Superlatives

LIX

When described, the Hindenburg is almost always described in superlatives. She is the "largest" airship ever built, the "most luxurious" and "the most advanced." But was she?

Not really.

She was the longest airship ever built at 804 feet long. But airships had been growing incrementally. She was not very much longer than the 785 foot long twins, the U.S.S. Akron or U.S.S. Macon. And they were only nine feet longer than the British dirigible R-101.

Her lifting gas capacity was less in cubic feet than that of either the Akron or the Macon (the two American ships used helium not hydrogen, so Hindenburg had more lift). Her volume was almost two million feet greater than the R-101, her nearest hydrogen counterpart, and her lifting capacity was far greater.

Hydrogen was dangerous, but European airshipmen had no choice but to use it. The United States had a monopoly on non-combustible helium and refused to sell it even to allies.

A cutaway of the Hindenburg's hull, showing the envelope, the latitudinal rings, the longitudinal girders, the bracing wire, the gas cell netting, the gas cell itself, and beneath all that, the crew and passenger areas of the ship

In terms of her overall construction Hindenburg was a very conservative ship, relying on designs that had served Graf von Zeppelin well. Her skeleton was made up of fifteen sequential concentric latitudinal frames called "rings". The tallest was 145 feet high. Each ring was reinforced with bracing wire the thickness of a pinky that was attached to the ring by a shackle. The effect of the bracing wire gave the ring the appearance of a spiderweb or a dreamcatcher. The open space between each ring was called a compartment. Each compartment held within it one of the sixteen gas cells of the ship and the mechanisms to control them.

The rings did not stand independently. Connecting these rings lengthwise were fifteen longitudinal girders that stretched from stem to stern. Together the rings and girders created a duralumin latticework that was covered over by the envelope that formed the hull.

Artwork of the British R-100. She had three passenger decks to the Hindenburg's two, and a Grand Staircase

Artwork of the British R-101. Her distinctive ribbed appearance is evident. The large dark rectangles are Promenade Deck windows. The passenger areas occupied a much greater cubic footage aboard R-101 than aboard Hindenburg

Other airships used different designs. The Akron and the Macon used eleven "deep" rings (rather like circular keels) and, in addition, had three "standard" keels in the lower starboard, bottom, and lower port portions of the ship. The rings used bracing wire, but the compartments were larger, allowing for the hangar decks on these flying aircraft carriers. The R-101 used fifteen rings like the Hindenburg but only eleven longitudinal girders. Since the designers did not employ bracing wire extensively, the girders were very heavy for their type, and the ship's hull had a "scalloped" appearance. These innovations all proved to be dangerous, as they had not been pretested in prototypes or models. The British seemed to have a penchant for not testing their radically new designs. The loss of the R-38 1n 1921 due to structural failure should have been a lesson. But it wasn’t.

The Hindenburg's two passenger decks occupied the very bottom of the curve of the hull. The accommodations were luxurious, but they did not approach the designs employed on the British airships R-100 and R-101.

R-101 had two large decks within its hull. Just for comparison, the main lounge on the R-101 was larger by 1,000 square feet than the entire passenger area of the Hindenburg. The R-100 had three decks and a Grand Staircase. Both British ships had larger cabins and public areas than the Hindenburg, and both had larger passenger capacity. The only real innovations on the Hindenburg were the shower and the airlocked Smoking Room.

The scalloped hull of R-100

R-100 in flight. The very evident rippling of her envelope had to do with design defects in her interior structure. The rippling weakened the envelope greatly every time she flew. She needed to be modified, but was taken out of service after the crash of R-101 and never underwent a refit or flew again. She was eventually scrapped

Not that it really mattered. By 1936, the Hindenburg was essentially flying without competition. The Akron and the Macon both crashed due to mishandling in bad weather, in 1931 and 1935 respectively, as did the R-101, which exploded on impact in 1930. Lives were lost in all cases. In the case of the British ship this was in part because her untested design was prematurely deemed operational due to political pressure. R-100, her running mate, was grounded and eventually scrapped.

R-101 on a test flight. She may have been the most aesthetically pleasing airship ever designed. but she left the ground with known structural flaws. Her envelope had become brittle due to an improper doping and flaked and tore in flight, leading to her disastrous end. Ironically, the area that ripped away carried her hull number. It can be seen clearly in this photo

The Hindenburg was it.