Hindenburg Statistics

Dan (Airships.net) Reply:
August 14th, 2011 at 2:50 pm

A detailed discussion of Hindenburg’s flight controls and flight operations can be found at these pages:

http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/interiors/control-car-flight-instruments

http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/flight-operations-procedures

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Stu Reply:
August 30th, 2011 at 10:50 am

Not to steal Dan’s thunder, but the rudders and elevators are the directional and vertical control surfaces of the airship, usually located on the tail fins in the after-portions of the airship. The elevators are the horizontal tail fins that nave control surfaces on them to direct airflow off the tail fin either up or downwards to lift of drop the tail of the airship and change it’s pitch. The rudders are the same except in the vertical plane, where they push the tail of the airship right or left. In the old, grand rigid airships of the 20′s and 30′s, the elevator and rudder controls were separately manned and operated.

Airships back then were commanded, not piloted. The “flight deck” of control room of the airship was run very much like the bridge or wheelhouse of a steamship of the day. A commanding officer would direct three to four persons in the control room to fly the airship. The rudderman’s post was at the forward-most part of the control gondola, and the elevatorman’s post was usually located just aft, on the port or left side of the control car, facing out the left side of the control car, not forward. There was also a crewman who monitored the engine telegraphs which sent messages to the individual engine cars from the control room. Lastly, there was a crewman who monitored the ballast panel and kept the ship’s static condition in check. There was also a navigator located nearby as well as a radio man, again, all set up based on the operational methodology of a ship at sea, not a piloted aircraft.

All the men in the control room were usually officers of some sort or another. It took years of training to man these posts. The elevatorman in the Hindenburg earned his pay by keeping the ship absolutely level while in flight to prevent glasses and things from falling off tables. That was a bragging point for the airship against the steamship passenger liner – no seasickness!

The large control surfaces of these airships were controlled by cables that were run the length of the ship through a complicated series of sheaves and pulleys. Large counterweights attached to the control surfaces balanced the huge fins so that human arms could operate the fins. They can be seen on the USS Akron and Macon. There was no electrical or hydraulic assist on these control surfaces, and many times, two men had to handle the controls in heavy weather. It was a laborious task to hold the rudder and elevator wheels from spinning out of control against the wind forces acting on the fins. When catastrophe happened, the cables linking the control surfaces to the gondola’s control room typically carried away, and the steering wheels inside the gondola spun uselessly. This was a sure indication to those in the control room that something bad was happening aft.

Lastly, men in the control room stood at their posts during their entire watch. There were no huge banks of gauges and dials like in a old B-17 bomber in the control room of an airship. Contrast this to the flight deck of the Zeppelin NT, which has a seated pilot / copilot positions with joystick controls much like an airplane.

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Tael Neilan Reply:
March 24th, 2011 at 10:18 pm

The lithium-Ion batteries that would be used in a solar-electric Zeppelin would probably weigh as much as if not more than the same volume of fuel tanks in a regular fossil fuel powered one. That doesn’t make it any less viable but you wouldn’t be saving any weight.

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Andrew Reply:
March 27th, 2011 at 7:09 pm

Yes, but there are two advantages:
1. constant (mostly) weight- one of the major reasons the Hindenburg had to vent gas was to adjust for the lost weight of the spent fuel
2. charge in flight- solar cells could recharge the batteries in flight, so the airship could theoretically remain aloft indefinitely, which is very good for recon purposes

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Tael Neilan Reply:
March 27th, 2011 at 9:18 pm

Those are some good reasons, it would greatly reduce the amount of lifting gas needed to “top off” the gas cells between passages. I don’t think it would be very difficult convincing the U.S. Navy to re-adopt the rigid airship with a few more points like those.

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David Erskine Reply:
April 22nd, 2011 at 4:40 am

As a rule of thumb, allow ten square metres of solar panel per kilowatt of power, in full sunlight. How much do solar panels weigh? 200 metres by 20 metres of panels on the top of a large rigid airship gives four thousand square metres or 400 kilowatts of power.

I am sure it could be done, but I suggest no batteries, to save weight. The electric motors only run for about 6 hours, 3 before midday, 3 after, because solar power is low at morning and evening. There would need to be petrol engines to provide power when there is no sun, so total engine weight is substantial.

Solar panels are certainly useful for auxiliary power, that is power needs apart from propulsion.

