It was the largest and most celebrated passenger airship ever built.
But like another legendary transatlantic liner,
the Hindenburg was doomed.
Get this, Scotty !
Get this Scotty !
I looked out the window and saw the fire,
and my only concern was to get out.
I thought to myself,
"This is the end. I can't survive the end."
4,5 hundred feet into the sky .
It's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen.
The smoke and the flames
and the plane is crashing to the ground,
Oh, the humanity.
I guess it looked like hell.
It was like hell on fire.
It was something that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Some said it was only a tragic accident.
Others blamed a murderous act of sabotage.
But what really destroyed the Hindenburg?
Now, after more than half a century ,
a former NASA engineer may have uncovered
the real answer to the mystery.
What I found was the fact that they knew that there was a problem.
It was a problem that would destroy the Hindenburg
and bring to an abrupt and tragic end the golden age of passenger airships.
It was, byevery account, simply magnificent-
the largest object that had ever been lofted into the air.
And wherever it touched down on its transatlantic crossings,
the Hindenburg was sure to draw a crowd.
At the Naval Air Station at I Lakehurst, New Jersey,
thousands would stand in line for hours just to get a closer look.
This was perhaps the most beautiful flying machine ever built-stately,
streamlined, poised to rule the skies.
Today, Lakehurst is a much quieter place,
but it's still haunted by echoes from the airships' glory days.
John Iannacone remembers that time.
He was part of the Hindenburg's ground crew.
Now he's one of the few visitors to the giant hangar that once sheltered it.
I was 18 years old when I got here.
And I saw this tremendous building in there.
I always say it's one of the biggest buildings in the world.
We put it in a hangar the first time it came here.
And it just about fit.
The Germans, when they designed it, it was supposed to be 814 feet long.
Then they realized that this hangar's only 806 feet long,
so they cut ten feet oF.
There was a one-foot clearance on each end.
It just fit in here and we closed the doors.
It's sad, I mean, because it's not being utilized
for what it should be utilized.
I mean, it looks like it's nothing but a warehouse and junk.
That's what it looks like to me.
Airships have had their place and their time.
And it's gone.
I don't think airships will ever come back.
History's first successful manned flight was in a hot-air balloon
launched by the Montgolfier brothers into the skies over France in 1783.
But balloons move at the mercy of the wind,
with no way to control their direction or speed.
Some dreamed of a method of directed flight.
The design for these so called dirigibles were certainly imaginative.
But even the ones that could fly weren't very practical.
The biggest challenge was building a dirigible big enough
to carry passengers and cargo.
One of the pioneers was Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
He first encountered manned balloons in the United States
as a German military observer of the Civil War and he even flew in one.
Back in Germany, Zeppelin set to work,
designing a large dirigible with a rigid framework
covered by a skin of fabric.
It would be lifted not by hot air, but by hydrogen.
In 1900 , his creation would finally fly.
Within a decade, there were tourist flights,
and even regular passenger service between German cities.
Count von Zeppelin was building the world's first airline.
But airships had other uses besides carrying passengers.
And with the begiNing of World War One,
airship construction became a military priority.
Nothing gets developed as fast as what things do during a war.
Okay, we experience it even today.
So the First World War definitely saw a dramatic size increase.
The airships went from something like 700,000 cubic square feet
to two-and-a-half million just within the span of four years.
The Zeppelins were soon transformed into weapons of war,
first as observation platforms, then in a new role:
As the world's first strategic bom ber fleet.
But they demonstrated their vulnerability as well:
High-flying fighter planes brought down dozens of Zeppelins
in fiery explosions, fueled by hydrogen.
In the years after the war,
airship technology would find champions around the world.
In the U.S., the Navy developed its own military airships.
The way the Navy used these big airships
was the way the Germans had used them in World War I.
And this was to send the airship itself out to scout.
Well, an airship is an easy thing to see, and it can easily be shot down.
Partly to protect their airships,
the Navy transformed them into flying aircraft carriers,
outfitting them with small fighter-reconnaissance biplanes.
They put a trapeze on the underside of the airship.
And the airplane would come up and land on it
by hooking the hook on a bar at the end of this trapeze,
which would then pull the airplane up to a hangar inside the ship.
They made the hangar large enough to accommodate five small fighters.
But there would be problems: The Navy's American-built airships
were plagued by freakish accidents and three of them met tragic ends.
