The age of the German zeppelins was brief, only a few years of the 1930s, but they still live on in pop culture and memory, such as a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade of 1989.
The set designers evidently did their research. Here is what luxury air travel was like 80 years ago.
An example - the Hindenburg's dining room:
Zeppelins were quite dissimilar to modern airships such as the Goodyear Blimp. For one, zeppelins were much larger. In fact, nothing flying since has even come close:
Second, the blimp is elevated with helium, which is inert, while zeppelins were elevated with hydrogen, which is not.
Third, zeppelins had a rigid internal structure to which the gas bags were attached, meaning that its design type was a dirigible, not a blimp:
Technically, a dirigible is any type of lighter-than-air aircraft that can be steered through the air under its own power, but commonly the word is used to distinguish zeppelin-type airships from blimps, which can also be steered, or balloons, which cannot.
But in a blimp, the blimp is the gas bag. Here the blimp part of the Goodyear Blimp uninflated:
Inside this outer skin are individual gas bags, though I recall only two, that hold the helium. You can see why the word "blimp" is assumed to be an abbreviation of "balloon, limp," which supposedly was the way military specifications referred to the airship type.
Of course, the most famous zeppelin was Hindenburg, which burned and crashed on May 6, 1937, while attempting to dock with its mooring mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey.
Well, that's hydrogen for you. The cause of the conflagration was never definitively decided. Investigators settled on four possibilities: static spark, lightning, engine failure, and (weakly) sabotage. But neither contemporary nor present-day investigators have been able to solve the mystery.
Thirty-five of the 97 souls on board died in the crash. Most of the survivors were badly burned. The crash was extensively documented by news photographers and movie crews because zeppelins were the still the only decent alternative to ships to cross the Atlantic and did so much faster. A radio reporter named Herbert Morrison was there to record the Hindenburg's arrival for broadcast the next day on of station WLS in Chicago. It has become one of the most iconic recordings of all time ("Oh, the humanity!").
Later, Morrison's recording was overlaid atop newsreel footage of the crash, timed so that the video showed the flames just as Morrison's voice announced it. Transcript:
It's practically standing still now they've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship; and (uh) they've been taken ahold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; it's... the rain had (uh) slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it (uh) just enough to keep it from...
It's burst into flames! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It's fire... and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames and the... and it's falling on the mooring mast. And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh it's... [unintelligible] its flames... Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it... it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it – I can't even talk to people, their friends are on there! Ah! It's... it... it's a... ah! I... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it's just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. I... I... I'm sorry. Honest: I... I can hardly breathe. I... I'm going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah... I can't. Listen, folks; I... I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.The most famous newsreel is in black and white, but there was also at least one color camera there, too, and it's footage got the Morrison recording, too:
The iconic reel is here. Very clear British Pathé footage, without the Morrison overlay, is here.
The crash marked the end of the zeppelin age. It would have ended soon anyway, with World War 2 only two years away. But ordinary airplanes were just starting to achieve the range, speed, comfort and reliability to cross the Atlantic, too, and would soon do so much faster than zeppelins.
The United States Navy used rigid-frame airships also, though filled with helium, not hydrogen. They were intended to be flying aircraft carriers, F9C Sparrowhawk fighter planes that could be launched and recovered while the airship was in flight.
Only two were built, USS Akron and USS Macon, entering service earlier than any zeppelin and only slightly smaller. Their service life was short-lived, however. Akron was destroyed while flying in a thunderstorm in April 1933, killing 73 of 76 aboard. It remains the deadliest airship crash in history. Macon was forced to ditch into the sea in a storm in 1935, but 70 of 72 aboard were rescued. Afterward, the Navy abandoned using dirigibles.
Modern blimps are very safe but not crash proof. In 2011, a Goodyear blimp crashed in flames at Reichelsheim airfield, near Friedberg in central Germany.
The blimp caught fire close enough to the ground for the three passengers aboard to jump to safety, but then the ship zoomed to 150 feet above the ground, then plummeted to the earth. The pilot, still aboard, was killed.
And sometimes airships just plain crash.
Still if I had the chance to fly on one I would in the snap of a finger.
Update: Thanks to correspondent David Foster of chicagoboyz.net and photoncourier.blogspot.com, who emailed to let me know that there is still a true zeppelin, rigid-frame airship flying in (where else), Germany. It's not nearly as large as the 1930s models, but still impressive, offering rides for tourists, operating out of Friedrichshafen.
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