Thread by @realhumanschwab

The Hindenburg represented the finest in air travel, it also represented the finest in Nazi propaganda. It was a national symbol paraded at sporting events, rallies, and other events where the Nazis wanted to show off their prowess.

By the end of 1936, Hindenburg had crossed the Atlantic 34 times, carrying over 3,500 passengers and the ship’s highly successful 1936 season seemed to indicate that regular transatlantic air service had arrived.

Imagine a world in which luxury travel was not only available to everyone, but was also affordable. In its day, airship travel was twice as fast as steamship travel and didn't require one to spend days adjusting to the tossing and turning of the ocean.

These luxury airships were called "hotels in the sky." You could leisurely float ~500-1000ft above the ocean in your transoceanic journey. Here is an excerpt from the Hindenburg brochure:

“You open your suit case and arrange your clothes in the wardrobe. At last, your shaving kit, hair brushes and other articles of toilet are displayed upon the toilet stand. At once, your cabin acquires a homely personal atmosphere.”

"You listen for the roar of the engines, or the fierce rush and vibration of the air, but apart from a distant quiet murmur, everything is tranquil and peaceful. You feel that nothing will disturb your sleep."

"Your steward appears and explains to you the arrangement of the handles and switches for light, heat, and ventilation. You are shown the bell-push in your cabin which will bring him to your side at any time during the day or night."

"Before he leaves, he reminds you to leave your shoes outside your cabin door for cleaning. You begin to feel that nothing has been overlooked to ensure your comfort."

There was even a pressurized smoking room. Passengers entered the room via an air-lock and it was specially insulated to keep hydrogen from leaking into it. The only cigarette lighter allowed on the ship was built into the lounge, which was open day and night.

Not only were such "flying hotels" much more comfortable than modern flight, they are also much more fuel efficient than any modern jet airliner or vehicle. The Hindenburg was capable of flying around the world in 1936 without stopping for fuel.

But the Hindenburg was truly on a revolutionary course— there existed plans, to add a fifth engine car, containing a Daimler-Benz diesel adapted to burn hydrogen. The upgrade would've allowed the ship to burn hydrogen which would otherwise have been valved.

In 1937 the world lost: an 800-foot-long floating platform that would move at 85 miles per hour and carry over 200,000 lb. of cargo an unlimited range. Airports and runways were not necessary. Cruising speed was 3 times faster than steamship.

Safe and luxurious travel from Germany to America in under 50 hours.

The savings in petroleum using lighter-than-air designs like the Hindenburg would have been 90% or more. We were getting dangerously close to free energy travel. If that technology had been developed, standardized and miniaturized... just imagine.

However, the Hindenburg "disaster" at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937 brought an end to the age of the rigid airship. Reportedly, the disaster's 36 deaths included 13 passengers, 22 crewmembers and one worker on the ground.

After more than 30 years of passenger travel on commercial zeppelins — in which tens of thousands of passengers flew over a million miles, on more than 2,000 flights, without a single injury — the era of the passenger airship came to an end in a few fiery minutes.

Lesser dirigibles, all hydrogen-filled, had been sailing planet-wide the often lightning-riven skies for years. Their safety record was impeccable. In an era when it could be perilous to cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane, zeppelins were seen as the future of passenger travel.

But after the Hindenburg disaster every nation on earth abandoned rigid airships.

That feel when you will never...

The official story, the result of the accident investigations in 1937, is that the Hindenburg disaster was caused by an electrostatic discharge. Completely unforeseen, the mystery of electricity seemed to be beyond German engineering.

Of course, you have your usual suspects. The oil oligopoly or perhaps agents within the US government. Despite a ban on the export of helium under the Helium Act of 1925, the airship was designed to use the far safer gas in the belief that the US would later license its export.

There are many questions surrounding this famous incident:

Why was the public never shown one single photographic picture that showed the beginning of Hindenburg‘s fire even though there were 22 professional photographers at the event to film her docking?

