No Hindenburg-accident

What would had happen to airships if there where no Hindenburg-accident. what would their further technicel development and where and how could they compete against airplanes?

Would we see airship routs connecting european cities?
 
While it would be nice to believe that, but for the Hindenburg disaster, the future of airship travel looked bright, this misses some critical historical facts.

When the Hindenburg crashed, there were only two other rigid airships in the world, Graf Zeppelin, and the retired USN ship USS Los Angeles. Hindenburg's near sister, also to be named Graf Zeppelin because she would have been a replacement for the original Graf Zeppelin, was completing. Assuming Hindenburg didn't crash, there would have been two active passenger ships, the new Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg in operation by the 1938 season. A newer ship LZ-131 was under construction.

The problem is that WW2 happens in 1939. The war would have ended all commercial zeppelin flights, except possibly within Germany and Austria, and possibly between Germany and the few friendly European nations or neutrals (Sweden, the USSR prior to 1941, Hungary, Italy). Much more likely, all zeppelin flights would be suspended and, given Goering's attitude about zeppelins, they would almost certainly have been scrapped for their aluminum in 1940 or earlier (that was the fate of both Graf Zeppelins in our world). The Zeppelin hangers would still be dismantled, and later the Zeppelin works bombed by the allies. Even if, by some miracle, all the zeppelins were not scrapped, and just mothballed for the duration,they would almost certainly be destroyed in their sheds by allied bombing.

There would be no possibility of ressurecting zeppelin air travel until the war was over...and Germany would be ill positioned to resume its role. It is remotely possible that, absent a Hindenburg disaster to sour attitudes about passenger zeppelins, the USA's Goodyear corporation might have been able to sell the public on zeppelin airships as stately transoceanic air liners, but by 1945/46 there were already passenger planes capable of carrying as many passengers as far as zeppelins at 3 times the speed. They might survive for a while as cruise ships, but not as scheduled liners.

I tend to think that, to have airships be commercially viable much after the late 1930's you'd have to change a lot more than just the fate of the HIndenburg.
 
While it would be nice to believe that, but for the Hindenburg disaster, the future of airship travel looked bright, this misses some critical historical facts.

When the Hindenburg crashed, there were only two other rigid airships in the world, Graf Zeppelin, and the retired USN ship USS Los Angeles. Hindenburg's near sister, also to be named Graf Zeppelin because she would have been a replacement for the original Graf Zeppelin, was completing. Assuming Hindenburg didn't crash, there would have been two active passenger ships, the new Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg in operation by the 1938 season. A newer ship LZ-131 was under construction.

The problem is that WW2 happens in 1939. The war would have ended all commercial zeppelin flights, except possibly within Germany and Austria, and possibly between Germany and the few friendly European nations or neutrals (Sweden, the USSR prior to 1941, Hungary, Italy). Much more likely, all zeppelin flights would be suspended and, given Goering's attitude about zeppelins, they would almost certainly have been scrapped for their aluminum in 1940 or earlier (that was the fate of both Graf Zeppelins in our world). The Zeppelin hangers would still be dismantled, and later the Zeppelin works bombed by the allies. Even if, by some miracle, all the zeppelins were not scrapped, and just mothballed for the duration,they would almost certainly be destroyed in their sheds by allied bombing.

There would be no possibility of ressurecting zeppelin air travel until the war was over...and Germany would be ill positioned to resume its role. It is remotely possible that, absent a Hindenburg disaster to sour attitudes about passenger zeppelins, the USA's Goodyear corporation might have been able to sell the public on zeppelin airships as stately transoceanic air liners, but by 1945/46 there were already passenger planes capable of carrying as many passengers as far as zeppelins at 3 times the speed. They might survive for a while as cruise ships, but not as scheduled liners.

I tend to think that, to have airships be commercially viable much after the late 1930's you'd have to change a lot more than just the fate of the HIndenburg.

