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The Hindenburg Disaster · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: should Know. This is one of those ones, Chuck, that
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm really surprised we haven't done already.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And actually, boy, talk about a segway.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: This is about the transatlantic voyage of the Hindenburg. But
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: before we get into that quickly, we want to remind everybody,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: or maybe if you're hearing this for the first time,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: about the Stuff at Sea voyage that we are going
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: on in partnership with Virgin Voyages. We're taking to the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Great Seas, right.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: We are not the skies, the seas, and we are
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: actually headlining a very special voyage called Stuff at Sea
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: and it's us doing our thing, including a live podcast
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: on board, and then some of our other colleagues too,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: including the stuff they don't want you to know. Guys
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: are going to be doing their thing two on this.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I think it's a five night voyage.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: That's right October two through seven, from New York City
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to Bermuda. Like I said, this is through Virgin so
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: that means it is a kid free luxury experience. And
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: there's also gonna be interactive sessions. The you're gonna be
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: meet and greets, they're gonna be themed activations. Woha, wonder
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: what that is.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I also saw it described as a culture soaked escape
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. I don't think
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: anything else needs to be said besides that.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you get it, folks. If you want
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to come hang out on a very large boat with
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: us in the middle of the ocean and here us
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: do our live podcast along with other things, then this
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: is going to be our only chance to ever do that.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very nice. You can go to virgin Voyages dot
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: com slash stuff in October. Cool. I don't know that
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: this was the best episode to put that in, but
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: we did what we did.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: You know, well, it's not like it's the Titanic episode.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Oh that's a great great Yeah, that's a good point
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: that would have been.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: That would be bad, really, because we're taking through the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: skies now talking about what happened on May six, nineteen
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: thirty seven, when the Hindenburg dirigible crashed burst into flames
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: over Lakehurst, New Jersey. And I am also surprised you
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: haven't covered this. This is you know, I didn't really
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: know much about it. I knew the Hindenburg crash, and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I'd seen the footage and heard the stuff the commentary,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: but I was like, yeah, man, that they built that
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: thing and they tried it out and it crashed. I
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: didn't know that they had successfully flown this stuff a bunch,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: and that there were even worse airship disasters than this.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: This is just the most well known. For reasons we'll
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: get into.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pretty shocking to see, and it was
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: really well documented. But yeah, I think including.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Me, never mind, there it is what those are the reasons?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but including me though, Chuck, I thought it
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: was the maiden voyage too. I didn't realize it was
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: just part of a larger thing either. And I think
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: the Hindenburg itself had already been on a three day
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: publicity tour and a round trip to Buenos Aires and
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: back from Germany before the unfortunate incident happened in New Jersey.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it had flown a bunch.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's talk about this. Because the Hindenburg was
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: known as an airship, which was also known as a dirigible,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: which you mentioned a second ago, and there's actually specific
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: criteria to be a dirigible, and the Hindenburg just checked
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: all the boxes.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: That's right. Dirigible means it is powered, so it's not
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: just floating around if they're like a hot air balloon.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: But hot air balloons and dirigibles are the same things
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: as far as being lifted by what's known as LTA
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: gas lighter than air gas in this case. In this
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: case we're talking hydrogen, but also helium was almost used
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and now it's pretty much exclusively used. Yeah, and then
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it means it's steerable as well, so you can you
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: can tell it to go in a certain direction, tell
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: it by way of working the rudder and powering those
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: engines and it'll go in that direction.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. All you have to do is shout dirigible,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: go there and it goes.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Well. I didn't know that it was actually an It
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: can be an adjective as well.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: For steerable, dirigible and steerable. So like this car is
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: highly dirigible because it's got great responsiveness.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Just try using that word like that though, and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: see if you don't get pushed back.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I would think there have to be an auto journalist
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: who's used it here there because they're just so sick
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: of using the same terms, you know.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like Current Driver magazine, like the snooty writers.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So there's three forms that argiles come in, Chuck,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: and it basically all has to do with how the
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: structured the blimp part is well structured. I guess the
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: B word. Yeah, I know you're not really supposed to
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: say that, but it's true. I mean, I think it's
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: pretty accessible to say blimp.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, we got you know, the Eastlake Golf
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: tournament is right near my house and so when we're
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: hanging out at the house during the tournament, oftentimes that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Goodyear Blimp is directly over my home. It's very cool
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to see.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Didn't you say you're trying to angle for a ride
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: in the Goodyear Blimp and that you're in laws have
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: ridden in the Goodyear Blimp at our Akron show.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I have never done that. You know, obviously Akron
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: is the home of Goodyear, and I think the blimp
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: still and my father in law Steve has at one
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: point road in that Goodyear blimp, but I have never
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: done it. So if anyone can take me up, and
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you I mean you're invited, you.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Know, Oh sure, sure, I assume that if you're interested.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I am or not. My dad
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: went on a hot air balloon ride and I was like,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: I'm not getting in that thing.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean after reading this, I mean, it's a
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: different deal now, but it definitely gives pause.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Right, So let's get back to what the balloon like
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: envelope aka the blimp part. How that describes what type
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: of dirigibles are. There's three of them.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah. There's non rigid, semi rigid, and rigid. Non
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: rigid is more like a high air balloon. That means
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: there's no structure on the inside and it's just the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: pressure of that gas keeping everything puffed out.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, and hot air balloons are what make New Mexico's
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: license plates so nice.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I agreed.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Semi rigid is kind of like non rigid, except there's
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: like a keel. There's like a structure for the keel,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the part that runs along the bottom of the envelope. Right, yeah,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: so there is some structure to essentially the bottom, but
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: then I guess it flops over, so it's basically like
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: a chef's hat. Like the sweetest chef's hate. Yeah, but
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: it flies right, and then Rigid is the last one.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: There's like a skeleton like frame, usually of a really
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: light but strong material, maybe aluminum. You sent a YouTube
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: of colorized photos of the Hindenburg, the interior in particular,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: and they said that its skeleton was made of dure illumine.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of that before?
