Hindenberg, first hand

Dirigibles really seemed like a good idea, right?

Balloons have a downside: there's not much of a steering mechanism. The development of the cucumber-shaped dirigible, though. Now there's something. We've got an aerodynamic design powered by (first) hand cranks and (ultimately) an internal combustion engine, allowing von
Zepplin's first flight in 1900 too achieve speeds of up to 18 mph. Not half bad.

Not only were dirigibles relatively fast, but they were also big and reliable. By 1910, cities in Germany were regularly visited by scheduled airship flights, making the dirigible (arguably) the first commercial airline.

Things all went bad.

First, like we can learn from Ken Burns' National Park series (on PBS now!), humans like to screw everything up, so in 1914 Germany's dirigibles were painted black and used in bombing raids on London. The world is a forgiving place, though, and after the war, dirigibles
were bigger than ever (and fast, too, with a cruising speed of 68 mph).

Now comes disaster.

Back in (some of) my grad school days, I once caused a not-well-controlled hydrogen explosion. Let me tell you, it is only through the grace of high-quality lab safety glass that I still have my eyebrows. It was rapid and terrifying, and there are a lot of reasons I am no longer a lab scientist, but this is definitely on the list.

Imagine, then, Lakehurst, NJ in 1937.

Or don't imagine -- my grandfather, the illustrious Silver Beaver referenced here, was there.

"I was a teenager when I saw the Hindenberg blow up at Lakehurst, N.J. Along with some friends, we piled into a pickup to watch the airship land. It was late afternoon and quite cloudy. We parked on the road alongside the airfield to watch this giant of the skies come in. As it very slowly approached to land, it dropped many lines and whoosh, the tail lit up and the airship settled tail first into the ground. The entire airship had burst into flame. It's hard to believe anyone could have survived that crash. We were parked about a mile away and as I recall, could feel the heat of that explosion. What caused this to happen, I could not even guess. It certainly, in my opinion, was not the weather. The whole event happened in less then a few minutes."

So why did the Hindenberg go down?

Tune in tomorrow, kids.