80th Anniversary of the Hindenburg Disaster.

Hello all,

Today marks eighty years since that fateful day at Lakehurst. The majestic LZ-129 Hindenburg gave her unexpected and fiery swan song to the world.

The disaster marked not only the end of the rigid airship as a trustworthy form of transport in public view, but was also in it's way a harbinger of the greater disaster humanity would experience. To me, in more than a few ways, the death of the Hindenburg over New Jersey signaled the end of an era, much as the outbreak of war in 1914 signaled the end of the Beautiful Age. It was, in hindsight, a perfect metaphor for the terror and misery the world would soon face, and perhaps a foreshadowing of the catastrophic demise of the Nazi Empire itself.

Much as the nature of aviation would be changed and molded after May 6th of 1937, so too would it change further in the wake of the world war. The Hindenburg, in her way, represented both the best and worst of those years just before the great conflict: Wondrous, beautiful, a triumph of airborne technology and craftsmanship. A stately queen of the skies, embodying the hopes and aspirations of a generation.

Yet, she was also a symbol of power and prestige, emblazoned with the swastika and tasked with enforcing the Nazi image of the "New Germany". She was a thing of decadence, the grand experience of travelling aboard her something for a privileged few. Like many things in the Dirty Thirties, the average person could only dream of cruising the wild blue in such fashion. To quote Libby Magness Weisberg, who witnessed the great silver ship over Philadelphia at age 9, "How could something so beautiful be so ugly?"

She, like many in her neighborhood, was Jewish.

Of course, it is well known that Dr. Eckener himself had no love of the Nazis. He paid the price for his disloyalty, becoming a virtual non-person for the rest of Hitler's reign. Eckener, more than any other in the Zeppelin Company, had placed his greatest dreams in the LZ-129. It was the beginning of an ambitious and far-reaching plan to bring safe trans-oceanic air travel to the world. The path had been laid by the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, the Hindenburg was to establish it. The vision of a global network of rigid airship service died eighty years ago today with Eckener's great vessel.

We may never fully know why Hindenburg crashed. We can only look back and wonder what could have been.

And, perhaps, what may yet be.

Up ship!