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I had never heard of it, so of course I
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: had to look it up. I'm sure you did too.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: That's an aluminum copper alloy, right, that's as strong as
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: soft steel whatever that is.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what that is either, but if
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: it's not exactly what it sounds like, then somebody messed
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: up naming.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: It's a lot lighter than soft steel, obviously, and in
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the case of the Hindenburg, and I learned this all
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: from that YouTube video. It's pretty cool to see those
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: pictures as well. Yeah, there are fifteen, as they described them,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: ferris wheel like rings that gave this thing the shape,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and between those rings, and this is something I didn't know,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: there were sixteen separate balloons between those rings. And that
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: whole thing was covered with Goodyear latex and then a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: cotton like canvas fabric outer shell.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the outer skin the envelope was not what
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: the gas was filled in, like it was in these
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: basically bladders inside the envelope, right, yeah, yeah, how many
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: were there? Like fourteen?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I guess then, I think sixteen balloons. We al should
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: mention that cotton canvas fabric was coated with their protective
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: coating because that'll come into play.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it kept the sun off essentially so that the
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: sun wouldn't heat the gas inside and so that the
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: UV rays wouldn't break it down into useless I don't
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: know what you'd break hydrogen down into. I guess ions.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: So the other thing about the rigid one, and I
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: had no idea about this either, is that the the
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: passengers and crew usually are inside that envelope, inside the blimp.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And if you look at the Hindenburg, there's like a
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: little you know, what's called the gondola attached to the
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: bottom of it, and that seems to be I think
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: the cockpit where if you were a passenger and you
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: were hanging out in the Hindenburg, you were inside that blimp.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: I had no idea about that.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Did you, Yeah? I did, because like where else would
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: they be because I mean, once you find out that
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: there are like twenty five cabins and a bar and
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a restaurant and all that stuff, it's obviously not going
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: to fit. I mean, you know, you could hang out there.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think they encouraged the passengers to hang
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: out in those two that double decked area because that's
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: where all the windows were, right. But I also learned
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: that from watching the trailer to the Hindenburg movie when
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: it showed a lot of action inside that shell.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha. So I just thought that the gondola was
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: just that dwarfed by the blimp itself and that it
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: held all that stuff. I had no idea they were
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: inside the blimp. I find that much more claustrophobic.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I could see how you would
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: think that because once you get a little bit and
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about the size of this thing, but you
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: need not only look at pictures of the Hindenburg flying
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: over New York City to see how gargantuan this thing was.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: It was enormous. So that good Year blimp, it depends
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: on which one you're talking about. I've seen that the
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Hindenburg was more than eight hundred feet long, almost as
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: long as the Titanic.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how does it compare to the seven forty seven?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Where is that?
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: I think it's like three times as long as the
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: seven forty seven and twice as tall.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously, Like go look up just type in like
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Hindenburg over New York City and it's the scale is
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: really kind of it drives at home for sure.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really It's really impressive. One of the
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: other things I saw, too, is that it had a
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: gas capacity. So of the hydrogen it held of seven million,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: sixty two thousand cubic feet of highydrogen gas. And to
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: put that in perspective, that's the gas equivalent of seven
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: sixty two thousand and one cubic foot bags of top
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: soil that you get at the Garden Center. That's how
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: much hydrogen gas it held.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of gas, and you know, of course
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that's what keeps it aloft. As far as those engines,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: it had four diesel engines, and it moved pretty quick.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I mean as far as travel of the day. It
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: could get across the Atlantic in two days. Yeah, the
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: fastest ocean line aer trip took five and it's still
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: it had the sister ship the LZ one thirty. There
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: are still the two largest aircrafts to ever take flight
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: off the ground.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was a pretty impressive ship for anybody,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: but it also was not like the first of its kind.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: It was the point that they had reached in the
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: development of dirigibles up to that point, which had really
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: been kind of going for almost one hundred years at
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: that point. I think it was in eighteen fifty when
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: the whole dirgible craze kicked off in Paris, thanks to
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: our friend Pierre Julienne.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. That was the first one. I think
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was in eighteen yeah fifty, Like you said, the next
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: one and that seemed more like a little like, hey, everybody,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: check this thing out. In eighteen fifty two you got
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the first full size one. Thanks. It was really the
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: French and Germans leading this charge was a French engineer
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: named Jules Auri Gifar one hundred and forty three feet
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: pretty big.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Sure, cant and sneeze at that. He also traveled seventeen
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: miles around in his first flight of his airship, which
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: is again nothing to sneeze that. He was puttering around
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: a six.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Miles an hour literally around right.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, in circles essential. The first few airships just
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: basically traveled in circles. The next one was eighteen eighty four.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: This is considered the first round trip light. I'm not
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: sure what Giffard was doing, but the French Army Corps
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: of Engineers like thirty years later took their dirigible in
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: a round trip flight, again a circle, but this one
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: was just four to five miles and it had a
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: nine horsepower motor and that is the same size motor
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: of a really good push mower, lawn mower.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you know, you're up there in the sky,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: so you're you don't have to give it a lot