The first, the Shenandoah, broke apart in a thunderstorm and crashed in 1925,
leaving a third of its crew dead,
and its remains scattered across the Ohio countryside.
In 1932, during a routine landing of the USS Akron,
three members of her ground crew were dragged into the air
when the Akron suddenly lurched upward.
The helpless sailors clung to the line in desperation until first one,
and then another tumbled hundreds of feet to their deaths.
The third managed to hang on for more than an hour
before he was finally hauled on board.
Less than a year later,
the Akron crashed oF the New Jersey coast, killing 73 of her 76 crewmen.
The last big airship that the U.S. Navy had was the Macon.
It was lost February 12, 1935
in squally weather off Point Sur, California.
There were 83 on board and, in this particular accident,
only 2 people were lost in it.
And there it lay, its exact location unknown for over 50 years.
Finally , in the early 1990s,
an expedition covered by National Geographic Magazine
found and photographed the remains of the Macon.
A Navy submersible located the Macon in nearly 1,500 feet of water.
Her tangled skeleton still harbored the remains of her fighter planes.
It was a sad reminder of the Navy's brief,
disastrous flirtation with rigid airships.
Elsewhere, airships would meet with greater success.
In Germany, the civilian airship industry was reborn after the war,
under the leadership of Hugo Eckener,
a charismatic successor to the late Count von Zeppelin.
Eckener had the experience, the personality,
and the entrepreneurial spirit
to realize Zeppelin's vision of a fleet of passenger liners.
He gathered together the best and brightest engineers and designers
to build the greatest airship yet, which he named after his mentor.
When the Graf Zeppelin was launched in 1928,
she was hailed as the most advanced airship ever.
But Eckener was eager to build on this success.
So he came up with an unprecedented scheme:
To fly his creation around the world.
If he could pull it off,
it would be a technological triumph- and a publicity bonanza.
This is very much like the Lindbergh flight if you will.
It's one of the big events that people had been waiting for to happen.
Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst
saw the potential and paid the Zeppelin Company $ 100,000
for the rights to cover the flight.
And look at the size of the Graf Zeppelin,
which looks big even with Atlantic Ocean under it.
This is first leg of long globe-circling glide of giant ship,
destined to set a record for round the world travel.
In August, 1929, with the eyes of the world focussed on the Graf Zeppelin,
Eckener piloted the airship across continents and oceans,
flying thousands of miles on each leg of his journey.
Oscar Fink was the helmsman on many of the Graf Zeppelin's flights.
Well, it really was a great time then,
an experience that didn't exist before-riding in an airship.
You would see something of the world- not like today in an airplane,
which flies at a height of 10,000 meters.
It was practically a sea ship in the air.
In the end, the Graf Zeppelin circled the globe
in less than 300 hours of flying time, a little more than 12 days.
Her triumphant achievement would make a lasting impression
on those who saw her.
I remember going up with my mother and father
to the rooftop of the apartment house-
we lived in New york City -just to go see the Graf.
The country was seized by what was called Zeppelin fever.
Hugo Eckener had proven what airships could do.
When he landed at the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey,
he received a hero's welcome.
It was an achievement in technology and it was an adventure that had succeeded.
Eckener was the toast of the town, treated to a ticker tape parade
along Broadway just as Charles Lindbergh had been
only two years before.
Eckener was probably the most recognized face in modern civilization.
He's very much like Neil Armstrong from that point of view.
He's a world figure of world renown
and if his name comes up in a conversation,
it's like every body knows who you're talking about.
Hugo Eckener and his airship had captured the world's imagination.
The record-breaking flight was even commemorated in a children's board game
The Graf Zeppelin soon embarked on a regular route
between Europe and the Americas.
It was history's first regular transatlantic airliner.
But back in Germany , a more sinister figure was rising to prominence.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers enjoyed growing support.
In a few years, they would transform Germany and push Europe toward war.
But for now, the head of the Zeppelin Company enjoyed the freedom
to pursue a new dream: Hugo Eckener envisioned a new airship
much bigger than anyof its predecessors.
This would be the Hindenburg.
It would feature the latest advances in engineering
and it would carry 50 passengers in safety and comfort.
It would truly be a luxury liner in the sky.
At 804 feet, Hindenburg would dwarf today's jumbo jets.
