#227 The Hindenburg Over New York

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2017

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, New Yorkers looked overhead at an astonishing sight -- the arrival of the Hindenburg, the largest airship in the world, drifting calmly across the sky. New York City was already in the throes of "Zeppelin mania" by then. These rigid gas-filled airships, largely manufactured by Germany, were experiencing a Jazz Age rediscovery thanks in part to the Graf Zeppelin, a glamorous commercial airship which first crossed the ocean in 1928. Its commander and crew even received two ticker-tape parades through lower Manhattan. In size and prominence, the Hindenburg would prove to be the greatest airship of all. It was the Concorde of its day, providing luxurious transatlantic travel for the rich and famous. In Germany, the airship was used as a literal propaganda machine for the rising Nazi government of Adolf Hitler. But dreams of Zeppelin-filled skies were quickly vanquished in the early evening hours of May 6, 1937, over a landing field in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Its destruction would be one of the most widely seen disasters in the world, marking an end to this particular vision of the future. But a mark of the Zeppelin age still exists on the New York City skyline, atop the city's most famous building! Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys Episode 227, the Hindenburg, over New York.
0:05.0	Hey, it's The Bowry Boys.
0:07.0	Hey!
0:08.0	Support for The Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:11.0	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:19.0	Hi there, welcome to The Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:22.0	And this is Tom Myers.
0:24.0	And Tom, we're presenting a story today that has fascinated me since I was a kid.
0:28.0	And I've been waiting for the opportunity for us to tell the story of the disaster of The Hindenburg.
0:34.0	Tragedy struck 80 years ago on May 6, 1937, when the German Zeppelin, the Hindenburg, crashed in New Jersey after floating over the Atlantic and over New York City.
0:48.0	Now, some may know this tragedy from that terrible 1970s film or maybe from a retelling on the history channel.
0:54.0	But what you may not know is New York City's role in this story.
0:58.0	For not only did the Hindenburg fly over the city of New York City, the same afternoon that it crashed,
1:03.0	but Zeppelin, Mania had taken over New York City for many years.
1:08.0	Zeppelin, Mania.
1:09.0	Yes.
1:10.0	So on today's show, we're going to be talking about how New York got itself whipped up into Zeppelin, Mania.
1:16.0	What that even meant, how and how the general public saw Zeppelin.
1:20.0	These big flying airships as the future of air travel.
1:24.0	Now, this may sound like a far flung concept.
1:27.0	Something we can't imagine, these gigantic gas bags, these balloons floating in the sky for commercial travel.
1:34.0	But there is one vestige of this age of the airship, which still commands our attention today.
	...

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