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: to get it going. And again they're not going very fast,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: six to ten miles an hour. All of these so
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: far have been non rigid. By the way, the first
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: rigid win came in eighteen ninety nine courtesy of Count
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Ferdinand von Zeppelin. That's where that word and eventual band
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: name would come from.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Zeppelin basically became the leader in developing, designing
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: and developing airships dirigibles at a time when it was
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: like this is the new thing, Like if you wanted
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: to get from one continent to another you took a
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: log liner, Like you said, they were kind of slow.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Zeppelins could go way faster, and it was like that
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: the promise of airship travel was just limitless at this
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: time when Zeppelin came along.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And as far as the band, I
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: can't remember who said it, this is off the dome,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: but somebody said something about them going over. They would
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: go over like a led Zeppelin. Yeah, obviously that's a
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: two contradictory terms. Sure, and that's what they meant. They're
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: being sort of a cheeky and of course you know
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: it was. The Hindenburg was on the cover of their
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: first record, of their debut album.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: One other thing, I looked up the el Z in
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: any of the Zeppelins, So like the first rigid airship
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: was called el Z one and you mentioned no, I
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: thought probably it was, Yeah, but it's a looft shift
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: or airship in German. So airship Zeppelin one was the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: first rigid airship. The sister ship of the Hindenburg was
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: ELZ one third. Yeah, that's right. So yes, I think,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: as a rule of thumb, anytime you're taking advantage of
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: a new technology that carries you away from Earth or
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: carries you long earth that really fast speeds do not
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: go in any models that are still in the single digits.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: That's just a good rule of thumb, I think.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: All right, So if the new plane comes out and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: it's the oh, I don't know, Airmax seven.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Just wait until he get the ten. They're gonna get
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: there fast because those next three are not going to
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: stay around very long.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: You're right, that's good advice. So nineteen ten was the
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: first commercial passenger flight. This baby went I think it
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: carried twenty three people plus nine crew on a sight
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: seeing loop yep. But it crashed. No casualties, no, get this.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: So this was LZ seven, still single digits. Yeah, ran
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: out of fuel, was blown off course and it had
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: in in trouble and it crashed into some trees. But
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the fact that nobody died is pretty well happy, I guess.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Eighteen years later we got our first transatlantic flight,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: and this is what they were gunning for. This thing
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: went from Germany to where the Hindenburg would go, Lakehurst,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: New Jersey. It's sort of a suburban Philadelphia like east
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: of Philly. Okay, one hundred and eleven hours and forty
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: four minutes. But this is what they were, you know,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: they were looking for, you know, the next wave of
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: like taking people. It wasn't just like wowser stuff or hey,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: like we tried it once. They were like really trying
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to compete with ocean liner travel.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I say we take a break and we come
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: back and get into that a little more. How about that?
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: All right, We'll be right okay, Chuck. So, like you
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: were saying, before the break, the zeppelin development had gotten
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: to the point where it's like, we can get across
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the Atlantic, we can get down to South America anytime
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: we want, Like, no problem, We've reached that point. Let's
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: just start creating dirigibles that are meant for transatlantic travel. Like,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: let's really put a dent in the ocean liner industry.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: We're just going to create a new travel industry. And
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: that's what they said about doing so. The the Hindenburg
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: LZ one was the part of this larger planned fleet
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: of specifically transatlantic luxury zeppelins that we're going to essentially
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: change the world and make it much smaller.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, it was you know, it was luxury
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: in the sense that it was an airship that catered
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: to rich people. If you look at the pictures, it
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: looks nice, but it's it's still not like anything you
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: would get on board, like the Titanic or anything like that,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: just because it was an airship, so they couldn't. You know,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: there are obvious weight limitations and size limitations, like the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: cabins were really really small, but they you know, they
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: were they were good, good looking enough for the for
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: the crowd that they were catering to, which is really
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: rich people. Because I think it costs, like in today
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: dollars like ten thousand dollars compared to about half that
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: for an ocean liner transatlantic ocean liner voyage.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those are one way too, not like our voyage
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: in October, which is round trip.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: That's right. They're bringing us back right, yeah, Okay.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: It's gonna leave us stranded in Bermuda.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I mean they could drop us in Atlanta on the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: way home. I would think, oh, that's.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: A great idea, that's a wonderful idea. Choke, we'll ask, okay,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean there, it was expense but it
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: was also very new, right, so you can imagine, I mean,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: luxury ocean liners have been doing this for a very
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: long time. By the time they reached that cost of
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: about five thousand dollars for a luxury liner. So you
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: can imagine that, like the Zeppelin Company had their eye
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: on bringing costs down eventually so that more people could
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: afford it. Yeah, but in the meantime to start, I mean,
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: that's kind of what you do. You attract everyone's attention
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: by getting the richest, most famous, most powerful people that
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: come fly on your friendly skies, and then newspapers write
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: about it like, oh my gosh, did you see Missus
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Astor eight hundred feet up hanging from the outside of
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: the Hindenburg. It was amazing. You could see Rode up
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: or dress. That's what newspapers want to write about, you know,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And so that's what they were doing.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and today Missus Astor's equivalent, I guess is Katy Perry.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right, Chuck, what a time delive.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: That was amazing.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So I mentioned hydrogen and helium as the LTA lighter