It would be almost as long as the Titanic-
the largest passenger liner of its day.
Building something this huge and being certain that it could fly
was an enormous challenge for Zeppelin's designers and engineers.
As with all dirigibles, the heart of this leviathan
and the secret of its flight was its lifting gas.
Along its central axis, enormous gas cells would rest end to end,
taking up almost its entire volume.
They would be filled with seven million cubic feet of hydrogen.
A rigid framework would be needed to support them.
It would have to be strong, but lightweight.
The material of choice: An aluminum alloy.
To separate the gas cells: gigantic O-Rings,
some more than a hundred feet in diameter,
as big as a carnival ferris wheel.
Now the pieces can be assembled, in a custom-built construction shed.
After more than three years of work,
the giant airship is beginning to take shape.
Around the frame: her outer surface is covered with
750,000 square feet of fabric, painstakingly stitched together.
To protect the cotton cloth from corrosion by saltwater and wind,
and to reflect the sun's heat, it's painted with a metallic doping compound.
It's an incendiary mixture,
but it's standard procedure in airship construction.
Finally, the gas cells can be filled.
Eckener's first choice is nonflammable helium,
but the Americans have a monopoly on helium,
and refuse to sell this strategic resource to a potential enemy .
So he is forced to fill the Hindenburg with hydrogen.
March 1936: The new airship is ready for her maiden flight.
With her first public appearances,
it was clear that there had never been anything quite like the Hindenburg.
Streamlined and elegant,
she was a technical marvel and a masterpiece of design.
As she floated gracefully oF the ground,
Hugo Eckener basked in the glory.
The Nazis would view his new airship as a stunning symbol of German might.
Though Eckener himself was no friend of the Nazi government,
one of Hindenburg's first flights was ordered up by
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels himself:
An aerial tour of the country's largest cities.
But the Hindenburg's primary function was to transport passengers,
and within days of her maiden flight,
she made her debut in the transatlantic airship service.
One of her crewmen was W erner Franz, who was hired as a cabin boy.
I was 1 4 years old the first time I sa w the ship.
When I entered the hangar, I didn't know where the ship was.
All I could see was a grey wall.
I looked left and right, until it became clear to me that
I was standing right in front of it.
I saw only a part of the ship .
You had to walk to the front and the back just to take in the whole thing.
Of course, I walked through every inch of the ship when I wasn't working.
My favorite spot, when I had the time,
was all the way in the front, in the bow .
There was a little area with a table and some small benches and a window
where I could see the whole panorama in front of me.
That was my fav orite spot.
I couldn't pull myself away from the window.
I was sorry when I had to do some work.
Acabin boy could appreciate the thrill of flying on the Hindenburg,
but the best views were from the passengers' deck,
inside the hull of the airship .
One of the youngest passengers was Elizabeth Kotter.
I was 1 1 years old when I was fortunate enough
to fly to Germanyon the Hindenburg.
That was an overwhelming experience,
to enter into this big ship , and to sail a way into the clouds.
It was immense. It was enormous.
And it was somewhat overwhelming, especially for a child.
And one would get caught up in the general euphoria.
I ife on board was just like daily life at home.
Breakfast would be served very nicely, just like in a big hotel.
The meals were very good, and you would look forward to what was on the men u.
The Hindenburg's chefs turned out gourmet meals served on fine china,
and accom panied by French and German wines.
Alfred Grozinger recalls the time he spent working in the airship's kitchen.
When I got onto the Hindenburg I was 19 years old and, as a cook,
I made all the voyages from the first to the last.
We did our utmost to make every body happy.
Whether it was the crew or the passengers, we did what we could,
and I would contend that
none of the passengers had anything to complain about.
They were very satisfied with the food.
They were only worried that
they'd gained too much weight during their trip .
After dinner, passengers could enjoy drinks in the lounge
and musical entertainment around its specially-designed piano
constructed of alumin um to save weight.
Next door to the lounge was the reading and writing room,
where passengers could enjoy a quiet hour with a book.
There was a typewriter for the inevitable reporters
and private desks where travelers could write to their loved ones back home.
Mail could even be posted from the Hindenburg,
which maintained a working post oFice in flight.
The Hindenburg rivalled the best ocean liners in comfort and amenities.
Most of the passenger rooms were dou bles- eFicient, but comfortable.
