> "But the deadliest airship disaster in history was a helium airship, the USS Akron, which was destroyed by bad weather killing 73 of the 76 aboard."
Worse than that in fate's sense of irony, after the Hindenburg disaster the US authorities banned Hydrogen as a lifting gas and built the USS Shenandoah as a Helium airship. When a Hydrogen airship of that era flew too high it had valves at the top to vent Hydrogen to the atmosphere and reduce buoyancy, but Helium was 50x-100x more expensive and the Sheandoah had its valves sealed so the crew couldn't waste any of it. It hit a turbulent updraft, rose so high the gas pressure in the balloons was past spec, and this is suspected to have contributed to it breaking up and crashing, killing 14 people.
Worse than that in fate's sense of irony, after the Hindenburg disaster the US authorities banned Hydrogen as a lifting gas and built the USS Shenandoah as a Helium airship. When a Hydrogen airship of that era flew too high it had valves at the top to vent Hydrogen to the atmosphere and reduce buoyancy, but Helium was 50x-100x more expensive and the Sheandoah had its valves sealed so the crew couldn't waste any of it. It hit a turbulent updraft, rose so high the gas pressure in the balloons was past spec, and this is suspected to have contributed to it breaking up and crashing, killing 14 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Shenandoah_%28ZR-1%29#Cras...