Awful Disasters That Killed the Airship
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
- The airship was once considered cutting edge technology - but disasters, some incredibly well-publicised and reported on, like the Hindenburg, killed the dream and ensured airships would be little more than a footnote in history. But it wasn't just Hindenburg - there had been dozens of crashes and incidents, many of them fatal. Today we'll explore the terrifying true tales of four doomed airships; German Zeppelin L2, the British airship R.38, the French airship Dixmude and the British blimp NS.11.
Oceanliner Designs explores the design, construction, engineering and operation of history’s greatest vessels- from Titanic to Queen Mary and from the Empress of Ireland to the Lusitania. Join maritime researcher and illustrator Michael Brady as he tells the stories behind some of history's most famous ocean liners and machines!
0:00 Intro
0:55 Zeppelin L2
4:54 Airship R.38
11:56 Airship Dixmude
17:08 Blimp NS11 - Zábava
Despite all the awful accidents with airships, I somewhat wish a version of them were still around. It seems like it'd be an entirely different journey from that of an airplane
It's an entirely different kind of flying, alltogether.
Slower, less dependable, exponentially more dangerous and less practical. Take a train or a boat. Airships are just not viable on a planet with any sort of weather...
Bloomberg and others feature some version of the airship returning. It is likely an expensive trip compared to other travel options, but guess it could spin a genre of youtubers who currently fly luxury suites on a plane and seeing how their airship counterparts compare.
These flying machines are still around in the form of the Goodyear blimes that do advertisement at sporting events 2:36
@@jamesfracasse8178 True! Can't believe I forgot about it tbh
I love how Mike has branched out into other forms of transportation like airships and warships, as well as the exceptionally high quality ocean liner content we know and love.
Just imagine how magical it would’ve been to see a structure the size of an ocean liner effortlessly floating in place above your head
Magical indeed!
I watched a UFO slowly travel from W to E while at military school in Wisconsin in the late '60s. The lights, low altitude, and apparent lack of sound had held my attention for 15 min or so (seemed twice that long) before it passed overhead and was obviously a blimp. 🙂
@@johncmitchell4941that was a better plot twist than a Shyamalan movie
@@johncmitchell4941🤣🛸👾
Your telling me a strange and unexplainable occurrence had a mundane and boring answer?
I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did. My father saw the "Hindenburg" over Manhattan on her final flight. The size alone must have been jaw dropping.
From far below the sea floor to floating high above the ground, this channel never fails to deliver.
Thank you Mike for this very well presented video.
I knew the Hindenburg was a heavy reason on what killed the airship, but I didn't know about these terrible disasters, or that they too had a heavy impact on the industry's death.
It wasnt, problem with airships for commercial passenger service is that they were too slow and couldnt offer the amenities of ships, they would only work in land but Europe and America had extensive rail service leaving it to less developed areas that run into the problem of having to build airfields to support then in remote areas.
Military it was just a big target, there were attempts at making then "airship carriers" but then the exact same problem with civillian airships come, you could just build a ship carrier or a airfield instead, its role can simply taken by other less expensive and/or more effective means.They did work well for ASW but we talking about the 30-40's when submarines were slow underwater (under 15 knots top speed) and much easier to spot from a low airship and you can just use a blimp instead.
The industry "died" because there was never a demand for then commercially, they were too slow and with too many limitations.
If the Hindenburg fire hadn't killed the airship industry, economics would have. It's object the size of an ocean liner (with labor-intensive landing maneuvers), but only enough lifting capacity to carry a few dozen passengers. So in order to be profitable, ticket prices had to be high. In the 1930's, (rich) people were willing to put up with the cost because at the time, it was the *fastest* way to cross the Atlantic. (The Hindenburg could do 74 knots, compared to 30 knots for the best ocean liners of the time.)
Airplanes were only *just* beginning to compete. But as they got faster and more affordable, airships would become obsolete, just as ocean liners did.
@@danielbishop1863 Yeah, the first article I read in a magazine made a vague reference to "similar disasters" when pointing out that Hindenburg's destruction.. wasn't unique, and that public perception had shifted to assume ALL hydrogen-filled dirigibles were destined to go down in flames. Cost was a HUGE issue when reliability just wasn't there, and disaster seemed inevitable.
I actually live in Friedrichshafen and they still have Zeppelins (calling Zeppelin NT) flying around here every day over my house 😊 although it's several times smaller than the ones from the past it's still impressive every time :)
@@lifequest7453 that's true but they don't make lager versions even the NT is now several decades old and won't get improved anymore it seems they just use the two remaining Zeppelins now only for sightseeing tours across the lake of constance
The massive hangar sheds used to build the R38 and others still exist. They've been used as movie sets amongst other things.
