Working largely in secret, aeronautical engineers in Germany are drawing up plans to rebuild the Hindenburg dirigible airship, but updating it for the 21st century, making it even larger and more luxurious, accommodating 250 passengers in a two-tier gondola.
Though plans are kept under wraps, experts say the new Hindenburg II, as it is already being dubbed in the German press, would loosely resemble its ill-fated predecessor -- except for the elongated two-level gondola that would stretch 70m along the bottom of the giant airship.
The largest airship ever built, the Hindenburg was enormous even by today's standards. Over 245m long, it was longer than three jumbo jets.
The new dirigible, which will be designated the HGZ 129 M in memory of the original Hindenburg (called the LZ 129) will also be as large as its infamous sister ship, which exploded on landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937.
That crash effectively ended commercial dirigible flights, but the new ship's designers insist the new Hindenburg will be safe.
"The Hindenburg safely crossed the Atlantic dozens of times to New York and Rio de Janeiro during its inaugural season in 1936, and it is now believed that an experimental weatherproof coating on the canvas skin of the ship spontaneously combusted during an electrical storm," project leader Juergen Henk told Berliner Zeitung.
"That new weatherproofing `dope,' as it was called, was painted on the Hindenburg at the outset of the 1937 season -- and the tragic end occurred on the very first flight of that season," he added.
Nazi officials, eager to cover up such an embarrassing lapse, never disclosed the true cause. But they changed the weatherproofing on the Hindenburg's sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin II, which was completed in 1938 and made many successful flights before being scrapped at the outset of World War II.
"It goes without saying that a new airship built today would conform to state-of-the-art technology that was unavailable in the 1930s," Henk said.
A team of 150 engineers, technicians and aeronautical experts has been working behind closed doors on the Hindenburg II project since 1998, according to Berliner Zeitung.
A feasibility study released in March stated that the project is viable, the Berlin newspaper said.
The new ship would use a combination of helium and hydrogen, in 17 separate gas cells, to give it enough lifting power to accommodate hundreds of passengers or up to 75 tonnes of cargo.
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