Wiki says it is some anniversary of the Hindenberg explosion. But, reading further upon noticing the Swastikas (sp?) on its tail, why did the US allow it to come here? Although we were not yet at war with Germany, we were already denying them sales of helium gas (already prefered for these blimps)! Why would the US make Germany look good? …Maybe what happened is poetic justice?
What’s the SD on how this came to be?
Let’s see. A private company, located in a nation we are still at peace with and have diplomatic relations with, has regularly scheduled transatlantic passenger flights from their country to America, the American terminus being a Naval Air station that has the facilities and crew to service it. As it happens, the leadership of that company is pro-American and strongly against the regime which we dislike. It’s “flyng the national flag” – one that has picked up strong negative connotations – by having it painted on its tail, much as a British vessel might have the Union Jack there – and under protest, as mandated by the Third Reich government to do so.
And it’s using hydrogen, not helium, because Germany supposedly has mastered how to safely use hydrogen, the more effective lifting gas but with the danger of being flammable.
I’m looking for the problem you’re seeing here, and missing it. Want to expand on why we should have banned them?
Prior to WW2, Germany was just seen as being led by a very unpleasant leadership, but a lot of people were pretty sure the Nazis would chill out after a while or eventually lose power and vanish. Not many peope really expected war, andeven fewer expected how psychotic they became. They were just your everyday local tyrants then.
You do realize that Aeroflot, the Soviet (now Russian) airline, flew regular flights to the US throughout most of the Cold War?
Just because there is a degree of tension between two countries doesn’t mean they cut off all commerce or air service.
The Hindenburg was designed to use helium. Hydrogen does provide more lift, but the designers still preferred helium because it is safer. The problem was that the U.S. did, as the OP said, have a ban on exporting helium at the time. The Hindenburg designers thought that the ban on helium would be lifted by the time the Hindenburg was ready for flight. It eventually became clear that the ban was going to stay in place, so part way through the design they re-engineered the Hindenburg to use hydrogen and added a few more passenger cabins.
Even though helium was preferred, the switch to hydrogen wasn’t seen as a big deal by a lot of folks, precisely for what Polycarp said. Germany hadn’t had any major hydrogen disasters (yet) and many people did think that they had mastered how to safely use hydrogen.
A lot of folks didn’t like what was happening in Europe at the time, but Germany hadn’t been propaganda’d into the Evil Empire ™ yet. While some folks were starting to scream that Germany was evil (especially a lot of the Jews who had relatives still over there), most Americans really didn’t care one way or the other what happened in Germany. The American Nazi party was holding rallies, and people didn’t really complain much.
Once the war started, Germany became the Evil Enemy, and the American Nazi party pretty much vanished overnight. Before then, a Swastika in the U.S. wasn’t that big of a deal.
And besides, as others have already pointed out, just because there are some tensions with two countries doesn’t mean all flights between them stop. Americans could fly in and out of Iraq right up until the gulf war started. How do you think all of those CNN guys in Baghdad got there?
A lot of Americans thought it was none of their business what Europeans did to each other. Neutrality meant even-handedness and observing the outward forms of polite intercourse.
At that time the US’s relationship with Germanywas a little less friendly than our present-day relationship with Venezuela, but more friendly than our current relationship with Iran.
Consider how much commerce we do with Venezuela now.
You don’t even need the “yet”. The Hindenburg wasn’t a hydrogen disaster, and would in fact have been just about as bad if they had used helium. It wasn’t the gas that was burning, it was the envelope (which, for some unfathomable reason, used thermite as a sealant).
You may be correct, but that wasn’t the conclusion of the relevant episode of MythBusters. Did they miss something or have you just not seen it? If the latter I highly recommend watching that episode.
Short form: It would have burned either way, but the *combination *of hydrogen and rocket-fuel paint made it worse.
I’ve not seen that episode, but would point out that Mythbusters rarely employs a very high degree of methodological rigor. I’m not hating on the show - I think that, insofar as it popularizes the idea that we should test our beliefs through experiment, it does a wonderful public good. However, it isn’t actually a very good cite for the specific myths it tries to test.
Mythbusters: Fantastic epistemology, lackluster science.
I would also point out that Dr. Hugo Eckener (president of the zeppelin airship firm), was hugely popular in the USA. He was not a nazi and had nothing but disdain for Hitler.