Yes! More airship Content!
Airships have a certain historical romance to them, the same way ships and steam locomotives do. I wish they could have found a bigger place in our transportation systems and that you could see them hovering in the sky on a regular basis.
Great video!
The R38 was especially weak because the British had been racing to catch up with German airship designs; all of their airships had been far inferior to German vessels. So the British began copying the latest airship designs from felled German military airships, especially the L33, L48 and the huge L70 - all of which were so called ‘height climbers’ whose especially lightweight designs were intended to let them fly above British aircraft and anti-aircraft guns. But those light designs meant they had especially fragile skeletons which couldn’t possibly have survived the sort of manoeuvres R38 was put through.
The long shadow of R38 was that the later British Imperial Airship Scheme that aimed to link up the Empire with a regular airship service required the construction of much stronger vessels - MUCH STRONGER - and heavier. Which meant that the doomed R101 ended up being grotesquely overweight and completely unable to meet her specifications.
Dixmude and Hindenburg were unusual for burning in mid-air; most of the rigid airships ended their short career by hitting the ground (or sea) when off-axis air currents working on the huge surface area caused loss of control.
I have a suggestion since I love your videos. It's about the ship Estonia that sank in 1994. It was a ferry and neither zeppelin or ocean liner, but the sinking is very much still a controversial and debated subject as we still don't 100% know the cause of the sinking. The best guess now is most likely the actual cause but in Estonia and Sweden, there's still many Conspiracy theories around it and the fact that it sank in less than 11 minutes.
The early part of the 1900s seems like it would have been an interesting time to be alive. Massive ocean liners plied the seas and equally massive airships soared high above.
Im surprised the L-8 or "ghost blimp" wasnt on this list. She was was a United States Navy L-class airship whose crew disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on August 16, 1942. Her crew was never found and the airship drifted to land empty and alone despite having left with a crew
That's because L-8 or "Love 8" was a Blimp or non rigid. This video is about rigid Airships/Zeppelins.
@@dabking94.19didn't watch the whole video did you?
@@jcraigie I watch everything in full LTA related. I know alot about airships and blimps. The OP was saying that they were surprised that a BLIMP (non rigid) wasn't featured in this video on Airships (Rigid's!) That's why I replied in the first place.
@dabking94.19 I don't believe jcraigie was insulting your knowledge of LTA, I think they were just pointing out that the last disaster listed in this video is (by the creator's own description) an instance of a non-rigid "blimp" disaster. This would mean the "ghost blimp" would still be a valid story to include in the video, despite the title implying it would be a list of rigid airships.
@@virensalt2000 Correct. Though I also disagree on their definition of Airship. Blimp's fall under the umbrella of "Airship"; the method of envelope construction doesn't matter.
Airship: encounters slight inconvenience.
"and then it exploded"
It's no wonder these things were deemed to dangerous to bother with.
Great video on zeppelins. While it isn’t naval in nature, there are a lot of related principles.
Aircraft in general use the maritime tradition rules and laws from the early beginnings
Ships and aircraft only differ in the part of the 3th dimension.
Traveling in the 3th dimenison would be for a ship a very bad day for an aircraft it is its bread and butter.
@@obelic71 yep!!
It's amazing airships were ever a thing, one of humanity's most impractical creations
well it was the most relibale way to fly back then. Thats why th dissaperd the moment aircraft became a bit more refinde than just a bit of plie wood and canvis taoed to am engine
My grandmother told me about the Graf Zepplin flying over her house in Los Angeles in 1929. It was a big story at the time and thrilling for spectators.
mega props to you for finding flight footage of R-38/ZR-2 and Dixmude.
Love your channel Mike . Every vid is so educational and professional. Your dedication and attention to detail shows . Very proud of you .
Another great video - very well done, Mike!
Rick Archbold wrote an excellent book about the history of airships: "Hindenburg: An Illustrated History". It's very well written, lavishly illustrated and contains some beautiful paintings by Ken Marschall.
m
"Oh the Humanity!!!"
The age of the airship was so brief that it makes their disasters even more notable.
In the USSR, airships also “died” due to two serious incidents, although this topic was considered very promising, even money was collected through the Pravda newspaper for the construction of an entire flotilla of airships. In general, the main interest in airships in the Union was due to the issue of delivering cargo to distant areas of the country, for example, Siberia or the Arctic.
