The Hindenburg Fire - Oh the HUMANITY! - Episode 57

Ed and Kara are back this week with a beast of an episode for you. It's been a long time coming, but Ed has finally dug into one of the worst air disasters of the 20th century, the Hindenburg fire! 

The Hindenburg was the largest dirigible? Blimp? Zeppelin? floaty thingy the world had ever seen. This thing was designed from the ground up to be comfortable, fast, and most importantly SAFE. Even though the thing was filled with highly flammable hydrogen gas, the Germans really did think of everything and we don't mean that in a sarcastic way... they really did think of everything. 

So how in the world did the Hindenburg burn to the ground in less than 40 seconds?

The answer is in the episode! So take a listen and discover how one of the greatest technological marvels of the modern era came crashing down in the most dramatic way possible. 

This episode has a ton of pictures and diagrams and what not, so be sure to check out The Day's Dumpster Fire website for all the details.  You'll also get to see the back catalog of nearly 60 historical dumpster fires as well as a collection of Kara's insanely good artwork. 

Be sure to send Kara and Ed an email at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com for show ideas and even corrections. We here at the Day's Dumpster Fire love all feedback as it makes the whole team better so that you can get the best content possible. 

In this episode, Kara and Ed talked about the following episodes that you may find interesting. All of which can be found on The Day's Dumpster Fire website!

Episode 14: The Molasses Flood Fire

Episode 26: Firing Fireworks Fire

Episodes 35 and 36: King Louis XVI 

Hey before you go!

Email us your "Trashcan Fires" to thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com (be sure to put "Trashcan Fire" in the subject line.

We would love to see your stories where you tried to plan out every little detail, but when you executed that plan, it all went horribly wrong shortly after and turned into your own Dumpster Fire.

Be sure to put "Trashcan Fire" in the subject line followed by the title of the story and whether or not we can use your name.

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Transcript

Intro: 0:00

There's a conspiracy theory out there in states that aliens were trying to stop America's search for nuclear technology. So they shot down the Hindenburg as a way to distract things, hence that flash of light on the tail end of the Hindenburg. That was the aliens shooting it down. It's that one. Yeah. I think that's it. We solved it. I entertain that for about point three seconds because none of that makes sense. I, I, I like that one. haha. Hello and welcome to the day's dumpster fire where we don't celebrate humanity's successes because who wants to do that. But we study and it celebrates this humanity's greatest failures because that's way more exciting. I am your host Ed and joining me as always is Cara, how are you doing this fine Saturday late evening?