Why were there so many photographers there to film the Hindenburg's arrival into Naval Air Station Lakehurst, NJ when she had already completed 34 successful transatlantic crossings the prior year?

It was the "first flight of the 1937 season". But in the months before there is little indication of public or media interest in the upcoming flight. You see tiny blurbs deep in the backpages, hardly justifying the dozens of newsmen with still & film cameras and audio equipment

Covering the clockwork landings of airships was akin to their modern counterparts waiting at the airport for every international flight's arrival. Despite their assignment editors' orders to go to Lakehurst, the field crews saw no news value in the event.

In a March 1937 'International Photographer' article, cameraman Al Gold recounts:

We all sat, wringing wet, beside our cameras mounted on the roofs of our trucks and exchanged vituperatives about the weather and the editors who assigned us to the story.

This wasn't news any more. Suppose we had to cover every boat that came over the Atlantic. Here was a big air liner that made, the trip many times before with clock-like precision.

"Here she comes," somebody shouted.
"So what," someone else cracked sarcastically.

Al Gold's editor-in-chief, Truman Talley, seemed to know beforehand that the Hindenburg would explode.

From "Movietone Presents the 20th Century" by Lawrence Cohn:

Talley would go on to work for the War Activities Committee in 1940, but began been producing anti-Nazi propaganda in 1938.

Here's Talley with European Movietone officials, the first civilian observation party ever permitted to visit the Maginot Line.

Why was “static spark ” theory grasped at as Hindenburg’s nemesis when there was no evidence for the occurrence of a static spark, and it had never occurred in the four previous decades of commercial hydrogen-filled zeppelins? (Nor has it happened since, Hindenburg is the only one)

Hugo Eckener, former head of the Zeppelin Company, Charles Rosendahl, commander of the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, Max Pruss, captain of the Hindenburg and most of the surviving crew all stated that the airship had been sabotaged.

There were many indications of sabotage, including Webb Miller of the United Press stating he received a warning call telling him not to travel on the Hindenburg, since it was to be destroyed.

The pilot of the Hindenburg, Captain Ernst August Lehmann, died believing it was an act of sabotage. Reportedly, stoic and "crystal clear" as he puzzled over the crash, his last words were, "It must have been an infernal machine [incendiary device]."

More than 20 years after the explosion, the airship’s badly burned but surviving captain, Max Pruss, was telling interviewers that he believed sabotage was the cause.

Michael Mooney in his book, The Hindenburg (1972), states that one of the crewmen on the airship was a Communist saboteur who set a time bomb. The bomb was supposed to detonate after the Hindenburg docked giving the passengers—and particularly the saboteur—time to escape.

However there were strong headwinds and the Hindenburg burst into flames before docking. Mooney reports the Americans located parts of the time bomb shortly after the disaster but, because of American embarrassment and German propaganda, a convenient fiction was agreed upon.

Why did all nations stop building rigid airships after a single disaster when the Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin had clearly demonstrated an effective form of flight resulting in extreme fuel efficiency?

If a fire breaks out in a modern airliner, the results are horrifically predictable.

Why does hydrogen continue to be shunned as a gas that's dangerously flammable when modern airliners and passenger cars continue to carry a fuel that's not only volatile but even more dangerous?

https://twitter.com/0xAlaric/status/1729558613759262890

WE MVST RETVRN. This technology, if refined and standardized, would be so cheap it would make personal long distance transport and exploration affordable to most.

There is, out there, MORE LAND.

The Hindenburg was one of the first times that recordings of a news event were broadcast, and the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast. This was the most shocking moving image most people ever saw. It changed the way news was reported.

Listen to Herbert Morrison's performance.

This was heavily edited, and seemed to have certain theatrical elements. Parts of Morrison's broadcast were later dubbed onto newsreel footage, giving the impression that the words and film were recorded together. It is apparent that the audio is not synchronized with the video.