Zoomar hit this right on the money. With the Hindenburg surviving, The LZ-130 gets finished and put into service probably in 1938. The LZ-131 would probably be completed in early 1939, maybe in service by the time the war breaks out, at which point it is highly likely that the zeppelins will be grounded, and scrapped like OTL in 1940 (or was it '41? I can't remember of the top of my head).

The KEY to any sort of airship survival at all with a POD of the Hindenburg not crashing ini 1937 would be to get the Americans onboard with their own airship program before WWII. This was Dr. Hugo Eckener's belief, anyway.
If Goodyear builds a passenger airship (or airships) for PanAm prior to the war, they would probably survive until the 50s as a scheduled liner (optimistically). [on a side note, it would be fun to have the LZ-131 be in route to America in 1939, and have the crew (with Eckener onboard) defect to the United States, saving the LZ-131 from wartime destruction.]

Realistically, to get the airship to be a major form of transportation, especially once airplanes become faster and more practical, you have to change things up in the late 20s, early 30s. In my Airship President TL, the primary PoD is Hugo Eckener becoming president of Germany in 1932, preventing the Nazis from coming to power and butterflying away WWII....however, the earlier PoD that I'd developed for another airship TL and quitely incorporated into the Airship President TL occurs in 1924, where the USS Shenandoah doesn't actually crash as per OTL....there is still an incident, but the ship isn't lost, and the US formally organizes it's airship program and sets up a training school etc....so that by the early 30s the USA is already committed to the idea of airships for the military and by the mid 1930s PanAm has it's first passenger airships.
I'll admit that my Airship President TL is very optimistic and somewhat simplistic, but if you're interested in alt-airship history you'd probably enjoy it.
Also, I highly recommend Zoomar's TLs on alt-airship history:
An Alternate History of the US Rigid Airship
AND
The Imperial Airship Establishment and the British Rigid Airship
 

Markus

Banned
What would had happen to airships if there where no Hindenburg-accident. what would their further technicel development and where and how could they compete against airplanes?

Would we see airship routs connecting european cities?

I don´t think so. Even without a war, airships would hardly have a chance against the next generation of long range airliners like the DC-4. With that range you can cross the Atlantic without a stopover and the Pacific with one or two and you can do so in a fraction of the time an airship needs. For air travel in Europe even a plane like the DC-3 would do. You could go London-Stockholm/Warsaw/Budapest/Rome/Madrid.
 
The Airplane Disaster.

Something could have happened to slow or halt the development of airplanes. An early spectacular crash for example. Little lasting interest followed. Zeplons were the viable alturnetive. They developed before and during the war.
 
Without the Hindenburg explosion, the key to airships is one thing:

Helium

Helium-based ships must dominate the air ship environment before the first major hydrogen fire. Hindenburg poisoned the public to lighter-than-air travel. Air ships could easily settle into niches larger than that of blimps at sporting events.
 
Something could have happened to slow or halt the development of airplanes. An early spectacular crash for example. Little lasting interest followed. Zeplons were the viable alturnetive. They developed before and during the war.
Haha...I'm quite mean to airplanes in my TL....a number of high profile crashes...one of which kills the POTUS in the mid-1940s along with a number of bad passenger crashes.

Without the Hindenburg explosion, the key to airships is one thing:

Helium

Helium-based ships must dominate the air ship environment before the first major hydrogen fire. Hindenburg poisoned the public to lighter-than-air travel. Air ships could easily settle into niches larger than that of blimps at sporting events.
Yup....though realistically the USA would use helium pretty much from the get-go, so if you can get the US airship program to really take of, it would be likely that Germany would eventually get helium as well (especially if you can find a way to nix Hitler :D). You could even end up never having a hydrogen fire in the first place (indeed this would probably be preferable).
 
Something could have happened to slow or halt the development of airplanes. An early spectacular crash for example. Little lasting interest followed. Zeplons were the viable alturnetive. They developed before and during the war.

This highly implausible POD is mentioned a lot but just isn't realistic. There were headline airplane crashes but that didn't stop air travel. Think of any train crashes, automobile crashes, liners sinking, etc. travel and transport didn't stop.