Kara: 1:07

Hello, hello, you look great. I binge watched a show with my husband all day today and I slept in and that's all I can ask for. As you get older, that's like, that's like the only thing that really matters is just being able to sleep in and. This is simple things it was so nice. Yep. You don't have to spend a ton of money. He just sleep and watch TV. That's it. So I did today, all I did was work on today's episode. Like, I thought bad because I was, I, my goal was to work on my episode. My monstrosity. No. Just, it just ain't happening after this past week. So today's episode is not what I said I was going to do on on the last one because the last one with the 1904 Olympics I mentioned something about doing like childhood star actors, like Judy Garland and how their lives kind of just, you know, they're super famous when they're 12 but by the time they're 20, their lives are ruined. Or I was going to do the Bay of Pigs, quite a, quite a spread of, of topics there, but you got a lot of things on. going Yes. Yeah, yeah, childhood star actors from the 1930s all the way to the Bay of Pigs and everything in between. Now the Bay of Pigs thing is going to definitely take a while because there is so many moving parts. Yeah, that one will take a bit. That's like mine. The one I'm working on, I was like, I need time by me Yes. time. Yeah, this, this one is kind of be kind of like my coasters last and where we've got like three major players and it's going to be like a major player for each for like each episode. And then I've got to be able like tied all together at the end. So Bay of Pigs is going to be, it's going to be a Bay of Pigs. And if anybody knows their history, that was an absolute fiasco from the minutes it was executed. So today I am shifting gears in a completely different direction. And Kara, I'm going to need your help on this one because I don't know what it is that we're supposed to learn from this whole thing. Just because like once we dive into like what, what actually happened in the causes of it and all that other fun stuff, it's just like, I don't know if people screwed up as much as we think they did because you know like to think it could just be one of those things where you have to accept that tragedy happens even though there's no reason for it. Yes, yes, and it's one of those things where humanity kind of like thought out everything. And they really did. But then, yeah, the ending of it is, is weird. And that like it's kind of like was it episode 14, the 1919 Boston molasses flood were like people on the outside of thinking like, how can you drown in a pool of molasses in the middle of winter. At the end of that episode there, there was the idea that my last is under pressure behaves a lot like'Ubleck' but, you know, a non-Newtonian flu but an exact opposite where, uh, under pressure instead of heartening and getting thicker it gets thinner. that ultimately resulted in the third Reich, yeah, the guy just wanted to die. For him, by the time I was done. Because wasn't that Hindenburg kind of like the German George Washington in a way? Umm, he was a hero. He was a hero but not, he wasn't put up on a pedestal to the level that George Washington is. Got it. But he even still, he was retired and they brought him back from retirement to run a nation when it was like 90. He was well respected though for sure. Yeah, so yeah, this, this episode is going to be about the Hindenburg, the Zeppelin or the Blimp. Uh, it wouldn't surprise me if they named this Hindenburg after your Hindenburg. What year was this? Uh, this is like 1936. And yeah, it's possible. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, the Hindenburg disaster is when I got to the end of this when I started studying or analyzing like what actually happened. And, uh, there's, uh, there's a new theory out there because ultimately it's the end of the day. We just don't know why this thing burned up. But there's, there's a new prevailing theory out there that when we combine it with a theory that I have. I think it solves it. So the Hindenburg, for those of you who don't know, it was Germany's largest derangeable or if you want to call them Zeppelin's. It's, it's a blimp. It's a giant blimp. Yeah, it is a giant sausage-like blimp wish swastikas on it. But I don't know about that, but. The engineering. Did you just get a bad visual in your head? I didn't like that image. That the sausage was swastikas. Yeah, I was weird. Wait till you see that comes out of the tip of this thing. Um, yeah. We'll get there. We'll get there. And what we can do is, uh, I kind of want to go back to, uh, we'll start with part one here. And when we get to the end of this car, I want you to be able to tell me what is the lesson that can be learned. From this that we could apply to our own lives because I just don't think that there's a lot of Hindenburgs in our lives that I would hope not. Uh, so I think that's because this is something that was kind of flukeish. Not necessarily man caused. Per se like there's no way anybody could imagine this problem happening other than one component and we'll, we'll, we'll get there. And humanity has always been fascinated and we were fascinated with getting into the air for a species that has like zero percent physical capabilities to fly like birds. We certainly have a fascination with it. It's almost as though like we weren't meant to fly. That was actually a sentiment amongst many scholars going all over to the 1800s is like, well, if humans could fly then God would have given them wings. So that part of Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear is having a moment, it really realizes that he can't fly because he's a toy. Yeah, crisis, stays, and he stairs and this identity crisis. Yeah, I remember when I was a little kid watching it and I was like crying. So I said, I ran to my mom. Buzz Lightyear can't fly. I'm not being able to fly. Well, I think with humans, it's more like we understand that we can't fly and we just didn't for the longest time we just didn't have the technology or the knowledge to actually make it happen. The French were the ones that really pioneered the first flight. There were the ones that came up with the hot air balloon. And especially with anything sort of utility in 1783, actually, no, let me backtrack the Shu Han Dynasty. What is that 220 to 280 BCE. They were really the first ones to make like small silk balloons. and they would pull like a little lantern on the bottom of it. Like, have you ever seen the end of Tangolder? That's um for those of you who aren't as early that's China. Yes that's not French. The the shoehorn. Yeah that's China. Yeah it isn't the shoehorn dynasty the guy that like strapped a bunch of rockets to his back and bloom self up. I believe it's very close. It's just straight, straight, straight, straight, straight, straight. Well we'll put that episode in the show notes because that's that's a that's a fun one that's one of those things where you're like, hey if you think you've really have a dumb idea. Try flying. Yeah flying with gunpowder rockets on your back. Yep. Yeah, it's good. What could possibly go wrong? Hmm. But yeah, the Chinese were the ones that like what make these little silk balloons and they have the little candles underneath them to heat them up and it's actually pretty impressive. They understood that heat rises. There's a lot of things that they understood that the Western folks took over. However though like these little silk balloons with candles in them, these would be used for military communication. The big boys, as I call them didn't come around until 1783 when French brothers Joseph Michel and Jacques Ertien Montgolfier. I think I got that right. I love that last day in Montgolfier. Isn't it great? I actually mentioned these same guys when I did my Louis when I did my Louis episodes. Yes. Yes, because they were they were definitely around at that at time and they were really paid by the monarchy to kind of like do their thing. It was like why if we're so broke, why paying are we those money to do this? Yeah, wait to see pictures of this stuff because it's just amazing. It's Yes. so over the top. Well, all our pictures in the show notes for you. So we went down that rabbit hole too when I read about it. Right. Yeah, I kind of wanted to be around at the time to see it because it was so monumental. Then I wanted like a mealie get out of there because it's all going to explode really soon. Yeah. But anyways, these guys, they publicly demonstrated a big hot air balloon and an a France. So what they did is they basically built a bond fire on the ground and then they filled up a silk balloon like a big one. So I just got up at about 20 feet diameter and they put it over the fire and sure enough the fire heated up the air inside the balloon and then this balloon took off. Now obviously nobody was inside that thing because it wasn't an inferno and you would have died but the thing is that the principle was there. People could make things fly. It's a river of the same year, the brothers performed another demonstration before King Louis XVI in Marie Internet. Still too nervous to risk human lives, the brothers decided to attach a basket carrying a sheep, a duck and a rooster. And I do believe you mentioned that in your episode. Sure did. That was funny. And I can only imagine what those animals must have thought during the whole thing. The duck may have been okay. He's like, hey, whatever. I'm in the air anyways. But the sheep and the rooster. They must have been the sheep must have been just going off like one of those screaming goats the whole time. Can't play them. No, I mean, I would have done the same thing if I was even a human in one of those things. On November 21st 1783, the Melkulfier Brothers sent up the first man balloon. And now they had the two dudes in there. They went up and it was tethered so they weren't just flying away. But now the race was on. And now it was like, okay, humans have taken to this guy. This is where like everything changed in terms of flight capabilities, I guess you could say. And these early balloons consisted of like a raging fire inside of like this, a like holdren kind of a thing. And everybody in a basket holding on for dear life, these early balloons were not controlled. These early balloons. Just they, they did eventually like they they would have them tethered to the ground. But still they would blow all over the place. And if that fire went out, you came down real fast. Because those silk balloons leak like a sieve. I believe it, which is unfortunate. So expensive. Sorry. Oh, oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah, because they couldn't use cotton. So I think cotton would have been too heavy. is ironic because when we get to the zeppelins, they did use cotton Which because it was so much stronger in certain aspects. Well, you actually they melted down animal intestines. Put them in the cotton as a gelatin and then that made it work. That's cool. I'm sure we'll get there. Sorry. So, time progressed, eventually hydrogen gas was discovered to be lighter than air, and now balloons didn't need crazy fires. In fact, you didn't want crazy fires. These next generation of balloons they could float on their own, assuming that there wasn't any fire to be seen or a spark or whatever. There were two main downsides to the balloons, especially with ones filled with hydrogen. One, they were unpropelled, meaning that they now had no way of control the dang thing. So, you get up in the air, and you get rid of that tether, and you're just going wherever the wind tells you you're going to go. Today hot air balloons actually have vents, I guess they can open up these vents to release air, and it will push them in directions. But even still, you don't see you don't see a hot air balloon in the middle of a hurricane. That'd be bad. Yeah. It would just be like a rag doll just flying all over the place. And then often these hydrogen balloons had a very loose stoichiometric combination of hydrogen and oxygen. So, what the heck stoichiometry? Stoichiometry is where you work out, basically, percentages of chemicals or substances that you're going to use for a specific purpose, right? There's no point in it like, say if you have a chemical correction that needs gold, do you just go find 500 pounds of gold and just throw it into the experiment and hope for the best? No, you're going to use stoichiometry to figure out what is the minimum amount of gold that is necessary because gold is expensive, and we don't want to waste it. In this case, you can have a stoichiometric combination, meaning what percentage of hydrogen can you have to what percentage of oxygen to make it work? Because hydrogen is lighter than oxygen, hydrogen is where you get your lift. Now, obviously, you would want a very, very pure hydrogen balloon, right? You don't want any oxygen in there. All things considered an all-hydrogen balloon with no oxygen is relatively safe. It's kind of hard to light that in a way. But if there's any air in there, especially if there is two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen, that's that sweet spot. Why do you think that is? Chemistry. What's the chemical expression for water? H2O. Meaning you have two hydrogens attached to one oxygen. Right. So if you're in a situation where you have two parts hydrogen with one part oxygen in a balloon, that makes sense now. That means you're going to have the maximum possible explosion when that thing goes off, and it's all going to turn to water. Okay, yep. I'm here. So, yeah, they would have a very loose stoichiometric combination, meaning that quite often they couldn't make these balloons this pure hydrogen. It was going to have some percentage of oxygen in there, meaning if that thing caught on fire, it doesn't. It doesn't catch on fire. It just makes a very loud bang. That's it. You're you're now in the hands of Newton. So in other words, these things are floating bombs. And some of the early balloons were into a method of mixing hydrogen with hot air to get it even more lift. So they would fill this balloon up with as much hydrogen as they can. And then they would pump in hot air. And the only way you get that hot air is from my fire heating. So I don't know, I don't know how long it took before they realized that this was a bad idea, but I'm pretty serious. It was pretty quickly. On one famous flight, Jean-Pierre Blanchard partnered up with a Boston physician to cross the English channel in a balloon that could navigate somewhat. This thing is pretty cool. What they did is they oh, I'm sorry, I missed a spot here. On June 15th, 1785, Pierre Romain and Pullatra de Rosier became the first to die from blowing themselves up in a hot air balloon. But RIP. Right now hot air slash hydrogen balloon. Yeah, I mean, it was bound to happen. But RIP. Two years, but yeah, approximately about two years after the famous flight in 1783. Yep, they filled that balloon up with helium and not helium, but hydrogen and that was the end of it. So that must have been quite a show. I bet. Man, I've listened even to small like party balloons mixed with two part hydrogen with one part oxygen and it is louder than a gunshot like it is so loud when that goes off. So big one. Can you imagine? Oh geez, like a like a 20 30 foot diameter situation. That would be loud. And then you have the screaming guys coming to the ground. Yeah more than likely they were tethered, so they wanted to fall in too far, but it was probably still be like a hundred feet. And eventually the balloon with a flapper was invented and some degree of navigation could be. Could take place, meaning this flapper. I think it was a dude at the back end of it with like a palm frond is flapping it. Like Lincoln Zelda Wind Waker where you had that leaf. Yeah, I'm just trying to get that out right now. It's probably technology stuff here, but because of this flapper thingy, they could actually, they could actually navigate somewhat. One of my favorite cases here was the flight with Jean Pierre Blanchard, and who partnered up with a Boston physician to cross the English channel in