This is the airship Hindenburg, burning up
while trying to land in New Jersey in 1937. 97 people were trapped inside. It was a big deal at the time. The Hindenburg was the greatest passenger
airship ever built. Imagine something the size of an ocean liner,
but in the air. And it could make the journey from Europe
to the US in half the time. It was a shining example of the future of
commercial air travel. And all it took was a spark to bring the
whole thing down. Air travel was on everyone’s minds in the
early 20th century. Aviators like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia
Earhart became huge celebrities after they conquered the Atlantic in airplanes. But airships were something else entirely. Just two years after Lindbergh famously crossed
the Atlantic in a cramped monoplane, a giant German zeppelin flew around the
world, carrying paid passengers, who ate comfortably
in a full-service dining room and slept in private berths. And in 1936, the biggest and grandest airship
yet was built — the German LZ129, named the Hindenburg. There she is, a fine example of simplicity
and economy of design. A triumph of lighter-than-aircraft, the likes
of which the world has never seen before. It was a monstrous feat of engineering, and
a symbol of Germany’s rising prominence in the early years of the Nazi party. The world’s greatest lighter-than-air ship,
the Hindenburg! That superliner of the sky made her first
trip to America from Germany in March, 1936. That year, the Hindenburg made 17 intercontinental
round trips carrying passengers. It had a dining room, too. And a reading room. And a separate lounge. It even had a smoking room. A separately-ventilated space where passengers
could smoke under the supervision of the maitre’d, who held the only lighter. Which brings us to a very important element
in this story – hydrogen. Hydrogen gas is lighter than air — and people
had used it for centuries to lift aircraft like hot air balloons. It’s highly flammable but cheap and easy
to make – as opposed to its safer, non-flammable cousin, helium. But the United States, who at this time produced
the rare gas almost exclusively, embargoed its sale in 1925. Countries around the world developing lighter-than-air
programs had to rely on hydrogen — and their airships were blowing up. In the US, the hydrogen-powered Roma exploded
and killed 34 in 1922. In 1923, the French Navy airship Dixmude did
too – 52 dead. And in 1930, the UK ship R101 went down — 48
dead. But the Germans weren’t worried. By the time the Hindenburg embarked on its
first North American flight of 1937, not a single German passenger airship had crashed. On May 6, 1937, that’s not what they
did. The ship was 12 hours late. And what’s worse – the crew had good reason
to believe it was leaking hydrogen – the back end was dipping toward the ground and
they couldn’t properly balance the ship. For three hours, the dirigible circled the
landing field at Lakehurst New Jersey, dumping more water ballasts than ever before in vain efforts to level off. Plus, the air was charged with electrostatic
activity due to a recent thunderstorm – and another one was on the way. That means they were trying to quickly land
an enormous hydrogen-filled airship, in electrically charged conditions, that was likely leaking
flammable gas. And… well... “It’s burst into flames! Get this Charlie, get this Charlie! And it’s crashing! It’s crashing, terrible! Oh this is the worst of the worst catastrophes
in the world. Oh the humanity!” When the Hindenburg caught fire, a crew of
reporters gathered for a routine photo opp sprung into action. Photojournalist Sam Shere only had time for
a single exposure, but of all the press photos taken that day, it’s this one that’s most
remembered. It somehow manages to perfectly frame the
entire disaster. The panicked crowd running in view of newsreel
cameras, with the hastily-dumped water ballasts still visible in the background. The name “Hindenburg” - barely illuminated
by the bright flames lighting up the entire top of the ship. And the faulty tail, now completely engulfed
— just moments before the flames burst out of the nose and brought the ship crashing
to the ground. The image of the Hindenburg burning was unlike
anything people had seen before – a disaster photographed as it was taking place. In the end, out of 97 people on board, only
35 — plus one crewman on the ground — died. That means that about two-thirds of the people
inside of that actually escaped. But the numbers didn’t matter. Hydrogen airships never flew paid passengers
again after that day. The Hindenburg wasn’t the first
or even the deadliest passenger airship disaster. It was just the one that was caught on film
— and that’s why it was the last. The last episode of Darkroom was about Scott's
doomed expedition to the South Pole. But there's some photos that we didn't include
- and one in particular - that I really want to show you, and they're in this book. That's going to appear next week in Video
Lab, our YouTube membership program. Just go to vox.com/join to learn more. And as always, thanks for watching. I’m looking at you insane the entire time.
It was filmed though
I thought American airships used helium. Why would one explode?