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Additional Information from Internet
Encyclopedia
LZ 129 Hindenburg (Luftschiff
Zeppelin #129; Registration: D-LZ 129) was a German commercial
passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of the Hindenburg class, the
longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. It
was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) on
the shores of Lake Constance in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and was operated by
the German Zeppelin Airline Company (Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei). It was named
after Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who was President of Germany from 1925
until his death in 1934.
The airship flew from March 1936
until it was destroyed by fire 14 months later on May 6, 1937, while attempting
to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey, at
the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season
of service. This was the last of the great airship disasters; it was preceded
by the crashes of the British R38, the US airship Roma, the French Dixmude, the
USS Shenandoah, the British R101, and the USS Akron.
Design and development
The Zeppelin Company had
proposed LZ 128 in 1929, after the world flight of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin.
This ship was to be approximately 245 m (804 ft) long and carry 140,000 cubic
metres (4,900,000 cu ft) of hydrogen. Ten Maybach engines were to power five
tandem engine cars (a plan from 1930 showed only four). The disaster of the
British airship R 101 prompted the Zeppelin Company to reconsider the use of
hydrogen, therefore scrapping the LZ 128 in favour of a new airship designed
for helium, the LZ 129. Initial plans projected the LZ 129 to have a length of
248 metres (814 ft), but 11 m (36 ft) was dropped from the tail in order to
allow the ship to fit in Lakehurst Hangar No. 1.
Hindenburg under construction
Manufacturing of components
began in 1931, but construction of the Hindenburg did not commence until March
1932. The delay was largely due to Daimler-Benz designing and refining the
LOF-6 diesel engines to reduce weight while fulfilling the output requirements
set by the Zeppelin Company.
Hindenburg had a duralumin
structure, incorporating 15 Ferris wheel-like main ring bulkheads along its
length, with 16 cotton gas bags fitted between them. The bulkheads were braced
to each other by longitudinal girders placed around their circumferences. The
airship's outer skin was of cotton doped with a mixture of reflective materials
intended to protect the gas bags within from radiation, both ultraviolet (which
would damage them) and infrared (which might cause them to overheat). The gas
cells were made by a new method pioneered by Goodyear using multiple layers of
gelatinized latex rather than the previous goldbeater's skins. In 1931 the
Zeppelin Company purchased 5,000 kg (11,000 lb) of duralumin salvaged from the
wreckage of the October 1930 crash of the British airship R101.
Dining room
Hindenburg's interior
furnishings were designed by Fritz August Breuhaus, whose design experience
included Pullman coaches, ocean liners, and warships of the German Navy.[6] The
upper "A" Deck contained 25 small two-passenger cabins in the middle
flanked by large public rooms: a dining room to port and a lounge and writing
room to starboard. Paintings on the dining room walls portrayed the Graf
Zeppelin's trips to South America. A stylized world map covered the wall of the
lounge. Long slanted windows ran the length of both decks. The passengers were
expected to spend most of their time in the public areas, rather than their
cramped cabins.
The lower "B" Deck
contained washrooms, a mess hall for the crew, and a smoking lounge. Harold G.
Dick, an American representative from the Goodyear Zeppelin Company, recalled
"The only entrance to the smoking room, which was pressurized to prevent
the admission of any leaking hydrogen, was via the bar, which had a swiveling
air lock door, and all departing passengers were scrutinized by the bar steward
to make sure they were not carrying out a lit cigarette or pipe."
Use of hydrogen instead of
helium
Helium was initially selected
for the lifting gas because it was the safest to use in airships, as it is not
flammable. One proposed measure to save helium was to make double-gas cells for
14 of the 16 gas cells; an inner hydrogen cell would be protected by an outer
cell filled with helium, with vertical ducting to the dorsal area of the
envelope to permit separate filling and venting of the inner hydrogen cells. At
the time, however, helium was also relatively rare and extremely expensive as
the gas was available in industrial quantities only from distillation plants at
certain oil fields in the United States. Hydrogen, by comparison, could be
cheaply produced by any industrialized nation and being lighter than helium
also provided more lift. Because of its expense and rarity, American rigid
airships using helium were forced to conserve the gas at all costs and this
hampered their operation.