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Stu Reply:
August 5th, 2011 at 10:02 pm

The problem with solar panels is the weight on the ships hull. Also where that weight is on the upper portions of the hull would offset the ship’s center of gravity making it unstable and tending to roll over and show the solar panels to the ground. Solar panels would be good on control surfaces, and small sections of the hull for house power and secondary sourcing of energy, but not for motive power. Airships have their heavy weights purposely located on the lower, shaded sphere of the hull for good reason.

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cole Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:44 pm

total tragic.

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Sean Reply:
June 3rd, 2011 at 11:15 am

The ovals are fuel and ballast storage. (I think.) Most of the water ballast was stored in canvas bags, but I believe that there were a few tanks as well.

There were several ladders that ran from the lower keel to the axial to the upper skin of the hull. These were used to monitor the gas bags and valves.

It may be that, on that illustration, at that scale, the keel would just get lost in the framing of the tail fins. You could, also descend into the lower rear fin to the auxiliary control station at its tip. At any rate, once you’re back that far in the ship, it’s a quick climb from the lower to the axial to proceed all of the way to the tail where, yes, there is an observation point.

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Stu Reply:
August 5th, 2011 at 10:27 pm

Those little ovals were probably ballast and fuel tanks which where spaced along the keel to distribute the weights along the ship’s length. They were also located not far from the engines that they served. Ballast bags were distributed evenly along the keel for trimming the ship.

The Hindenburg had a typical lower central keel as well as central keel running the length of the ship from the rudder post to the bow. The lower keel stopped at the lower fin. The middle keel ran to the rudder post aft. The last bay of the ship had no aft platform and was dedicated to a gas cell. There may have been a small platform back there.

The Hindenburg had 3 ladders leading up to the control valves located at the top of the ship.

The Akron and Macon were military ships and had a full platform aft that was serviced by a lower single lower keel. It was designated as an “observation” platform. The Akron and Macon both had three keels, one each side, located up each side of the hull where the engines were. There was also a keel running along the top of the hull with access to a forward “observation” platform. There was no lower, central spine of a keel on those ships. To get anywhere vertically, the crew would climb the central rings (deep triangular round rings every 22 meters. These rings would connect all three keels along the ship’s length. The top keel ran from the leading edge of the top rudder fin to about 23 meters back from the bow. The side keels also ran from 23 meters from the bow to the tail fins.

The Hindenburg had a very small platform in the lower fin for observation. The Akron and Macon had a auxiliary control station located in the leading edge of the lower tail fins.

Crewmen of those ships were called riggers, and for good reason. You had to have the skills of those who climbed the rigging of the square riggers of old sailing days inside the tangle of wires and girders of a rigid airship hull.

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Dan (Airships.net) Reply:
January 6th, 2010 at 8:53 am

Hindenburg’s cruising altitude is discussed here, on the page about Hindenburg Flight Operations. Thanks for your question!

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Bryan McFarland Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

Just to compare apples to apples (or contemporary technologies), how does the Hindenburg’s consumption figures match up against a Boeing 314, Sikorsky S42, Short Sunderland, or Empire?

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Baloonist Reply:
December 17th, 2010 at 1:47 am

Good Question! (takes a deep breath):

Okay, let’s just establish a few standards: Modern jet fuel weighs 6.4 pounds/gallon (814 grams/liter). The density of No. 2 diesel fuel is 7.15 pounds/gallon (850 grams/liter). The Hindenburg used diesel fuel.

The Hindenburg carried a crew/kitchen staff of 52 men, and 72 passengers. Its cruising speed was 76mph (125km/h). I’m not sure what its standing cruising height or service ceiling were.

The Boeing 314 Clipper airboat carried 74 passengers and a crew of 11, had a service ceiling of 19,600 ft (5,980m), and had a fuel capacity of 3,525 gallons (13,344 liters) and a range of 3,685 mi (3,201 nm, 5,896 km) at normal cruising speeds of 188 mph (163 knots, 302 km/h) at 11,000 ft (3,400m). That’s about 1.04mi/gal (1.6 k/l), so a Frankfurt to NYC trip (3,995 miles/6,430 km)would necessitate at least one stop for refueling and would consume 4,155 gallons (10,288 liters) of fuel to carry 74 passengers, for a fuel consumption per passenger rate of 56 gallons/passenger (139 liters/passenger) or 400 lbs/passenger (118 kg/passenger). That compares very well to the 450kg/passenger of the Hindenburg’s figures that Tony Holroyd pointed out above.

