There are some very interesting photos here, but I'm also intrigued by some parts of the captions. For example part of one reads, "The Associated Press and Corbis Images are teaming up Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011, in an attempt to make more money from a stockpile of photography that includes some of the world’s most famous pictures."
These were common citizens of Germany as well as the United States. Not a military craft or military personnel. The war was 2 years away. Making a statement like "I used to feel bad for these people..." is not only ignorant it is just plain hateful and the poster has no business using this forum.
A great picture of the Hindenburg drifting by The Empire State building. Especially when you consider that the Titanic was only about 80 feet longer than the Hindenburg.
Congratulations. These photos are really great and show us details of the disaster and how they took providences in order to avoid more injuries and deaths.
I see that it is suggested that Hydrogen was used simply because it was cheaper. Not so. Germany wanted to use Helium, but the only source at that time was the U.S. Unfortunately, the U.S. government refused access to the Helium so Germany had no alternative but to use the Hydrogen. Not sure why access to Helium was denied, possibly some anti Nazi attitude or even a bit of jealousy that Nazi Germany had built such an incredible ( for the time ) flying machine.
In fact Hugo Eckener, head of the Zeppelin company, was very anti-Nazi. He was known to be quite critical of the regime, and was eventually declared to be persona non grata (non-person) by the Nazi's. He even refused a demand by Goebbels to name the ship "Adolf Hitler", and because of this the ship was only referred to as LZ-129 in Nazi controlled media.
If you look at the photo of the coffins lined up with the flags draped over them, that was the German flag at the time- solid red with a white cirle bearing the swastika. Not condoning the actions of the Nazi party, just pointing something out.