First, on August 10, 1934, the airship B10 Komsomolskaya Pravda burned down from a lightning strike. This fire also destroyed the USSR-V7, ready for testing, and the USSR-V5, which was stored disassembled. According to other sources, the hangar burned down due to a violation of fire safety regulations, and everything was attributed to lightning (there really was a thunderstorm at that very time). There were no casualties then. But the final blow was dealt by the B6 OSOAVIAKHIM disaster. B6 was supposed to evacuate the expedition of Yuri Papanin from the drifting ice floe. On February 6, while flying at an altitude of 450 meters in continuous clouds, near the city of Kandalaksha (Karelia), the airship crashed into a mountain, as a result of which 13 of the 19 crew members were killed and 3 were injured. After this, the program was discontinued.
love your videos, any plans on a video about imperator and her sisters ?
Yes we have a video coming out about them soon!
Heck yeah I'm early. As always, a very educational video from Mike. Keep it up mate.
Most of the passengers actually survived the Hindenburg disaster
Thanks for another great video Mike. Your ability to craft a compelling narrative is always educational, fascinating, and entertaining, regardless of whether your regaling us with a story of one particular vessel, or several. Thank you.
I’m surprised Maitland died in the R38 crash because I’m surprised he even got on it. He knew it was unsafe so it’s crazy to me that he was even willing to fly on it. Unless of course he was ordered to.
As always I love all your videos!! Keep up the great work Mike!!
Amazing video as always :) Well researched and narrated, I can't wait to see what comes next!
I just recently found your channel, and I have to say I absolutely love it. The presentation is great, and the subject matter has always fascinated me. There's some great mystique about the ocean, shipwrecks, airships, and ship design that I can't explain
I've discovered your channel recently and have really been enjoying it. I love airships and antique ocean liners so this is right up my alley. Great quality content. Thanks so much!
This looks worse than The Hindenburg disaster at lakehurst New Jersey in the 1930s
And this was the only one I knew... 😧
Brilliant as always. I know I'll always enjoy your presentations. Well done.
Nicely done, Mike!
@Oceanliner Designs: Hello my friend, Mike Brady. I love your channel, from the sheer professionalism to the in depth research and images, I’ve been watching at least one a day since I found you. As a sailor and history enthusiast myself, it’s the content I’ve been waiting for my whole life! Have you ever thought of doing a video on the NS Savannah? I wasn’t sure if a better way to contact you so I figured this may at least be a start.
Another interesting video as usual! Thanks for getting into airships!
The airship will be forever known and recognized, as the cruise ship of the skies.
Thanks again for the content
Great video as always sir
Whilst I come for wrecks (ocean based!) Loving this take on airships! Keep up the amazing work! ✊🙏
Hey, airships nonetheless live up to the Oceanliner Designs name.. only glanced at comments after having the epiphany to see if other folks thought so too!
These kinds of videos are fascinating given that I know very little about the history of airships. Awesome job!
Epic as always Mike 👍
was actually looking for a video more on airships and it disasters and you just so happen to pop up with it 😄
nicely done Oceanliner Designs plus this also serves as resource materail as im in works with a manga that im doing that does have zeppelins and airships in it
Excellent narration! Bravo, and live long!
Another great video. You are such a great storyteller.
Thank you Mike, my friend , another interesting story. You are a star!❤
Awesome video 👍
OMG ITS HERE IT'S HERE 😍😍😍 Thank you Mike!! My airship homeboy 🙌
My heart jumps when I see a new upload from OLD, ❤❤❤Great work as always guys...its pity we can't have these great airships today..😢😢
great video!! 🤍
I'm really enjoying the lighter than air episodes. Well researched and produced.
Hey Mike, I just saw your dad perform the AFL anthem! Keep up the good content! P.S: what afl team u go for?
As always, great content and a very big thank you for turning down the background music. It was, on some of the videos, becoming uncomfortably loud.
Growing up in Hull, I knew of R38 only because the memorial to those lost still stands in Hull's western cemetery
A Host, don't push your luck. Friendship is earned.
I can’t help but believe that a lot of airships disasters were deliberate
04:35: I’m sure L1 went down not in the Red Sea, but in the North Sea as that’s where Heligoland is located.
An interesting video, thanks! Your reports reminded me of the mid 60s when, traveling to the beach at Sand Hook, NJ, passed Lakehurst and my father pointed out large hangars and explained that the zeppelin Hindenburg encountered its disaster there. I can't remember if I saw any airships, but the large hangers I do recall. Hangers much larger than those for normal airplanes which I was accustomed to at McGuire Airforce Base.
