During World War One, huge investments were made in the manufacture of aircraft engines which allowed the Illuminati bankers to stipulate that all aircraft engines use petroleum as the sole source of fuel. The final coup de grace: Burn the Hindenburg to give the world a reason to forget all about airships (as they consume much less fuel).
26 comments
I kid you not, this same person says that the Titanic was sabotaged too, in a dastardly Illuminati plot to get transatlantic travel converted to fuel-hogging jet airliners(which did not exist circa 1912). Everything is a conspiracy to lower fuel efficiency and make oil barons rich. Ergo everything was planned, and apparently there is no such thing as a tragic accident.
Hastur the Unspeakable, essentially airships are extremely analogous to electric cars: there was a period about a century ago in which they were superior to their competitors, but rapid technological developments of the competition eclipsed them, and they were abandoned. Until recently, the technology did not exist to make either viable again, and by hybridizing electric cars with gas ones and airships with airplanes, we have found a way to reduce the disadvantages that limited their use. The result:
image
image
So essentially his argument- the Hindenburg was sabotaged to give jets a shot- is not only unsupported, the entire premise is wrong. Airships could not have competed with jets in the same niche.
@New Face of Rev
Yes, he conveniently ignores the fact that while pure Hydrogen is indeed nonflammable, Hydrogen that mixes with even tiny quantities of air becomes explosive. The Hindenburg was cavernous; there was plenty of oxygen inside the ship that could mix with Hydrogen, leaking from a gash in one of the cells, to be ignited by an errant spark in the midst of that thunderstorm...
Actually, the Hindenburg burned up so quickly because the skin of the gas envelope was painted with a reflective coating containing aluminum. an inner layer of the gas envelope was made with iron oxide.
The thing was coated in thermite.
Yeah, the hydrogen would burn, but since it's so light hydrogen burns quickly and in a rising plume that would not have burned up the passenger gondola.
It was the thermite that did it.
@zipperback
Um, nope. That's a very annoying urban myth that doesn't seem to want to go away. I dont blame you for believing it; news organizations and trivia buffs often blithely parrot it as if it was a settled matter. It was the Hydrogen, there is no doubt. Thermite was not present in the skin, nor was the aluminum even a factor, any more than aluminum paperclips can spontaneously combust. It's not exactly a mystery, either- I've seen swatches of the unburned skin with my own eyes, and I have seen how weakly it smolders when an identical patch is tested.
As for the passenger decks, the Hydrogen wasn't just burning itself, it was also incinerating the upper structure of the airship. You can clearly see the fires stopping at the passenger decks and gondola in the footage, but shortly thereafter the framework collapsed on it, to say nothing of the fuel fires. It's a wonder 2/3s of the passengers survived, actually.
Here's a thorough debunking of that myth by airship historian Dan Grossman: http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/myths
"...which allowed the Illuminati bankers to stipulate that all aircraft engines use petroleum as the sole source of fuel."
Yes, they ran the coal-powered aircraft industry right out of business. Bastards.
The dirigible argument is bullshit as well. Not only did they obviously burn petroleum, they burned a lot of it. The fuel mass per passenger-mile may be a little lower than a jet, but the jet is eight times faster, giving you far greater revenue capacity.
1. At the time, the only choice between power for any mechanized vehicle was petroleum-powered internal combustion engines or heavy, cast iron external combustion steam engines. Steam engines were way too heavy to use in an aircraft, not to mention the problem of keeping the heat going mid-flight and having enough water to keep the engine running.
2. The Hindenburg also used petroleum-powered engines, otherwise it would have just been a big balloon at the mercy of air currents.
3. The Hindenburg didn't exist until after WWI.
4. Airships still exist, i.e. the Goodyear Blimp.
Though the Hindenburg disaster was in 1937, airships represented a very small proportion of air traffic at the time and were seen as being primarily useful for long-haul flights. I have seen an ad in a US magazine from 1939 for a planned flight across the Pacific to Sydney and Tokyo in 1940, though other events stopped that; obviously, airship flight was still thought to be worth doing after the Hindenburg disaster. The USSR and the US Navy continued to use them, the latter into the 1960s.
The Hindenburg had a ratio of about two crew members to one passenger, carrying about a hundred people all told. That's what makes them expensive. Ocean liners could carry thousands of passengers at a ratio of five passengers to two crew. After commercial jets were launched in the early 1950s, they had a ratio of four passengers to every crew member. Direct transatlantic flights between the US and major European cities did not start until the late 1950s, twenty years after the end of the Hindenburg.
The biggest problem with dirigibles was their extreme fragility. The Hindenburg gets all the attention but the real death of the airship everywhere but Germany occurred much earlier. In the U.S. it was the crashes of the Akron and Macon that sealed their fate. Both were filled with helium, which doesn't burn, but were destroyed when they got caught in storms and broke up. Even with modern metals and composites they are inherently dangerous compared to airplanes. Of course, that has nothing to do with why gasoline and jet fuel are used. The simple fact is that they are the only fuels with high enough energy content for the job. Something to consider when one fills their gas tank with gas when there are viable alternatives for automobile fuel.
