alloy shell, about the unwise decision to use hydrogen rather than the less explosive helium, about static electricity created while flying through poor weather on the way to New Jersey, about flammable paint on the ship’s body and about a puncture in the ship’s hull which led it to leak hydrogen.
Then, of course, there is the theory that the ship had been sabotaged or was the victim of a terrorist attack (put forward mainly by the company who had built the ship and by the Hindenburg’s commander, Max Pruss). While those who have espoused this theory over the years have certainly collected their share of evidence to support it, most of it remains circumstantial, and thus the exact cause of the accident has still not be entirely determined.
The Return of Zeppelins?
Whatever may have caused the accident, more than sixty years have passed since, and one would assume that any airship built today would have to pass all of the government-imposed safety standards, practically ensuring that such a tragedy would never again occur. Still, the rigid airship has been completely out-of-use since about 1960, replaced only by those few non-rigid lighter-than-air ships, such as the Goodyear, Fuji and Metlife blimps that often hover above sporting events.
Perhaps lighter-than-air craft are simply remnants of the past, only to continue to be phased out. But the memory of it should not be spoiled by the Hindenburg disaster – a single failure of what was otherwise an ingenious invention.
References:
Zasky, Jason. “The Hindenburg: A Classic Failure Revisited.”
Footage of the Hindenburg Disaster.
