泰坦尼克号作为当时世界上最大最豪华的邮轮，号称“永不沉没”之船，它的故事广为人知。
但作为至今为止世界上最大的飞行器：“兴登堡”号飞艇的故事却鲜为人知，这艘长达249米、直径55米，比泰坦尼克号尺寸还大的飞行豪华邮轮，有着和泰坦尼克号类似的的故事：1937年5月3日到5月6日，整整4天的空中死亡之旅，它极尽奢侈 拉风之能事，却最终以烈火焚身的悲剧方式，收场。
On the evening of May 3, 1937, the 36 passengers of the "Hindenburg" boarded the huge silver-gray airship after dinner at the Frankfurt Hof Hotel on a Lufthansa company bus to the Rhine-Main Airport.
Before departing from the hotel, each passenger's luggage is carefully weighed, and only 10 kilograms of luggage can be carried free of charge per person, and the excess part will be charged at 6 marks per kilogram. Passengers were repeatedly asked if they had brought matches, lighters or flashes of magnesium when boarding the boat, all three of which were prohibited from being carried on the airship — much stricter than the plane security checks at the time. This strict safety procedure makes passengers feel a little nervous.
At 8:15 p.m., the orchestra played the German national anthem, and more than two hundred ground crews grabbed the cables and pushed the Hindenburg out of the garage along with the moving tether tower at the bow.
Passengers waved out from the portholes, which resembled the atmosphere of the first flight of a Titanic cruise ship. At 8:27 p.m., at the command of Captain Ernst Lehmann, ground personnel released the cable——— and the 236-ton Hindenburg slowly rose upwards.
France refused to fly over its airspace, so the Hindenburg took off and turned northwest, flying in the direction of Cologne under a slight northeast wind.
On the airship, excited passengers excitedly wandered around to see it. Because the airship itself is lighter than air, the engine power can be done very little, coupled with the double layer sponge sound insulation equipment, so the sound of the engine sounds only like the buzz of bees, this flight experience, even today's most ready-to-enter aircraft can not achieve.
Hindenburg's restaurant floor is luxuriously decorated and covered with thick carpets, which are more like the first class of the Titanic than the cabin of a flying machine.
The smoking room on Deck B is only open an hour after take-off, but the bar room is already open. On Deck A, the waiter brought sandwiches and beer, and the passengers began playing cards and chatting like passengers on the Titanic. Some sharp-eyed passengers noticed a spotlight on the belly of the airship that shot toward the ground, illuminating a circular aperture on the ground with a small red airship pattern in the center——— which was a measure to prevent the airship from getting too close to the ground or sea surface at night.
Among the passengers flying to the United States was Dale Mang, a female Zappelin columnist of the Hearst newspaper department. Madame Hay, Friedrich Krebs, mayor of Frankfurt, Rudolf Brutner, owner of the aluminium piano in the airship lounge, and Sir Herbert Wilkinson, a polar explorer, and so on.
At 11:15 p.m., the Hindenburg flew over the city of Cologne. In the smoking room. Some passengers toasted Dr. Eckner and Captain Caiman, while others went into the bedroom, wrote something or went to bed.
In the early hours of the morning, the Hindenburg flew into the English Channel from the Netherlands, and some passengers who did not sleep saw the famous white cliff below in the moonlight. Since britain also refused the airship to cross its airspace, it had to fly along the British coast.
In the early morning of 4 May, when the first rays of sunlight shone through the port side veranda window of the Hindenburg, the airship had already flown over the southwestern tip of the Island of Britain, ahead of which was the five-thousand-kilometre-wide, endless Atlantic Ocean.
At 8:30 a.m., the aroma of freshly brewed coffee comes from the pantry and the restaurant begins to serve a varied breakfast of coffee tea, milk, hot cocoa, bread, butter, jam honey, boiled eggs, omelette, Frankfurt sausage and fresh fruit. At this time the airship flew over the Dutch mail ship Stadine bound for New York, whose whistle made a high-pitched and loud sound, and the passengers on the mail ship also rushed to the deck and waved their handkerchiefs in greeting the Hindenburg. After breakfast, Captain Lyman led the passengers to a detailed tour of the interior of the Hindenburg.
In the early morning of 5 May, the Hindenburg flew 1,400 kilometres from the Canadian Sable Island, where Father Paul Schulte from the Church of Aachen held an aerial Mass.
At 4:12 a.m. on May 6, the passengers of the Hindenburg saw a string of lights like a necklace below, which was Long Island in New York State. At 4:35 a.m., passengers crowded to the window overlooking brooklyn's city lights. Although it's not yet dark, the restaurant has already started serving breakfast with sliced sausages, toast, jam and coffee.
The Hindenburg flew over Battery Park, the southernmost part of Manhattan Island, at exactly 5 a.m., when dawn had already begun in the east. Suddenly, from below, the whistles of hundreds of ships sounded, and passengers could see tiny bursts of white steam rising from the chimneys of mail ships, cargo ships, ferries, yachts and fireships moored on the East and Hudson rivers: the enthusiastic Port of New York welcomed the arrival of the Hindenburg with an ancient whistle ceremony.
Captain Lyman ordered the Hindenburg to slow down and flew around the Empire State Building at a distance of less than two hundred meters, admiring European travelers who had never been to New York with the spectacular view of the skyscrapers on Manhattan Island.