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: than air gases used to power anything like this. And
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: they had a real decision to make early on with
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the Hindenburg, like what to use, and the original design
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: was hydrogen, but then they said there was a crash
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: of in nineteen thirty of the British airship R one
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: oh one out of the single digits YEP still crashed,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: survived impact, but everybody died in the hydrogen fire because
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: hydrogen turns out superflammable. So Hugo. Eckner said, you know what,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: let's go to helium. It's way more stable. It's a
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: little bit heavier, so we're going to have to design
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: a larger envelope so we can keep that same payload.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: But then there was a US helium embargo and the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: United States was the only maker and cellar of helium
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: at the time, and so they said, all right, you
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: know what, let's go back to hydrogen and let's just
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: cross our fingers.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a Helium Act of nineteen twenty five
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: that I never heard of that the US is like,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: this is a natural research that we really need, so
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: we're just going to keep it all to ourselves.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And we see a podcast on that at some point
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: right on helium.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: No, we've definitely talked about it because there was a
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: shortage and it was all everybody was really worried about
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: it growing away, and then all of a sudden we
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: found a huge new vein of it in the United
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: States and now there's no problem with helium anymore. Stuff
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: like that makes me feel like we're definitely in a
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: simulation sometimes, you know, Yeah, it happens a lot like
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: people are like, oh, we're hitting peak oil or you know,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: like we're going to run out of helium and all
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: this horrible stuf's going to happen, and then nothing happens,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Like something comes along and just completely does away with
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: that randomly.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: At any rate, that was not the case for the
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: designers of the Hindenburg. They had to go with hydrogen,
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: like you said, and because they had made that envelope
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: so much bigger to accommodate the more helium that they
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: were going to need, they were going to now have
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: to fill the whole thing with hydrogen. So they added
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: a bunch more passenger cabins to basically, we'll make more money,
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: but also to make it heavier so that it would
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: do all the same things it would have had a
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: been helium.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it wouldn't float away. Pretty much, pretty much,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: we went over some of the sizes. I think we
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: should probably mention the cruising speed with seventy six miles
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: an hour with a topper of eighty four miles per hour. Yeah,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and total you've got about forty flight crew, ten to
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: twelve stewards and cooks. As we'll learn there was a
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: bartender as well, and then fifty passengers in thirty six
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and then up to seventy two I guess because they
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: built those extra cabins.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Right right, right, And that was nineteen thirty seven season,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: and I think nineteen thirty six was the only complete
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: season in the Hindenburg service. One other thing that I
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: was trying to get to the bottom of that was
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: surprisingly hard to find was its cruising altitude. Now, yeah,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: apparently it's usual cruising altitude or normal cruising out sude
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: was like six hundred and fifty feet or about two hundred.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Meters man's press.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: It is impressive, but they would usually fly lower to
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: basically fly under clouds rather than through or over them.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean these things I saw somebody say,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: like these are they were flying at the height of like,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: you know, the tallest trees in the world, Like it,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: It wasn't that high up that they were flying.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean also, and I don't know if that
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: anything to do with it, but you want people to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: see this thing if they're trying to draw them up business. Sure,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and again those pictures over New York City, that thing
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: is pretty low.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It is like like kind of concerningly low. Actually.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Chuck, just a little more about what it
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: looked like inside and what it was, you know, like
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: aboard the Hindenburger. Remember these were luxury, like, state of
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: the art luxury accommodations in the mid nineteen thirties, but
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: they also had to adjust for weight and stuff like that.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Like you were saying, it seemed like there was formica everywhere,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Like it looked like the walls were made of formica even.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally a lot of formica, but that that jibe
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a little bit with sort of the art deco look
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: that seemed like it ran throughout.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. For sure, they dressed for dinner like you would think.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: There was an illuminum piano made specifically because a baby
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Grand would just be too heavy. Yeah, and they had,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: of course incredible meals in this incredibly cramped dining room. Yeah.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: And then there was a smoking room, which at first
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: I'm like, well, of course there's a smoking room, it's
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the thirties. And then I was like, hydrogen dirigible that
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: is actually pretty remarkable.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it had a double air lock. Apparently there was
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: one lighter, so they didn't trust people to, you know,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: just to bring their own lighters, so there was one
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: lighter that would light everyone's cigarettes I guess or whatever else.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: They were smoking pipes I imagine cigars, blunts. Who knows
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the bartender was. I can't remember the guy's name, but
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: they talked about him in the YouTube video and he
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: seemed to be a pretty popular guy. And there's one
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: story of a famous passenger who creates a drink or
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I guess rather his wife did. British author Leslie Charteris,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: who created the Saint Yeah franchise, His wife Pauline was
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a bored and apparently they ran out of gin, like
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: probably pretty fast, a lot of gin based drinks back then.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: So she created a martini made from kishpasser which I
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: looked up, which is like a some sort of a
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: cherry thing.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a cherry brandy. It's really good.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Oh you've had it?