For me Mike and the crew if Oceanline Design are one of the best channels on CZcams
Such interesting and curious ships!!!
truly an oceanliner design of all time
Hi Mike, airships are fascinating. Thanks for the great doco mate. Bravo Zulu 👍
I never knew howden had an airship station i live a couple of miles away. Should really look into local history more. Thanks mike.
little known tid bit: airship tech is still used today, but it's reconnaissance balloons. They are basically massive drones that fly at incredible speed because they are so light. they don't have any passengers
Great video! I knew the story of the Dixmude, I am writing a novel (I am not a professional author, this is just a hobby) with a chapter about the disaster. I didn't know that the Dixmude was build with the intention to bomb New York City, though I had read a lot about the airship for my novel (I was specifically interested in the disaster itself, and this is probably why I missed this piece of information.) This is quite surprising to me, because the airship (L72 at the time) was used for short raids above enemy lines, and I have read that the engines were not designed for a relatively long flight like its final one. This is a reason advanced to explain why they decided to stop the engines and drifted eastward towards Sicily. It is interesting to hear another explanation: the need to save fuel. I'm not sure the Dixmude could have landed without an experimented crew on the ground, especially with strong winds. But I am no expert, even if I am very interested in the subject.
Anyway, I always love to learn about airships in general. The video about the R101 disaster was also fantastic. Unfortunately, most stories about airship end with a disaster and loss of lives.
One thing that strikes me as both sad and disappointing. I have recently seen a number of videos on various aeroplanes that were allowed to be certified airworthy when a small part of an entire system was prone to failure. The airship disasters speak loudly of how often, when people or companies want something to be right and ready to go they ignore anyone who says anything different. In all cases disaster has led to loss of life, investment and loss of public confidence in projects, that if managed correctly could have made significant improvements to the projects that followed.
A similar phenomenon is what NASA calls "go fever". People overlook potential problems because they want the project to get off the ground (literally sometimes). The Challenger explosion is a prime example.
@@DonDueed yes. Couldn't agree more with you. Maybe we need more (because I'm autistic) autistic people. No emotional hopes raised. Just do the job. (not meaning to think the NASA staff wouldn't be striving for 100% success)
Very interesting video love your content. If it’s not too much trouble I would be very interested to see you do a video detailing the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff. Once again love your videos
The Great Big Move did a fantastic video on MV Wilhelm Gustloff.
Another semi-rigid airship I think that was a disaster is the Italia, although I think that deserves a video in itself just like the R101.
Good for you Mike for getting the pronunciation of the foreign names correct.
The whole history of airships is more or less one big disaster. From more than 100 big airships, I found only one that was almost 10 years in continuous service. That was LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin. All the other large airships had an catastrophic accident or they where retired early. This kind of light huge structure can't be build rugged enough to survive under all weather conditions. It looks great but it is just a bad idea.
The history of LZ-127 would make a nice video.
Fascinating. However at about 23:53 it is stated that the Helgoland air disaster was in the Red Sea. Helgoland is in the North Sea.
"Lets fill a balloon the size of a skyscraper with a highly inflammable gas, put engines on it and people in it. What could possibly go wrong?"
Great video as ever Mike! I'll even overlook the misspronunciation of Cley-next-the-Sea (Cley should sound like 'eye'') - weird Norfolk thing! 🤣
You strange Norfolkers 😂
On top of the many structural, maintenance and general safety issues, it also has to be said that large rigid airships simply werent commerically viable. Taking the Hindenburg as an example, her only advantage over the Queen Mary was speed; 2 days to New York against 5-7 days. However, you were paying more for a tiny cabin on the Hindenburg than you were for a first class outside cabin en-suite on the QM, with none of the facilities that an ocean liner afforded, very limited baggage capacity and a single shower shared with the rest of the passengers.
Given that the first Transatlantic passenger airplane flight was only 2 years away - able to carry more passengers at lower cost, it's unlikely that commercial airship flights would have continued much longer ever if the Hindenburg hadn't crashed so dramatically with the world's media watching.
Early Genesis songs for chapter titles? Well played, well played. It’s the little things that make this channel top tier. I love it, lol.
Great work Oceanliner Designs, never heard of these until now. Thanks for the historical insight.
My father lived in Pennsauken NJ. Just so happens, that the airships passed over his house en route to Lakehurst. On two occasions my grandfather went out and snapped 2 photos- one of what we think is the LOS ANGELES, and the other of the GRAF ZEPPELIN.
Dixmude has remained a ship's name in the French navy since, first an escort carrier, now a helicopter landing ship (also a through decker)
I was so confused about the name.
