What if the Hindenburg Disaster Never Happened?

on the evening of May 6th 1937 the lz129 Hindenberg delayed by rough weather attempted to land in a small town in New Jersey but something had gone horribly wrong the hydrogen gas that filled the Airship began to leak a spark possibly caused by static electricity started a chain reaction and within seconds the Airship was engulfed in flames this moment is easily one of the most infamous transportation disasters in history and often cited as the moment where the Golden Age of airships came to an end or at least that's how the story goes so what if the Hindenburg disaster never happened what if the Airship landed safely well after the Hindenburg crash in our timeline the Zeppelin Company still made airships one Airship the LZ 130 graph Zeppelin 2 at first the manager of the Zeppelin company wanted to use helium rather than hydrogen because helium doesn't explode but there's a problem most of the world's helium supplies were controlled by the United States and the Zeppelin company was German and this was the late 1930s the US wasn't willing to give Germany access to a gas that could be used in war balloons right after they invaded Austria so the graph Zeppelin 2 was forced to use hydrogen and rather than risk passengers lives the Airship was limited to only military operations s primarily Recon they were effectively useless in combat by World War II anti-aircraft guns were designed to take out much smaller and faster airplanes so these big bulky and slow airships were nothing but an easy target the airships didn't contribute enough to the war effort and eventually the Germans destroyed the existing Zeppelins for scrap metal but if the Hindenburg never burst into flames would things have been kind of different I guess the graph Zeppelin could have carried passengers for a few more years but sooner or later it would have been thrown into the scrap pile like all the rest you got to look at the Airship objectively for a moment Beyond being big and looking cool what do they offer that an airplane doesn't yeah they can stay in the air longer but they're also much slower they can allow for more space and room than your average passenger plane but they aren't as luxurious as say a cruise ship famously the piano in the lounge of the Hindenburg had to be made out of aluminum because a real piano would way too much even though they were massive they couldn't carry that many passengers and they were usually reserved for the wealthy eventually planes could get people across the oceans faster than airships and had their own accommodations there just wasn't a need for these things anymore wow that is not a satisfying answer that's not really fun airships always seemed like they had untapped potential and maybe they did that's why asking the question what if the Hindenburg didn't explode is so alluring to many people because this alternate age of the Airship is what a lot imagine was a possibility but sadly we weren't going to get that whether the Hindenberg landed safely or not we aren't going to find that in the 20th century No instead we have to go further back back before the Hindenburg was designed to a time before airplanes were even imagined back to the 18th century hot air rises and if you can contain that air you can create lift the montgolfier brothers took this into account When developing the first large-scale hot air balloons in France during the late 1700s and coincidentally around the same time the Robert brothers who also happened to be French were working on their own balloon assisted by Jack Charles this balloon didn't use hot air it used hydrogen both teams demonstrated their projects to large crowds over the course of 1783 and managed to attract Global attention after the mulier had enough unman tests they decided to finally put somebody in one of these things neither of the brothers were willing to take the chance though in fact no human was going for the first flight it would be a three- member team consisting of a rooster a sheep and a duck and and to many people's surprise they did not die The Mont goers and Robert brothers would eventually get humans to ride in their balloons it was a big deal and watching from the sidelines was Benjamin Franklin who just happened to be in France at the time as an American Diplomat intrigued by these flying machines Benjamin Franklin would write to several colleagues he imagined they could be quite useful for war in fact even the mulier themselves had already considered the amazing potential of balloons in Warfare while they weren't perfect flying machines after all they would just go where the winds would take them they had one unique quality that would make them Unstoppable it was literally that nobody could stop them this was the late 1700s Firearms didn't have the accuracy or range to shoot these things out of the sky and if they were utilized properly these balloons could change the face of warfare Ben Franklin proposed that if you took 5,000 of these balloons each occupied by two men and sent them over enemy territory you would just simply overwhelm them but uh this never happened soon after these first flights the French would become preoccupied with uh other things and the British viewed all this balloon stuff as French nonsense it would probably be useless and French so they just never bothered looking into any of it then the Americans could barely sustain a mil military force let alone an Elite Squad of balloonists so for the next Century