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah? Yeah, remember when I was like super into
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: making cocktails.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I've used like the cherry, like the
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Lexardo liqueur and stuff. Is it sort of like that.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: No, it's much lighter and it's not nearly a syrupy
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: and heavy. It's more of a spirit than like a syrup,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, because the yeah lxardo is a liqueur, but
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the other one is like a legit ninny proof you
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: know kind of thing.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, where you're like who, But it's it is very
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: good and it's it's like a cherry flavor. So she
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: used that instead of gin, and apparently then did the
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: bartender die because like supposedly, the rest of the ingredients
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: are lost to history.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess Pauline must have died or else
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: she could have just probably told everybody. By the way, like,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: after this tragedy settles, I created a whiz bang of
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: a drink up.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: There exactly remind me to tell you about the Hymn
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: cocktail that came out. But I saw somebody surmise that
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: the other ingredients were probably drivermoth, which you like at
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: a Martini grenadine and not like Roses grenadine, but like
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: the real pomegranate syrup, and a lemon peel. Yeah that
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: sounds nice, Sure, I'll try that.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: So what else they had that piano.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: The cabins had running hot and cold water. They had
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: a little fold down desk, but they were small. The
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: crew cabins were just like would expect a crew cabin
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: to be very small. It look like those beds were
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: a couple of feet wide.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were bunk beds too.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: So with an art deco ladder, no less too pretty.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Of course it was kind of cool looking. I'm not
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: a huge fan of the nineteen thirties esthetic. I liked
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: the ladders for the bunk beds.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I'm big into deco. Maybe you can get one of
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: those off of eBay or something.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Oh man, it's it's probably dead or gone up in flames.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I would guess, well, some of that stuff survived as
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: in a museum. True, so you couldn't buy it, but
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: maybe we could, you know, bust it out.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we could break into the Smithsonian.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Get that ladder for you.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Just pass everything else by and go straight for the
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Hindenburg ladder.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: That's it, that's all you want.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: And I'd be like, I'd get it home and be like,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: I don't even have bunk beds, So this is all
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: getting lots of press, like this is a big deal. Remember,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: the Hindenburg was part of a playing Transatlantic fleece, so
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: this is big news. One thing that a lot of
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: people forget is that the Nazis were in charge of
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Germany at the time. The Hindenburg was a German ship.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: It was a civilian ship, but it still had big
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: fat swastikas on its tail fins. And as everyone knows,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: the Hindenburg went up in flames. I think is no
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: coincidence that its tail went up in flames first, because
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: It, right, it's a good point. I didn't think about that. Actually.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: So the Nazis were like, hey, we're trying to get
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: everybody a like us to psych them out, and let's
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: send the Hindenburg on a three day publicity tour around Europe. Essentially,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: that was its maiden voyage in March of nineteen thirty six.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they did a lot of these little propaganda flights
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: and apparently the one that lifted off on May six
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: had some engine trouble. But they had had to skip
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: endurance test because of one of those propaganda flights.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they were like it'll be fine. Apparently, think
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: that they would have found the engine troubles, but The
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Hindenberg made its first passage to America in May of
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six, which is confusing because it was May
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty seven when it had its last Yeah,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: its last voyage to America, so almost exactly a year
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: later in between its first trip to America and its
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: last trip to America. Yeah, it got me all throughout
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: researching this. Yeah for sure, Wait wait what how are
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: these people alive?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And then yeah, they completed thirty four flights in nineteen
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: thirty six, which included some of those propaganda flights, one
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: of which very famously at the nineteen thirty six Olympic
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Games there in Berlin. And then you know, round trip
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: flights to America and then the one to Brazil that
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, and they had, you know, they were catering
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned the astors, you know, Nelson Rockefeller, the
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: head of Eastern's airline TWA pan Am Like. I think
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: they were kind of rubbing in the face of all
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: these early airlines, right saying, come fly on this super
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: slow but kind of awesome thing.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: I wonder also if they were like, hey, don't you
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: guys want to start your own airship division. We'll sell
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: you theatirships, you know. Yeah, it could have also been
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: a little of both. Yeah, right, that millionaire's flight you mentioned,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Eddie Rickenbacher was also on that, and he's the American
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: flying ace from World War One who took down the
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Red baron. Yeah, so I'm sure it was a tad
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: awkward around the other German military Nazi leaders who were
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: on that millionaire's flight too.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well this guy, right.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: So that was nineteen thirty six. It was a triumphant
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: year for the Hindenburg, and it had six more successful
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: flights in nineteen thirty seven. When it started, I say
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: we take a break and come back again, and things
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: just start to go poorly for the Hindenburg. How about that?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back, all right. I was
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: confused by the May stuff as well, because here we
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: are in May again, one year after the first commercial
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: passage in thirty six, all those successful flights. Later, the
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: seventh one of the new year, on May third, nineteen
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: thirty seven, Captain Max Press was at the Helm and
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: it lifted off there in Frankfurt headed toward Lake Hirst.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: There's a naval air base there by the way, which
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: is why they kept going to suburban New Jersey.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is kind of shocking. They were letting the
