The Flying Hotel
In the evening of May 6, 1937, a massive luxury airship called the Hindenburg had nearly completed its trip to America from Europe. Longer than ten blue whales, it was the biggest object ever to fly. With its lounges, private rooms, and gourmet food, the Hindenburg was like a gigantic flying hotel. And that night it was filled with passengers.
Passing thunderstorms had made landing difficult, so the Hindenburg spent hours floating over the Atlantic coast, waiting out the storms. When the ship was finally ready to land in a New Jersey field, the crew dropped down ropes for the men on the ground. It was a routine procedure that had been done many times before. Inside the airship passengers eagerly pressed their faces to the windows, scanning the crowd below.
Suddenly the people on the ground gasped in shock and horror; flames were shooting out from the rear of the ship! A newsman reporting from the site cried, "It's burst into flames! It's burst into flames, and it's falling, it's crashing! . . . Oh, the humanity! . . . All the passengers screaming . . . This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed."
Werner Franz, the 14-year-old cabin boy, was saved from burning when a ruptured tank soaked him with water. One passenger, a trained acrobat, hung from a windowsill until he could jump to safety.
Others were not as lucky.
Within half a minute, the mighty Hindenburg lay burning on the ground. Thirty-six people, many of them crew members, had lost their lives.
An Accident or Not?
Until the day the Hindenburg exploded, passenger airships had had perfect safety records. Also called zeppelins after their inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German airships like the Hindenburg had rigid bodies with a hollow interior. The huge, balloon-like ships were filled with hydrogen, the lightest gas, so that they could float.
Immediately after the disaster, experts began investigating what caused the explosion. To this day people are unsure of what really happened. Because the Hindenburg was a German ship, and the German Nazi party was gaining power in Europe, some people suspected that a bomb was planted. But most people believed the fire was an accident, set off by a spark of static electricity that ignited hydrogen leaking from the ship. In more recent years, experts have speculated that the explosion was caused by a highly flammable coating on the airship's outer skin.
The Age of Zeppelins
Hugo Eckener, a talented zeppelin pilot, eventually took over the Zeppelin Company started by Count von Zeppelin. Eckener had long dreamed of connecting Europe and the Americas through flight. He finally fulfilled this dream through the zeppelin.
At first the great airships had been used during wartime to locate enemy ships and carry bombs. But Eckener soon realized that they could also be used to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. At the time boats were the only way people could journey between Europe and the Americas—a long and often difficult voyage. The zeppelin could offer a smoother and more scenic way to travel.
In 1929 a passenger airship called the Graf Zeppelin circled the globe, flying from Germany to Japan, and arriving in California. Its success encouraged the Zeppelin Company to begin making plans for a second airship—a bigger and better one with more safety equipment—called the Hindenburg
The Hindenburg became the first zeppelin to fly regularly between Europe and the Americas. In 1936, its first year of operation, it crossed the Atlantic Ocean thirty-four times, carrying thousands of passengers and traveling two hundred thousand miles. While a boat could take over a week to cross the Atlantic Ocean, the Hindenburg could do it in about half the time and much more comfortably.
Europe and America became wild with excitement about the flying airship—the world's first real airline. Children on both sides of the Atlantic played zeppelin games. Household objects such as pocketknives and needle packets came with pictures of zeppelins on them. Countries around the world printed zeppelin stamps.
Being onboard the Hindenburg was a special experience. The passengers had their own rooms and enjoyed breathtaking views and luxury treatment. Mealtimes featured gourmet food served on expensive plates that people often kept as souvenirs. A very light piano was even specially designed for the ship so passengers could enjoy music. At night people could leave their shoes in the hallway to be shined, just as they would in a fine hotel. There was even a smoking room with airtight doors and a single lighter chained to the wall, to prevent any possibility of a fire.
The airships were so popular that soon an American company was making plans to build them too.
The End of an Era
The Hindenburg was the greatest airship of all, but it was also the one that changed everything. Its disastrous explosion in 1937 abruptly brought an end to the age of zeppelins.
For the first time in history, photographers were able to capture an enormous tragedy as it happened. By the next day, horrifying pictures of the explosion were shown all over the world in movie theaters and newspapers. No one could ever look at a zeppelin again without picturing the Hindenburg bursting into flames.
All future transatlantic zeppelin flights were canceled. Within a few years, growing safety concerns and the dawning of airplanes caused the great airships to disappear from the sky.
As the zeppelin commander Eckener had once said, the airship was like "a fabulous silvery fish . . . floating quietly in the ocean of air . . . It seemed to be coming from another world and to be returning there like a dream."
A Memorable Adventure
In 1939, just two years after the Hindenburg disaster, a passenger airplane flew across the Atlantic for the first time. A new era of air travel had begun!
But the great flying airships—which were at the forefront of air travel—were never forgotten. Even after the disaster, many survivors said their experience onboard the Hindenburg was so memorable that they would definitely ride a zeppelin again. And today, in both California and Germany, smaller, helium-filled zeppelins have recently appeared in the skies, carrying sightseers.
Werner Franz lived to be the last survivor of the 1937 tragedy. As a young cabin boy, he had dreamed of becoming a zeppelin captain—but that dream vanished along with the airship itself. Many years later, when asked about his most unforgettable zeppelin adventure, Werner spoke of a trip to South America. The Hindenburg had met the Graf Zeppelin in the middle of its flight over the Atlantic. The massive ships slowly circled one another in silent greeting, like giant whales in the air. It was a sight that delighted both the crew and passengers.
"That moment," Werner said, "was just for us."