THE AGE OF THE AIRSHIPS: Take Two
Copyright ©1997 by Matthew Cross. All Rights Reserved.

Lakehurst, N.J. - Summer, 1997: The seventy year-old hanger that once housed the great German Airship Hindenburg on its American stopovers still stands at New Jersey's Lakehurst Naval Air Station, a thousand-foot long sentinel to a bygone era. So does the broad expanse of landing field, now paved over and marked in the center by only a small, flat memorial and an almost invisible miniature weathervane in the shape of the 800 foot long Zeppelin - the largest craft ever flown by man. Inside, on the floor of the immense hanger, you can still see old railroad tracks peeking up through the cobblestones, once used to transport the anchoring equipment out to the landing field.

Inside the hanger, I meet several old Navy men indulging in the hobby of flying gossamer model airplanes, powered only by rubber bands. These delicate airplanes, weighing mere fractions of an ounce, seem to move in slow motion as they make huge lazy spirals inside the cool, still hanger. "The record is fifty-seven minutes aloft", one of them proudly tells me. From housing the Hindenburg, to model planes weighing less than a pen. An interesting evolution for this hanger. Outside, one can feel the history in the air at this forgotten site, curiously left as flat, open, and inviting as it was on that day in 1937, when a bomb dramatically announced the end of 36 lives and brought the silvery giant, and an elegant age, to the ground. This airborne memory is fitting, as air is the true home of an airship. For many years I’ve planned to visit this place, ever since my father brought home a copy of The Age of the Airship when I was still in single digits. I remember reading that book over and over again...

I investigate further. Into the Navy Canteen that overlooks the great landing field I go, for a snack, and more information. Once inside, I discover that civillians are not allowed to buy even a pint of orange juice. Wait a minute - both my Grandfathers served in W.W.II, and I love my Country, too! “Sorry, it’s the rules”, the cashier apologetically explains, and directs us to the soda machine outside. On base, there are no postcards, momentos, or other reminders, besides the small memorial, of the former East Coast Airship Port Lakehurst once was. The only local collection of artifacts from that time rest in a musty old Church five minutes off base in the sleepy town of Lakehurst. The tiny Church/Museum is open only six hours a week - on Sundays and Wednesdays. As today is Saturday, I must settle for viewing what I can through dusty stained glass. I dimly see an old original poster inside, and a yellowed newspaper headline...

Recently I learned that Count Albrecht von Brandenstein-Zeppelin - current chairman of the original Zeppelin Company and great-grandson of legendary airship pioneer Graf (Count) Ferdinand von Zeppelin - has brought back the airships. A 250 foot-long prototype, equipped with the most modern technology, and filled with nonflammable Helium, made its debut earlier this year in Germany. This new airship, the Zeppelin NT (New Technology) is slated initially for tourism, and can carry twelve people in safety with no danger of explosion. Actually, for over twenty years in the early part of this century the Germans had flown their airships over a million miles, transporting over 10,000 passengers without a single mishap - using flammable Hydrogen as their sole lifting agent.

Dr. Hugo Eckner, designer of the Hindenburg, wanted nonflammable Helium for this new, largest airship - but America was then the only source for nonflammable Helium. With the Nazis rising to power in Europe, we refused to give the Germans any Helium - even for a passenger airship (pre-war fears). True, airships were intimidating weapons for the Germans in the early stages of WWI. But they were no longer considered any kind of serious military threat by the late 1930’s. Hitler actually disliked and had little use for airships - except for their considerable propaganda value as unmistakable symbols of German ingenuity and pride. Ironically, the proud and honorable men of the Zeppelin Company never wanted their airships to be any part of the Nazi propaganda machine. But they were given no choice. Be overhead at key rallies, drop political pamphlets when we tell you, bear the Swastika on all tail fins - or don’t fly at all.

History so easily overlooks the fact that German airships were safely carrying passengers over Europe, to North and South America, even around the world, many years before airplanes - and before the world had ever heard of the Nazis.