The Hindenburg flew from near Central Park over the Hudson River, anchoring below for another pride of German industrial technology: the Six-Year-Old German cruise Ship Bremen, which had won the blue streamer award for the fastest passenger ship across the Atlantic. The ship honked its thick and loud whistle in salute to the Hindenburg, and the German passengers on the airship fell into a state of frenzied excitement.
After the sun rose, the Hindenburg sailed south along the Hudson River and flew for another dozen hours.
At 18:00 on May 6, 1937, the end of the whole journey: Hearst Lake arrived.
At 19:00, the Hindenburg began to fly southwest over the Hearst Lake Air Station at an altitude of 200 meters. On the ground, American newsjournalists began turning on 22 cameras, ready to shoot the newsreel of the titanic arriving in the United States.
At 19:08, because the storm was coming, the ground demanded that the Hindenburg "land directly at the fastest speed", so the captain drove the airship to the left at full speed and made a small radius of sharp turns——— this violent turning action may damage the keel structure of the airship at that time.
At 19:11, the Hindenburg turned again and flew eastward, and in order to land as soon as possible before the weather was bad, the valves of airbags 11 to 16 opened and began to emit hydrogen for about 15 seconds.
At 19:18, the bow sank too fast, and the three ballast water tanks of the "Hindenburg" discharged 300, 300 and 500 kg of ballast water respectively, followed by another 5 seconds of hydrogen from the airbags of the bow, and 6 crew members arrived at the bow, ready to dock with the tether tower.
Since the distance was not enough to descend to the docking height, the Hindenburg made another sharp turn. Some experts later believe that it was this sharp turn that caused a fixed cable near the stern of the "Hindenburg" to break, like a whip, piercing the No. 4 or No. 5 airbag at the stern, causing hydrogen to leak.
At 19:21, accompanied by the "popping" sound of the diesel engine, the Hindenburg began to drop the tether cable at an altitude of less than 90 meters, and the passengers and some crew watched the landing process with great interest in front of the veranda porthole.
At 19:25, some sharp-eyed ground personnel leaked air at the base of the vertical tail of the Hindenburg, and several others saw that the aluminum-coated skin of the left tail of the airship seemed to appear blue "St. Elmer's Fire", like the static sparks that often appeared on the surface of the airship on gloomy and wet thunderstorms. Next, for a moment! The Hindenburg is on fire! According to the results of the post-mortem investigation: the ignition point was near the left tail wing.
What happened in the next few tens of seconds is difficult to describe in words, but the journalists present at the time took a large number of photographs and photojournalism, enough to witness the disaster over Hearst Lake from many angles. With a loud noise, a soaring yellow fireball emerged from the rear of the airship, and the tail of the Hindenburg fell to the ground first, breaking the keel.
With hydrogen still in the bow's airbags, the front of the Hindenburg was lifted upwards in a matter of seconds, pointing like a cigar into the sky, and soon a terrifying pillar of fire erupted from the nose (9 of the 12 crew members in the bow were killed). The cockpit and cabin floors were raised high, and all the men firmly grasped the handles at hand so as not to fall.
About 5 seconds after the fire, the Hindenburg broke in the rear of the passenger area, and the duralumin skeleton of the crack was melted by the high temperature of hydrogen combustion, collapsed inward, and the hydrogen bladder exploded. The bow began to fall to the ground, and the name of the "HINDENBURG" boat located at the front of the airship was swallowed up by the tongue of fire.
When the wheels under the cockpit touched the ground, the bow bounced slightly, but then fell into a sea of fire.
The Hindenburg burned for a very short time, some judging it to be 34 seconds on film, and others saying it was about 32 to 37 seconds — in short, in about half a minute or so, the world's largest aircraft to date had become a pile of collapsed, charred-black duralumin skeletons.
Surprisingly, two-thirds of the people on board the Hindenburg survived this terrible fireball——— in fact, 23 of the 36 passengers of the airship survived, 39 of the 61 crew members (21 of whom were trainees) survived, and the survival ratio of both crew and passengers was 64%, far exceeding the Titanic (passenger survival rate is 37%, crew survival rate is 24%).
Location of the crew at the time of the disaster (red for death, green for surviving)
In fact, the characteristics of hydrogen combustion saved most of the lives of the Hindenburg. If these people were caught in a fire caused by a gasoline explosion, I am afraid that no one would be spared. However, because hydrogen is more than fifteen times lighter than air, the flame follows the hydrogen upwards, taking away most of the burning heat, the thermal radiation located below or below the side of the fire is much smaller, in addition to the rapid combustion of hydrogen, the hydrogen on the "Hindenburg" burns out in a few tens of seconds. If this is a fire caused by gasoline of the same energy, I am afraid that the fire will continue to burn for 6 to 10 hours...
The wreckage of the Hindenburg was quickly collected by The Hurst Lake Air Station and sold to several scrap plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Cleveland, Ohio. Most of the duralumin that these factories recycled from them was bought back by Germany for the manufacture of aircraft.........
The burning mail on the Hindenburg's last flight
The "sinking" of the "Hindenburg" in the sky actually declared the "sinking" of the airship era.
The air transport industry changed course from the blow of the Hindenburg. In 1939, the first commercial plane full of passengers crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Valuable lessons were learned from the disaster, and since then, no country has ever attempted to use airships for long-range manned transport.