a balloon that could navigate somewhat. ambitious. I will give them that. But the angles channels far, it's like 38 miles. The aircraft wasn't sealed very well, and they started to send so low that in order for the two men to make it across the channel, they had to throw out all their supplies. Because it is not like they had a stock pile of hydrogen sitting around it was. Yeah, everything they had in there is what they had to work with. They barely made it to the side, and. This must have been a heck of a site because nobody knew where they were going to land because, you know, navigation. So people were running up and down the coast trying to find these dudes, and when they finally found them, they found these two buccas naked man cheering their success, meaning that they eventually had to give up their clothing in order to shed enough weight. But we didn't Yeah, like, everything just wasn't flying over the edge. And that must have been a heck of a site too. Just like some little fisherman to sit not there. And then here comes this weird have that. ball like thing. And then all of a sudden you start seeing like barrels flying over. Then you see like a pair of trousers and then a shirt and then a vest. Yeah, that that must have been a heck of a site. There were a few other achievements, but for much of the first half of the 1800s, balloons kind of just fell out of interest. They really struggled to navigate, and it was really hard to keep them up in the air for any useful length of time. But for 50 years before some like some steam power to engines, and envelope design sell and aluminum manufacturing before we would see anything resembling what the hint in Berg would look like today. And so for all the way up in the 1850s, it was just a floating ball with some dudes in it, hoping that they don't crash. Perfect. Part two. The derogable dirigible dirigible airship nailed it. Yes, if you can, kids, if you can go home and pronounce derogable to your parents, they'll be very impressed if not worried because they don't know what that means. What does it mean? I don't know. I think it's, I think it's just a style of the aircraft. It's like a long. Like oval shaped type thing instead of like a ball. Like a dirigible can be like you can actually send it straight, but I don't know the actual translation for dirigible. How to look that up later. Yeah, yeah, I should. And maybe I'll put that in the show notes, but essentially balloon suck. They are heavily subjected to any wind. They are nearly impossible to maneuver slash navigate. Yes, even with motors, if your balloon experiences across wind, your motor can only push in one direction, so you're screwed. Like you can't turn left or right, you can only just go straight. And I think some of them actually had like a steam powered engine in them, which that's got to have a lot of lot of horsepower, especially back then. Sounds heavy though. Yeah, especially with like a two horsepower steam engine with materials as they were up to the 1850s to balloons, leaf like a sieve, no one wanted to see too naked man high fiving each other on the beach next to a giant shriveled up sack. That's. I concur.... that's basically what it amounted to. It, it's especially when they're just out there growing out. Yeah, it's a lot. Everything changed in 1852 when I think it's pronounced Henry Gifford, but if he's French it would be Henri Giffard, I'm not sure. But, uh, when Henry Gifford created the airship or better known yet as the derogable, the name airship comes about because well, imagine using a balloon that resembled that in a shape of a seafaring ship. The logic. was that, if you get a ship in the ocean, you don't ship it like a round circle. hmm, It's just not feasible. So instead, let's make a aircraft shaped like a ship and see what happens. So instead of being a, uh, like a round, being a round body kind of a thing, uh, it's more or less like something that shaped more like a football Uh-huh. where they kind of each end comes to a point, and then it's kind of like oval shaped in the middle, and they would eventually become just perfect circles in the middle as they discovered that the perfect circle works better with the crosswind rather than having a, uh, oblong shape. As well, we'll get to it the engine and rudder could be placed in the rear of the aircraft and later elevator flaps to combat crosswinds could be, uh, used and be more maneuverable. So now you actually have something that resemble something that of like aerodynamic. And it can cut through the air kind of like an ocean liner can cut through the water and they can steer left and right. Uh, but that that can be difficult as we'll see, but you can still do it. And better yet, you can put an engine on these things and actually go places. So in 1852, he attached a small steam engine with a massive propeller. I think this thing was like five feet in diameter or something crazy. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah, no, he was he was ballin' out on this thing. He was pimpin' my, pimp my balloon. Uh, instead of standing in a basket, holding on for dear life, uh, Gifford's ship design allowed the pilot to sit comfortably because he actually had like a, you know, like a three foot long platform that he could just sit on. And let the one or two horsepower steam engine propel the ship forward. And it actually allowed him to fly forward. That's really the only direction for 17 miles at five miles per hour. Woo, we're moving about back then. Back then it was pretty good. Yeah, I mean that's like a fighter jet. I mean, hey, we're just thankful that we can turn. So yeah, I mean what as we'll see like once we get these things up to speed like it 84 miles an hour. Steering becomes a bit more difficult because these things are like 800 feet long, but we'll get there. The long, the long story short of it is that this 1852 Gifford flight like changed everything. And it was like the first real advancement in balloon slash flying technology. The concept of a lighter than airship was now locked in stone suddenly people started to think that there is something more to floaty things that might be able to serve more of a genuine purpose. The 1990s, vertical bulls got way bigger way faster with the use of gasoline engines and applying aluminum instead of wood. What did I write here instead of woodland. I was, yeah, I was tired when I wrote this. Instead of wood, the blimpy part was no longer just the leaky sack. It was a semi-rigid sack with a metal gantry below that extended the whole length of the ship. The new generation of derogables are even lighter than before, despite being bigger. The big thing was aluminum. There was a time when aluminum was worth more than gold. It is so funny because like, at that time, I mean, earth has a ton of it. It is everywhere. But at that time it was just really hard to extract it. Whereas, like, now it's just, it's just everywhere. I, I think I read a story somewhere. I can't remember the name of it, but basically the plot of it was this group of people they left their world to come to ours because our world had trees. But their world was just nothing but gold. There was so much gold everywhere that they couldn't get rid of it. Like, they just couldn't get rid of it fast enough. And then when they discovered wood, they said that like the wood was the most precious thing in the world to them. It's interesting. So, yeah, whoever thought that you could live in a world where like, there's just too much gold. Something tells me that's not the case, but I want to mind visiting there. Maybe. Yeah, I'll just take this paperweight with me. Right. So now like because we now have these dirugibles that could fly in a direction with a measurable speed. Like, now we could put these things to work by the 1890s, they got way bigger, way faster. That gasoline engine was the other thing, as I mentioned before, having that gasoline engine versus a steam engine was. That was another game changer because gasoline engines are just significantly more efficient than steam. And you don't have to have fire necessary, like an open fire near your hydrogen-filled balloon. We also see dirugibles become and considered for military use. So like the Baldwin dirigible American inventor Thomas Baldwin built a 53-foot airship called the California era, which won a one mile speed race on October of 1904 at the St. Louis World Fair. I'm so happy that that race turned out a lot better than the marathon that was held that same. Or what is that the ethnic gains or whatever it was that apology days. Yeah, the anthropology days. It must have been a crazy time to be in St. Louis in 1804. There was so much stuff going on there, like a blimp race, like that is just Especially if you're, if you're a kid who's never seen anything other than a bird fly, could you imagine what it must be like to see like this blimp fly over. Right. That that that that would have had to have been just absolutely mind-blowing. It's around the same time that circuses were a big deal to the circus was a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. The traveling circus would go through areas that didn't get a lot of excitement. So, hey, here's circus. the Yeah. There's all this crazy weird things giant tens exotic animals acts entertainment. Yeah, imagine just being like some farmer and Idaho and then all of a sudden, here's a circus. And here's an elephant. Yeah. Like you probably have seen drawn pictures of them in books, but. Here's an actual elephant. You just want to realize, yeah, there's no zoos the at now, zoos were really an early early. They were they were there, but they were only like New York. They were in big cities, and even then it was, I don't quite remember. I think zoos were a product of the circus or something. They're related You know, that's a good question. I don't know where like the advent of zoos came from. Yeah, I want to look at it later. So, wonderful is one of those things like, okay, what do we do with the animals when we're done with them? Yeah. I don't them. like I'm pretty sure there's some dumpster fire ideas in that. Oh, guaranteed. This is an interesting time. Oh, yes, there is. There is that one circus train that crashed. Or PT Barnum's Museum or PT Barnum's first. Or just PT Barnum in general. I actually thought about doing that anyway, we're getting sidetracked. Yes, yes. I do kind of want to look up that train accident because there was like tigers and lions running all over the place. I can see that just being a nightmare. But anyways, 1904 St. Louis, World Fair, Baldwin, and his little derogable, eventually got like a military contract. In 1908, Baldwin sold an improved model with a 20 horsepower engine to the US Army called the SC1. And leave it to the US Army or the government to take something that could be named really, really cool and give it a catalog number. That's what newspapers are for. Like I got this derogable, we call it the Raptor. And the government's at cool. It's the SC1. Now we're going to come into a guy that. Changed everything and this is one of these things where. You got the right guy born at the right time. Who had just the right personality. It's like Winston Churchill man, like I don't know of anybody else we could put alive in Winston Churchill's time in World War 2 to do what he did. We're going to get the lead out.[laughs] Get the lead out. Yeah, that's what they say when you listen to Led Zeppelin. Oh, jeez. [laughs] No, we're not getting the lead out, but we are getting into Ferdinand as Zeppelin. This guy, he was born in a wild time. If you think about it, like, born 1883 and died 1917. Like, here's a German military general, and it's like, he was kind of a hero in his own right. Zeppelin, when you look at that time frame, like, imagine how he saw the world change. From 1838, we're still talking people that are, like, fighting in Napoleonic styles to 1917 and World War I machine guns and biplanes and all that stuff. Yeah, it's just crazy. That's why World War I is my favorite World War II study. Yes, I know. With all those guys shooting at each other with their machine guns. Writing horses? Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. [laughs] So, yeah, born 1838, died 1917. He was a German military general who looked at the idea of the previous airships and had a brilliant idea. Instead of using ropes or nets to hold the shape of the blimpy part, and I really don't know what the technical term is for that floating. The part that actually does the floating, I don't know what that's called. Me neither. So, It's okay. I'm calling it the blimpy part. Perfect. So, the, or the plumpy part. Either one. I don't know if I like plumpy part. That sounds weird. It's kind of cute. The plumpy part? Yeah. Okay. I did a girthy part, but that still wouldn't work. I don't like that one. No, I don't like that either. Well, blumpy, or actually, we'll call it plumpy part. Okay. As a technical term. So,[laughs] looked at the shape of the plumpy part in the desired shape. Use a material called Dura Lumin, which as I guess that's considered at that time, like aircraft grade aluminum. So, like, yeah, you probably hear it all the time and like knives. Like, oh, this uses aircraft grade aluminum, and there's different grades of aluminum. Like, I think there's like 60, 68, and there's 70, something, there's 80, something. Basically, like, how you can have a steel that is harder or softer, or you can have a steel that has more flex to it, but doesn't break as easily and all that kind of stuff. You can have the same exact thing with aluminum, and you can make aluminum just absolutely insanely light as well as insanely strong, and that's kind of what does Dura Lumin, Dura Lumin, I think is what they eventually called it. And everybody used it in England, America, Germany. Everybody was using this stuff, even though it was really expensive to make. But anyways, he used that aluminum to create like a skeleton inside the plumpy part. And basically, instead of filling the whole thing up with just one giant amount of hydrogen gas, you use like a series of bladders. So kind of like a, you know how, like, the Titanic had those baffles or those, like, those compartments that were built into it. There was, I don't know, like, what, 10, 12 compartments that they could close off. And, like, so, like, Compartment 3 is flooded, cool, shut it off, and then that way, we can't, like, we can't sink, because it's just that one. This is kind of like the same idea, but here we use these, these, what would be called gas cells. And so, like if a gas cell popped, it's okay, because we still have like four or five others that are, you know, not popped. That was actually, that was a really, really ingenious idea. And the idea was that, okay, let's build an exoskeleton, and then we'll wrap that exoskeleton with the air bladders inside. And now you could, now you have a lot more control of what the aircraft could do. So now you could purge gas, you could deflate something, you could inflate something, you could change pressures, like you had a lot of control now. And, like, how is the aircraft going to be balanced? You know, if it gets higher up, just gonna put it in the back of the—the balloons or, or the Blatter's are gonna want to expand and explode or if you go down after you ventured gas but the time you get down now you don't have enough gas to keep you afloat. So, this air blatter design was absolutely ingenious in because of this we are now entering the world of what we generally consider what the Hindenburg would look like. We are now in the world of the Zeppelin. Not the Led Oh. That doesn't come around until like what 1970s? Yeah, I'm planning on watching documentary later. Anyway. On July 2nd 1900 Zeppelin's first real working model, LZ1. And, uh, by the way, we will see this LZ, like the Hindenburg was I believe LZ29 or 129. So, he made a 129 models in his time or the company did. So, the LZ1 took flight. It did work, but it had a lot of like kinks to work out and it did crash, but it was able to perform well enough for the government to be like, okay, I think there's something