The Sikorsky S42 flying boat carried 37 daytime passengers and a crew of 4, had a service ceiling of 15,700 ft (4,788m), a fuel capacity of 1,240 gallons (4,964 liters) and a range of 1,930 mi (3,088 km) at normal cruising speeds of 150 mph (241 km/h) at 11,000 ft (3,400m). That’s about 1.56 miles/gallon (2.26 l/km), so a Frankfurt to NYC trip (3,995 miles/6,430 km)would necessitate at least two stops for refueling and would consume 6,232 gallons (14,532 liters) of fuel to carry 37 passengers, for a fuel consumption per passenger rate of 168 gallons/passenger (393 liters/passenger) or 1201 lbs/passenger (319 kg/passenger). That compares very poorly to the 450kg/passenger of the Hindenburg’s figures that Tony Holroyd pointed out above.

The Short Sunderland, being a military flying boat, only carried a crew of 11 and about 24,000 pounds/10,700 kilos of fuel & cargo. It cruised at 178 mph (285 km/h) at a height of 5,000 feet (1,500 m), had a service ceiling of 16,000 feet, and a range of 1,780 miles (2,848 km) and a fuel capacity of 3037 gallons (11,602 liters). That’s an incredibly wasteful .58 miles per gallon (.25 km/liter). Without the weight of the fuel, that left about 3000 pounds for cargo. Pretend that cargo space was stuffed full of passengers standing up at an average of 175 pounds apiece, and we’re talking about a fictitious passenger load of 13. That’s 6887 gallons of fuel necessary to fly from Frankfurt to NYC, you’d have to stop for refueling three times, and that’s 2,591 pounds per passenger (if you pretend that the crew only needed to be 4 people for a non-wartime flight). That’s absolutely AWFUL compared to the Hindenburg.

More importantly, though, the Hindenburg was designed foremost for passenger comfort, not for passenger capacity. NO PLANE FLYING TODAY has the kind of square footage per passenger that the Hindenburg did, except, perhaps, a luxury plane like Air Force One, which has 4,000 square feet of interior floor space (the lower level of which is strictly cargo space, leaving only 3,000 feet for passengers) and carries 26 crew members and up to 70 passengers (. The Hindenburg, by comparison, had 4,500 square feet dedicated to its 110 passengers and included a salon (complete with grand piano), a writing room, a dining room, 34 private cabins each containing 2 beds, a hot & cold water wash basin, and closets). It had onboard showers, bathrooms, a smoking room, a kitchen, a mess area for the crew, and a full bar. And that was just where the wealthy passengers flew… there was an additional several thousand square feet of crew quarters, cargo areas, oxygen tank storage, generator room, radio room, post office, officers quarters, captain’s cabin, AND the control car gondala. A modern Southwest Airlines 737 flight has 1120 square feet of cabin space, and crams 137 passengers into it. That’s 5.2 square feet per passenger. The Hindenburg gave each of its 72 passengers a luxurious 62 square feet. Air Force One ranks a little lower at about 45 square feet per passenger, and a first-class seat on a really nice foreign airline gives you about 10-12 square feet.

The Hindenburg was more akin to a flying oceanliner than the modern squeezeboxes that pass for airliners today. If the Hindenburg was designed like a modern international airline 747 first-class section, with individual lie-flat sleeping chairs, it would still have enough room to have all the showers, kitchen, and dining room, but would fit about 400 passengers. Put THAT number into your calculator to get the real equivalent kilograms of fuel per passenger when comparing it to a 747 jumbo jet, and you wind up with 179 pounds (81kg) of fuel per passenger, or roughly 1/3 of the 747 that Tony contends is “more economical” — add in modern carbon-fiber construction, and modern turboprop engines like the Pratt & Whitney PW150A (which cruises at 3950 horsepower vs. the 850hp that each of Hindenburg’s 4 engines individually/3400hp total generated, and which use 1/3 the fuel of the Hindenburg’s primitive Daimler submarine motors), pop on modern 6-bladed reversible pitch composite propellers (like the ones used on the Bombadier Q400 turboprop passenger plane), and you’d have a faster, more fuel-efficient Hindenburg on which could easily double the entire crew/passenger quarters (due to the lighter carbon-fiber frame & compartment construction), allowing you to carry 800 passengers at roughly 1/2 the fuel consumption rate of the Hindenburg. That would knock that kg of fuel per passenger down to 1/4th of the Hindenburg’s, down to 45 pounds (20kg) of fuel per passenger, compared to that 747’s “economical” 573 pounds (260kg) of fuel per passenger.

