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Why the Hindenburg Ended the Airship Age — and the Akron Didn't
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The 1937 Hindenburg crash killed fewer people than the USS Akron disaster — so why did it end the airship era? Herbert Morrison's radio broadcast and the birth of live disaster coverage changed everything.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Before May sixth, nineteen thirty-seven, the worst airship disaster in history had already happened. Seventy-three people died when the USS Akron went down in a storm off the New Jersey coast in nineteen thirty-three.
To understand what was at stake on that evening in New Jersey, you need a clear picture of what the Hindenburg actually was. The German-built Zeppelin LZ one-twenty-nine was eight hundred and four feet long.
The central technical problem with the Hindenburg wasn't a secret. Everyone involved knew it.
The Hindenburg arrived at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey on the evening of May sixth. It was the first transatlantic voyage of the nineteen thirty-seven season.
Herbert Morrison was a radio reporter for WLS Chicago, on assignment at Lakehurst to record the Hindenburg's arrival. The recording was intended for later broadcast, a feature segment about the glamour of transatlantic airship travel.
The USS Akron went down on April fourth, nineteen thirty-three, caught in a severe storm off Barnegat Light on the New Jersey coast. Seventy-three of the seventy-six people aboard died.
The cause of the ignition has never been definitively settled, and that uncertainty is worth stating plainly. The most widely accepted explanation involves an electrical discharge, a spark, probably connected to the mooring procedure or to atmospheric conditions that evening.
The immediate response at Lakehurst was substantial. The United States Navy deployed over fifteen hundred personnel from surrounding military bases within hours.
The commercial airship era didn't wind down gradually after May sixth, nineteen thirty-seven. It stopped.
There's one more thing worth holding onto here. The Hindenburg made something new on the evening it burned.
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