Yeah, those damn Waltons! They’re always ruining everything!
Curate, Hindenburg’s pressure height was fourteen hundred meters. The Anaheim Blimp Company site says: “Our airships normally operate at around 1,500 to 3,000 feet. We can, however, go up to 8,000 but the payload is reduced.”
You’re correct about the WW I zeppelins. Germany got into an arms race with Great Britain - the Brits developing fighter planes that could fly higher and higher to shoot down the zeps, and the Germans developing zeppelins that could cruise at higher and higher altitudes to avoid attack. They finally were flying bombing raids at over 20,000 feet, pretty impressive, especially with WW I technology.
The book The Airships Akron and Macon - flying aircraft carriers of the United States Navy covers the troubles the Akron had on one of her cross-country flights. The biggest problem (on top of an engine failure) was the fact that they were flying from west to east across the Rockies. Therefore they were trying to make it over the mountains near the beginning of the trip while they were still loaded down with a full fuel load.
Another really good book is the Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships - Graf Zeppelin & Hindenburg by Harold Dick and Douglas Robinson. Dick was an engineer for Goodyear and spent five years working with the Zeppelin Company in Germany. He made 22 transatlantic flights in the airships and gives a great inside view of what they were like to fly on and how they operated.
Oh, I don’t know, they made a movie about it, starring George C. Scott and a bunch of other “no name” actors. AMC’s currently showing the film, so I have to say the odds of The Waltons being to blame are pretty slim.
Thanks, Santos, for reminding me of the details of the Akron’s difficulties with the Rocky Mountains. I was in a game store a few months back that had a game based on a possible war with Japan being fought in the 30’s, and I wondered if it included the possible use of Zeppelins as scouts and what kind of advantage, if any, their use might have provided. I seem to recall that there was only one occasion when the navy conducted war games in which the Macon or the Akron (I can’t remember which) and their attendant airplanes were actually used as intended, but that the experiment showed some promise.
I’m going to look for the books that have been mentioned. When I was in the sixth grade I was able to take a ride on one of the Goodyear blimps in Houston, and I’ve been fascinated ever since.
Lucky bastard. I plan to keep pestering the two campanies mentioned above to find out when rides will be available.
I highly recommend the Akron & Macon book (it’s by Richard K. Smith). It gives a lot of info about the unfortunately short life of the airships as well as a lot of detail about the operation of the fighter planes they carried and routinely launched and recovered.
I also recommend Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg as already mentioned.
Another good one is Blimps & U-Boats by J. Gordon Vaeth. During WW II the US Navy operated over 150 blimps as anti-submarine aircraft patrolling the coastline and protecting shipping convoys. IIRC, not a single ship was lost while under blimp protection.
Perhaps, but didn’t Led Zepplin (or some other rock band) use a shot of the Hindenburg going up in flames? I know that I’ve seen tons of images of the Hindenburg going up and have never seen The Waltons episode you mention. (I quit watching after their house burned down.)
Okay, but still! More people saw the TV show than the obscure movie. And more people saw the Led Zeppelin album cover (I believe it was LZ II) than saw the TV show.
The show had authentic footage - John Boy was a newspaper reporter at the time, so it would have been quite late in the series’ run. He was “on location” in Lakehurst to cover the landing of the Hindenburg.
And I gotta tell ya, it was some scary footage. Yeeck.
It seems hydrogen was not the culprit in the Hindenberg diaster but the aluminum oxide compounds used in the fabric covering of the ship. The compounds had a very similar chemical makeup to solid rocket fuel.
Right. But, most people think that it was the hydrogen which made it go kerblewie. One of the things that’s going to make hydrogen cars a tough sell to folks is called “the Hindenburg effect,” i.e. hydrogen goes boom in a rather spectacular fashion. So does gasolene, of course, but people are used to being around gasolene, so much so, that they don’t think about the fact that they’re loading an explosive into their car to make it go.
Of course, you would think that all of those “no smoking” signs at the gas stations might give them pause. Still, your point is well taken. When people see “hydrogen,” they think “explosive”; when they see “gasoline,” they think “fuel” - and nothing more.
That doesn’t mean hydrogen is perfectly safe! “It’s as safe as gasoline” isn’t saying much at all. There’s no doubt that a helium airship is safer than a hydrogen airship. Besides, the cost of helium is small compared to the cost of the hardware.
Speaking of which, I read once that commercial jets tires are inflated with helium since it’s lighter than air, and the cost of the helium is less than the amount of jet fuel needed were the tires to be filled with air. Anyone know if that’s true?
I may be venturing into urban legend territory here, but back in the 70’s I had a subscription to Air Classics magazine and I seem to recall a story about the sub-hunting blimps of WWII. They did indeed have a very good record of safety, but I recall a mention in the story about one blimp that crashed after a patrol and was found to be without its crew. Parachutes were still aboard, life raft still in place, but no people. I also recall a reference to Goodyear’s recycling the gondola of that blimp for use in one of their company aircraft after the war, and that supposedly they went to some lengths to obscure which one of their blimps was using the “haunted” gondola. Keep in mind that the story must have been written during the 70’s obsession with the Bermuda Triangle.
I can’t find any reference to it on the internet, but as long as we’re kicking around the hazards of lighter than air flight I think I’d rather take a chance with burning hydrogen than being unexpectedly squirted into an alternate dimension.