This is simple: an airship has a large surface area for the wind to act on, low mass (and structural strength) giving it little inertia relative to its size, and low thrust relative to its size. Sooner or later the wind is going to overpower it. That's if nothing else goes wrong first. You can't change the laws of physics, there is no technology that will ever make these things safe enough for passenger service.
People commenting here high and mighty about the bad idea of airships because of these accidents completely ignore the fact that this was in the first half of the 20th century, where all forms of motorised transportation were completely new and barely understood and prone to catastrophes. There were no computer models or extensive knowledge of material fatigue etc or even chemistry was still just getting started(compared to our modern level) And of course the helium embargo forcing the use of hydrogen, which was a ridiculous choice comparable to using no containment building on a nuclear reactor, which would be the norm in a few decades after the age of zeppelins, both in the US for test reactors and the Soviet Union for commercial ones.
Pointing at a disaster from over a hundred years ago to prove a design would fail today is like pointing at the Titanic and claiming that large ocean liners would be inherently unsafe.
SpaceX was riddled with absolute failures, until they weren't and changed the way we go to space.
I think this would have been best on Airliner designs channel. A good episode one.
I can't believe that if development has continued in a more controlled and organized way, the progress of technology couldn't have made airships totally safe. The idea of being strapped into a tight seat, plummeting toward the ground and my death terrifies me. Maybe the fact that you could walk around an airship would make it less claustrophobic.
It by and large _did._ Far and away the largest historical usage of airships was by the Americans in World War II and the Cold War, and by switching to helium, they were made safer than modern civil helicopters.
Notably, they were also the most reliable and mission-capable aircraft of World War II. Regrettably, helicopters proved to be faster and more “modern” to military sensibilities, so they were allowed to lapse into obsolescence in the early ‘60s.
It seems like the one blessing of airships is that they didn’t carry many passengers so the loss of life was low. I did a double-take when Mike said 50 casualties was the worst disaster, although that’s 50 personal tragedies too many
We need to revisit this technology. With modern engineering, airships could have quite a future.
I liked this video I’d never heard of most , cool
Mike you have got to have the classiest wardrobe of anyone your age i really do appreciate your style. Super classy
It's important to note the difference between "explosion" and "caught fire". As cataclysmic as its hydrogen ignition was, most consider the Hindenburg only "caught fire" and crashed to the ground. Some believe the Dixmude "exploded" mid-air based on eyewitness testimonies and how so there was little wreckage recovered.
The Ahlhorn Hangar disaster is another "explosion", 4 Zeppelins and the SL 20 and 2 hangars were destroyed. Nobody knows what caused it (could have been an accident or sabotage) but it seemed like one explosion triggered further ignition nearby.
Just enjoyed your video on the 101 Airship. If you would like to dig deeper into the full story, try and find a copy of Neville Shute's book Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer. There is an article about him and the book in Wikipedia.
I am amazed at the lack of helium, I knew the USA had controlled Helium export which is part of why German craft used hydrogen despite being rather perky when around an ignition source but I somehow always figured that the British and French would have had access to it.
It may have been an economic decision. Hydrogen is lighter by volume than helium, so to carry the same load a helium airship would need to be much larger.
I have a question for ya, so you made a "What if Titanic didn't sink?", and a "What if Britannic didn't sink in 1916?", so uh, can you make a "What if Olympic wasn't scrapped?" video?
I’d reckon she’d either become a cruise ship or a museum ship. The most unlikely is her retention of ocean liner service.
Sunk in WW2
oh god, there are even more than the accidents you've already covered in other videos...... it's amazing they were popular as long as they were!
Bear in mind that despite the various accidents and others, airships were still the safest aircraft of their time.
When I was a kid, we used to see the Goodyear blimp floating over a lot. Do they still fly it? Does anyone know? Excellent video, Mike. Thanks!
Yes, it still exists and is considered the Official Bird of Redondo Beach for some fucking reason
Still blows my mind that this things were a thing.
Not in the blimp forum nowadays. But these huge airships.
When I was young kid. I thought these were fake. It's just the look and size maybe. But just seemed beyond my young mind could understand at the time.
You should do a segment on the R100. The R101 sister ship.
13:38 well done sir!
Cause of the disaster that destroyed the largest flying object ever built (Hindenburg) at the army airfield in New Jersy is a mystery to this day.
Is it? It thought the likely culprit was a gas leak caused by a a broken rudder cable coupled with a static spark.
Is there any videos in the future plan about the LZ 129 Hindenburg?
That's one speculative bubble that popped dramatically.