Hindenburg disaster 75 years ago abruptly ended zeppelin era
Baku, May 7 (AZERTAC). This Sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg crash, a disaster that killed 35 people in 1937 and instantly became the world`s most documented news event, bolstering the nascent radio business and making pre-movie news reels must-watch entertainment. And the reference to the U.S. Capitol isn`t random. Not when you consider that the Hindenburg, at 803 feet from end to end, was longer than the 751-foot-long home of America`s federal legislative bodies.
In the years leading up to World War II, airplanes were already beginning to supplant the giant airships as a much more efficient and economical way to cross oceans. "When the idea began to use large passenger zeppelins in the mid-1920s, it was a time when airplanes were really primitive," explained Daniel Grossman, an Atlanta lawyer.
No one knows exactly what caused the Hindenburg to explode. But on that day in May 1937, Lakehurst, N.J., was being roiled by electrical storms, Grossman said, causing some local rubber factories to shut down for fear of lightning igniting rubber dust. "At the most elemental level, the hydrogen ignited," Grossman explained. "It was just crazy and dangerous to operate a ship that had 7 million cubic feet of fuel. It`s a flying bomb." Grossman said that although it`s not known how it happened, it`s agreed by Hindenburg experts that some of the airship`s hydrogen escaped and met a spark, causing disaster. The Hindenburg was attempting a landing where the ship was 200 feet off the ground and had dropped down a landing line. But up at the zeppelin`s level, a lot of sparks were flying, he said. Grossman said that a common, though unprovable, theory is that because the Hindenburg had had to do a very tight turn to land, pointing its nose into the wind, a bracing wire may have snapped and sliced through a gas cell. Even today, however, there are people who can`t accept that hydrogen was to blame for the explosion, Grossman said. Instead, some argue that the Hindenburg`s skin was flammable. This is an urban myth that endlessly annoys the small fraternity of so-called "Helium Heads," or zeppelin experts, Grossman said. Either way, that day 75 years ago come Sunday put a very abrupt end to one of the most dominant forms of passenger air travel. And that was a shame.
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