@pete
It's true that the Macon and Akron both crashed 80 years ago, but that was more due to human error and an add-on design flaw than anything. With modern materials and design, airships are actually the safest aircraft out there. They may not be the fastest- only 1/4 the speed of a jet- but they're still good for hauling cargo, scientific research, advertising and surveillance. Don't expect them to be filled with cramped little seats and cross the Atlantic in a few hours like a jet can, but that doesn't mean they aren't still useful in other ways today- but not so back then, as this rube says.
That said, I believe their biggest problem at the time, besides Hydrogen, was actually their dependence on special infrastructure. The actual fares were about half that of a Boeing clipper, and are still cheaper than a first-class transatlantic ticket in today's money, but needing a huge ground crew, mooring mast, gas facilities and a giant hangar kind of defeats the point. There was none of the to-anywhere freedom a plane had, you could count the number of landing sites for airships on both hands. There was no way around it at the time, either: to get rid of that requirement, you need to hybridize it with an airplane, which was far beyond their technological level.
P.S.- Hasan, you're thinking of the Graf Zeppelin. The Hindenburg had a 1:1 crew/ passenger ratio. Still, just goes to show that even if it didn't blow up, Zeppelins were not ready to replace airplanes for mass transit.
If indeed a type of fuel was stipulated, it was most likely to prevent the need of stocking and transporting different fuels and to reduce the liklihood the possibility of putting the wrong fuel in aircraft.
Burning the Hindenburg wouldn't have effected much regarding fuel choices.
Now let's talk about your med choices.
@Watermelon Rat Hindenburg itself had a top speed of 85 mph and could cross the Atlantic in 60-70 hours, as opposed to the 10 to 12 hours today by jet. The point wasn't speed, though, it was luxury. Today you are crammed together like sardines...
image
...But Zeppelins were all-first-class.
image
They couldn't just torture as many people into as many seats as possible, because A) that would have messed with the weight distribution, and B) no one would want to spend two and a half days in economy class. Zeppelins were literally incapable of transporting large amounts of people at a time; luxury travel was the only transportation niche they could occupy. Ergo, speed was of little consequence.
@J.James
IIRC, the Hindenburg on its last flight had about 35 passengers and about 60 crew. It may, of course, not have been operating at capacity. The point is though, that these numbers are tiny compared to the requirements of mass transit.
In 1937, the speed of the Hindenburg was certainly of consequence when you consider the alternative of spending five days and nights on board a liner. The equivalent fifty years later would have been taking Concorde as opposed to a standard transatlantic flight. It was money rather than speed that was of no consequence.
Hasan Prishtina, that actually was an unusual case. The Hindenburg had a passenger capacity of 72, but they had taken on a additional crew for that flight in order to train them. Ordinarily it has more or less equal passengers and crew.
And by the way, when I said "speed was of no consequence," I meant its slowness was of no consequence, as it was much faster than the alternative. It wasn't actually slow at all.
The Hindenburg really was the Concorde of its day, you're right. It may have been slower, but it was almost as comfortable as a resort hotel, and a lot cheaper. A Concorde flight costs $15,000 in today's money, and a mini-vacation flight on the Hindenburg costs $6,500. Personally, I would choose the Hindenburg seven days a week and twice on Sunday- I've been on board a Concorde before, and let me tell you, their farcical idea of "first class" is a colossal rip-off. The seats are cramped, the cabin's claustrophobic, and the windows are like postage stamps.
@ J James - Late to the party but... anyway. Dan Grossman's description of thermite does not seem to add up.
Why would an improper ratio fail to cause a reaction? If the amount of iron was not exactly the amount what's preventing the oxygen atoms in the iron oxide from jumping to an adjacent aluminum molecule causing an exothermic reaction? The thermite would not burn with ideal efficiency but it should be adequate to continue the reaction. Vinegar and baking soda are also two molecules that react, but even if you don't have exact molar ratios adding them will cause a reaction leaving the remainder unreacted.
Furthermore, Secrets of the Dead, a documentary series acquired a small piece of the Hindenburg's envelope and subjected it to a spark. It flared up fast, damn fast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_CLxP_wyNA
Go to around 48:30. Why was your skin different? Perhaps it was the undoped portion as seen in the photo on Grossman's page?
The remainder of Grossman's defense states that iron oxide paint would make the ship too heavy to fly so there was no iron oxide, except for the iron oxide that he admitted there was (in a non-ideal ratio). This is just saying that the Hindenburg wasn't covered in pure, ideally mixed thermite.
Duh.
I think Grossman's answer begs a lot of questions. Either that or he's attempting to playing a game of semantics "The Hindenburg wasn't covered in thermite it was covered in paint that was only HALF thermite. it's totally different herpaderp!"
@zipperback
Not to mention the simple fact that the videos clearly show a hydrogen explosion occurring from the inside of the ship. The idea that it could have happened like that had it been filled with helium is absolutely ridiculous. A single layer of painted canvas does not instantaneously explode into a fireball 1,000 feet high, 7 million cubic feet of Hydrogen gas does.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register . Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.