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: nazis land blimpse and at a naval air base in
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: New Jersey.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this was still I mean, this was
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: just before they probably would have said no, right, right, Yeah,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: So they got all the way there, they flew and
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: that's sort of the cruel tragedy of this is or
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: one of them is, you know, if there were any nerves,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: they're like landing in New Jersey and they're like, this
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: is great. We made it. Everybody, we're all sort of drunk.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: We put out our last cigars. It was a storm.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: There was a storm happening, so they sort of delayed
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: the landing. They flew out over the ocean for a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: few more hours. I imagine everyone got even more liquored up.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: And then finally around seven pm, they descended in high
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: winds from about five hundred feet down down down to
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: a little under three hundred feet and they actually dropped
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: those mooring ropes, which turned out spoiler alert could have
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: caused this whole thing, and they secured those ropes at
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: seven twenty five. They secured those ropes to the ground
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: with their winch system, and in less than thirty seconds
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: it was all over.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the ropes that bear this in mind, the
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: ropes had been dropped and touching the ground for at
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: least four minutes by this time, right, Yeah, so yes,
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: it took I think I saw thirty four seconds from
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: the time when the flames erupted to the time when
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: the entire thing was destroyed and crashed on the ground.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: It went that fast, Like I said, the stern, the
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: tail of it caught fire first and the flames just
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: kind of blew through the envelope and came out the nose.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: And what's just mind boggling is that as it landed
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: on the ground, because it was a light skeleton but
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: not something you would want to land on you. And
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: in fact, one of the ground crew died, yeah, from
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: the skeleton landing on him. People once it hit the ground,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: people were running out of the flames and survived. They
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: were running for their lives and they actually made it,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: which is crazy.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Two, I mean, we'll go ahead and go with
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the numbers. Two thirds of the people basically survived. There
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: were ninety seven people on board total, thirty six passengers,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: sixty one crew, and only thirty six people perished, thirteen
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: pass and twenty two crew and then the one ground
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: crew person that you were talking about, and very famously
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: it was it was called live by a Chicago radio
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: reporter named Herb Morrison. Yeah, and I think we should
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: either I'll either read it, well, I'll read it, but
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: hopefully we can replace it with the real thing, Like
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: surely this is like within the public domain, right.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: I saw uncertain according to the Library of Congress.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: All right, well shall I do it? Then?
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Do it? Can you do a great HERD Morrison impression?
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Though, I'll do my best. Weall.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Can you do it as Jim Morrison?
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe I should do it as Sammy Davis Junior, just
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: to give it some light.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: I would love to hear that if you're okay.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: No, no, I can't do that. That would be even
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: that this decades later, it would be disrespectful, I think.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that hasn't been one hundred years.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: No, all right, so here we go. This was Herb
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Morrison's call, and this is what was played and literally
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: played in movie theater newsreels like the next day. So
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it's all over the place, it's fire and it's crashing
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: it's burning, bursting into flames, and it's falling on the
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: mooring mast. This is the worst of the worst catastrophes
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: in the world. Oh, it's crashing, oh four or five
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: hundred feet into the sky, and it's a terrific crash.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke and there's flames now and
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: the frame is crashing to the ground. Oh the humanity
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and all the passengers screaming around here. I can't talk,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. Honest. It is just laying there, a
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: massive smoking wreckage, and everybody can hardly breathe and talk. Honest,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: I cannot see it.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: That was excellent. If you listen to herb Morrison actually
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: doing this, he's in between a lot of these sentences,
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh, oh yeah, he is just completely overwhelmed.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: It happens immediately the moment he sees those flames. He's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: just completely overwhelmed. Go listen to her Morris and calling
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: that because it's just it's quite stirring. And he's the
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: one who gave us that phrase, Oh the humanity.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently, and that's where that comes from I just
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: kind of want to do a straight reading. I didn't
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: want to do all the morning.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: No, no, I mean, no one expected you to do that.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't want to arouse anybody.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he've always got your eye like three steps ahead, man.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: I hope so. But yeah, oh the humanity that had
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: never been said before? Is that true?
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know if it had been said,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: but certainly heard. Morrison was the one who popularized it.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Seems to me like everything that he said was just
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: pouring out of him without thinking. Yeah, so I would
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: guess that was just off the cuff for him.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Man, it's amazing. So again, only thirty six of the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: ninety seven people aboard perished. Immediately, there were about fifteen
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: hundred US Navy personnel there that were, you know, all
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: of a sudden doing not much of a search but
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: just rescue attempts. And like I said, it was all
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: over the news the next morning, it was on movie
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: theater newsreels. Within hours of both American and German investigators
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: were there, and immediately theories started coming out kind of
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: left and right.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is the thirties, everybody's already starting to
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: get wise to what the Nazis are like. There's also
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: communists running around, maybe even old school anarchists who like
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: to throw bombs. So the idea that it was this
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: act of sabotage was bandied about very quickly. Yeah. One
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: of the first people who had their eyes set on
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: them was a guy named Joseph Spee. Have you did
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: you see his professional name?
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Oh no, I didn't. I saw he was an acrobat,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: But he was an acrobat.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: He was also an actor. He appears in Marathon Man.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Apparently he's the guy who dies in the car crash
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: that starts everything off.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: His professional name as an acrobat was ben Dova. I'm
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: not kidding.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, it's amazing.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he I'm just gonna call him Bendover from
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: here on out.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Sounds like a Bart Simpson call into its stabborn totally does.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: He was deemed suspicious by one of the stewards, a
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: German steward a board the Hindenburg, and apparently the German
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: steward told the authorities who are investigating this that he
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: found Joseph Bendova quote unsympathetic to airship travel like he
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: wasn't he wasn't just overjoyed or blown away by it apparently,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: which is spoken like a true everyday fascist pos if
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: you think about.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: It, Yeah, budd he might also have been like, I'm Bendova,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: you think like you should see what I've seen exactly.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Well, that was one of the other things too, that
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: when he was being investigated, they were like, he's also
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: an acrobat. He could probably climb around into the Skelton
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: and plan a bomb. So apparently they found zero evidence
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: to that of like supporting him being a bomber whatsoever.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I have not seen the film from noineteen seventy
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: five with what's the guy's name Georgie Scott and Anne
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Bancroft among others, but it seemed from the trailer that
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: they fully like just fictionalized, and that it was it
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: was a bomb and it was sabotage and that was
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: that was the movie.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Oh really, I didn't know that. That's lame.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it looked like to me. And apparently
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: it was a fifteen million dollar movie at the time,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: which was a lot of dope in nineteen seventy five
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: for a movie.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Sure, what was going on with blimps and disaster stuff
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: in the seventies, because there was also that movie Black Sunday.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just the peak, it was peak disaster film,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: so they were they were looking at all angles.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: I think I should have guessed that there were other
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: people who were considered for sabotage anti Nazis. Sure there
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: was one that said the Zeppelin company and or the
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Nazi Party blew up the ship for insurance money.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was one.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: It was. I think it was covered for fifteen million
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: dollars and according to Westig, that's about three hundred and
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: fifty five million dollars today.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Do not think the Nazi Party would not have considered
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: doing that.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, bombs being fired at
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: from below, from above. The one thing they do know
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: for sure is that the hydrogen was what caused it
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: to go up in flames in like thirty seconds. There
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: is no controversy about that. How that happened is still
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: not like for sure. Known witnesses said that as the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: ship approached, it appeared to be glowing before the fire
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: even started, and so at the time scientists heard that
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: and they were like, oh, okay, well it gathered an
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: electrostatic charge because of these storms that were going on,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: and that there was probably like a hydrogen leak and
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: that's what ignited the whole thing.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Right. The thing is is like that electrostatic charge, if
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: it had like sparked, it would have had to have
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: sparked exactly where that hydrogen leak was, and across an
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: eight hundred foot dirigible. The chance is of the spark
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: and the leak happening at the exact same spot are
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: pretty low, right, Yeah, I agree. So there's other theories
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: that tried to Basically, basically everyone agrees there was an
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: electrostatic charge. Somehow the electrostatic charge sparked, somehow that spark
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: set off the hydrogen explosion. Almost everyone agrees on that.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: But within that you still have a lot of room
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: to maneuver around and figure out, you know, what exactly
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: led to this disaster. And what's amazing is that we
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: still don't know today.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there have been a lot of books written
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: about it over the year. There was one in nineteen
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: sixty two called who Destroyed the Hindenburg by AA Hurling
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: And they blamed a ground rigger named Eric Spell who
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: was actually on the crew. He was in inside the blimp,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and apparently blew it up to a pease or to
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: please his communist girlfriend. But I don't know if he
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: survived or not. But that doesn't make sense, and I
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: don't think there was any evans at all about that.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: No, And now that I see Michael Mooney, he wrote
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: a book called The Hindenburg and that movie was based
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: on the Hindenburg and he basically used that theory. So
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: that's why they would have made it like a bombing.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he must have been the character in the movie
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: that I saw that was running around up to no good.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Ben Doova is a character in that movie. But he
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: goes by I think Joseph spiel I think.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, this is a missed opportunity.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure. Yeah. There's also a theory about incendiary paint,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: which is basically a scientist from NASA named Addison Bain
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: who his career is based on creating hydrogen fuel propulsion
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: systems right, using hydrogen as fuel.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's pro hydrogen very much.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: So he had an idea that no, the hydrogen that
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: was secondary, that what really ignited first and then eventually
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: ignited the hydrogen was this coating on the outer shell
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: of the envelope which we talked about that kept the
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: sun's rays off and that that ignited. And he really
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: went to talent on this. Apparently he had a television
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: special and had to really work at getting an actual
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: piece of salvaged envelope from the Hindenburg. He burned it
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: on TV, but he really had to bend over, He
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: had to bendova backwards to get this thing to light.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: So essentially his own demonstration proved to critics like, that's
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: that that theory's not doesn't hold hydrogen.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was debunked. Boy, you were just
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: flying all over the place with these jokes in double
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: entendre's very impressive.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Thanks, I appreciate you noticing.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: The giant capacitor theory. That was just like five years ago.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: There's a Caltech professor named Constantinos Giappus, not sure where