this technology really just stagnated beyond a few forward-thinking Alia impractical Concepts this whole technology didn't progress all that much during The Next Century but let's imagine right here in the 1700s we see a point of Divergence creating an alternate timeline for whatever reason Louis V 16th is completely entranced by his nation's newest creation he decides to allocate a large amount of money and resources towards continued development and production of both hydrogen and hot air balloons cool uh this would still be a problem hydrogen is the most common element in the universe but in the late 1700s it wasn't that easy to obtain in fact for the past few decades it was just referred to as inflammable air because all it would do was catch on fire you know explode making it incredibly dangerous and difficult to produce if the French were inspired by Ben Franklin's suggestion and they did plan on building 5,000 balloons they would have to be hot air balloons so in 1785 Ben Franklin leaves France and returns to the us bringing with him the French's Newfound Love of All Things air travel the US which is in deep financial trouble and already trying to shrink its military certainly couldn't afford any federal spending on an unproven Tech technology and the British would still not care about balloons at all once again to French back in France the exorbitant spending on balloon research is seen as par for the course for the French Elite the balloons while still being developed for war would end up mostly being a status of wealth and power for the rich which would make them enticing targets as the French Revolution got underway these balloons would most likely be destroyed or commandeered by the revolutionaries many would be used for scouting something that actually happened in our timeline yes the French aerostatic Corps was the first aerial-based military unit using the balloons for reconnaissance during the Battle of flaru but in this alternate timeline a few important changes are made to the balloons to make them more effective in combat or effective at all in combat the idea of balloon Warfare in the late 1700s was based around the idea that this flying machine couldn't be touched no firearm would be accurate enough to take it out from a distance unfortunately this also means that no firearm could be used from the hot air balloon all that effectively as well but you could drop bombs primitive bombs small bombs these balloons had a very limited weight capacity although you could imagine low altitude balloons being equipped with iron grenades set with fairly long fuses something that would be ideal for hitting Royal structures and causing a good deal of Chaos in the streets of Paris a lot of chaos for both sides not much would result from these bombing raids if you could even call them that but it would certainly cause a lot of heads to turn with the introduction of any new technology into Warfare the impact of that technology is often disputed but many initial claims tend to overestimate the ability and importance of any fascinating new weapon and these would be very new and very very fascinating military Powers across the globe would begin to take far greater interest in balloons than they had before even the British what was previously the weird French thing would now still be a weird French thing but potentially useful and while they might not be so inclined to make their own they would want to find a way to combat them with the right winds these things could One Day Fly right over the straight of Dover and with relations between the two empires on a Shaky Ground it wasn't out of the question and the British would ask themselves how do we counter this how do we stop a flying Armada the answer is they couldn't sure a cannon shot into the air might be able to hit a balloon but it's equally likely to fly hundreds of feet in any other direction hit a local school at higher altitudes the balloons would be Untouchable nothing could counter them except for more balloons you would need to find a way to propel the the balloon independently of the wind this would allow one balloon to approach the other and fight it on level ground so to say concepts of powered durables existed although they were highly impractical the limit to how much a balloon can carry is based on several factors including volume the larger the volume the more lift it has and the more it can carry to get something that could be strong enough to lift a steam engine along with the required Fuel and the crew well it would need to be a rigid Airship rigid airships are unlike hot air balloons rigid they have a solid frame that contain several bags within to allow for more lift but no material available at this time could create the structurally sound lightweight frame for a rigid Airship iron would be too heavy and too brittle to support a massive frame like this and the only option in the early 1800s would be maybe steel it's not a perfect solution it's still very heavy and certainly not a great substitute for the aluminum and derum frames that would be used in our timeline aluminum was so difficult to produce at this time it was so rare that it cost more per ounce than gold hydrogen had to be made in Laboratories and while balloons would be filled with these on occasion it wasn't being mass-produced really the missing ingredient here was electricity or electrolysis specifically you need this to Mass produce both hydrogen and aluminum and widespread access to electricity