Only the Germans had an impeccable safety record with airships, once they mastered the medium. The English and the Americans inevitably crashed their airships; the Germans ran a safe, successful transatlantic passenger service with theirs. One wonders if this civilized, elegant, safe, and enjoyable mode of flight would have disappeared for so long if clearly deliberate sabotage at Lakehurst had not stepped into the picture when it did. History favors remembrance of disasters; of the dramatic. Sensationalism sells - and sticks in the mind. Actually, the media did as much damage to the airship’s image as any bomb. The terrifying explosion of millions of cubic feet of highly flammable Hydrogen on that May evening in 1937 was indelibly stamped into our collective memory. But show me a modern Jet crash where 62 out of the 97 people on board actually live to tell about it. That’s over 63% who survived! And from a ship filled with the equivalent of vaporized gasoline, no less. Had the Hindenburg simply been filled with nonflammable Helium, an explosion would have been impossible...

Still the belief persists that the explosion itself was an accident, “an Act of God”. Yet any objective study of the data rules out everything but a bomb as the clear cause (Who Destroyed the Hindenburg, a very well-researched 1961 book by A. A. Hoehling, only confirms a magazine article I recall years ago describing how the remains of a bomb was recovered from the crash site). One of the many little-known points surrounding the disaster is how the Nazis so totally muzzled the surviving crew members compelling evidence of sabotage - before, during, and after the official investigations. The last thing the Nazis wanted was any sign of prominent resistance to their growing dark cause...

Back at the airfield, I close my eyes, and drift back to a different time. I catch a fleeting glimpse of the silently immense, cigar-shaped silver ship, moving majestically across the sky in my mind. I eagerly await the day when I can fly between major points on the globe in craft that does not depend on thrust for lift.

Think about it: If an airship’s engines ever stopped during a flight - for any reason - you wouldn’t fall like a stone out of the sky, as a plane does. You wouldn’t fall at all; you would simply float. And, your flight would be so smooth and stable a pen would stand on end for hours without falling over. So what if ninety miles an hour is top speed? Airline safety statistics aside, I'd gladly trade that primal fear (especially during takeoff and landing), pressurized cabin, breakneck-speed, sardine seating, questionable food, desert-dry stale air, massive pollution, earsplitting noise, and stuffy, cramped bathrooms of our “modern” Jet planes for the true safety, unpressurized comfort, spaciousness, quite smoothness, environmental sanity, and sheer fun of airship travel (to clarify matters, an airship is not a blimp, e.g. the Goodyear Blimp. A true airship - a dirigible - has a full internal frame, usually housing passenger decks and individual gas cells; a blimp is basically just a huge balloon with a gondola attached).

On airships, the journey itself was as important as the destination; the quality of flight was not sacrificed to the quantity and speed of the miles covered. I'd happily spend thirteen hours flying between, say, New York and Orlando in an airship - with my own cabin, plenty of room to walk about, a sit-down restaurant, and huge observation windows to leisurely watch the world go by below at a comfortable viewing altitude of a thousand feet or so - and arrive truly refreshed and relaxed. What? No thoughts of how our current air traffic control system is on the verge of a meltdown, with possible imminent death always somewhere in the back of the mind? Sign me up! Anyone with a fear of flying would be able to take to the sky in an airship with the confidence and peace of mind of a bird.

Why fight gravity, anyway? Why dump the tons of jet fuel required for every single airline flight into the air we breathe, in our mad dash to race through our lives and “get there?” I like the tagline to the movie Jerry Maguire: The Journey Is Everything. Instead of the current three airplane hours from New York to Orlando in a cramped kamikaze metal tube at 35,000 feet, I’d take a quality cruise in the air any day. And imagine the huge marketing and PR potential! Perhaps now is the time to send that proposal I wrote years ago to Donald Trump. I can see it now... the Trump Zeppelin, with regular service between New York and Atlantic City. Zeppelins over America - again. Donald, you read it here first: Priceless advertising value for the bargain price of about $7 million - the cost of a new twelve-passenger airship. Now, where did I put that proposal?

I certainly don’t think airships will replace airplanes anytime soon - but wouldn’t it be great to have an alternative mode of air travel that was really safe, and a lot of fun, too? Sometimes the best way to move forward is to step back. Perhaps our harried, speed-crazed, rushing world is ready once again to embrace a more relaxed age, an age where flight is a wonder to be savored in quiet, relaxed safety... The Age of the Airships. When that day comes again, I promise myself I will be among the first "new" passengers.