And if you were willing to pay a premium,
you could enjoy the lu x uryof a private stateroom.
But luxury didn't come cheap.
Aticket on the Hindenburg cost $400 each way -
more than $4,000 in today's currency.
Amazingly,
despite the proximityof millions of cu bic feet of flammable hydrogen,
the Hindenburg also featured a smoking room-isolated by an airlock
and equipped with a single electric lighter.
But for most passengers, it was the observation windows
on the promenade deck that provided the greatest attraction.
Coasting along at 80 mHes an hour, less than 800 feet up ,
the views were incredible.
There was always something new to look at.
You could see fishes or an ocean liner.
That was a major event.
Edith Dieckmann was married to a Zeppelin Company physicist.
She and her husband joined Hugo Eckener
on the Hindenburg's first transatlantic crossing
and she recalls an un usual encounter with a passing ship.
The captain of the ocean liner made contact with Dr. Eckener,
and asked him if he would deviate from the route
in order to flyover the ship , and Dr. Captain Eckener, of course, agreed.
He even lowered a bottle of champagne down to the ship ,
and the first one broke, but the second time he tried it, it worked.
For the crew, the thrill of flying on the Hindenburg was matched
by the excitement of visiting ports of call like New york.
I was just fascinated by the sky scrapers.
The EEuropean cities, compared to New york,
were really just provincial cities.
This was something com pletely diFerent.
EEugen Bentele was a mechanic on the Hindenburg.
He and his fellow crew members were treated like heroes wherever they went.
Bentele remembers one occasion when he hitched a ride to New york City
and ran into a little trou ble.
just before we got to Ilolland Tunnels, my driver must have made a wrong turn.
There was this whistling sound-uh-oh, the police.
And we pulled over, and the policeman was all ready to write us out a ticket.
Then the driver said to him, "I have a man from the Hindenburg,"
and he waved us oF.
And I would imagine that perhaps only the astronauts,
who fleWaround the world in 90 min utes,
could have had a stronger im pression.
It was a wonderful wayof travelling.
And I have to say, it was the most beautiful wayof traveling
that I ever experienced in my life.
Besides being beautiful, the Hindenburg was promoted as being perfectly safe.
I am convinced that under all weather conditions, even the most unfav orable,
we will be able to make the flight in all regularity and safety. Thank you.
By the spring of 1937,
as Hitler contin ued his military buildup and aggressive foreign policy,
manyeuropeans were becoming increasingly nervous
about the possibilityof war.
That may ex plain why ticket sales for the Hindenburg were down
from the year before.
There had also been a series of bomb threats in recent days.
Nevertheless, on May 3,
the inaugural flight of the Hindenburg's second season proceeded on schedule.
Hugo Eckener wasn't on board,
but his heir apparent, Ernst I ehmann, was.
It promised to be a routine flight.
The airship took oF with 97 people aboard, including 36 passengers.
One of them was Burtis Dolan, a perfume company executive,
returning home to his wife Mildred, after a four-month buying trip .
An xious about his flying on the Hindenburg, she had urged him to sail.
So he wrote to her, apologizing for ignoring her wishes.
Not that I fear in any respect the safety of the journey.
There is less risk than ordinary flying.
Of course, Precious, none of us know the I Lord's will,
and if anything should happen to me en route, it will be too late to regret.
The crossing was uneventful, except for un usually strong headwinds.
By the afternoon of May 6th, the airship was 1 2 hours late.
One of those who remembers its approach is Alice Taylor.
I had taken my mother to Asbury Park, that was a seaside resort,
to shop for a birth day present.
It was almost time for the store to close, it was nearly 6:00 , and Mother and I stoppe
When we looked out the window , to our surprise,
we sa w coming directly toward us through the clouds, the Hindenburg.
That sight I'll never, never forget.
I remember saying to my mother,
"Oh, I would love to give you a ride on her for your birth day present."
She laughed and said,"Oh, but those on that ship are the rich and the famous.
But that's a beautiful thought.
I'll dream about it."
The Hindenburg had been scheduled to land at I Lakehurst, New Jersey at 4:00 .
But her landing would be delayed further.
It was a completelyordinary trip.
just like always, sometimes there was bad weather,
sometimes good weather.
But when we arrived at the airfield,
the entire area was filled with thunderstorms.
We were going to have to fly around in circles for about two hours,
I think, before we would be allowed to land.