wouldn't be available for a long time it simply wouldn't be possible given the technology at the time even in an alternate one where everyone is infected with balloon fever you see there's another form of balloon Warfare we don't really talk about unmanned balloon bombs yeah these were a thing that actually existed first flying over Venice in 1849 they were pretty simple in their design just Balloons with a bomb attached to them no pilot no steering just let it go and hope it goes where you want it to and while the effectiveness of this weapon has been disputed in our history this would be the perfect weapon for a cash strapped and barely industrial United States seemingly so the war of 182 would be kind of the perfect opportunity to test out these new weapons a fledgling United States going up against the big bad Britain once again I could imagine these weapons being used up North with the US invasion of Canada while a well fired musket could maybe take out a balloon it couldn't stop them all and even the one shot down would still result in trapnel bombs falling on the streets below shock and awe would be the strategy of these weapons an Unstoppable Force unlike anything used in combat before targeting both civilians and Military alike until the wind shift more than likely the balloons would just float into some trees and give away the Americans position or even worse just blowing back into their faces before exploding the first engine powerered airship in our timeline was actually created all the way back in 1852 the gford dirigible it was powered by a lightweight steam engine although it really wasn't capable of generating enough power to go against the wind but this experiment and experiments like it developed without access to military resources or funding still managed to do impressive things so imagine if people you know actually cared what if there was incentive and money and support to build this technology up then maybe airships could have had a much larger impact on the latter half of the 19th century so in the 1860s the United States became a lot less United the Civil War began in our timeline hot air balloons were used by both the North and the South for reconnaissance but in this alternate timeline both sides would be a lot more ambitious now the South wasn't as industrialized as the north meaning that producing anything resembling a proper Airship would be completely out of the question but for the union it might actually make a lot of sense as the war really started to heat up the North Begins engaging in more Total War tactics not only attacking troops and milit milary outposts but cities and civilians we can only speculate what the union might have been able to build but we can assume it might have been a significant improvement over gord's dirigible Concepts from the 1850s show an Airship that kind of resembles a flying fish I guess yeah it's quite a bit different than the traditional interpretation of a steampunk Airship but it's definitely more realistic something that prioritizes being lightweight but also allows for stability in control while being in the air this wouldn't be able to lift that much so you wouldn't have a lot of options when it comes to Weaponry got to have something that doesn't weigh too much something that doesn't require any real degree of accuracy either but can still do a decent amount of damage so fire incendiary weapons have been used in Warfare for a long time but if you want to start a fire in enemy territory you usually have to get pretty close to the enemy territory which is easier you're said than done this is where the Airship would come in handy you could just fly over the enemy troops ignore their formations and go straight for whatever you wanted having flammable weapons on a machine that is filled with inflammable gas is probably a bad idea but you got to think even gord's dirigible managed to use a steam engine without exploding hydrogen can be dangerous yeah but with the right safety precautions this could work maybe it would be slow it would would need to take off right outside a city and the wind would need to be pretty calm if it flies too high it's not going to be able to do too much 19th century firebombs dropped from 1,000 ft might not do that much damage but the lower this thing flies the easier it becomes for the enemy to hit it this would be a mostly useless weapon but a very valuable tool its real purpose would be well a literal propaganda machine a symbol of the industrialized North using its tools to burn Southern cities to the ground a point of Pride for the union and a reminder for the Confederacy how brutal their enemies could be the south on the other hand could retaliate with one of those tried andrue balloon bombs which much like the union Airship probably wouldn't be all that effective as a weapon but it would still make for some good propaganda like imagine Washington DC surrounded by balloons that if they explode when they touch the ground light the city on fire or light something on fire it doesn't matter it would be pretty memorable a point of Southern Pride but neither of these would change the outcome of the war the American Civil War would be the first instance of an Airship being used in battle and I'm sure many industrialized nations would take note and there would be serious concerns while we would know that the Airship and balloon bombs would be mostly useless most people wouldn't it would just seem like the union used this unbelievable aircraft