MovieChat Forums > Timeless (2016) Discussion > What would the bad guy gain by preventin...

What would the bad guy gain by preventing the Hindenburg Disaster?


Wikipedia said the bad guy was trying to destory America by changing history. What would saving the Hindenburg and the people on it change history besides the zeppelin not catching on fire and exploding. Zeppelins instead of Jet aircraft used for air travel isn't gonna hurt American history that much. Makes me wonder what other historical events they will visit.

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For one, America may not develop jet engines needed for WWII if they relied on dirigibles for travel.

Two, who says the guy wanting to save the Hindenburg is the bad guy?

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US did not have jets in WWII. The Germans developed the ME-262, which was the first jet fighter in the war. Because of a tighter turn radius, Mustangs were able to shoot them down even though the 262's were faster.

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Utter nonsense. Both the US and the UK developed and flew jet fighters during WWII. The P-59 first flew 1 October 1942. The Gloster E.28 first flew 15 May 1941. Neither of these entered actual combat service in WWII; they were not really combat worthy. But the Gloster Meteor did. Meteors shot down a number of V-1 flying bombs. The P-80 was coming along, and actually did enter limited service, two of them flying in Italy in 1945, though not seeing any combat with enemy planes.

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The US fighters caught the Me 262 jets at landing when they were vulnerable, very few were shot down in actual combat.

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Actually, the ME 262 wasn't very reliable. More were destroyed by crashes than by actual combat.

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We did have a WW2 jet, they had squadrons in Italy. We also had helicopters saving GI's near the end of the war.

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Maybe you need to take a History course or two. The US developed jet engines and rockets after WWII with the help of German Scientists "acquired" through programs like Operation Paperclip.

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Turbojet engines were independently developed by the Germans and the British. The Brits gave their jet engines and radar to the US, in exchange for our help protecting the Atlantic convoys that literally kept Britain from starving.

But the British design was a fat engine with a big cross-section. This added a lot of drag, affecting performance. Germany's Me-262 engine had an improved "axial-flow" design, long and skinny for low drag, yet even more thrust, which was the one the world ended up adopting.

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...Gee, maybe you should WATCH THE SHOW to find out...

We are listening and were not blind
This is your life, this is your time


-Snow Patrol

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When the Hindenburg was destroyed, it ended airship travel forever. So maybe the show is going to use that as an angle somehow. Maybe if the Hindenburg had made it, there would've been more zeppelin trips and more Nazis and their sympathizers settling in the United States and spreading their ideology here. Who knows?

---
IMDB, flagging ppl for bull💩 since 1995. 

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Wasn't the alternative world in Fringe using airships instead of planes?

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thanks for the mention of "Fringe"!!!!

"We will bury you"-NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV

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That exact plot point was used in the second Pendragon book, the explanation there was that there were Nazi spies and a large collection of Nazi sympathizer money on the Hindenburgh, and so its destruction stopped both some key piece of information or capital which could have shifted the tide of the war.

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Or maybe there was someone onboard who the bad guy thought would be beneficial to his, or maybe the Nazi's cause if he didn't perish on the Hindenburgh.

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Spoiler if you really want to know he's actually trying to blow it up on the return trip because people important to the US like Rockefeller are supposed to be on it

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Exactly!

--
If vampires hate "plus signs" - imagine how they feel about the "square root" symbol.

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the show has a cool premise and looks interesting... but the fact they deem the Hindenburg important enough for the pilot worries me. that's not an interesting storyline to kick off your show with. of all the historical events... a blimp exploding

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The Hindenberg wasn't a blimp -- it was a Zeppelin.

And while it might not have been the most historically fascinating and important event, it has several aspects that would make it ideal for a pilot/first episode -- it's visually interesting, it's relatively familiar to most audiences and -- it IS fairly minor in the greater scheme of things.

In a tv pilot, the writer has to get a LOT of stuff done -- introduce the premise of the show, introduce the cast, and make things interesting enough that people will want to tune in next week. So there isn't a lot of time for a very complex storyline. Hopefully things will become more complex as time goes on.

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Came here to say this. NBC played the "Timeline" teaser about 1000x during the Olympics, and I kept thinking "Who gives 2 sh!ts about the Hindenburg exploding or not?"

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Did it ever occur to you that saving someone's life in the past can cause drastic changes to the future. Thirty-six people died as a result of the crash. Those people can move on with their lives and have children and those children can have children. The further back the change the more drastic the present will be. Genghis Khan died almost 800 years ago. He had sex with so many women that around 16 million males today carry Genghis' y-chromosome. Those 16 million people wouldn't be alive today if you went back in time and killed him. Now think about Mark Anthony or Alexander the Great. Time travel would be extremely difficult to traverse. You'd spend years just analyzing every move of every second of the day before even attempting to go back because one false move could end your own bloodline. Other than that there wasn't any strategic move technologically for saving the Hindenburg. The reason the Germans used Hydrogen was because the US controlled most of the Helium in the world. It's a show and time travel in this fashion is absurd so just watch it for what it is.

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The US did produce about 90% of the Helium back then, but the other 10% were produced by Kanada, Poland and Russia. So after Hitler conquered Poland, he would have had access to larger ammounts of Helium, meaning he could use Helium in Zeppelins. Depending how many Zeppelins were already produced he would have had access to a fleet of long-range bombers that needed very little gasoline, compared to the ammount of bombs they could transport, were very hard to shoot down and could reach the US east coast within three days. The British had massive problems with German Zeppelins in World War 1, they weren't able to shoot down one.
So, let's play this through: The Hindenburg didn't explode in Lakehurst, the Nazis built more Zeppelins, started filling them with Helium from conquered Polish mines in 1939 and a fleet of Zeppelins first bombed England and after 1941 (after the US entered WW2) they bombed US east coast cities (Washington DC, New York...).

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Yes, a Zeppelin had massive cargo capacity which makes it attractive as a potential strategic bomber...but it was also slower than molasses (85MPH top speed) which makes it rather unattractive.

~~Bayowolf
There's a difference between being frank... and being dick.

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Except it was filled with hydrogen, not helium.

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So you know without a doubt it didn't effect anything major can't know for sure how big of a impact that disaster had from being motivation to come up with a safer way to travel to inspiration. To do something better in there life

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