hindenburg disaster

LZ 129 Hindenburg was a German zeppelin or airship, and at the time it was the largest aircraft ever built. During its second year of service, it went up in flames and was destroyed while landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, U.S., on 6 May 1937, having left Frankfurt, Germany 3 days earlier. Thirty-six people were killed, although surprisingly given the nature of the accident, the majority of the passengers survived. Several theories exist as to the cause of the accident, the most likely of which is a build up of static electriciy on the outside of the airship canopy causing a spark which ignited the hydrogen within.

Modern airships are of course filled with helium, lighter than air but also inert or unreactive. Much safer for all concerned. Except that this could have been used anyway in the 1930's in place of hydrogen. The Americans were already doing so, having discovered large amounts of helium over 30 years previously during drilling operations, and far from being a rare element helium was found to be present in vast quantities under the American Great Plains.

This put the United States in an excellent position to become the world's leading supplier of helium and they began to develop military uses for the gas, including airship use, and set up the National Helium Reserve in 1925 at Amarillo, Texas with the goal of supplying military airships in time of war and commercial airships in peacetime.

However, due to a US military embargo against Germany that restricted helium supplies, the Hindenburg was forced to use hydrogen as the lift gas. Still, without the Hindenburg disaster we might have been deprived of one of the most iconic rock album covers of all time.