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: he was from, but he offered a different take on
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: the ignition source. I think there was a pbshow Hindenburg
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: colon the new evidence and here was the deal. There was,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: you know, the outer skin that we were talking about,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: but that skin wasn't directly wrapped on the frame. It
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: had these little wooden spacers like hundreds, I would imagine
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: thousands of these things spacing it out so it didn't
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: actually touch the frame. And his proposal was that when
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: the ship dropped those ropes that we talked about, and
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: I said to put a pin in it, that the
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: space between the ship's skin collected a lot of positive
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: electrostatic charge during that storm, so that the area between
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: the skin and the metal frame collected electrons when the
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: ropes hit the ground, and it turned it into just
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: a big, basically a giant bomb, a big energy storing
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: capacitor that was dotted with these little capacitors like ignition points.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Essentially, Yeah, that's so, that's what his That's where we
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: were saying that the ignition point, the spark, and the
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: hydrogen leak being at the same spot was very unlikely.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: And what Geoppis basically said was like, no, all those
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: spacers became capacitors themselves, and they were all soaring, all
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: this energy negative on the frame, positive on the skin,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: and all it took was one spark for all of
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: them to start sparking. And if you have a hundreds
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: or like you said, thousands of little capacitors sparking at once,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: it's going to blow up a hydrogen dirigible, and it's
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: going to do it pretty fast. And I said that
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: there was four minutes in between the time when they
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: dropped the mooring cables to the ground and the time
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: the Hindenburg blew up. And in one of the tests
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: that Giappus ran for Nova for this program, he basically
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: ran essentially the same situation that the Hindenburg would have
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: gone through under his theory, and it took four minutes
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: for it to develop enough of a charge for the
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: capacitor to spark.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, he just sounds pretty good.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I like this one a lot too.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's the most recent one, I guess the
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: others have been debunked, So yeah, you know, I'm bandwagoning
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: admittedly for sure.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that a lot of people
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: aren't aware of is that the Hindenburg when it went up,
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: not only did it immediately put an end to the
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: idea of transatlantic airship flights or airships in general, aside
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: from Goodyear, who bravely was it? Yeah, it put the
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: kibosh on hydrogen as a fuel. That's why people like
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: Addison Bain in the nineties were coming up with these
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: these things trying to defend hydrogen. They're saying, no, it's safe,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: it's safe, and people are like, did you see the Hindenburg.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: You're a fool. And apparently it is safe in some
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: ways compared to like gasoline.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there are new airships happening, and there's
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: you know, there's people working with hydrogen again, so it's
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: like enough time has passed to where they're looking into
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: this kind of thing again. I think the Pathfinder one.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Google co founder Sergey Brinn is the sort of brain
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: child behind that one. That thing is four hundred and
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: feet long, eight feet long, and I think is still
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: like none of these things are commercialized yet they're like
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: still in testing phases and development phases.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they all run on helium not hydrogen too.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean hydrogen's being used for other things, but yeah,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: that they're still I don't think they could ever use
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: hydrogen again for something like this.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: We've talked about the Hindenburg before. It must have been
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: on like one of the videos we did, because I
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: remember us saying that none of the people who jumped, no,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: none of the people who didn't jump died. That the
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: people who jumped from the Hindburg who died. That's not true.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: That is a urban legend and we kept it going.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: But this was fifteen years ago, so come on give
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: us a break.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, if you want to see parts of it,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I told you, you know, some in the Smithsonian, some
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of the pieces of the ship, some of the luxury stuff,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of like the Titanic survived. The National
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Museum has some stuff. Obviously, the Air and Space Museum
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: have some stuff, and that's where you can see it.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Just keep your eyes, keep your eyes off that ladder.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: That's for Josh.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks man. I appreciate you looking out for me like that.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Since Chuck is looking out for me with Smithsonian artifacts,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: that means obviously it's time for listener mail. Guys.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: This is just a really nice email for Michael and Columbus, Ohio. Hey, guys,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: just want to give you thanks for being one of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the most consistent aspects of my world for almost two decades.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I started listening when I was ten years old. Nice
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: on and off of course at first, but in the
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: last couple of years I've been listening to new episodes
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: every week. Such a gift you've given and are still
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: giving to this world, sharing your stories, perspectives and jokes
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: and rants and spectacles. With this, I truly hope you too,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: and Jerry and all the people who help behind the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: scenes are able to recognize the benefit an impact of
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: having consistent worldly discourse. Being able to turn on a
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: podcast and learn about landing on the moon or the
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: wonders of the world or anything in history really inspired
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: the learning in me and continues to spark my curiosity
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: every week. Josh, Chuck and team you guys rock. Thanks
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: from a twenty seven year old kid trying to figure
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: out this world. Hope remains alive and that is Michael
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: and Columbus Man.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Live those really great Thanks a lot, Michael.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: That inspires us.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm inspired to go another eighteen years, Chuck, I
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: hope I live that long.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: You better, man, I Well, I plan on it.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Uh okay. Well, if you want to be like Michael
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: and send us just a really gee whiz that's super
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: nice email. We love those, love them. You can send
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:50
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• 49:53
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