craft to destroy southern cities even if most of the damage was done by troops on Horseback this would definitely lead to militaries taking the threat of airships seriously they would continue developing their own aircraft but more importantly begin investing in ways to take these things down in our timeline in the 1870s the French used balloons to get people out of the city of Paris during a Prussian Siege the prussians responded by building what they called a balloon cananas a gun designed specific specifically for shooting balloons it was massive moved around by hor drawn carriage and while the accuracy and effectiveness of the gun is debatable it did manage to take down eight Balloons these things weren't Unstoppable they were just hard to hit and most Nations didn't bother trying to hit them it wasn't a priority but in this alternate timeline it would be nobody would know what airships were truly capable of not militaries or Engineers heads of state or especially civilians this could spark an arms race where every side is assuming the enemy is capable of flying over their borders and destroying their cities within hours the reason anti-aircraft Tech took so long to develop an our timeline was because they're just wasn't a reason to develop it but if every nation is scared about getting invaded by Unstoppable flying machines they're going to put some time and money into finding a solution Railway guns mechanical computers yeah that that stuff actually did exist in our timeline Tracer rounds were being developed Explosive Rounds automatic weapons but the Airship itself still wouldn't be that useful you would only want to use it in very specific circumstances when the enemy couldn't be expecting it the Battleground had to be close to a nation's home and most importantly the fate of the battle couldn't rely on these airships at all because once again not that useful 1903 would be an exceptionally important year not because of the right Brothers building the first heavier than air flying machine oh no Alberto Santos Deon would have done that well before this point look him up now see in 1903 This Crew in Kansas found natural gas now in this alternate timeline this would be the moment that leads to a gold rush to get not necessarily natural gas but a byproduct of it helium helium is lighter than air just like hydrogen but it won't catch fire while it can't lift as much as hydrogen does it's still pretty important for airships because again it doesn't catch on fire this would spark more fears across the world and eventually whether it be due to the assassination of arch Duke Ferdinand or something else the global war would begin and the airships would finally get their chance to shine in our timeline the most devastating use of airships was the raids on London where Zeppelins attacked the city 159 times these Unstoppable flying machines targeting civilians doing Untold damage and the final death toll was 557 which means for every Zeppelin attack on the city less than five people died on average in this alternate timeline with every nation aware and preparing for what they expect to be a massive Fleet of Highly capable airships nothing would happen Technologies like radar might have advanced a bit quicker with incentive to stop these aerial raids Tracer rounds could have helped spot airships at night there would be more than enough ways to stop the airships if they even managed to approach a city and this is because they just weren't that fast and they weren't that capable and by this point in this alternate World War I the age of the Airship at least in Warfare would come to an end in our timeline ironically this is when airships would begin their Golden Age the raids on London like I said left an impact Nations saw this and thought hey we should probably make our own yeah so that's the thing about airships their design was not ideal for Warfare ironically if militaries had embraced this new technology earlier than in our timeline it would simply accelerate the death of the Airship kind of while these things might have not been useful for invading neighboring countries they would be useful for passengers looking to cross the ocean or just a leisurely flight around the country Even in our timeline for decades many people doubted that the airplane would ever be capable of competing with the Airship and in this scenario these feelings would be even stronger and unlike in our timeline many of the obvious safety issues would have been probably addressed if airships were developed earlier a Hindenberg disaster would have never happened by the 1930s or at least in a way that it happened in our timeline not because the Airship would use helium but because the outside of the craft would be designed to limit the buildup of static electricity while the Airship would eventually fall out of favor getting replaced by planes there's a possibility that the Golden Age of these machines could have lasted decades yeah they would have become obsolete either way but at at least in this alternate timeline they would have had a much stronger Legacy [Music] [Music]

Channel: AlternateHistoryHub

Views: 409,260

Keywords: the hindenburg disaster, hindenburg, alternatehistoryhub, alternate history, alternate history hindenburg, what if the hindenburg disaster never happened, no hindenburg, what if airships were more popular, airship history, alternate history airships, alternate tech history

Id: 2AI-jl3ewTQ

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024