here. Yeah. See if something fails, it doesn't mean it's a failure. It just means we gotta fix some Yeah. things. Especially if it was able to like perform well before it crashed. Yeah. And through a bunch of donations, he was able to put together an upgraded model that could fly over 24 hours in 1906. So, now you have an aircraft that can hang out in the air for over a day in 1906. See, now that to me is impressive. That is, that is wild. Like that is when like an airplane at that time could only just fly a few miles at the best. Yeah. That is absolutely incredible. Now granted that airplane would be flying much faster. But that's okay, we're not, we're not looking necessarily for speed. We're looking for direction. And we are looking for stability. Flow and steady rate wins this race. Yes. The German government now saw the advantages of these new zeppelins for wartime use. And by the time world one broke out, one hundred of them have been commissioned. And it was something that you do see pictures of in, in World War One, you see these, these zeppelins up in the air. And there wasn't like there was any anti aircraft guns at that time to really shoot them down. Now, thankfully they didn't have a lot of lift so that it's not like they could strap on a 500 pound bomb and fly over and bomb you know it would be a couple of dudes and they're just dropping hand grenades out. And they could be the cheaper like scouting and stuff but yeah. Yes, To me, it reminds me of like those videos that you see of like what's going on your crane where the drone flies over with like a basket of like a grenade on it is proper over the site. And then they see it hit and then they just like float away. That's kind of what these things were capable of doing. So that's what's really used for reconnaissance yet. And even the Hindenburg was used a lot for reconnaissance. Zeppelin worked on a passenger model known as the D lag or D lag, which is I think Americanized for Deutsche Luft. Look at Luft Schiffarts. Oh. Yeah, it's a good attempt. It's luke she far. Schiffarts. Okay, guys L U F T as the C H I F F H R. T S. I can see where you're getting the farts, but it's funny. For the German speaking people, you are listening. We are butchering it, but hey, we're trying. Actually, we're right. Really. It is. Loved shift far. Excellent. The Loved part sounds like Luft with a short U sound is in book the shift some similar to shift. And the farts is pronounced with a long A sound like farts. Farts. Loved shiparts. That's a good word. That's amazing. I love the German language. So angry. Sorry. Yeah, one listeners is like 99999. Sorry, sorry. Fator. in your own bird too. Maybe that's why they changed it to this D lag because the Americans were just going to have way too much fun with It's true. this. Uh, anyways, this passenger line, the lag was commissioned or established in 1910 to be like an intercontinental ship to move civilians about. So now we're stepping away from the military side of things and now we're getting into the people move or side of things. Zeppelin also established the Friedrich Friedrich Schoffen or the Zeppelin Foundation was served to be a main development for aerial navigation and the manufacturer of airships. So now like that's all they're going to do is just build what we would call today blimps and boy did they make one. 1928 the graph Zeppelin was completed and this thing was massive. Uh, my grandfather actually remembers seeing this thing in America, he flew over in Chicago and my grandfather saw that for the first time and he like freaked out. Like what is this thing? Uh, this thing was seven hundred and seventy feet long. So, but what two football fields two and a third something like Yeah, it had a diameter of 100 feet. So this thing was a thick boy. It had a lift capacity of 191,799 pounds. That's a very specific weight. It is 799 pounds like wonder what mass went into that. Well, it also depends on the altitude of takeoff. Yeah. So like if if you are taking off at a higher altitude, you can't put as much on. if you're taking off at a lower altitude, you can as we'll see here with the, um, the Hindenburg, it had a max speed of 80 miles per hour. Uh, it was powered by five 12 cylinder engines at five hundred and 50 horsepower max. And it had a capacity of 20 sleeping birds. That's pretty, that's pretty big. Very large. Yeah, it's a, that would be the largest thing in the air at that time, the graph Zeppelin would go on to fly five hundred and ninety flights. By the way, this thing was filled with hydrogen the entire time. Um, helium was invented at this time, but America put the Kabashon on helium because America owned all the helium that was produced because they only came from these oil minds in, I think, Texas or something like that. Uh, but yeah, this bad boy would fly five hundred and ninety flights including the first transatlantic flight. Uh, the first flight around the world. And the flight over the North Pole. That's not including all the flights to America and many different locations there. She flew until 1837 and it was an icon of her time. She, uh, she became like something recognizable of the guy's of the time. Everybody knew what the graph Zeppelin looked like. Did you mean 1937? Yes. Okay. 1937. She did not go back in Got it. My goodness. Could you imagine seeing something like that in 1837? Oh my gosh, it freaked out. So, so yeah, the graph Zeppelin, I mean, it's on postage stamps. It is. It's, it's, it's just been one of those things where it's like the M1 grand or whatever or the Honda Civic or the Toyota Corolla, it just worked and it worked every time. And because of this reliability, the crews that worked it were very, very competent crews, like they all knew each other. They all knew how to operate this thing. So like whatever came after the graph Zeppelin, it would, it would be well-manned. But I wanted to do a huge shout out to airships. net. That website where I got a lot of this technical research from is amazing. They've got pictures. They've got schematics. They've got the statistics. They've got this stories behind everything. Like go check them out. If you want like a very comprehensive site to go get more information on all these different airships. Airships. net. They, they are an amazing company. In fact, almost all the pictures that you're going to see on the website are attributed to airships. net granted a lot of these pictures are so old that they're kind of like open source or like they're not, they're not cooperated anymore. But the fact that airships. net took the time to like compile them all is pretty cool. So you should go check them out. Uh, after nearly a decade of nearly flawless flights and zero injuries, the graph was ordered to- or was ordered to like come back to Germany where the hydrogen was evacuated and eventually it sat in scraps until it was recycled for the Luftwaffe in World War II. Some stuff was kind of useful in- other aircraft. Well, the Hindenburg happened. That's what happened. So that was in 1937, if I believe. Part three. The Hindenburg. The Hindenburg built March 4th 1936 was very similar to the graph Zeppelin, but there were some key differences that set it apart. Even though it was only 30 feet longer than the Zeppelin, Hindenburg was 130 feet- 135 feet in diameter compared to the Zeppelin's 100 feet. So for those of you who remember your, you know, your surface area of a circle, we factor in pie and everything like that, you know, pi r squared. If you start increasing the diameter of that circle, it's surface area, it goes up exponentially. So yeah, it's weird like when you see the graph Zeppelin and the Hindenburg side by side, you can obviously tell which one is the Hindenburg, it made it as clearly bigger, but it's not like, wow, this is earth shattering like it's not like it's twice as big visually, but there's a lot more to it. This battery design also gave it a bit more rigidity, so keep in mind that rigidity part. To steer these things, you have to really flex that frame, that hard structure because the motors were on the back, but the steering was in the front to turn that nose, you really had to put a lot of torque on the back end of that thing. So this thing had to be very, very strong, especially when you include the four dymular bend 16 cylinder engines with a max output of 1,320 horsepower, that could cruise at 850 horsepower. The graph Zeppelin had 550 max. This thing could cruise at 850 horsepower and it had a max speed of 84 miles per hour with the Zeppelin only having 80 miles per hour, so. It's like really all that engine output and all that kind of stuff like really that's all it could do is four miles an hour faster. The main difference between the two was that the Hindenburg was far rumored and was way more stable. It was said that a pen, because this thing made multiple trips across the Atlantic, that the aircraft could take off, get to altitude, and you could set up a pen on a plate in the dining room. And that thing could get all the way over to lay curse New Jersey and dock and that pen would never tip over that's how stable this thing was and those engines at 850 horsepower, those engines ran 24 7, they never stopped. That's a lot of work for an engine to just run like that. And these things weren't flying super high. They were flying like no more than 400 feet high. Like they weren't going above the clouds or anything like that. So they stayed pretty low so they didn't need turbochargers or anything, but. The Hindenburg was kind of considered the Titanic of of the day was just an absolute like ocean liner of an aircraft. The Hindenburg also had an innovative autopilot system, which I thought was kind of cool. So they can flip a switch and the autopilot system would automatically level it out and it would automatically adjust like the air pressure of the gas cells and all sorts of stuff like it would. It was pretty clever. It was a very clever mechanical computer all things considered. So perhaps the biggest difference was that this Zeppelin, the Hindenburg was the first durable that was designed not to use hydrogen gas, but much safer helium helium floats, but it also can't catch on fire. But helium also has less lifting capability than hydrogen hydrogen. I think has. Was it like 50 percent more lifting capabilities per volume than helium? But hydrogen also has that problem of, you know, exploding. Whereas helium just makes you voice unfunny. Yeah, that sounds more fun. Well, in order to, like, in order to, to make the, uh, helium work, you actually have to make the whole aircraft way lighter. Yeah. So there's a head to go, uh, do a lot of engineering into the structure into the skeleton of it. Uh, the designers of the Hindenburg decided to ditch hydrogen when the British Airship, the R101 crashed on October 5th, 1930 near Bouvet, France, killing 48 out of the 54 people on board. Yeah, the Germans were like, "Okay, our time is coming." We haven't had, we haven't blown up anything yet, but, it's, it's, it's going to be a matter of time. 'Cause I think in the United States, the Shenandoah crashed, um, but that was filled with helium. But, either way, the Germans were like, "Okay, let's switch over to helium because our time is going to be up here, like we can't dodge a bullet forever." Uh, Hindenburg had 14 adjustable helium gas cells that could be controlled from the control car. The original design called for an inner ring of hydrogen gas cells around the much larger helium cells with all cells having an event that led to the top and away from anything that could produce enough heat to ignite the hydrogen. So, basically, the original design was going to be like the gas cells inside would be like these giant donuts, and then in the middle of it would be like a long cylinder of hydrogen just to give it that extra lift. Uh, I think they did away with that idea. And they just decided, you know what, let's just stick with just all helium. And then they built a, um, like a really cool walkway so you could go from nose to tail. And you could walk along the entire length of the balloon or not balloon, but the, uh, the zeppelin, and you would have like these gigantic bags of, or these balloons inside of just gas and everything had its own vent and everything could be controlled from the control car. So, Hindenburg also had special release valves on the top, so these were kind of like these, uh, these valves, what they would do is they would stay closed until they hit a certain amount of pressure. Once that pressure got up to a certain point the valves would open up and vent the gas out. Uh, the higher the altitude you go, the more the balloons inside are going to want to expand so it's kind of like, um, you know how they're going to send up those weather balloons. Right, and they got to go all the way up to like the edge of space and the only look like they're like a quarter the way full. Everyone noticed that. Yeah. That's because when the higher up they go, the more that balloon swells, the more the gas wants to expand. Okay. That makes sense. And when they actually get up into space, then there is absolutely no atmosphere compressing it and then the balloon pops and then everything falls down. So that that's the reason why they're like So yeah, basically if the, if the zeppelin got high enough, then it could vent gas. And then it would bring itself down as necessary, but then it also had autofill features. So when it got down, so like if you're getting say like 100 feet above sea level. So suddenly all that you have that atmosphere pushing down on those those gas cells. Now there's not enough left. So then they had these gigantic hydrogen compress hydrogen tanks that would then automatically refill the bladder. So like this thing was self leveling. I guess it would uh, if you set that thing for like say 350 feet above sea level, it stayed there. And it didn't matter if it lost effects, it did. It would lose 20% of its gas going over the ocean for a very, very specific reason, but it would always maintain the pressure in those gas cells, very impressive stuff. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, it's almost like they thought this through. Yeah, that's where the gas cells are made differently, uh, probably because the originables or zeppelins were made from gold beater skin, which I had to look that up basically. yeah, gold beater skin. I guess they, they call it gold beater skin because as material, they would use to extract gold from like sluice Uh, and stuff like that. Gold beater, that's just an interesting name. It is. I kind of want to name like a kid gold beater. I wouldn't do that. Now, you'd be better off called Sue than Goldbeater. I But agree. anyways, Goldbeater skin was basically made from the outer layer of cow or oxen and testin. So basically it was a giant sausage casing. And if you look at it, it's like translucent and it's like crinkly and it feels like plastic. It's fun. it's actually cow intestine. So yeah, so when I said that the Hindenburg look like a giant sausage like thing, that wasn't wrong. No, no, no. However, though, the Hindenburg used a very different material that they actually got from the Americans. It's amazing up to this point, like how much the Americans and the Germans work together. I thought this was even when in the late 1930s, it was amazing how much American Germany, even when Germany was under Nazi rule, how much like they work together on stuff. I always thought that was kind of interesting. But what the Americans came up with, they used a special material that where they what they did is they took gelatin, which is you can use pigs feet, cows feet, horse feet, whatever, you take their hooves and you boil it and boil it and boil it. And that's actually where we get gelatin from. So when you get a buy package of jello and you mix it up, put it in the fridge and got this gelatinous red mask, that's actually just horse hooves rendered down. But they would they would do is almost make like a composite. They would take a sheet of cotton. They would slather this gelatin all over it. And then they would sandwich it between two other layers of cotton to create the fabric for the gas cell. So it was very flexible. But because of that gelatin being sandwiched in between, it was very strong. Like it was probably as strong as materials, the most space age stuff ever at that time. And it was very simple. It's a and even even to this day, like I know they're doing research on like Mars habitats. So like how do we build a habitat on Mars that won't just fall apart on us. That's what they're doing is they're basically taking a thing like cotton. And they're embedding it with like a resin of some sort. And then there's sandwich it between two other things. And it's like a, it's a very, very strong and airtight material. Hindenburg structure was built mostly out of Duralumin. A lot of it they bought from the British. They are 101. So I thought it was kind of funny. They're like, Hey, so what are you doing with all that left over R101? Guess do you want it? Yeah, we can use it. Recycle. Yes, especially this stuff because it was very expensive. It was actually purple in color. So when they manufactured it, they would put like a purple lacquer coating over it over the finished part. I'm not too sure why maybe they identified as like that Duralumin stuff. But yeah, it was a highly sought after material. But the R101 was sold and then reused to establish a 15 main ring connecting 36 longitudinal girders with a triangular keel at the bottom for rigidity. There's a lot of geometrical terms there. Yep. Basically put the way that it worked is that the Hindenburg was divided up into 15 main rings. And as a result, you could hold 16 gas cells in there. And in the middle of all that, there was a walkways. I mentioned before and we'll have pictures of it on the website. There was a walkway that goes from the nose all the way to the tail. That way people could access every gas cell as needed. Like they could they could check on everything. And there was the same thing on the bottom of it. The the bottom of the Hindenburg was made of like a triangular shaped scaffold. It was very rigid and that's where the like the living quarters were. That's where the cruise quarter was. It had to be very rigid just because they didn't want people like swaying around inside because you know, nothing like getting seasick in the air. So that walkway, I have to imagine that there was no smoking signs everywhere. During this time, maybe, maybe not. What's really funny is that people would walk up and down that walkway, smoking. Yeah. It's just kind of what people did. I don't know. It's hard to describe without going into a full historical detailed context of deep. Well, it's like that lady that I knew growing up. She worked in a munitions factory in World War Two. And her job was to pour the powder into the bullets. And then her next person, like her next partner, would press the bullet in. And that's all she did for like 16 hours a day for the Ontario War. And like they all, like the whole line of these bullet pressers smoked cigarettes while they were just pouring gunpowder into each bullet. If that nothing happened, it was just really like, I'm doing my job and I'm having a cigarette while I'm doing it, just like everybody else. When I figured too that like, if anything goes wrong, very raced. It would be such a quick death, you wouldn't even know what happened. And I'd imagine it would be the same way in there other than like, why? I always think about it and we're like, oh, that's not a good idea. But yeah, that's a yeah. That's not only did you get lung cancer, you run the risk of blown up the whole factory. Yeah, there's a lot of things wrong with it, but you know, hindsight 2020, right? Yeah, they did have pretty interesting lives. I will say that. The skin of the Hindenburg was made from a metallic metal metalized fabric that was designed to block two types of solar radiation. This was incredible. I know mythbusters, they tested this is the they basically covered the whole entire skin of the Hindenburg with like the silvery aluminum oxide component. And they tested to see if it was flammable. It is, it's very flammable. But this was very clever and again, you got, you cannot discredit German engineering. This material is designed to block two types of ultra or two types of radiation from the Sun ultraviolet and infrared, ultraviolet light. This radiation has a tendency to wear stuff down like synthetic things like fabrics and rubber plastic and all that stuff. Imagine going out, I'm sure everybody's seeing this like you go out to your backyard and you see like a plastic lawn chair that's been sitting up there for like five years. And you feel it and it's really chalky and it's kind of brittle. That's because of UV radiation destroyed it. It happens a lot in Arizona. It may be not so much in the east coast, but it happens a lot here. That like the ultraviolet stuff can really wreak havoc on those gas cells. Like they really wanted to protect those things. So that was pretty clever that they were able to come up with something that could block that. And then the other thing and this is the reason why it was silver and color and kind of shiny is that they needed a block infrared. So infrared isn't destructive like ultraviolet, but it is also the source of heat that comes from the Sun. So if you stand outside on a sunny day and you feel the warmth coming from the Sun, that is because you're being blasted with infrared radiation from the Sun. It's not radiation that will kill you, but it's how we can't see infrared, but we can feel it as heat. Take a flashlight, shine it in your hand for a while, like a really, really bright flashlight, your hand will start to warm up. That's infrared radiation. Again, we can't see it, but we can feel it. But this infrared radiation could cause the gas cells to heat up and cause the pressure to rise and then vent gas before it needs to. So by minimizing infrared radiation, it really stabilized those gas cells, which I don't know. To me, I thought that was this really impressive. Now, the control car, this is that thing on the bottom of the Hindenburg that has all the windows on it. And it's really small in comparison to the rest of the craft, but this thing to me, I could have an hour just going over the control car because it's very, very small. It's maybe about twice the size of a mini van. So imagine like too many van side by side. That's about how big it is or one of those econovans. So two econovans next to each other. I'm not going to go up, like, go on for hours about this, because the engineering nearer than me is just, I just giggle like a schoolgirl just looking at the pictures of it and everything like that. But it's very, very simple. And I'm just going to just kind of skim over the basics of it. The whole ship, including the engines, could be controlled in the car. Well, hence the name of the control car. However, unlike ocean ships, after all, that's what inspired the whole design of the rigid form airship. Instead of one wheel to steer the craft left and right, the Hindenburg actually had two. One wheel controlled the rudder, which steered the ship left and right. So that wheel would be you'd be looking forward out of the windows and there was windows all around. It was really cool. You had almost a 360 degree field of view. So you would have like a regular wheel in the front like a ship's wheel. And that would, you turn it left or right to steer the ship. or the aircraft left and right. Then you had another one that would control the elevators, and the elevator is those flaps in the back that go up and down, and that's how you change the pitch of the aircraft. And the reason being especially that elevator wheel, if you're moving, and that giant mass, and you've got to try to like pitch up or down, it could take a couple of guys, including the captain, to actually turn that wheel to get the flap to go to the angle that you need it to. Because it's just so much air moving over an 800 foot long object, hitting those flaps in the back, and that was even using pulleys. That's crazy. Like that was even, yeah, that was using pulleys that they had hydraulics that probably would work better, but yeah, like it took two, three guys each to maneuver this massive beast of an aircraft around, and if it was a windy day, may God have mercy on your soul. How big were the wheels it took two to three dudes to steer it. There were big. There were about four feet in diameter. Okay, so nothing too, too crazy. Yeah. It was all done with pulley systems. And again, if they had hydraulics, it probably work better. So like, that's one of the things that Americans did with like their bombers is they had two systems. They had a hydraulic system, which made like a bomber way more agile. Like you could just, well, it's like your car when you steer your car, you're using hydraulics. Whereas, if you had a racquet pinion, you had to like fight the car and you're relying on gears and everything like that. But like American bombers, they used a both a hydraulic system, and then another system called a fly by wire. And that was more like a pulley system. So it would still work, but you really have to fight the plane and just don't do a nose dove. The Hindenburg only had fly by wire. Probably because it doesn't break. Yeah, like it's very reliable. Yeah, you had teams of people, two different airmen operating these wheels and they worked very closely together. And what's interesting is that the captain really didn't do much. The captain would just stand back and watch his crew. There would be like six guys in this little. You kind of like double econovian size thing, and these guys, they would run everything. And the only time the captain would get involved if there was a disagreement or if there was some expertise needed. If there was something specific that the captain needed, otherwise he backed off. He did not micromanage anything, which I thought was kind of interesting. So the crew break down is one, you have a captain, then you have three watch officers, three navigation officers, three rudder men or Helmsman, three elevator men. For the three guys, turning the thing left and right, three guys pitching it up and down, you have a chief rigor. Don't tell my middle schoolers that a chief rigor or sail maker, three rigors are sail makers. So I'm assuming these were the people that would actually like go in and do repairs on the gas cells in the 1800s. A sail maker was the person that would work on the sales. Obviously the Hindenburg doesn't have sales. So I'm assuming they would work on everything from the skin of it to like the gas bladders and all that kind of stuff. I just picture a bunch of dudes working with a bunch of patches and glue. They're slapping it on. They're slapping just trying to just plug all these holes very likely, probably not how that worked, but that's just what my brain told me Yeah, I do know like they could actually go out and they actually had special harness rigs where they could go on the outside of it while it was in the air and do repairs on the skin. that's cool. If needed, yeah, that's neat. That's not cool. That's Balsey. Well, it's cool. I mean, I don't know. During this time period, they everything was balzy from the constrictors scrapers to watching a window like all of it. How about these balzes, balzy if you could use a chain saw. Yeah. Uh, so you had a chief radio officer and then you had three assistant radio officers. And these guys all they did is again, the Germans were all about safety. And. the flight path they would take they would be radioing into every land mass that they could see asking for weather reports that that's all they did was they just wanted to know radio reports which I thought was kind of cool then you had a chief engineer then you had three engineers and then you had 12 mechanics so these people actually lived inside the engines so I'll we'll have a picture of it on the website but like the engines were kind of like on a scaffold that set outside of the aircraft obviously because of you know hydrogen these compartments were again they're about the size of a like a pickup truck and you could have a couple of these mechanics just sitting inside the engine room just working on it while these things ran 24/7 and you would take a little you would actually like a little like one-foot wide walkway that went from the mechanics quarters in the very tail end of the ship and you would just walk out on this little one-foot wide path out like six seven feet to get to the engines at while you're at 300 feet up in the air it's it's a really it's a really trippy sight to just be like damn people were built different back then you had a chief electrician and then you had two assistant electricians the crew are given a great deal of flexibility and discretion Lieutenant J. D. Repi who flew on four transatlantic flights of the Hindenburg rote a Captain Layman of course would be on the bridge for the landing but generally acted in the capacity of observer and only gave an order when you considered that some phase of the landing was not going as it should one officer handled the engines and he used his own judgment as to slowing stopping or backing the engines to have little or no ground speed at the instance of landing another officer had charged um had charge of the ballast so the ballast is like a bunch of water they keep on board to like balance it out um that that's uh I'll go a little bit more detail about ballast here in a little bit and here he was also exercises on judgment as to when to drop ballast and also as to when the valve hydrogen so i'm meaning valving hydrogen meaning you you open up a vent and you release hydrogen out of the gas cells the remaining officer coached the elevator men as to the altitude and sometimes would order the ship valves if it appeared necessary you also watch the rudderman to some extent uh but in general the rudderman maneuvered the ship himself as necessary to keep in the wind and pointed towards the landing point so basically the dynamic here is like because i think because of the graph zeppelin lasted and flew for so long they were able to train so many people and like in the case of the hindenburg that the control room had six captains in because that's how experienced these guys were these weren't like lieutenants there weren't any like sergeants there weren't any uh no these were all ships captains and there were six of them working this thing it's it's just really weird and it wouldn't surprise me if gene roddenberry kind of uh wasn't inspired by that dynamic when you came up with star trick because when you look the select star trick next generation picard he gave a lot of autonomy to his officers that you do what you feel is right and then get with me if you need help or whatever it's a very interesting way of of leadership so in other words the hindenburg was operated by a crew of people that worked together in each person's judgment was taken seriously so this isn't like when we look at the hindenburg going up in flames this isn't like an idiot got everyone killed right this isn't somebody being neglectful this isn't somebody you know it's screwing around and making a mistake and it's not like the engineers were cutting corners that's why like I need your help to come up with a lesson at the end of this because I'm just trying to think like man how do we uh how do we avoid this in the future especially in our own personal lives during translate flights the uh airship would fly three to four hundred feet above sea level I thought it flew higher than that but no they wanted to stay under the clouds so they could keep a uh close eye on thunderstorms and they would radio in constantly to any land source as they saw asking for weather predictions the Germans considered the hindenburg and all weather ship but they still aired on the side of caution they were worried about lightning strikes even though it was designed to handle lightning strikes it's interesting that lightning does not necessarily ignite hydrogen which I thought was kind of interesting it it takes a lot of electricity to ignite Hydrogen. They were worried about lightning strikes. Perhaps one strike is