Today in Technology History
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May 23
Exactly 95 years ago, a big experimental hydrogen-filled airship dramatically crashed to the ground before thousands of spectators -- and miraculously, no one was killed.
The airship was built by John A. Morrell, at his Morrell Airship Company in San Francisco. Morrell hoped to prove that a giant airship could be used as a sky liner, just as a giant ship could be an ocean liner. So he constructed the largest lighter-than-air vessel built till that time: a cigar-shaped bag filled with hydrogen gas, 450 feet long. The immense airship, which cost $40,000 to build, had a basket capable of holding sixteen people -- more than were ever carried at once by any previous aircraft.
Skeptics, including at least two apparent experts, warned Morrell that his ship would fail because the cloth his gas bag was made of wasn't strong enough to hold the weight of the gas and the vehicle. Still, the optimistic Morrell was convinced his contrivance would work, and he widely advertised its first flight, hoping to attract potential investors.
Morrell's airship took off soon after midday on May 23, 1908, in Berkeley, California. A crowd of about 10,000 gathered to watch sixteen passengers -- the pilot, several engineers, a few photographers, and Morrell himself -- take to the air.
The flight began as planned, with a smooth ascent to an altitude of 300 feet. The nose of the airship pointed gently upward to keep climbing when, suddenly, something went wrong. The nose abruptly pointed into the sky, almost vertically. The gas bag ripped, the hydrogen started to escape, and the big airship began to fall from the sky.
The pilot left the basket and clambered up the netting on the gas bag, hoping somehow to fix the problem. Once he arrived at the tear in the bag, though, it ripped open much wider, and he had to strain to keep his face away from the gas. Until this point, the airship had been descending slowly -- but with its gas now completely gone, it plummeted the last 75 feet to the ground.
Everyone aboard was hurt in the crash, with bruises and lacerations, snapped legs and arms and ribs. Three were so badly injured that doctors said they would die, although they all pulled through. None of the spectators was hurt.
The exact cause of the accident was never established, but some reports suggested that the engines shifted, somehow piercing the bag and perhaps igniting the gas.
Morrell remained hopeful. He promised reporters that he would start work on another, larger airship once he left the hospital. However, investors must have been (understandably) spooked, since we can find no record of Morrell building another airship.
Related links:
Click here to read about the deadly crash of the airship Akron in 1933.
Click here to read about the inventor of the first dirigible.
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