Episode 205 - Travels By Zeppelin

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through some photographs, and I came across some pictures I took of the Goodyear Blimp, anchored in Carson, California, right next to the freeway. Those pictures got me thinking. What must it have been like to fly in the big dirigibles of the 1930s, those gigantic, hydrogen-filled airships that were sometimes called flying ocean liners? People took long trips on those things—and not a few people. By the time the Hindenburg met its fiery end in New Jersey, more than 3,500 people had made commercial flights aboard the Hindenburg or its sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin; in fact, when the Hindenburg burned, it was in its second season of transatlantic flight. In this episode, we talk about life aboard these behemoths, as John Geoghegan refers to them in his book about these massive airships, When Giants Ruled the Sky. John Geoghegan agreed to join me on this program, as did Alexander Rose, whose book, Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World, tells the story of the battle between zeppelins and airplanes in the early days of commercial flight.