When you compare apples to apples, the Hindenburg kicks the 747’s ass. When you then redesign that same apple with modern construction techniques and engines, you leave the 747 in the dust. Sure, it would take you 6x as long to fly from Frankfurt to NYC, but if you’ve got a salon and fine dining room, that might actually not be all that bad.

NOTHING can haul as much cargo as cheaply as a dirigible. We WILL see them again at some point in the future. This isn’t science-fiction, it’s just math.

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Ryan Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 9:40 pm

Beautifully put. And I hope we do see them again.

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Stu Reply:
August 5th, 2011 at 10:37 pm

The Hindenburg burned 41,110 kg of diesel oil crossing the Atlantic in 1936 from Franfurt to Lakehurst, NJ. That was a distance of 7,238 km or 3920 nautical miles. She did that crossing in 78:30 hours, at an average speed of about 82 mph.
The jet’s faster but burns more fuel per km than the Hindenburg. The Graf Zeppelin crossed from Tokyo to Los Angeles (with landfall at San Francisco) without refueling.
Airships are the tortoise to the jet’s hare.

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Frighteous Reply:
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:31 am

The Hindenburg wasn’t created for economy. It was created by Nazis for propaganda purposes, and to make people aware of what Germans are capable of building and to raise morale in Germany. No other nation had anything comparable to the Hinden. American sources such as Rockefeller and Carnegie funded the birth of Nazi Germany, and along with Henry Ford, more than likely paid for a good piece if not all of the Hindenburg.

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Mash Reply:
February 8th, 2011 at 2:20 pm

The “Hindenburg” wasn’t created by Nazis at all. The Nazis took the opportunity when the Zeppelin company was not able to pay their bills anymore. That’s all. “Graf Zeppelin” e.g. wasn’t painted with swastikas.

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Dan (Airships.net) Reply:
February 18th, 2011 at 10:19 pm

Both Graf Zeppelins (LZ-127 and LZ-130) did have swastika flags on their tail fins.

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Stu Reply:
August 5th, 2011 at 10:44 pm

Huge Eckener designed the Hindenburg first and only as a luxury passenger ship. In order to get financing and support for the venture, he had to filth her hull with swastikas. Believe me, Eckener hated the Hitler regime, but it was a marriage of necessity. Only Eckener’s immense popularity protected him from getting pinched by the Nazi SS which silenced dissension very efficiently. The Graf Zeppelin-2 was never used for long distance passenger flight as the Nazi Party gained more control of the airship works and used it for propaganda and radar recon missions over the English Channel probing the British coastal defenses in the months prior to the Battle of Britian. She was torn up by the Nazi’s after the Blitz of Poland and used for her aluminum. Such a sad use for such peaceful airships. Dr. Eckener stayed in Germany throughout the war, and managed to live through it miraculously enough considering his open feelings against Hitler’s regime.

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Baloonist Reply:
December 16th, 2010 at 3:28 pm

The Hindenburg’s engines were a product of their day, and nowhere near as efficient as a modern engine. Swapping out those engines with modern turboprops would drastically increase a modern Hindenburg’s fuel efficiency. Additionally, only a moron would make a modern Zeppelin with an aluminum frame… it would most definitely be a carbon fiber construction job, which would allow you to easily septuple (or more) the passenger/cargo carrying capacity on the same length Zeppelin, and if you made it twice as long (like you advise), a modern Zeppelin would carry up to 14x the cargo/passengers as the Hindenburg. Now we’re talking about 1,400 passengers or so. Difficult for me to see how any jumbo jet can compete with that on a fuel efficiency ratio alone. Speed, yes, fuel efficiency, no. Modern airship transport WILL happen… we just need an entrepreneur with the vision and drive to make it happen.

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David Erskine Reply:
August 7th, 2011 at 8:15 am

I suspect that the Hindenburg’s diesels were nearly as efficient as modern diesels and certainly better than modern spark ignition engines. High compression ratio is the point of a diesel. The big difference is the higher power to weight ratio of modern diesels. I also suspect that the Hindenburg’s diesels were more efficient than modern turboprop engines because the turbine blades are exposed to a constant stream of exhaust gas, so the temperature must not be too high. The advantage of a turboprop is the high power to weight ratio.

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