Despite a U.S. ban on the export
of helium under the Helium Control Act of 1927, the Germans designed the
airship to use the far safer gas in the belief that they could convince the
U.S. government to license its export. When the designers learned that the
National Munitions Control Board refused to lift the export ban, they were forced
to re-engineer Hindenburg to use flammable hydrogen gas, which was the only
alternative lighter-than-air gas that could provide sufficient lift. One of the
side benefits of being forced to utilize the flammable yet lighter hydrogen was
that more passenger cabins could be added.
Operational history
Launching and trial flights
Four years after construction
began in 1932, Hindenburg made its maiden test flight from the Zeppelin
dockyards at Friedrichshafen on March 4, 1936, with 87 passengers and crew
aboard. These included the Zeppelin Company chairman, Dr. Hugo Eckener, as commander,
former World War I Zeppelin commander Lt. Col. Joachim Breithaupt representing
the German Air Ministry, the Zeppelin Company's eight airship captains, 47
other crew members, and 30 dockyard employees who flew as passengers.[15]
Harold G. Dick was the only non-Luftschiffbau representative aboard. Although
the name Hindenburg had been quietly selected by Eckener over a year
earlier,[16] only the airship's formal registration number (D-LZ129) and the
five Olympic rings (promoting the 1936 Summer Olympics to be held in Berlin
that August) were displayed on the hull during its trial flights. As the
airship passed over Munich on its second trial flight the next afternoon, the
city's Lord Mayor, Karl Fiehler, asked Eckener by radio the LZ129's name, to which
he replied "Hindenburg". On March 23, Hindenburg made its first
passenger and mail flight, carrying 80 reporters from Friedrichshafen to
Löwenthal. The ship flew over Lake Constance with Graf Zeppelin.
The name Hindenburg lettered in
1.8-metre (5 ft 11 in) high red Fraktur script (designed by Berlin advertiser
Georg Wagner) was added to its hull three weeks later before the
Deutschlandfahrt on March 26. No formal naming ceremony for the airship was ever
held.
The airship was operated
commercially by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei (DZR) GmbH, which had been
established by Hermann Göring in March 1935 to increase Nazi influence over
airship operations.[19] The DZR was jointly owned by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin
(the airship's builder), the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (German Air Ministry),
and Deutsche Lufthansa A.G. (Germany's national airline at that time), and also
operated the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin during its last two years of commercial
service to South America from 1935 to 1937. Hindenburg and its sister ship, the
LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II (launched in September 1938), were the only two
airships ever purpose-built for regular commercial transatlantic passenger
operations, although the latter never entered passenger service before being
scrapped in 1940.
After a total of six flights
made over a three-week period from the Zeppelin dockyards where the airship had
been built, Hindenburg was drafted over Hugo Eckener's objections for a formal public debut in a
6,600 km (4,100 mi) Nazi Party propaganda flight around Germany (Die
Deutschlandfahrt) made jointly with the Graf Zeppelin from March 26 to 29.[20]
This was to be followed by its first commercial passenger flight, a four-day
transatlantic voyage to Rio de Janeiro that departed from the Friedrichshafen
Airport in nearby Löwenthal on March 31. After again departing from Löwenthal
on 6 May on its first of ten round trips to North America made in 1936,[22] all
Hindenburg's subsequent transatlantic flights to both North and South America
originated at the airport at Frankfurt am Main.
Die Deutschlandfahrt
Although designed and built for
commercial transatlantic passenger, air freight, and mail service, at the
behest of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
(Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda or Propagandaministerium),
Hindenburg was first pressed into use by the Air Ministry (its DLZ co-operator)
as a vehicle for the delivery of Nazi propaganda. On March 7, 1936, ground
forces of the German Reich had entered and occupied the Rhineland, a region
bordering France, which had been designated in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles as
a de-militarized zone established to provide a buffer between Germany and that
neighboring country.
In order to justify its
remilitarizationwhich was also a violation of the 1925 Locarno Pact[26]a post
hoc referendum was quickly called by Hitler for March 29 to "ask the
German people" to both ratify the Rhineland's occupation by the German Army,
and to approve a single party list composed exclusively of Nazi candidates to
sit in the new Reichstag. The Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin were designated
by the government as a key part of the process.[27] As a public relations ploy,
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels demanded that the Zeppelin Company make the
two airships available for a tour of Germany (Deutschlandfahrt), flying
"in tandem" around Germany over the four-day period prior to the
voting with a joint departure from Löwenthal on the morning of March 26.
