During 2007, I had the opportunity to visit the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen a town on the northern side of Lake Constance (Bodensee) in southern Germany, near the borders with Switzerland and Austria. Probably the most famous airship built was the Hindenburg built in 1931 to a new, all-duralumin design.
Vivian MacFadyen
It was a visually striking airship, 245 m long and 41 m in diameter, longer than three Boeing 747s placed end-to-end, and only 24 m shorter than the Titanic. It was originally equipped with cabins for 50 passengers and a crew complement of 40, though on the last flight there were an additional 21 crew members in training.
The centrepiece of the museum is a reconstruction of a 33 m section of the craft. What struck me was the size, the opulence of the accommodation, and mostly the skill of the construction crew. The duralumin frame was extremely light, and I almost hurt myself when lifting a 15 000 X 300 X 300 mm section because I was not expecting it to lift so easily. There were literally millions of rivets holding the aircraft frame together, and these were not pop rivets, each one had to be fitted with hand tools.
The workers must have had great pride in themselves and it showed in their workmanship. The rivets were set expertly, the metal cut precisely, and even though the frame would not be normally visible, it was perfectly finished.
In contrast, I live in the neighbourhood of a recently constructed shopping mall and the workmanship is incredibly shoddy, especially since we now have far better machine tools to use.
I believe today's workers in South Africa are just as capable as those in Germany, but unfortunately they have not been trained by skilled master workers. These experienced people have been abnormally displaced but are still out there, and given the right opportunity, could become valuable mentors to the new workforce.
The upliftment of our work ethic needs to be done holistically, and not hindered by lack of insight and prejudice.
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