18. A Disastrous Decision to Fill its Airships With Hydrogen Doomed DELAG
It took only 37 seconds from when the first spark appeared on the Hindenburg for the world’s biggest airship to get destroyed by fire. Of 97 people on board, 35 perished, and another person died on the ground. The spectacular disaster captured on film and widely disseminated around the world, shattered public confidence in that mode of transport. It brought the airship era to an abrupt end and killed off DELAG’s fortunes along with it. At the time, the catastrophe was commonly blamed on sabotage: the Hindenburg was not only the pride of DELAG but also a source of German national pride and a symbol of resurgence under the Nazis.
Many were eager to stick it to the Nazis: threatening letters had been received, and a fired bullet was advanced as a plausible cause for the fire’s start. Another widely accepted hypothesis pinned the blame on a static spark. Whether an accidental spark or a deliberate shot, the catastrophe would not have happened if not for DELAG’s disastrous business decision to fill its airships with highly flammable hydrogen, instead of a less combustible alternative such as helium. If the Hindenburg had used helium, as airships do today, then neither a spark nor a shot could have reduced it to an inferno in less than a minute.