Verna Thomas lived just a few mHes from the Naval Air Station at I Lakehurst.
All day long, this was all you heard on the radio-
about the Hindenburg being still delayed.
Around evening, when the word had come through that the ship
was gonna come into I akehurst, my husband, he says,
"I et's go up and get into the station and see it for good."
On the ground, crowds had gathered as usual.
Print reporters and newsreel cameramen were standing by.
Even a radio announcer was covering the event.
We're greeting you now from the Naval Air Base at I akehurst, New Jersey,
from which point we 're going to bring you a description of the landing
of the mammoth airship, Hindenburg.
It was 7: 1 5 p.m.
The storms had all but ended and the Hindenburg was cleared
for its final approach.
Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen, and what a great sight it is.
Athrilling one, it's a marvelous sight,
coming down out of the sky,
pointed directly toward us and toward the mooring mast.
Her mighty motors just roared
and throwing it back into a gyre-like whirlpool.
All of a sudden, there came a call: Six men to the front,
because the ship was too light at the front.
I stayed halfway between the pilot's cabin and the bow.
There was a hole somewhere there.
And I thought, "W ell, I'll just lie down here on the support beam
and I'll watch the landing."
During the landing maneuver, I was busy at the motor,
so I could observe everything exactly as it happened.
And I thought perhaps they had brought the ship down too hard,
too fast, and that something was torn or ripped.
And so I looked out,
and I sa w that the ship from the stern back to the first motor was on fire.
It burst into flames.
Get this Scotty, get this, Scotty.
It's terrible.
Oh, my! Get out of the way, please!
My father said, " My God, it's on fire.
Run!" W e watched it burn.
We could see people jum ping out.
It didn't look like anybody could possibly survive.
I can't really remember the collision,
so I know that the ship must have hit the ground with a very hard jolt.
I regained consciousness and then I quickly began to run away
from the side of the motor.
But there was a stream of heat
coming from the enormous flames above the ship .
Then, whHe I was running a way, I thought my clothes were on fire.
I put my hand up to my neck to try and protect it,
and instead of my neck getting burned, my hand was burned.
I thought to myself: "Now this is the end.
I can't survive the end."
And then it happened like this:
I came down nearly perpendicular with my legs and landed in some sandy soil.
But almost immediately, I got up again and I ran away.
I was lucky, because I was running against the wind,
so none of the flames from the fire were behind me.
And the thing that im pressed me was the intense noise
created by the collapsing of the fabric covering
and the roar of the flames was just a horrendous noise.
In front of me, maybe I was lucky, a water tank ex ploded,
and perhaps it was the water that protected me from the heat.
Now I could make my way to the door and I kicked it open.
I could already see the ground coming towards me and I jumped out.
I didn't think about anything.
My mind didn't start working again
until I was back on the ground and I started running.
And then after awhHe it came to me: And I lost my nerve and I cried.
I waHed like a baby.
I didn't know what to do until a couple of crew members came up to me
and shook me to my senses and said, " Get a hold of yourself.
Try to help somebody." But there was no one left to help .
It's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen.
The smoke and the flames, and the plane is crashing to the ground,
not quite to the mooring mast.
Oh, the humanity and all the passengers.
I don't ...
I have people and friends out there.
It's ...
I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen...
Ilonestly, it's like mess...
It started from the tail end between the two fins,
and went into the middle and the forward section.
Within five seconds, it was all on fire.
The ex plosion was so bad and the fire was so heavy at that particular time.
I guess it looked like hell; it was like hell on fire.
The ground crew and the people that did dare to go back,
they were helping to pull bodies out.
Two American Navy soldiers grabbed me and they took me to an am bulance.
And then little by little, five or six more people came.
One of them was Max Pruss.
He had no nose anymore-nothing there, no eyebrows , no ears.
Every thing was burned oF. He was burned.
When I arrived there, the dirigible was still burning.
Raymond Taylor was one of the first doctors to reach the crash site.
I tried to identify some of the corpses right a way,
but some of them could not be immediately identified
because they were so badly burned.
Also, a Jewish doctor,Dr. Adolf Tobin, asked me if he could take care of
Captain I ehmann, who was in charge of the ship.
His reason for wanting to take care of him,
??? E he wanted to show Hitler and the German
that he was very friendly toward them and that the German people
should be aware that the Jews were taking care of the injured,
and they should appreciate it.