The major problem for airships is that they and their infrastructure are fantastically expensive. Any corporation is going to need the financial backing of the government. The development of airships really declined and ended because they were not worth it.
 
Yup....though realistically the USA would use helium pretty much from the get-go, so if you can get the US airship program to really take of, it would be likely that Germany would eventually get helium as well (especially if you can find a way to nix Hitler :D). You could even end up never having a hydrogen fire in the first place (indeed this would probably be preferable).
Where would the Germans get their helium from? :confused:
 

mats

Banned
the main reason why there weren't any helium based airships otl was that USA wasn't exporting it's helium.
 
the main reason why there weren't any helium based airships otl was that USA wasn't exporting it's helium.

Well, another thing is that helium is rather difficult to extract and purify.

In the 1920s, in the period between the receipt of the Los Angeles from Zeppelin and the loss of the Shenandoah, both ships rarely were flying at the same time--because there was only enough helium on hand to inflate one or the other but not both at once. Eventually production improved. During WWII the Navy operated hundreds of blimps of various sizes. Meanwhile other uses for helium besides lifting airships have been developed and production is now on a larger scale than ever.

But commercial helium is extracted from natural gas, from certain fields that for no scientifically understood reason I have ever heard explained, happen to have "high" concentrations of the stuff. The ultimate source of all helium on earth is from radioactive decay--an "alpha particle" is an energetic helium nucleus emitted by high-mass isotopes. By sheer chance or for some subtle reason unknown as yet, either something caused a lot more alpha-decay in the rocks near these wells, or they tended to keep more of the helium around longer, accumulating relatively high levels. But only relatively--we are talking just a few percent at most.

The American wells are in the region where the borders of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado are all near each other, I've heard of wells in each of these states.

To my knowledge, the only other known wells that turn out to have significant concentrations are found in Siberia and Algeria.

When I go hog-wild myself with visions of fleets of giant airships forming a huge global network, I remember--"There isn't a whole lot of helium readily available."

I posted some hog-wild visions on a thread of Eckener's that actually really belong here instead.
 
This highly implausible POD is mentioned a lot but just isn't realistic. There were headline airplane crashes but that didn't stop air travel. Think of any train crashes, automobile crashes, liners sinking, etc. travel and transport didn't stop.

The major problem for airships is that they and their infrastructure are fantastically expensive. Any corporation is going to need the financial backing of the government. The development of airships really declined and ended because they were not worth it.

Absolutely right regarding the infastructure differential. In 1925 a couple of pilots could buy a few airplanes, hire some mechanics and a receptionist, rent a hangar at a municipal airport and start an airline. Airships required about 40people to man them, 100's to handle them on the ground, and the biggest buildings on earth to be their hangars. Also, there was an early perception difference about the "riskiness" of airplane and airship flight. This was prior to the era of large airliners blowing up with 100-200 people on board. When a 1930's airplane fell out of the sky it usually killed fewer than 10-15 people, many of whom were professional aviators or avowed "risktakers". When a zeppelin crashed, upwards of 50-100 people could lose their lives, and if it was a commercial ship like the R-101 or Hindenburg many of the people who died were "just folks".
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I always thought that if zeppelins/airships stuck around they'd basically be cruise ships in the sky :)

....which they sort of were in OTL, but this time they get nicer and nicer :p
 
[on a side note, it would be fun to have the LZ-131 be in route to America in 1939, and have the crew (with Eckener onboard) defect to the United States, saving the LZ-131 from wartime destruction.] Realistically, to get the airship to be a major form of transportation, especially once airplanes become faster and more practical, you have to change things up in the late 20s, early 30s.

Not to toot my own TL too much, but that's not wildly dissimilar with two events I have happen in my Naval Airship history: (1) the LZ-130 being caught in the USA at the outbreak of WW2, interned, eventually put into USN ASW service, and finally ending up as a giant Smithsonian exhibit, and (2) the unsuccessful attempt by Eckener and others to defect to the USA with the Hindenburg during a scheduled crossing. Unfortunally, in this TL, poor Eckener is caught and "disappeared" by the Nazis.
 
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