The video cuts between two different camera sources with different exposures. The first frame after the cut is black. Morrison nonsensically emotes in a way that sounds utterly fake to our ears. In 1937, this would've been the first time most heard live reporting of a disaster.

Morrison even says at one point "all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world." When did he ask "all the folks" that question?

There are no interviews or any audio/video synchronicities to prove he was actually there on the scene.

Little is known of Morrison's early life, other than that he was ex-military— and there are only sketchy details of his career subsequent to the tragedy.

What really clarifies Morrison as a suspicious character and his role in this comes from his own mouth. He continued to report that day and there exists 38 minutes of preposterous content that he produced. Let’s have a listen—

He predicts, supernaturally, the findings of the investigation on the scene; some kind of static spark set off the ship's hydrogen due to the rain earlier. He also says that "there is no possibility of anyone being saved" even though *most* people were immediately recovered.

Reminder, no such thing had ever happened before in the many years of rigid dirigible landings. No person or camera had ever seen a spark of any kind in all her previous dockings.

The cause has never been finally determined, approaching a century later there is still speculation

It all becomes even more painfully obvious when you examine the propaganda films they released later. Look at the skull.

Can you imagine the ghouls that did this? For that era, this would be like playing Faces of Death in a cinema.

Two lies in just this short clip :

1. Most didn't die in the crash. The disaster killed 35 persons on the airship, and one member of the ground crew, but miraculously 62 of the 97 passengers and crew survived.

2. It wasn't a "miracle" there were survivors— hydrogen fires dissipates upward quickly, unlike jet fuel. The gondola descended gently to the ground.

Hydrogen overall is actually not very dangerous, which is why the Allies had to design explosive bullets to bring them down.

Example: On March 31, 1916, a Zeppelin L15 was brought down over London by 3-inch anti-aircraft fire. As the Zeppelin descended, it was targeted by a Royal Flying Corps BE 2C. The aircraft dropped incendiary bombs and explosive darts on the Zeppelin, but it still did not burn.

The media coverage of that day at Lakehurst is altogether puzzling. Passenger airships had existed for a decade. The Hindenburg herself made regular trips.

Yet we have professional aerial photography from multiple sources.

Notice the tone on "hydrogen".

"it almost seemed as if fate had set the stage for the horrible tragedy"

They are laughing.

This event signified a downward shift in the direction of our civilization, into a much greyer timeline— and they are laughing.

1937 British Pathe narrative: "She represented man’s latest attempt to conquer the Atlantic by air. Her tragedy will not halt the march of progress. From her ashes will rise the knowledge, from her fate the lesson, that will lead to a greater and better means of mastering the air"

In this next clip we hear the random screams of actresses that are in no way synchronized with the timeline. People then had no perception of video editing, all of this would have escaped the notice of all but professionals—

We get the picture as the narrator starts to wax poetic on the destruction. This was a "news organization", the gratuitous embellishment has one purpose—

They are trying their best to traumatize the audience. After this, there are minutes of panning closeups of the wreckage.

Now that your conscious mind has been dazed by screams and flames, he can slip his message into your subconscious—

"a greater and a better means of mastering the air"

These newsreels were released days after the disaster but he's giving you the whole historical narrative.

Funnily enough, it just so happened that Herbert Morrison began his famous coverage that day with a commercial for American Airlines.

Just like today, they also had prescient "experts" back then. This was an international investigation that had hundreds of witnesses and thousands of pieces of evidence. "The exact cause will never be known," say the sinister all-seeing wizards in the employ of Universal Studios.

But anyone with any sense does know the cause. You can feel the haunting pull of your rightful timeline, hear the words of your own true self that does exist in that place.

"They are the thieves of worlds, those that have done this— they are the enemies of humanity."

We must rebuild what we have lost. Lighter-than-air travel is no dream, it is your birthright.

This is the newest iteration of my Hindenburg thread, with novel evidence. If there's enough interest, I will continue with a revised conclusion, drawing parallels with the Concorde disaster.

https://twitter.com/realhumanschwab/status/1729557647572009321