But no doctor could save Captain I ehmann.
He would die of his injuries.
And so would Burtis Dolan.
In Dolan's pocket,
they found the charred letterh he had written to his wife,
but never had a chance to mail.
It had taken just half a min ute from the first signs of trou ble
to the fiery crash.
Now , 36 passengers and crew members were dead or dying mostly
from burns and smoke inhalation.
Miraculously, two-thirds of those on board survived.
My view of it all was entirely diFerent from the destruction.
Mine was that beautiful thing in the air and that's what I like to remember.
I've seen the other ships,
but this was sort of the first cause of excitement like that.
Maybe it was made more so because of the tragedy.
The next morning,
Americans awoke to screaming headlines and terrifying photographs.
For the first time, every detail of a disaster was recorded as it happened,
and relayed to a shocked public.
Adolf Hitler sent a personal telegram to President Roosevelt,
thanking him and the American people for their help
in dealing with the casualties.
In New york, the German ambassador made hasty arrangements
for the bodies of his country men to be returned to the Fatherland.
Their flag-draped coFins would lie in state on a Manhattan pier,
as local German citizens paid their respects.
Then the dead were shipped home on board the liner Hamburg.
But back in Berlin, the government faced more than an aircraft disaster.
This was a public relations catastrophe.
The Nazis saw it as a slap in the face of German technology,
and so it didn't enter the newspapers.
It was sort of like on the bottom of the page:
"There was a crash of the airship Hindenburg.
And so many people died.
And here's the survivor's list." That was about it.
Even the film footage was not allowed to be shown in Germany to the pu blic,
and most people didn't get to see it until after the war.
Besides the shock of the tragedy, and the embarrassment,
there were questions waiting to be answered,
about what could have caused this disaster.
German airships had carried thousands of passengers
more than a million mHes-in perfect safety.
Was the Hindenburg brought down by an act of sabotage?
As a symbol of the Nazi regime,
it may have been a tem pting target for opponents of Hitler.
Some have even suggested that
Hitler may have ordered the airship's destruction himself,
perhaps in retaliation for Hugo Eckener's anti-Nazi statements.
But no solid evidence was ever found to support either of these notions.
Just four days after the crash,
the Commerce Department convened a hearing at I akehurst,
to examine the evidence.
Hugo Eckener headed the German delegation.
In the end, the Commission concluded that
the crash was an unfortunate accident,
caused by a discharge of static electricity,
igniting a leak from one of the airship 's gas cells,
and touching oF an explosive hydrogen fire.
But decades later, a new theory would emerge to challenge these findings.
Addison Bain is a retired engineer,
the former head of Hydrogen Programs for NASA.
His ex pertise led him to question prevailing ideas
about the Hindenburg disaster.
Well, with myexperience with hydrogen over the years,
starting in about 1960 ,
and designing systems and writing safety man uals and that type of thing.
And I'd keep hearing about the Hindenburg,
what about the Hindenburg, the hydrogen exploded.
Well, it didn't .
To Addison Bain's trained eye, the evidence was there all along,
in the photographs of the disaster:
The enormous fireball that consumed the airship
could not have been produced by burning hydrogen.
It was very apparent that it was a very brilliant fire.
Again, that set my suspicions into motion
because hydrogen generally burns with an invisible flame.
Perhaps something else had fueled the Hindenburg fire.
Why did this fire burn so hot and so fast?
And fire investigators go oF and look for so-called accelerants or chemicals
and that kind of thing that may have contributed to this.
And that's why I led oF into the chemistry of the airship design,
particularly the outer coating.
To find out what might have fed the flames,
Bain went to Germany and visited the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen.
There, in the archives, among fHes of documents and blueprints,
he found the construction diagrams for another airship -and an important clue.
When I arrived and started going through drawings on the Hindenburg,
I also found drawings on the I Z1 30 ,
the sister ship of the Hindenburg- the Hindenburg, was I Z1 29.
But the I Z1 30 had flown after the Hindenburg
and it was exactly the same size.
I came across one particular drawing
that outlined the fabric covering of the hull.
Now following down through the notes on the left hand side of this drawing,
I come across notes on the doping process.
They started oF with a coat of iron oxide,
very similar to the Hindenburg doping process,
but then the next steps were coatings of powdered alumin um bronze,
not just plain alumin um powder.