The Zeppelin Company chairman,
Dr. Hugo Eckener, disapproved of this propaganda use of his craft. According to
American reporter William L. Shirer, "Hugo Eckener, who is getting [the
Hindenburg] ready for its maiden flight to Brazil, strenuously objected to
putting it in the air this weekend on the ground it was not fully tested, but
Dr. Goebbels insisted. Eckener, no friend of the regime, refused to take it up
himself, but allowed Captain [Ernst] Lehmann to. [Goebbels] is reported howling
mad and is determined to get Eckener."
While gusty wind conditions on
the morning March 26 threatened a safe launch of the new airship, Hindenburg's
commander, Captain Ernst Lehmann, was determined to impress the politicians,
Nazi party officials, and press present at the airfield with an "on
time" departure and thus proceeded with its launch despite the adverse
conditions. As the massive airship began to rise under full engine power she
was caught by a 35-degree crosswind gust, causing her lower vertical tail fin
to strike and be dragged across the ground, resulting in significant damage to
the bottom portion of the airfoil and its attached rudder. Hugo Eckener was
furious and rebuked Lehmann.
Graf Zeppelin, which had been
hovering above the airfield waiting for Hindenburg to join it, had to start off
on the propaganda mission alone while LZ 129 returned to her hangar. There
temporary repairs were quickly made to its empennage before joining up with the
smaller airship several hours later.[33] As millions of Germans watched from
below, the two giants of the sky sailed over Germany for the next four days and
three nights, dropping propaganda leaflets, blaring martial music and slogans
from large loudspeakers, and broadcasting political speeches from a makeshift
radio studio aboard Hindenburg.
On March 29, as German citizens
voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Rhineland re-occupation, the Hindenburg
was aloft over Berlin. Later, Hugo Eckener privately mocked Goebbels by telling
friends, "There were forty persons on the Hindenburg. Forty-two 'yes'
votes were counted." William Shirer recorded: "Goebbels has forbidden
the press to mention Eckener's name."
First commercial passenger
flight
With the completion of voting on
the referendum (which the German Government claimed had been approved by a
"98.79% 'Yes' vote"), Hindenburg returned to Löwenthal on March 29 to
prepare for its first commercial passenger flight, a transatlantic passage to
Rio de Janeiro scheduled to depart from there on March 31. Hugo Eckener was not
to be the commander of the flight, however, but was instead relegated to being
a "supervisor" with no operational control over Hindenburg while
Ernst Lehmann had command of the airship. To add insult to injury, Eckener
learned from an Associated Press reporter upon Hindenburg's arrival in Rio that
Goebbels had also followed through on his month-old threat to decree that
Eckener's name would "no longer be mentioned in German newspapers and
periodicals" and "no pictures nor articles about him shall be
printed." This action was taken because of Eckener's opposition to using
Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin for political purposes during the
Deutschlandfahrt, and his "refusal to give a special appeal during the
Reichstag election campaign endorsing Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his
policies." The existence of the ban was never publicly acknowledged by
Goebbels, and it was quietly lifted a month later.
While at Rio, the crew noticed
one of the engines had noticeable carbon buildup from having been run at low
speed during the propaganda flight days earlier. On the return flight from
South America, the automatic valve for gas cell 3 stuck open. Gas was
transferred from other cells through an inflation line. It was never understood
why the valve stuck open, and subsequently the crew used only the hand-operated
maneuvering valves for cells 2 and 3. Thirty-eight hours after departure, one
of the airship's four Daimler-Benz 16-cylinder diesel engines (engine car no.