okay, but then they were also concerned about multiple strikes weakening the frame or subsequently weakened the gas cells. Hydrogen and helium, a weakened gas cell could cause a lot of problems. There was a smoking lounge, which I thought was interesting, but it was like located in the middle of the living quarters, and it was pressurized. So they pressurized the smoking room to make sure that no hydrogen, if it was leaking anywhere, could make its way inside and blow the whole works. Hey, at least they thought about it. Yeah, it's a, it's a pretty clever, again, a pretty clever idea. The only problem is is that pushes all the smoke out to like the living quarters and all that crap, but back then everybody. Everybody smelled like smoke. Yeah, it was just the way it was. They kept a very close eye on gas pressures, it seems as though like almost every crew member could operate the gas levels if needed, like everybody was trained on it. There was more like at the back of the control car and the every crew member could look at it was like this, it was like this array of like 16 knobs. And then you have like these pressure gauges above each one. And there was like an art form of opening and closing and venting and releasing, and like they could look at the gauges and be like, okay, we need to increase the pressure in air bags. And then let's vent some air out of, you know, 15 and 16 to help level it out as necessary. So it was a, it was a pretty interesting dynamic that they they had to go off of while traveling, as I mentioned before, they would lose about 20% of fresh hydrogen. And I thought it was purposely vented out of the top. And I'm thinking like, why, why would you want to do that? Well, if you are releasing hydrogen out of a hole, oxygen can't come in, whereas if everything is sealed through the process of nucleation, meaning at the atomic level, air can still make its way in. And it's like the reason why you get a like a party balloon, they don't stay inflated forever, they always leak out. And it's because at the atomic level, air particles are healing particles can work their way out between the molecules of rubber. And it's the same principle here. If you just lock up everything and don't let anything out in a controlled way, then oxygen can work its way in. And what happens if you have a 3 million cubic meters of hydrogen being mixed with one part of oxygen. It's a big boom. Yeah, the Hindenburg wouldn't even catch on fire. It would just pop. It would just explode instantly, as a purpose to like just burning to the ground. That's why they vented hydrogen out. They purposely vented it out. And then they refilled it so that it prevented any oxygen from getting in there not to mention to oxygen ruins the lift capacity. It was like basically poisoning the gas cells. Which again, I thought that was like, I never would have thought of that. The main to maintain equilibrium constant replenish constantly replenish oxygen replenish hydrogen would be dumped into the gas cells. This meant that a steady stream of hydrogen is being vented, but a steady supply is being replaced, making it impossible for oxygen to contaminate the gas cells. It was added much to the cost of operation, but it was immensely safer, immensely safer, as I do air quotes. Now, wait a second. All this talk about hydrogen, but I thought this thing was designed to be filled with helium. Like, where is the helium and all this. Well, there's a couple of reasons why they Hindenburg was originally designed to operate with helium. However, America had a complete monopoly on helium. And in 1927, it passed the Helium Control Act, this basically forbid any American company to sell helium outside the US. I don't know what America was using all that helium for, but they're like, hmm. Other countries want it. You're not getting it. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. Is this like, I mean, I do know that helium is relatively rare substance, and they do get it from the oil wells and stuff like that. But, and there will come a time where there won't be any helium left on earth. Because it's going out into space. But to make it, I think, like, In 1936 the other thing was that German you couldn't get their hands on the helium before but they were like let's design it to be used with helium just in case America decides to you know not be but heads and make it you know so we could buy it. However though in 1936. It's 1937. Air was a guy of the name of Hitler and his little Nazi A-holes their their system didn't really jive with the democratic system of America and America was like oh no no no no Hitler. We are holding on to this helium. You can't touch this with a 10-foot pull. It was basically Japan at that time had an easier chance of getting helium than Germany did all because of the whole Hitler thing so hydrogen it is they can't get their hands on it that's fine like. Germany had a long history of using hydrogen airships without any incident they knew what they're doing what could possibly go wrong nothing. Oh crap I knew I forgot about the living quarters like that's what this whole thing was built for. Okay there were two decks a deck was for the passengers and was located above B deck. This deck had 25 double bunk cabins that were tiny they were like the equivalent of like a bathroom size. I think they were maybe six feet wide and I'm looking at a picture of it here and you had like a little ladder to get up to the top bunk and you had like a sink and like a little cloth table and that was it. Me personally if that thing was filled with helium I would have flown on it. I would give it a whirl like why not dude like going across the ocean in a balloon heck yeah. But yeah that I guess the novelty of it is that you're flying in a freaking dirigible so just like live with it and this was only designed for very wealthy people like your movie stars your politicians your business moguls you weren't you there was no steerage in this thing a one way ticket was 400 us dollars back then which is about nine thousand dollars today. Is there a coupon. It's also we're in the height of the depression. So yeah, yeah, it was yeah 1936 it was pretty bad so but even still like there was still plenty of wealthy people I mean even at the height of the depression America was what 17% unemployment. I don't remember the exact percentage. Yeah for me it was Germany like Germany man were they but they were also climbing out of it since like 1934 35. Yeah that was that was Hitler's way of like that's it we're no longer in debt because I say we're no longer in debt. Okay it was all steerage in a way and only the very wealthy or the affluent could hitch a ride surrounding the sleeping section is where you would find the observation promenades eating area complete with a full time chef and kitchen a writing room passenger lounge complete with a portrait of Hitler himself. You cannot have a luxury airliner like this without Hitler somewhere present but yeah it was really cool like you had this observation deck where they had like these little train like what seats like you would see in a train and they sat by the windows and you could just look out. And again you had almost a 360 degree field of view of everything especially designed grand piano made from aluminum. And only way at a third of a wooden one I think this thing weighed three to 400 pounds was a normal wooden grand piano would weigh about a thousand pounds a dining room hall that was perched near the observation promenade so like you would have like this large banquet table type thing that you could eat dinner at and look out the windows. I think it was really inspired by like cruise ships and stuff like that where no matter where you're at you can look out and see something cool. Yeah probably. The decorations and furniture was designed by the very famous designer fritz August bow house so look them up I kind of like his style and his designs but it's very simple but yet very functional kind of stuff. B deck was more or less for the crew and their living situations like a small mess hall. However, in B deck everyone would find it gender gender neutral bathrooms. So look not too Germany being gender neutral. There's more like they just didn't care like their bathroom stalls. Efficiency over. Yeah. Social politics? There was a shower. However though, reports indicated the showers, water pressure was closer to that of a s. Other than an actual shower. Sweet. Hey, at least. Yeah. It should get clean. Yeah, yeah. But then again though, you're only on this thing for like, no more than 2 days. Yeah. I've had a really hard time planning to go out and do some laundry and go out and do laundry and go out for 3 days. It can be planned to go out for 2 days. Maybe get down to Brazil and 3. Yeah, you're not getting all sweaty and all the fun stuff. So, and it's something to note too is that, uhm, the Hindenburg didn't have any water reclamation. whenever you run an engine, one of the byproducts is water because you're burning air. The Hindenburg didn't have any of that. It was just whatever water was stored on board is what it would have until it landed. The B. Deck was interesting because there was also two exits. One exit had a gantry that went to some more crew living quarters in the back of the ship. That's where the engineers and mechanics lived. Uh, that was closest to the engines. And then the back of the ship is where you could also find the chief officers and engineers mechanics and whatnot. And, uhm, yeah, they would have a walkway that would go out to the engines even when it was up in the air. It was, it's, there's a picture of it on there is, dude like walking out to the engines, it's absolutely insane. Uh, man, that's just, to me, it's just mind blowing. The other exit went to the electrical room and then to the control car. And well, we already talked about that. Lastly, uh, this is also where all the cargo was held and surrounding the whole crew quarters were these massive like 300 gallon compressed hydrogen tanks. So, if something blow it up there, it. I want to go through this real quick because I'm kind of running out of time here. Um, fun fact, some people think that the Hindenburg went down kind of like Titanic did like on her maiden voyage. It didn't. The thing actually flew 63 flights before its tragic end. June 1936, it made a surprise visit to England. Uh, just decided to just pop up there over West Yorkshire and I guess the priest, uh, of the Hindenburg dropped like a parcel out asking, hey, whoever finds this letter. Could you like put this little package by my dear brother lieutenant French salty. Uh, he's at this grave. He died in a prison camp in England. Uh, many thanks to your kindness. John Peisholte, the first flying priest and two boys did actually find it. And I'm assuming they actually did drop that parcel off at the, at the cemetery. I thought that was kind of kind of cool. I like that story. Yeah. This is random box flying out of the sky. Uh, okay, I don't know if they did or not, but um, the other other reason is a historian Oliver Denton. He thinks the surprise visit was more or less to fly over England's industrial complexes and take pictures. Yeah. I can totally see See. July 1936, Hindenburg broke a record for the fastest trip from Frankfurt to Lakers. Uh, we're going to, we're going to hear about Lakers. Lakers new jerseys like the airport for blimps, like for all one of them. Uh, that is where, like if you're going from Germany or England or France or whatever to America in a Zeppelin, you're going to Lakers. Like that's all there is to it, because it was a gigantic field and it could handle all that all that space that these blimps would take up. October 8th, 1936, Hindenburg became known as the Millionaires flight, which it did like a up and down coast flight of New England carrying 72 of the wealthiest people in America, including, ambassador to UK, Winthrop W Aldrich, future Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller. Uh, Juan trip, founder of the, and CEO of Pan Am. And then W W one flying ace Eddie Rickenbacher, president of Eastern Airlines. And then of course in the summer of 1936, Hindenburg made an appearance at the opening ceremonies and Berlin to help announce the upcoming visit of Adolf Hitler. And then there was like many other flights all over the world, including South America and Africa, as well as Europe. All in all the Hindenburg was was a very tried and true reliable aircraft well built well manned and well maintained. There was no major instances to record and it seemed as though the aircraft would remain a staple in disguise for quite some time. until around 6 p. m.@lacrisnojursy on May 6, 1937, or the age of the airship would come to a close. Part 4. Oh, the humanity. Frankfort Germany and it would essentially head west until it hit like a portion in France and then it would head north and hit the southern tip of England, probably taking some pictures of the indistossal capabilities all along the way and then from there they would head west. The strategy was simple. They actually followed the old sailing ship has, you know,'cause the, Coriolis effect would make that what is it the transatlantic wind? Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but they would just follow that because the wind would do all the work form. They got off at 716, they got to England, and then they started heading out to the United States at around 2 a. m. the next morning. And then from here, nothing happened. It was only a day, or it was only a two day flight to get to Lakehurst and the passengers and crew really had nothing to worry about. At this point, I want to mention an important fact. The control car and the entire Hindenburg itself was operated by six different captains. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. You'd be thinking having six captains and they would all just be fighting each other for authority and all that stuff. No, they actually got a lot of fantastic. They all knew each other. They all worked together. They all worked under the graph Zeppelin. Yeah, as part of the Zeppelin company, they just they just knew each other. So the guy who was in charge, like the commanding captain was Max Price and then you have Captain Albert Samt, who was the watch officer, and then you have Heinrich Bauer, who was the other watch officer. And then you had Walter Ziegler, who was a watch officer. And then you had Ernst Lehman. Remember, we mentioned him earlier and then he was an observer and then Anton Whitman was, he was an observer. These were the guys that would control the rudder. They would control the elevator. They would, they would all control the gas levels. Like they would all like take turns doing different jobs in that control room. Yeah, it must have been a really cool sight to see these guys, like working together and not just fighting and all that kind of stuff as you would expect to have that many captains in one room doing. It was later noticed that the airship was facing a strong headwind and it was slowing them down when they were scheduled to get to lacrosse at 6 a. m. on May 6. The landing was moved to about 6 p. m. on that day, so they bumped the landing back 12 hours, Captain Max Price ordered the aircraft to fly around New York City when lacrosse command officer or commanding officer Charles Rosendall. And this guy look him up. He's a very competent and experienced leader. He's got in a very extensive military background and a lot of experience with Zeppelin's himself in America. He told us to fly around to buy some time for the storm to pass through due to all the winds and the potential lightning strikes, so that we knew Jersey was getting hit with a gun thunderstorm and Rosendall just told the press like, hey, just just go drive about for a bit. Take a scenic route. Come back when I let you know the storms are gone. Okay. Fair enough. Again, the Americans in the Germans, despite their political differences, they really work together a lot. So basically with Rosendall on the ground and his crew, we have like another competent person in place here, which was kind of cool. So like normally you'd have like one idiot running around. No, no, we now have seven people, including the ground crew that were very experienced that knew what they were doing, and not a one of them was screwing around by 612 Rosendall message the Indian Berg and told us that the wind temp the winds temperature and air pressure had died down, and the conditions should be suitable for landing like now. But one reason press, didn't get the message or or it took some time to get back. But by seven away, Rosendall, something other message that he strongly recommends captain press bring in the Hindenburg ASAP. So Hindenburg came back. Hindenburg's approach. the latest new jersey landing site shortly after 7 p. m. at an altitude of 600 feet, but hindenburg was approaching from the south west. This is a tricky situation because for a winged aircraft, even for a winged aircraft, because a crosswind, uh, wants to push the aircraft to the left, like it went to the right, um, no, yeah. A left, so a left blowing would want to blow the aircraft to the left. That makes it very difficult to try to land when your plane is drifting off to the left, as opposed to, like, just staying straight and narrow. It's even worse for a Zeppelin, because it's a round mass, which means it has a resistance coefficient of exactly one half, meaning that 50% of the aircraft is going to be affected by this crosswind. Yeah. Just broadsiding an 800 foot long cylinder. It's not as easy as a, as an airplane, even though you're flying like at 10 miles an hour. So, press decided like, okay, we're going to come in from the southwest because the wind is coming from the east. We're going to head north east, go over the laycur side, and then basically fly around in like a giant oval and then make a left hand turn and then fly straight for a bit, make another left hand turn. So now he's heading south and then make another left hand turn and now he's flying east. So basically, he made three left hand turns coming from the southwest and that way he's now heading into the wind, if that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. We'll have a map up of like the path that he took. And that was sound procedure. That is exactly what you're supposed to do. Yeah, coming in straight and right into the eastern winds sound, sound maneuvering as this ship was coming about after the second left hand turn. First officer Albert Samt who was in charge of the ship's trim and altitude and was assisted by watch officer Ziegler, who watched the gas valves and assisted by second officer Heinrich Bauer on ballast, vows 15 seconds of hydrogen into the air from the gas cells, meaning okay guys, we get a lower the altitude and then we're going to release this gas by that will get us to make the ship less buoyant. Basically, yeah, they're just venting hydrogen out into the air to lower everything. So far, so good, right? Now they're starting to descend. I think they get down to about 300 feet or so. As Captain Press was in the midst of making the third left hand turn to head straight into the landing site, Samt noticed that the airship was suddenly tail heavy, meaning that the airship was starting to like point upwards, which isn't good for landing. You need that ship to be perfectly level with the ground. And I think the, like they would dock the nose of it up to like this tower, but I think was like 50, 60 feet up in the air. And there was two dudes standing on the top of that tower that would be be responsible for literally putting a hook on the nose of the Hindenburg when he came in. Like that's his scenes. That's just a lot of bigness coming at you. Yeah. I don't want that job. I mean, that's that's precision though. Like gotta give him credit. What Samt did then since the, it was starting to point upwards, he valved 30 seconds of gas out of cells 11 through 16. So basically the gas cells at the very, very tail end, that was like number one and then number two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 was the very front gas cell. So what, so I'm mentioning like 11 through 16, that would be out of front. So like the first or the, the very front five gas cells, if I'm mentioning one through five, that's at the very tail end. He vented out like 30 seconds of gas from 11 through 16. That would make the, the nose less buoyant. And then when he noticed that after he vented that gas out like it still didn't work. Samt ordered three drops of water. I like how they just say, oh, just dropping water, totaling about 24 hundred pounds, that would be out of the back. So that 24 hundred pounds would hopefully make the less the back of it less heavy and start bringing it up and Ziplin's operated much like submarines right you had these tanks that you could fill with water that would make the submarine heavier goes under water you could push out that water. Out of the ballast tanks and then it would want to go up Zeppelin's work the same exact way on top of dumping the water Sam's valve out an additional five seconds of gas from the nose. So Sam's here is like trying his best to get this thing to level out and he's fight for some odd reason it's not working like this is what is going on the only conclusion is that there had to be a leak. When this didn't works excrumble in were ordered from the back of the aircraft. So these would be like mechanics they were ordered from the back to go the whole length and go hang out at the nose where there was like six other dudes just chilling up there. And they would just they were there's there for weight just try to wait that nose down as much as possible it's funny how delicate. This balancing act is at this point Captain Press stepped in which was uncharacteristic normally he would let his officers do it but when he started to see that things weren't working then it was like okay I've got a I've got a step in here and try to figure this out. At the last minute so they were approaching the boring tower head on drool like do East and at the last minute or so the Eastern wind was now blowing Southwest so now they've lost their headwind that's a problem so to fix that press order the ship to steer hard to port meaning like to steer really really hard to the left. And then what they're going to do is make like a little loop the loop and they were going to go from the left pointed up towards the north and then make another hard turn and whip the tail around. So that the tail would be pointing north and the nose pointing south and then they would approach that moring tower this is what's known as an S curve. So just picture like six to 10 dudes just heaving and hoeing all these wheels. That's the thing yeah there would have been there would have been six guys and they're just trying to wrench these wheels as hard as possible. Yeah. Not to mention to like the engines were working super hard two of them were shut off because they were getting ready to dock. And like they just trying to torque and 800 foot long lever. Yeah that I can't imagine what those guys were going through in there. Press continue their approach to the moring tower at about oh I'm sorry it's 180 feet above that's what they got the aircraft down to 180 feet. That was enough to drop the landing ropes. And the landing ropes are crazy because like dozens of dudes would come out like grab these ropes and they would help guide in like they would be on the ground guiding in this gigantic blimp to the moring tower which I guess hey man if it works it works no one to let go. Yeah. After a few minutes a few minutes after I think it was like four or five minutes after seven twenty The ropes had all been dropped and observers noticed a flash of light towards the back like the back end near gas cells five on the port side or the left side. So you've got like these four gigantic fins like one at the top on the bottom one on the left one on the right and the back of it. And that's where like gas cells four and five were located. And some of the people were like what's that flash of light back there that's kind of weird. Lakers commander Rosen to all later described a motion shaped flower or flame bursting from the front of the upper fin. This was confirmed by R. W. Antrim who was on the ground and on top of the moring tower as well as maybe Lieutenant Benjamin May who was with Antrim on the tower. So there's three dudes that all confirmed like hey there is like a weird flash of light going up there. From here everything happens in thirty five seconds. So everything that I read off here until we get to part four happened in thirty five seconds, which is terrifying. Suddenly there is a muffled explosion and the entire back end of the ship was engulfed in flames. Observers on the ground reported seeing flames on the inside of the aircraft making their way to the front. Other people in the ground noticed that in these first few seconds of the fire pieces of Dura Lumen frame were melting and raining to the ground. That's how hot that fire was. The skin of the Hindenburg caught on fire and vaporized instantly. It seemed as though there was absolutely nothing inside or outside of the aircraft that was immune to this fire. Like to see burning aluminum, that is very, very hot stuff. So, you remember that walkway that I talked about in the beginning? Like to get in the middle of the craft that goes from nose to tail. That's where people can check all the gas cells and everything. Observers noticed that at the very, very nose of the Hindenburg, they saw flames and a blue-white color shooting like dozens of feet out the tip. Yikes. That is a very a blue-white fire is like a blowtorch. Super hot. Yeah. In fact, they called it the torch or the blowtorch effect. Remember earlier I mentioned that they ordered six crewmen to come from the back up to the front to hang out with six other guys to try to like balance out the Hindenburg. Well, that's where they were when all that went out the nose. Yeah. So these twelve guys, I think ten out of the twelve were incinerated instantly because of this anybody who is like the furthest away from that nose stood a chance of surviving. But yeah, those guys died just instantly and you can see it on the video where the like there's just flames blowing out the nose of this thing. It's a pretty crazy. As for the passengers, they actually stood a little bit better chance of surviving, a lot of them were observation primonods watching the landing process when the tail caught fire some reported hearing like a muffled explosion. Those new something was terribly wrong when the back of the observation promenods started to tip down violently and then like everybody went sliding down to the back of the promenod. Like, oh, that's not supposed to happen. Those who could reach the window would jump out. It only took a few seconds for the tail end of the craft to hit the ground, which meant that the living quarters and the promenods and all that stuff up front would only be like maybe 10 12 feet off the ground. That point jump out there were a lot of tragic reports, though, of folks dying because instead of jumping out to save themselves, they ran into the living quarters and try to get their family. According to airships dot net the fire spread so quickly, consuming the ship in less than a minute. The survival was largely a matter of where one happened to be located when the fire broke out. So the folks that were the remaining folks like the engineers and the mechanics that were in the back of the ship, they were gone. They they were just no way they could survive. But the ones up the front towards the living quarters, you actually stood at a surprisingly good chance. The centers in crew members began jumping out of the promenod windows escape the fire and the burning ship most of the passengers and all over the crew who were in the public rooms on deck a at that time of the fire close to the prom out of windows did survive. There are those who were deeper inside the ship in the passengers cabins. They just didn't have enough time Yeah. if they had maybe another minute, they could probably make it work. One passenger john pans, panes, the U-Nark manager for the Hamburg America line, which handled the passenger reservations for the Deutsche Zeppelin rederee, was in the dining room and the fire broke out encouraged jump by the ship's photographer. There were a couple more carols auto clements who escaped from one of the windows and survived. Painz. Instead left the dining room to go find his wife Emma, who had returned to their cabin for her coat. Both died in the fire. And there are three children, Irene 16 Walter 10, Werner eight were also in the dining room watching the landing, but Mr. Donor left the fire or left before the fire broke out Mrs. donor and her two children or two sons jumped to safety, but Irene left the dining room in search of her father and both of them died as a result. But even the speed with which the hidden bird burns survival for the crew was largely a matter of luck as a diagram that will have on the website shows. As the diagram below shows, those who were close to a means of exit at the time of the fire generally survived, including nine of the 11 of the engine cars meant in the engine cars, and 12 of the, or 10 of the 12 men in the control car, those who were deep inside the ship such as the electricians in the power room along the keel or max-shults in the smoking room bar on B deck or those in the starboard side since the flaming ship was rolled slightly to the starboard as it hit the ground were generally trapped in the wreck and the men stationed in the bow were exposed to the column of flames that rose through the ship as the bow pointed skyward. The nine men who were closest to the front of the ship at the time had they literally they could not find the remains the only way that they were able to figure out where those nine men were that were in the front of it was based off of the captains orders that was written down and that was recovered that was the only way they know who those guys were. So within 30 seconds, the Hindenburg was lying flat on the ground like a metal mangal skeleton in an inferno it was still burning and it burned for quite some time. Chief petty officer Frederick J Bull Tobin and his Navy men descended under the record to try to find survivors. So if you ever watched a video of the the guy saying oh the humanity, if you ever watch him or watch that video you see all these these Navy men just go running towards it and it's a very iconic picture it's like it really stands testament to how the you know how how the military men viewed this that was like they don't care who was on there they just got to get him out as much as possible but by the time that thing fully burned down it I mean it was literally just a heap of aluminum scaffolding and that was it. There was little traces of anything else. The final toll shockingly as well as tragically out of the 97 souls on board 62 survived that that kind of blew my mind like given how fast this happened and how violent it was that's pretty impressive like 62 yeah now less than 30 people yeah 35 people now those that did survive many of them suffered burns and broken body parts and and whatnot because he just jumped out like 10 to 20 feet but thankfully the ground was really muddy that actually does help. And the reason why it was really muddy is that whenever you burn pure hydrogen with oxygen what do you make water that field was it was still pretty damp from all the rain but all that water from that burning hydrogen it was actually kind of like raining almost because of all the water that fire produced which again that's kind of weird but you know a lot of them landed and just mud and then just trying to like clam out of it and get somewhere 13 of the 36 passengers and 22 of the 61 crew died alongside one civilian on the ground landing party Allen Hageman, HEAGMAN about that poor guy just looked up and then just saw this 800-foot long flaming mast like well my time is up like you're not going to be able to outrun that so it's just the following morning over the radio the following recording was played over and over and over again and this should sound familiar

