In 1937 the largest aircraft ever to fly, with its sister ship, crossed the Atlantic with a dining room, a promenade, and a smoking lounge. It had been planned around helium, the gas that lifts and cannot burn. It flew on hydrogen.
Why? Not thrift. America held the world’s only real supply of helium, and an American law from the 1920s forbade selling it abroad. So the Zeppelin company flew the substitute, managed the hazard beautifully for dozens of flights, and used the extra lift to sell twenty more berths.
On the evening of 6 May 1937, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the Hindenburg waited out a thunderstorm, landed when the station said she could, and burned in about half a minute. Thirty-six people died. Sixty-two of the ninety-seven aboard survived.
The Magnanimous Doctor Warthan opens the file on the leak no gauge could see, the spark nobody caught in the act, the myths that grew up around the fire, and the helium that was approved, allotted, licensed, and never delivered.
Technical details drawn from the U.S. Department of Commerce accident report (Air Commerce Bulletin, August 1937), the German investigating commission’s findings, Foreign Relations of the United States 1938, and President Roosevelt’s 1937 and 1938 statements on helium export.
The Doctor’s voice and the Society’s imagery are synthesized.