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Zeppelin Trivia    July 10, 2005

I took a look for the sake of clarification, and evidently Morrison's radio reports pertaining to the Hindenburg disaster are not entirely conclusive. He may have said "Oh, the humanity!" or he may have said "All the humanity." Either way, the use of the word 'humanity' leaves me scratching my head, but then I found some illumination on that as well. From Wikipedia:

Herbert Morrison's famous words should be understood in the context of the broadcast, in which he had repeatedly referred to the large team of people on the field, engaged in landing the airship, as a "mass of humanity." He used the phrase when it became clear that the burning wreckage was going to settle onto the ground, and that the people underneath would probably not have time to escape it.

I'd always interpreted Morrison's words to mean "Oh, the humanity [of this sad situation]." But either way it's still pretty creative english for a radio broadcaster. For instance, you would be unlikely to say "Oh dear, that big mother of an airship is about to crash land on that humanity over there."

You might be surprised to learn that not everyone on the Hindenburg died, despite that it went up in flames in less than a minute. 13 of the 36 passengers, and 22 of the 61 crew bought it; the rest got lucky. Also, the Hindenburg disaster was not nearly as tragic as that of the Titanic. At the time of the event, the Hindenburg had already been in commission for more than a year and flown 191,583 miles, including 17 transatlantic round trips.

Because of the publicity of the disaster, and despite an impressive safety record, the golden age of zeppelin transport and the giant airships came to an untimely end. If it had not, we might have enjoyed sights like those in the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which does a fine job of projecting the design and stylistic sensibilities of the thirties onto a modern world. Jude Law, as always, is predictably narcissistic but it's quite a sight seeing a giant airship docked at the top of the Empire State.






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