Photo of the Hindenburg over New York City on May 6, 1937. A few hours after this photo was taken, the airship crashed and burned at Lakehurst, NJ while trying to land. Yes, those are Swastikas on the tail. / Wikimedia Commons
Whenever I watch "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade", I'm filled with longing for the majestic beauty of airships.
Three times longer and twice as tall as a 747 – to put that in perspective, the Hindenburg class machine was as long as the Empire State Building is tall – these magnificent machines had 25 cabins (yes, cabins) holding two passengers each, a dining room, a passenger lounge with a piano, a writing room, a smoking room.
Powered by four Daimler-Benz DB 602 16 cylinder diesel engines delivering 735 kW, the airship would top out at around 130 km/h. The transatlantic journey from Friedrichshafen to Buenos Aires took 3 days.
No doubt these beautiful gentle giants would still be filling our skies to this day if not for the fact that the US aircraft industry was taking off.
In order for airships to compete with airplanes, they needed helium. The world's largest deposits of helium were in the US. So in 1925, the US passed the Helium Act.
This Act effectively nationalised all helium supplies and gave the United States Department of the Interior and United States Bureau of Mines jurisdiction for the experimentation, production, repurification, and research of the gas.
The Germans negotiated with the US government to release some supplies for peaceful purposes only. The US initially agreed, but when Hitler invaded and annexed Austria, that permission was withdrawn.
When the Americans refused to release supplies, the Germans had to resort to hydrogen instead. But hydrogen is flammable. The Hindenburg disaster that followed destroyed commercial airship aviation forever.
But consider this: in 2017, a massive underground helium reserve was discovered in Tanzania holding 2 800 billion litres of helium.
Now imagine an airship-based freight operation from Durban to every major destination in the rest of Africa. No need for roads, no need for tolls.
But we have idiots running our continent. The Chinese will probably build it first, And make us pay for it.
The picture shows the Hindenburg over Manhattan on 6 May 1937 shortly before the disaster. Yes, that's a pair of Swastikas on the tail.
