THE German airship Hindenburg was the flagship of the German dirigible fleet, and at three football fields in length, was the largest manmade object that had ever flown. Most of its passengers, as it plied back and forth across the Atlantic in the early 1930s, seemed unworried by the fact that they were buoyed aloft by 7 million cubic feet of highly inflammable hydrogen.
The few who were concerned, were no doubt reassured by the thought that in 20 years of commercial flying, German zepellins had never had a single fatality. But this changed 60 years ago today; on May 6th, 1937, the Hindenburg burst into flame at Lakehurst, New Jersey, with the loss of 35 lives.
The Hindenburg had begun the fateful crossing from Frankfurt on May 3rd. The landing at Lakeburst on May 6th was delayed for three hours by heavy showers and thunderstorms, but by 7 pm the thunder seemed to have abated, and the airship began its slow descent in virtually calm conditions, although it was still raining heavily. The ground crew of 200 men began to haul the ropes to anchor the giant craft to its trestle mooring mast, and it seemed that this would be yet another perfect landing.
The tragedy began innocuously with a small bright flame at the top of the hull just forward of the tail. Almost immediately there was a burst of flaming hydrogen, followed by a muffled explosion, and 32 seconds later, a charred and smouldering wreck upon the ground was all the flames had left of the majestic Hindenburg.
At first it was thought it must be sabotage, but later it seemed more likely that the key to the tragedy lay in electrical activity associated with the recent thunderstorms. They are believed to have resulted in the build up of static electricity within and on the craft; then the saturated cables used to guide the airship to its moorings provided a convenient path to facilitate a flow of current.
The process is also believed to have been exacerbated by the fact that the Hindenburg was coated with a different kind of paint or "dope" to that used on all previous zeppelins - a dope whose dielectric characteristics may well have provided a vital catalyst for the ignition of the fatal spark. In any event, an electrical discharge between the outer cover of the Hindenburg and the aluminium frame within, seems to have been the likely cause of the immediate disaster and ultimately, of the end of the era of the giant airships.