4, the forward port engine) suffered a wrist pin breakage, damaging the piston
and cylinder. Repairs were started immediately and the engine functioned on
fifteen cylinders for the remainder of the flight. Four hours after engine 4
failed, engine no. 2 (aft port) was shut down, as one of two bearing cap bolts
for the engine crankshaft failed and the cap fell into the crank case. The cap
was removed and the engine was run again, but when the ship was off Cape Juby
the second cap broke and the engine was shut down again. The engine was not run
again to prevent further damage. With three engines operating at a speed of
100.7 km/h (62.6 mph) and headwinds reported over the English Channel, the crew
raised the airship in search of counter-trade winds usually found above 1,500
metres (4,900 ft), well beyond the airship's pressure altitude. Unexpectedly,
the crew found such a wind at the lower altitude of 1,100 metres (3,600 ft)
which permitted them to guide the airship safely back to Germany after gaining
emergency permission from France to fly a more direct route over the Rhone
Valley. The nine-day flight covered 20,529 kilometres (12,756 mi) in 203 hours
and 32 minutes of flight time. All four engines were later overhauled and no
further problems were encountered on later flights. For the rest of April,
Hindenburg remained at its hangar where the engines were overhauled and the
lower fin and rudder received a final repair; the ground clearance of the lower
rudder was increased from 8 to 14 degrees.
1936 transatlantic season
Hindenburg made 17 round trips
across the Atlantic in 1936its first and only full year of servicewith ten
trips to the United States and seven to Brazil. The flights were considered
demonstrative rather than routine in schedule. The first passenger trip across
the North Atlantic left Frankfurt on 6 May with 56 crew and 50 passengers,
arriving in Lakehurst, New Jersey on 9 May. As the elevation at Rhein-Main's
airfield lies at 111 m (364 ft) above sea level, the airship could lift 6
tonnes (13,000 lb) more at takeoff there than she could from Friedrichshafen,
which was situated at 417 m (1,368 ft). Each of the ten westward trips that
season took 53 to 78 hours and eastward took 43 to 61 hours. The last eastward
trip of the year left Lakehurst on October 10; the first North Atlantic trip of
1937 ended in the Hindenburg disaster.
In May and June 1936, Hindenburg
made surprise visits to England. In May it was on a flight from America to
Germany when it flew low over the West Yorkshire town of Keighley. A parcel was
then thrown overboard and landed in the High Street. Two boys, Alfred Butler
and Jack Gerrard, retrieved it and found the contents to be a bouquet of
carnations, a small silver cross and a letter on official note paper dated May
22, 1936. The letter read: "To the finder of this letter, please deposit
these flowers and cross on the grave of my dear brother, Lt. Franz Schulte, 1
Garde Regt, zu Fuss, POW in Skipton cemetery in Keighley near Leeds. Many
thanks for your kindness. John P. Schulte, the first flying priest". Historian
Oliver Denton speculates that the June visit may have had a more sinister
purpose: to observe the industrial heartlands of Northern England.
In July 1936, Hindenburg
completed a record Atlantic round trip between Frankfurt and Lakehurst in 98
hours and 28 minutes of flight time (52:49 westbound, 45:39 eastbound). Many
prominent people were passengers on the Hindenburg, including boxer Max
Schmeling making his triumphant return to Germany in June 1936 after his world
heavyweight title knockout of Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium.[52][53][54] In the
1936 season, the airship flew 191,583 miles (308,323 km) and carried 2,798
passengers and 160 tons of freight and mail, encouraging the Luftschiffbau
Zeppelin Company to plan the expansion of its airship fleet and transatlantic
service.
The airship was said to be so
stable a pen or pencil could be balanced on end atop a table without falling.
Launches were so smooth that passengers often missed them, believing the
airship was still docked to the mooring mast. A one-way fare between Germany
and the United States was US$400 (equivalent to $8,783 in 2023); Hindenburg
passengers were affluent, usually entertainers, noted sportsmen, political
figures, and leaders of industry. Hindenburg was used again for propaganda when
it flew over the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on August 1 during the opening
ceremonies of the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. Shortly before the arrival of
Adolf Hitler to declare the Games open, the airship crossed low over the packed
stadium while trailing the Olympic flag on a long weighted line suspended from
its gondola. On September 14, the ship flew over the annual Nuremberg Rally.
