Throughout the 19th century long distance air travel was just a dream. But, as the century turned, the best hope for conquering the skies lay in gigantic powered flying machines - the airships. They were the largest, most romantic aircraft ever conceived.
View The Airships. Video hosted on Guba. THE AIRSHIPS brings to television the gripping story of remarkable flying machines and their pivotal role in history. It is a saga steeped in drama, political intrigue and tragedy as men with vision raced to dominate the sky with huge, rigid-framed flying machines, held aloft by the sheer miracle of lighter-than-air gas.
The riveting series exploring these unique flying machines and their dynamic role in global history concludes tonight with remarkable footage of the world's most famous airship disaster.
With the world in financial turmoil after the Wall Street crash, raising the money needed to build a fleet of airships for intercontinental travel was tough business.
Two new ships were built for the US Navy - Akron was the world's first flying aircraft carrier. Inside its huge fuselage was a hangar with four modern fighter planes that could be launched and retrieved in flight. The Navy's concept was that the Akron, and later, her sister-ship, the Macon would become the aerial eyes of the fleet.
To justify the public money spent on these giants, they were sent on almost continual public-relations flights around the country - showing the flag - winning the accolades of the people. On one such flight, three ground crew holding the mooring lines were lifted into the air when the 'ship rose unexpectedly. Dramatic film captured two of the men dropping to their deaths, hundreds of feet below - a third struggling to reach the ship, and safety. These images horrified the public, and did little to enhance the popularity of these huge craft.
Soon afterwards, Akron crashed into the Atlantic with great loss of life. A similar fate befell Macon as she returned from fleet manoeuvres off the west coast, near San Francisco. This time the entire crew survived. Dramatic underwater film shows the wreck of the Macon, and the 4 planes hangared in her belly.
When Hitler came to power in 1933 his propaganda machine saw great potential in using the German Zeppelins to promote his so-called peaceful pursuits of the Third Reich. Hitler backed the building of a new ship - the Hindenburg. Launched in 1936 Hindenburg was used in tandem with Graf Zeppelin on political flights over Germany - over the Olympic Games in Berlin, and the huge Nazi rallies in Nuremberg.
At Lakehurst, on 16 May at 6.25 pm, Hindenburg , with her gas bags filled with over seven million cubic feet of highly combustible hydrogen, burst into flames only meters from its mooring mast. In full view of the waiting crowd, and with newsreel cameras filming, the largest airship ever built was destroyed by fire in less than a minute. Amazingly, 62 of the 97 people on board survived. The program features an interview recorded with the German cabin boy who escaped the inferno. This disaster immediately put an end to all further passenger flights by Zeppelin airships.
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