“OH, THE HUMANITY…”
History and Hauntings of the Hindenburg Disaster
On May 6, 1937, one
of the most photographed and familiar disasters of the twentieth century
occurred as the German zeppelin airship LZ 129 Hindenburg burst into a
massive ball of flames as it descended over Lakehurst, New Jersey. Seven
million cubic feet of ignited hydrogen incinerated the dirigible in just 34
seconds, long before it could hit the ground. The disaster shocked the world,
dealt a blow to Nazi propaganda, effectively ended the era of lighter-than-air
travel and claimed the lives of 35 crew members and passengers and one person
on the ground.
To this day, the
anguished cries of radio reporter Herbert Morrison, as he broadcast from the
scene, can still send chills down the spine of the most jaded listener. But
Morrison’s famous radio report is not all that lingers of this fiery calamity.
Some believe the spirits of the Hindenburg dead still linger, as well.
Dirigibles, or
airships, first came to the attention of the public as a method of air travel
in the late 1700s. They were really considered more of a novelty than for
practical use until the latter part of the 1800s, when a few inventors began to
attach propulsion motors to their balloons in order to get from one place to
another.
However, the “Golden
Age of Airships” really began in July 1900 with the launch of the Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ1. This grand
experiment led to the most successful airships of all time: the Zeppelins. They
were named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who began working with rigid
airship designs in the 1890s. The airships had a framework composed of
triangular lattice girders, covered with fabric and containing separate gas
cells. Tail fins were added for control and stability and two engine and crew
cars hung beneath the hull driving propellers, which were attached to the sides
of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally, there was a passenger
compartment located halfway between the two cars.
During World War I,
airships were briefly used as bombers, but they proved to be a terrifying, yet
inaccurate weapon. Navigation and target selection proved to be difficult under
the best of conditions. The darkness, high altitudes and clouds that were
frequently encountered by Zeppelin missions reduced accuracy even further.
Their flammable hydrogen lifting gas made them vulnerable at lower altitudes.
Several were shot down in flames and others crashed en route. They began to fly
higher, above the range of other aircraft, but this made their accuracy even
worse. In the end, airships were best suited for scouting during the war and
the bombing raids turned out to be disastrous in terms of morale, men and
material. Many pioneers of the German airship service died in what was the
first strategic bombing campaign in history.
After the war, a
number of nations operated airships, including Britain, the United States,
Italy, France, Russia and Japan. Most discontinued their use by the early 1930s
and, within a few years, only Germany was still in pursuit of the superior
airship. The Zeppelin company was operating a passenger service between
Frankfort and Recife in Brazil, which took 68 hours. In the middle 1930s, the
company started building an airship that was specifically designed to offer
passenger service across the Atlantic to the United States.
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The Nazis saw the
immense airships as another way of establishing their dominance in the world.
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After Adolph
Hitler’s rise to power, around this same time, the Zeppelin lent itself to
exploitation by the Nazis. The German public perceived the development of the
airships as a national achievement, rather than as a business one. Nazi
propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels employed airships in mass events, as a
daunting symbol of Nazi power. With no other country in the world employing the
massive airships on a regular basis, Germany flaunted its superiority in this area,
starting a regular transatlantic service in March 1936.
On May 3, 1937, the Luftschiff
Zeppelin 129 Hindenburg departed from the Rhein-Main Airport in Frankfort,
Germany, lifting into the air toward the United States. The airship’s namesake
was the recently deceased Paul von Hindenburg, a World War I field marshal,
president of the Weimar Republic and a national figure. The Hindenburg was
over eight hundred feet long, 135 feet in diameter, and weighed approximately
two hundred and fifty tons. To provide the lift that was required to get the
monstrous ship off the ground, its sixteen gas cells had to be filled with
combustible hydrogen.
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The
passenger lounge (with grand piano for entertainment) where passengers could
rest, eat, sleep and socialize during the flight. (Below) A two-berth cabin on the
Hindenburg. A wash basin was included in
each small cabin, with the toilets and shower on another deck.
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Since its maiden
flight in 1936, the Hindenburg had completed twenty flights across the
Atlantic Ocean and had broken the speed record of previous Zeppelins. Under
normal conditions, its engines accelerated the airship to 84 miles per hour,
but favorable winds had allowed for top speeds of up to 188 miles per hour. A
westward trip from Germany to the United States took an average of 36 hours and
42 minutes. Although the Hindenburg had been built to accommodate
between fifty and seventy passengers, it carried only 36 travelers in addition
to 61 crew members when it embarked on its fatal final flight. The passengers
could rest in twenty heated cabins at the center of the hull’s lower decks.
Amenities on board included a dining room, a reading, writing and smoking room,
and centrally located restrooms with showers. