Hindenburg - The Titanic of the Skies!

 

Hey kids! Welcome back to KidsCast! Today we are here with another thrilling yet interesting topic. We are going to talk about: Hindenburg - The Titanic of the Skies! So let us begin! 

So before getting to know about Hindenburg, we first would need to know that What is an Airship? 

What is an Airship?

An Airship is a mean of air transport which can fly in the air. It can either be a passenger airship or a cargo airship which helps in shipping goods. In fact, airship is a dirigible balloon like aircraft, which is kind of lighter-than-air aircraft. This aircraft gains lift from a lifting gas such as Hydrogen or Helium, and this gas is lighter than the outside surrounding air, and because of this, the Airship gets lifted. Blimps, are also a type of airships, but it is not a rigid airship. 

However, these days we don't get to see much airships in the skies. In fact, according to the Van Wagner group, there are only 25 blimps or Airships currently operating around the world. The lack of Airships rotating around the world also has its own reasons. Now here is a story which will describe its one reason. So let us begin with the story of Hindenburg - The Titanic of the Skies! 

Hindenburg - The Story Begins! 

Hindenburg (or LZ 129 Hindenburg) was a German passenger airship which was built and manufactured in 1931-1936. It took its first flight on 4th March 1936. In fact, it was the titanic of the skies at that time! It was a very high-class experience in this airship as its interiors was not less than today's airplane's business or premium class interiors. It was built by German Aircraft Manufacturing Company named the Zeppelin Company. 

This airship was approximately 237 metres (approx. 778 feet) long and could fit in 140,000 cubic metres (4,900,000 cubic feet) of hydrogen in it. Hindenburg was actually really big, bigger than you can imagine!  So these all were the specifications of the Hindenburg Airship. Now let us know what happened on its last flight ever!  

Unfortunately, what we are talking about on its last flight was a disaster. On 6th May 1937, when Hindenburg was cleared to land on the Naval Air Base, in Lakehurst (in New Jersey, the United States), at 7:25 PM the airship bursted into flames and dropped down to the ground. This was a major disaster! Out of the 36 passengers, 13 passengers survived, and out of the 61 crew members, 22 crew survived. 

The cause of this disaster is currently unknown, however many theories have been made, one of them being more likely to be the cause. It is believed that this disaster happened because of the Hydrogen gas leakage, into the compartments where it shouldn't have leaked, which caused the airship to burst into flames and crash onto the ground in less than a minute. It was a major disaster, which made the titanic of the skies to crash and end its existence. 

So you see children? This disaster was so scary that people started to deny travelling and using airships, as they felt that they are not that safe to travel from. Hence, people then started to travel with airplanes, ditching this balloon like aircrafts, which were legendary! This is the reason that nowadays we don't see airships in the sky, because no one uses them that much. Mostly the rare airships are today used just for advertisements and all, and no one uses them for travelling anywhere.

So kids this was the story of Hindenburg, which was the titanic of the skies of that time! Besides its crash, it is still legendary and popular among the people, and its stories are today spread around the world, as today we did to you! So children we'll keep posting more articles, so Stay Happy, and Happy Learning!