On October 8, 1936, Hindenburg
made a 10.5 hour flight (the "Millionaires Flight") over New England
carrying 72 wealthy and influential passengers including financier and future
U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Winthrop W. Aldrich, his 28-year-old
nephew Nelson Rockefeller, who became the Governor of New York and, later, Vice
President of the United States, various German and American government
officials and military officers, as well as key figures in the aviation
industry, including Juan Trippe, founder and Chief Executive of Pan American
Airways, and World War I flying ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, president of
Eastern Airlines. The ship arrived at Boston by noon and returned to Lakehurst
at 5:22 pm before making its final transatlantic flight of the season back to
Frankfurt.
During 1936, Hindenburg had a
Blüthner aluminium grand piano placed on board in the music salon, though the
instrument was removed after the first year to save weight.[59] Over the winter
of 193637, several alterations were made to the airship's structures. The
greater lift capacity allowed nine passenger cabins to be added, eight with two
beds and one with four, increasing passenger capacity to 70. These windowed
cabins were along the starboard side aft of the previously installed
accommodations, and it was anticipated for the LZ 130 to also have these
cabins. Additionally, the Olympic rings painted on the hull were removed for
the 1937 season.
Hindenburg also had an
experimental aircraft hook-on trapeze similar to the one on the U.S. Navy
GoodyearZeppelin built airships Akron and Macon. This was intended to allow
customs officials to be flown out to Hindenburg to process passengers before
landing and to retrieve mail from the ship for early delivery. Experimental
hook-ons and takeoffs, piloted by Ernst Udet, were attempted on March 11 and
April 27, 1937, but were not very successful, owing to turbulence around the
hook-up trapeze. The loss of the ship ended all prospects of further testing.
Final flight: May 36, 1937
After making the first South
American flight of the 1937 season in late March, Hindenburg left Frankfurt for
Lakehurst on the evening of 3 May, on its first scheduled round trip between
Europe and North America that season. Although strong headwinds slowed the
crossing, the flight had otherwise proceeded routinely as it approached for a
landing three days later.
Hindenburg's arrival on 6 May
was delayed for several hours to avoid a line of thunderstorms passing over
Lakehurst, but around 7:00 pm the airship was cleared for its final approach to
the Naval Air Station, which it made at an altitude of 200 m (660 ft) with
Captain Max Pruss in command. At 7:21 pm a pair of landing lines were dropped
from the nose of the ship and were grabbed hold of by ground handlers. Four
minutes later, at 7:25 pm Hindenburg burst into flames and dropped to the
ground in a little over half a minute. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew aboard,
13 passengers and 22 crew died, as well as one member of the ground crew, a
total of 36 lives lost. Herbert Morrison's commentary of the incident became a
classic of audio history.
The exact location of the
initial fire, its source of ignition, and the source of fuel remain subjects of
debate. The cause of the accident has never been determined conclusively,
although many hypotheses have been proposed. Sabotage theories notwithstanding,
one hypothesis often put forth involves a combination of gas leakage and
atmospheric static conditions. Manually controlled and automatic valves for
releasing hydrogen were located partway up one-meter diameter ventilation
shafts that ran vertically through the airship.[69] Hydrogen released into a
shaft, whether intentionally or because of a stuck valve, would have mixed with
air already in the shaft potentially in an explosive
ratio. Alternatively, a gas cell could have been ruptured by the breaking of a
structural tension wire causing a mixing of hydrogen with air.[70] The high
static charge collected from flying within stormy conditions and inadequate
grounding of the outer envelope to the frame could have ignited any resulting
gas-air mixture at the top of the airship.[71] In support of the hypothesis
that hydrogen was leaking from the aft portion of the Hindenburg prior to the
conflagration, water ballast was released at the rear of the airship and six
crew members were dispatched to the bow to keep the craft level.
Another more recent theory
involves the airship's outer covering. The silvery cloth covering contained
material with cellulose nitrate, which is highly flammable. This theory is
controversial and has been rejected by other researchers because the outer skin
burns too slowly to account for the rapid flame propagation and gaps in the
fire correspond with internal gas cell divisions, which would not be visible if
the fire had spread across the skin first. Hydrogen fires had previously
destroyed many other airships.
The duralumin framework of
Hindenburg was salvaged and shipped back to Germany. There the scrap was
recycled and used in the construction of military aircraft for the Luftwaffe,
as were the frames of Graf Zeppelin and Graf Zeppelin II when they were scrapped
in 1940.