I thought, " Ah-ha, this is interesting."
To Addison Bain, it indicated that
the airship's designers had serious questions about the doping com pound
used on the outer covering.
They knew a n um ber of problems.
They did a n um ber of modifications to their design,
all because of the Hindenburg accident.
But hydrogen had been blamed for the disaster,
so why did Zeppelin companyengineers focus instead on the fabric-
struggling to make it more fire-resistant,
and less likely to build up static electricity?
Did they know more than they let on?
To find out what was really responsible for the fire,
Addison Bain would head into the laboratory.
He had managed to secure some rare artifacts:
Actual shreds of the Hindenburg's skin.
Placing a sample in an infrared spectrograph,
Bain could analyze the doping compound on its surface.
And when I discovered that the doping process that was used on airships,
in general, uses a cellulose nitrate type compound,
which was basically gun powder,
and then used a combination of powdered alumin um in the dopant process.
And I said, "W ell, you know,
powdered alumin um is the fuel used on the space shuttle."
So, here we have rocket fuel, we've got gunpowder.
And I said to myself, "W ell, there's gotta be more to this.
They must have introduced some other chemicals
to reduce the flammability characteristics."
With a scanning electron microscope,
Bain could inspect the skin at the molecular level.
He found nothing that would have retarded the Hindenburg's flammability.
But he did manage to learn exactly
what the fabric was com posed of and recreate it.
With this new sam ple, he could find out what would happen
if a flame or a spark made contact with the fabric.
What I'm gonna do is burn a piece of the lab sam ple that I prepared earlier.
First thing you'll notice, it doesn't self-extinguish,
and it starts moving quite rapidly.
Notice the colorization of it- typical carbon fire.
And another feature that's very interesting is
the eFect of the alumin um against the iron oxide forms
little balls of thermite- very highly reactive combination.
Those thermite balls get up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Very simply, I believe that the cause of the Hindenburg fire
was static electricity that was built up on the envelope.
It found a path towards the frame, across the panels,
and ignited the very, very sensitive alumin um powder.
That, in com bination with the iron oxide and other chemicals,
was just a rapid chemical fire.
If Addison Bain is right, then in spite of the oFicial report,
the fire that consumed the Hindenburg wasn't just an ex plosion of hydrogen.
It was actually fueled by the flammable skin of the airship itself.
But even if hydrogen wasn't entirely to blame,
the Hindenburg disaster sounded the death knell for passenger airships.
With the outbreak of war,
Germany's last remaining airships were reduced to scrap.
As for Hugo Eckener, his glory days were over, too.
One of the world's most celebrated figures would quietly fade into history.
Today, a subsidiary of the same com pany that built the Hindenburg
is once again creating an airship .
In a hangar at Friedrichshafen, the Zeppelin NgT is taking shape.
That shape maybe familiar, but the technology is brand new.
Scott Dannekar is testing this high-tech dirigible.
The Hindenburg is like an albatross that has been thrown around our neck
and we've been wearing it for the last 62 years.
We have to overcome the stigma of the disaster and the failures of the past.
We have to prove what an airship is capable of
and we have to prove its success.
And once we do that,
then I think we 're well on our way to restoring airships
to the prominence that they used to have years ago.
This is a very diFerent kind of airship :
It features electronic controls and com puterized steering.
Its semirigid design sets it apart from the familiar blimps
we see at sporting events,
but it's less than a third the size of the Hindenburg.
And it's filled with helium, not hydrogen.
If all goes well, the new Zeppelin will be used for tourist flights
and scientific research-and perhaps as a vehicle for transporting passengers.
flying an airplane for me is a job.
It's something that you have to do.
flying an airship is a joy. There's magic with these things.
I think it's just the idea of a giant silver-
or in this case white- airship just floating serenely above the country side.
There's just a magic there that for me is just personally indescribable.
Is the Zeppelin NT the wave of the future or just a nostalgic day dream,
a bid to recapture an elegant era?
The golden age of airships may be long gone,
but magnificent giants like the Hindenburg won't be forgotten.
They'll flyon forever,
floating majestically across the landscape of memory.
I think everyone who ever worked with airships
would really like to see one of those huge objects in the sky again.
There's nothing more beautiful than flying in an airship.
It's page one in the book of dreams.