Intro: 1:55:22

pretty sure everybody in the world has heard at least the oh humanity part that reporter herb morrison he later said that he was saying oh the humanity because he honestly thought like everybody was dead like there was nobody that could survive that and he he was kind of shook up after that I think anybody who witnessed something like that would would be a little shaken up I remember as a little kid listening to that now would be laughing like dude get a grip like dude calm down until I got a little older and realized like oh oh oh dear my grandfather remembers he remembers that as a kid woke up of course the family always turned on the radio and they were playing this recording over and over and over again and that's how my grandfather found out about the fire and it's just like any other person like like anybody who remembers like where they were at 9/11 right it's just one of those things where it's such a massive unexpected event that you kind of just burns into your brain So that's what America woke up to the fall long morning. So part five, the aftermath and lesson learned. The next day, 1500 various sailors and Marines and law enforcement surrounded the crash site both America and Germany wanted to conduct an investigation to figure out just what had happened. Two million onlookers converged on the site trying to get a glimpse of things or even take a piece of the wreckage as some morbid souvenir made which made the investigation, uh, even more difficult. And I don't know if there are actually pieces of the Hindenburg out there. I don't know how much of it actually made it out.

Kara: 1:58:33

There'll be some out there in the world like family heirlooms or hiding in Yeah, cheap store. like a scrap of aluminum or some rivets or something like And I don't have to look that up because also how do you verify that. it? Yeah. Yeah, how do you know that's legitimate. Yeah, you can take any piece of aluminum and just burn it for a while. But yeah, once the once, like all these thousands of people were just like converging in on the site, they were trying to just grab like a piece of it. That like really messed up the investigation. That's why they had all these military guards out there and everything just like guys back away. Regardless of the rising tensions between America and Nazi Germany, both sides put down their differences to get to the bottom of what happened. It seemed like and I couldn't get this vibe. But it wasn't like Germany was pointing a finger at America. Like an America wasn't pointing a finger at Germany. It was more like, okay, what? What happened here? And I thought that was kind of interesting. I'm sure there were newspaper reports out there like blaming Nazis and all of the fun stuff. But. Both sides conducted their investigations, including getting eye witness accounts and even trying to get a hold of the schematics of materials used from Germany, but the Nazis were pretty secretive about all that stuff and they were kind of cagey on. Releasing specifics of the schematics to the Americans, especially like what was that skin made out of and all that other fun stuff. To this day, like we don't know exactly 1% how all this went sideways, but there's there's a number of theories out there that I'll try to explain real quick from like the least probable to probably what I think is the real cause. So the first one aliens. The conspiracy theory out there states that aliens were trying to stop America's search for nuclear technology. So they shot down the Hindenburg as a way to distract things. Hence that flash of light on the tail end of the Hindenburg. That was the aliens shooting it down. It's that one. Yeah, I entertained that for about 0.3 seconds because none of that makes sense. I like that one. Elvis. That's ridiculous. Yeah, that's just insulting to the people who died. This one is a bit more reasonable. But, you know, there's political terrorism. There was a lot of anti-Nazi sympathizers out there, both in Germany and in America. And the idea was that somebody would put a bomb on there or somebody would try to sabotage it or whatever to make the Nazis look like they're not competent. There is that idea of political terrorism. I can kind of see that. I just don't know how they would make it work. There is also the theory that American British spies tried to shoot out or poke holes in the gas cells of the Hindenburg, which could explain the leak on cells four and five. Okay. So somebody who's on the ground with a rifle, just like trying to shoot holes into it, like, okay. I guess you're going to need a lot more than just some bullet holes that. And on that thing down, a popular and what I think could be a very plausible cause is a lightning strike. There was a storm nearby and was starting to rain, and it was the largest and tallest thing in the whole area of a flat field. Where does lightning strike? It strikes the tallest thing that it can. So, if somebody wanted to hold on to the theory, like, oh, yeah, no, it was definitely lightning. I want to blame them. I think it's a very valid way. Now we start getting into like the findings. Both the Americans and the Germans basically concluded that static electricity was the cause of the explosion. The idea is that when the storm passes over, it generates a lot of ecstatic electricity between the clouds and the ground. That's where we get lightning from. forever though. The Germans in the Americans differ in terms of the nature of static electricity. On the American side, uhm, the, Hindenburg was floating over and people on the ground reported that they saw like glowing parts. They saw like, uh, like a bluish glow around different aspects of the craft. And that's what's hype of static electricity called st- St. Elmos Fire. So it's basically like a static electricity that hovers over something. And a lot of people reported seeing something that was like that. uh, the, uh, the American said that like, OK, there was clearly a leak in the back and it just took that Felix Fire stuff or that say Felix at St. Elmos Fire. And that, the movie yes, uh. If it helps you remember. Yeah there we go. Uh, but yeah, they think it was that, that current, and, and that's a static electricity thing. It's, uh, it's a phenomenon that you see on sailing ships and, and whatnot, and that phenomenon was enough to trigger the hydrogen explosion on the back. And, and a lot of eyewitnesses did claim that they saw that, like that bluish glow. And it's literally all it is is like, you know how when you like shock yourself with static electricity. And you see a little flash of light. But if that static electricity has nowhere else to go. And the static around it is super, super strong. It'll just kind of float there. For a few seconds, it's, it's really weird. And you got to have a really massive surface and you've got to have a lot of metal to make it work. But the American said that's what caused it when you combine that with the leak, that makes sense. The Germans were like, no, it had to be a hard strong spark. It had to be a, like the mother of all electric shocks. And that's both of which are static electricity based. But one is based off of observations of seeing that St. Elmo's fire. The other one is based on like a hard almost like an internal lightning strike. That's, yes, that both are very strong possibilities. But I think it gets a little bit more complicated than that. And then this is where we get into what I think is the nature of what happened combined with my own theory here. And because I teach, I teach a school, that makes me an expert. And I'm more than I have all the credentials to like really put my own take on this. So Professor Constantinos, Constantinos geopus, professor of chemical engineering at Caltech has a very compelling theory that is actually testable. Many observers testify that they saw that glowing parts on the surface of the aircraft mentioned or moments before the explosion. This is where the American greed, the Americans agreed that the build up of static electricity that caused the problem. However, according to Emily Velasco, who wrote an article title, "Histories, Mysteries, Caltech professor, helped solve Hindenburg disaster," wrote that the American committee theorized that the hydrogen was ignited by a phenomenon known as a Corona discharge or saints almost fire. This soft leakage of high voltage charge from the surface of something occurs on the mass of ships or on airplane surfaces in flight during a stormy weather in contrast to Germans investigation. Committee suggested that a high intensity spark had instead triggered the explosion. So the Americans think it was that saint almost fire and the Germans think that it was a strong Uber spark for the lack of better words. So geophus tested this on a piece of simulated skin material from the Hindenburg using an abundance of static electricity and then he grounded it. So the idea was that the static electricity is what triggered everything when they dropped the ropes. So when they dropped the ropes, ropes hit the ground and now the static electricity can be discharged somewhere. And because it was raining out, the ropes were wet and that conducted the electricity up from the ground into the aircraft and somewhere rather it was sent almost stuff or it was a strong spark, that's what started it. Jeppus tested theory so he connected a ropes to the ground and nothing happened, well there was like thousands of volts of static electricity in a bulb, then he sprayed water on the skin. uhh, saw that his sample. He sprayed water on it as though it was raining and suddenly large powerful sparks were jumping the gap between the fabric and the frame holding it up. Uh, the skin of the uh of the Hindenburg was actually lifted above the metal frame. There was actually a whole bunch of uh little strokes on the inside that suspended the skin away from the rest of the frame. So when you see it and how it has those uh straight edges on it, that's actually the frame using another piece of something that doesn't conduct electricity to keep it off from the frame. If that makes sense. So basically the skin did not touch the metal. It is kind of like set above it, probably because they didn't want the uh the which was metalized to be in contact with the aluminum frame because whenever you have metal touching metal, you start corrosion which would weaken the skin and all that stuff and cause all sorts of problems. So they separated the two. Uh you see this in uh home air conditioning systems. You'll have like a uh a copper return line that goes to your compressor outside and it'll be connected to an aluminum fixture that goes into your compressor and they have to put something in between those two metals. Otherwise it goes copper and the aluminum touch for too long. They'll corrode each other and then you have like what you had where everything leaks out. And then you're you have a hot nasty night ahead of you. That's that's kind of what the Germans are trying to avoid. Again, that's brilliant. I never would have thought of that. So once you sprayed water on the skin of it, it was sparks were jumping the gap between the frame and the skin. That basically showed that basically proved the Germans theory that there was a it was a very strong spark. And then like jeopardists was trying to figure like okay so then why did this take place three to four minutes the ropes were dropped. Like why would it do that? Why would it take so long? Shouldn't it just be instantaneous? The thought the thought was that the Germans thought that the ropes needed to be sufficiently wet in order for electricity to conduct from the ground up to the aircraft. But, Geopus tested it and he tried it both wet and dry and both conducted electricity. So it didn't matter if it was wet or dry. The ropes were the thing that caused that charge to take place. Now, the question is is why did it take so long? Why did it take three to four minutes? This is where it gets interesting. So you remember how like the Hindenburg was coming up from the southwest and then it kind of had to make that weird like make a left hand turn go straight for a little bit, make a left hand turn and then go straight make a left hand turn and then head in eastwards towards the mooring tower doing that the proximity of the storm. The outside of the Hindenburg that skin was just absorbing a bajillion positive ions. The outside of it was positively charged like static electricity, but it's positively charged. When they dropped the ropes off the side, because they didn't know how positively charged the skin was, how could they know? Nobody could have known. When they dropped the ropes off the side, those ropes are connected to the frame of the aircraft. When those ropes hit the ground, then negative ions came from the ground and electrically charged the frame of the Hindenburg was a negative charge. So the outside was positive, the inside was negative and it was just separated by a few inches of like insulation, right? Because remember the skin doesn't actually touch the frame. It just it sits on insulators that basically turns the entire aircraft into a gigantic capacitor. So what a capacitor does is that it holds a bunch of positive ions on one side and it holds a bunch of negative ions on the other side until the current gets high enough. Then it can jump like the two can meet and then the capacitor will dump all its power at once. That's what a capacitor does. It's almost like a battery in a way, but you're not using any sort of chemicals or whatever to generate the power. You are dumping electricity into it. And so like one part of it is going to be positively charged, the other part is going to be negatively charged. And then when it gets high enough, they both can meet up in the middle like they can jump that gap and then all that charge can just leave it once. If that makes sense, I'm not sure if that sits well. Okay. Yeah, you're good. So, Japhis did some math and he's like, oh my god, for a capacitor, the size of the Hindenburg, and let's say this, the skin of it is so positively charged, like it's just, like, it's just so positive, it's so happy about life. When they drop those ropes down to charge up that capacitor, he calculated that it would take about four minutes to do it. So, when the ropes hit the ground, it would take four minutes to charge the skeleton frame on the inside, it would take four minutes for it to get fully charged, before this, the positive and the negative ions could jump that gap and then release all the power at once. So basically that flash of light that they saw at the back end of the Hindenburg was actually that all that current jumping the gap between the skin and the frame separated by that insulator, it was jumping that gap and then who knows how many hundreds of millions of volts dumped right into that leak and kaboom. Because otherwise static electricity alone isn't enough to ignite hydrogen, it's, it, like, it just doesn't work. Now, to finish us off, where did the leak come from to begin with? So, here's my theory, because even with all that static electricity, that shouldn't be enough to light it. Like, if everything was still inside those gas cells, it wouldn't have, nothing would have happened. They would just discharge the current and somebody would get a doozy of an electrical shock, whoever grabbed that rope, but nothing would have happened. Remember, when captain press started to make those three left hand turns and he kind of made those three turns kind of tight, well, by doing that, he was putting a lot of stress on the frame of that aircraft, right? Because he also had that eastern wind coming at him. So, he was trying to turn left right to head west so that he can make another left hand turn to make another left hand turn to head to the east to get to the moring tower. By doing those turns with that kind of wind, like, it took three dudes to turn those wheels inside. As I mentioned before, that is the torque. When you look at those motors in the back, those motors, which are connected to the frame, are now it's like the best way I could describe it is, OK, take a broom and then hold it at the very, very end of the handle and then hold that broom handle out at arm's length. And then try to lift that broom up using your wrist. Because you imagined like how hard that is. Well, that's exactly what I think was happening with the Hindenburg when they were making those turns. You had the energy source and the back trying to swing around like 700 feet of a gigantic zeppelin with all those winds and top of it. Like, they were just torquing the holy living crap out of the back end of that thing. And they did it three times. And then to make matters even worse, they did it a fourth time when they did that S curve and the S curve was even tighter than the original three were to begin with. But you'll notice that after the second turn, Sont was reporting like, um, the back end is dropping. Like, why is the back end going down? And that's why they were like venting air out of like 11 through 16. They were, you know, getting rid of ballast water. They were trying to put air or gas into those back ones and they're like, okay, cells four and five are the ones most affected here. Cells four and five is where they saw the flame initially start. Cells four and five also have these these top cables that kind of give it like internal support. So like these cables would go in between the gas cells. And they would be kind of like tensioned. That's what kept the thing as a circle were all these cables that would go through the diameter of the craft. When they were spinning that ship around, after the second time, it put so much torque on the frame that those cables snapped. And when those cables snapped, it ripped holes into the gas cells of four and five. And that those, and I looked it up on the schematics, there were like four cables that criss-crossed the whole diameter of the craft. And I looked at where the engines were. gas sacks or gas cells 4 and 5 is right where I think the most amount of torque or leverage was being applied from swinging that nose around and having those motors having to or those engines trying to twist everything that was enough to twist the frame snap the cables and that's what cut the bags open to begin with. And then you combine that with the outs or the combine out with the whole thing being a giant capacitor with all that leaking hydrogen gas and it wasn't just like a leak it would have been. Like a rupture so like when they vent hydrogen out they do it in a very controlled manner so that there's no way that it could catch on fire, but this was probably just dumping out. And then a huge rate and then all it took was at spark and then that's it it's all over. So that was the end of the airliner that was the end of the Zeppelin like blimps they were never made again after that it was just considered too dangerous and the helium was as too expensive to be commercially viable. But they're always a way smaller and like the good your blimp and stuff like that, but nothing like the hindenburg like the there will never be anything like that again. Unless you see the movie up. After all that car what's the lesson here dude. And what does the takeaway from this because I just don't feel like this is a traditional dumpster fire. Sometimes it might be better to go with nature than to fight it. So they probably should have either waited longer gone somewhere else instead of trying to fight the storm and goes through it because when it comes to Mother Nature can't fight it. I like that because there's got to be a point where and we saw this with the, the Tory Canyon oil spill, they were running behind and they tried to take a shortcut. The autopilot was engaged they didn't know that they were fighting the ship and they ran ashore here they were behind. I didn't get a sense like oh my god somebody's gonna lose their jobs if they don't land it here soon, but they figured hey we've got 63 flights in with this thing we can we can figure this out like we know what it's capable of. But they should have been like no let's not risk it. Yeah don't chance it. And I think that's a really, really tough thing about life is like when do you risk something and when do you don't. Right because if you don't risk anything, you get no gain right, but you also got to be prepared to lose everything. You got to measure the risk. I guess I wouldn't. But in this case, I don't know how they couldn't measure the risk. I wouldn't fight Mama Nature. Yeah, yeah, I mean you've already been yeah, you're already running an hour late so it's like who cares let's just. Took him an hour to yeah, it took him an hour to respond when they're saying now or never and then you wait an hour, you're like I don't know about that. Yeah that rosin doll is like it's now or never guys come on. But I mean they had the capabilities to staying up, probably for days longer if necessary I like. should have waited don't fight the nature. The other thing too is yeah, when it comes to accidents that happen in nature, it can be a hard thing to accept. So a lot of people want to point fingers, they want to blame spy politicians were in the middle of a war it's aliens. Yeah, let it's definitely aliens. It's a really bad accident that happened because nature took over and that happens and sometimes we just have to accept it. And they're trying and it is, but it is a classic case of like the Germans really did think of everything everything from the ultraviolet to infrared light. They thought of everything from like venting the gas, like having automatic vents that could expel gas if necessary to keep it level. They even thought about putting insulators in between the frame and the skin of the ship knowing that the two are metals and they would react together. But it's one of those things it's like it is a failure of imagination. And sometimes you just got to be prepared for that that you just you're in a mess right now because you just didn't think of something. But I guess what the next time you will and in this case they're just like we're done. And and here's the thing though the Hindenburg was already on the way out like airplanes were now flying over the Pacific. It just wasn't. Like the Hindenburg was becoming more of a novelty. It was at the early stages of it. But it would have been like one of those things where I want to take a train across the country. No, I can hop into a plane and get to New York in hours or I could spend like four days in a train going across the country. You would want to do it because of the novelty of it. Right. So. Stop in different places when the train stops. Buck of cruise, but not as yeah. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. Same thing. I can get to Hawaii in five hours or I could spend like a day or two on a cruise ship. Link. How do you want to how do you want approach it? That's the Hindenburg folks. Be sure to check us out on the dacemstifier.com. There you will find all of Kara's art contributions and whatnot plus other articles or show notes. And dacemstifier.com. You can also find links to you know like iTunes, Amazon, whatever. We were on every platform and be sure to tell a friend or a family. Easy thing to do is just grab their phone and show them how to do it in case that they don't know what a what those podcasts are. Email us at the dacemstifier@gmail.com. Messages on Instagram. We're at the dacemstifier over there. Yep. Follow us. Give us a like. Um, and if you could leave a review and obviously share on your social media platform of choice, that'd be great. Otherwise. Oh, real quick. I want to do a shout out to that airships. net. I know I, I mentioned them before, but guys, be sure to check them out. That's an incredible website, a ton of information on pretty much anything that floats in the air. They they get you covered. So if you want even more details, if you want to know like the operation manuals of how the Hindenburg worked amongst the crew, like they've got it. So yeah, huge shout out to them. They did a deep that they did an incredible job. A lot of the pictures that you'll see on our website. I got from them. So I'm crediting them for for the images that I'm using in the diagrams and whatnot. But yeah, they they they did an incredible job. So be sure to check them out. So yeah, until next time, I say, yeah, keep it hot mess. Thanks for listening. Bye.

Intro: 2:24:26

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