It’s worth pointing out that Hugo Eckener only developed doubts about the safety of using hydrogen as a lifting gas after the British R101 crased. He abandoned work the LZ-128 (which was essentialy a larger versin of the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin) and designed the LZ-129 (the Hindenburg) to use a both hydrogen & helium (hydrogen gas cells surrounded by larger helium gas cells). Luftschiffbau Zeppelin eventually decided use only hydrogen after all on economic grounds (helium is/was much more expensive than hydrogen). Dr Eckener was as anti-Nazi as it was safe to be at that time, but he made a deal witht he Devil in order to get the funds he needed to finish the LZ-129. The newly elected Nazis provided the needed funds, but in exchange his company & airline, DELAG, were nationalized.
He didn’t actually lobby the US to lift it’s ban on helium export until after the Hindenburg crashed. Her sister, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin II, was redesigned to use helium and Eckener traveled to the US. President Roosevelt promised to supply helium, but only for peaceful purposes. After the Anschluss, the Secretary of the Interior refused to supply helium, and the Graf Zeppelin II had to use hydrogen after all it (which is why it was never allowed on revenue service).
Fun fact Eckener was prepared to run against Hitler in the 1932 German presidential election, but withdrew when the elderly Paul von Hindenburg decided to run for reelection. Just imagine how very, very different world history could’ve been if Eckener ran & won.
Not quite. If the ‘envelope’ had had a fire-retardant sealant, and if it were only the vented hydrogen which caught fire at first, well … hydrogen is lighter than air. What you would have is an airship settling slowly to the ground as it gradually loses buoyancy, topped by a massive hydrogen flame. This in fact happened with one British airship – I don’t have the relevant data any more for details – and the crew simply jumped as the ship neared the ground, or ran off it after it hit. Virtually no loss of life, and none from fire.
Though it remains still a bit controversial, more and more the consensus is putting the blame for the disaster on the cotton-fabric envelope with incendiary paint catching on fire. Possibly – and this is still conspiracy-theory territory, but there’s a little evidence supporting it – with sabotage, probably from anti-Nazis involved.
Color film of the Hindenberg.
While the consensus disagrees wit my premise, I still say it is odd that the US should put a ban on selling helium to Germany (hence, bolstering their need to use hydrogen safely) and YET allow them airship passage here.
So, what’s the point of the ban in the first place? As implied above, it must be all politics, right? …Do as I say, and not as I do.
I don’t fully understand your question. The US was the primary producer of helium. We banned its export to Germany because it could be used for military zeppelins, so the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen. There was no restriction on the sale of hydrogen to Germany, because hydrogen is so easily produced that there wouldn’t be a point. I can produce hydrogen with a glass of water, some wire and a battery, and also because hydrogen is more dangerous to use, because it burns, so a military zeppelin filled with hydrogen is easier to shoot down.
The Hindenburg was a passenger liner, filled with people who wanted to visit America. We were at peace with Germany at the time, so why would we stop a flight from Germany to America?
The US also had a military (well naval) airship program at the time the export ban was put into place. Airships as bombers become obsolete in 1916, airships as scouts were still considered a possibility. The US Navy even experimented with carrying small scout planes on airships. As things turned out the USN had a string of bad luck, flew airships into conditions they shouldn’t have, and was never able develop a clear doctrine for rigid airships. Non-rigid blimps did prove very useful in WWII escorting a variety of ships.
The Nazis considered airships useless for anything other than propoganda flights and/or passenger travel. The Graf Zeppelin II was used to test British radar, but that was it as far as military use of airsips by the Nazis.
There are all sorts of fairly routine things we will not sell to China right now because of their military utility. Last I heard we have a fairly vigourous trading relationship with them anyway.
Restricting sales of military goods has nothing to do with dealing with the target countries’ responses. We won’t sell them guns so we refuse to permit Amercans to import the bows & arrows they make instead? There is no logic in that, nor in anyone thinking that connection should be logical.
I do sorta see the irony in forcing them to use hydrogen and then they bring over a big bag of the destructive stuff & set the darn thing off at a US Navy base.
But that’s a consequence of the oddity that the miitary utility of helium is precisely in its non-destructiveness. And the military non-utility of hydrogen is that it’s too inflammable.
Gentlemen! You can’t fight here, it’s the War Room!!
In point of fact, one major reason the Navy was so enthusiastic about the big rigid airships was their ability to remain aloft over remote areas of ocean for extended periods without needing refueling. In a time before radar and supersonic aircraft, they made a perfect intelligence tool for monitoring the oceans for hostile warcraft, etc. Surveillance of the northern and eastern Pacific in case of actual or impending hostilities with Japan was the intended major use for the Akron and Macon and their eventual sister ships, according to plans.