The Hindenburg, once the largest aircraft to ever grace the skies, marked the beginning and end of the commercial transatlantic airships. At eight hundred and four feet long, and a hundred and thirty five feet wide, the Hindenburg zeppelin dwarfed any other aircraft to ever fly. Built in Germany by the Zeppelin Company, the Hindenburg made several commercial transatlantic flights between 1936 and 1937. Its passengers flew in five star luxury with fine dining, comfortable quarters, a lounge, and a bird's eye view of the scenery below. The Hindenburg was hugely popular in the United States and whenever it flew over American soil, large crowds and media gathered to marvel at it. Everyone seemed to think the Hindenburg was the archetype of an exciting new form of air travel. But "everyone" was proven wrong on May 6th, 1937. On that day the Hindenburg came to its mooring in Lakehurst, New Jersey. As it prepared to land it suddenly erupted into flame in mid-air and came crashing to the ground. While we do know that the cause of the explosion was the ignition of the hydrogen gas that filled the enormous zeppelin, no one knows what caused that ignition. Every possibility from static in the air to a bomb on the aircraft has been explored. Although most of the passengers survived, the American media sensationalized the incident and forever marred the possibility of airship travel as an alternative to airplanes. The Hindenburg disaster helped to sear into the consciousness of the public the danger of hydrogen gas. It also totally discredited dirigibles as a plausible form of popular air travel. Although the Hindenburg, in the end, really was a failure, its letdown gave rise to the era of the airplanes which dominate our skies today.
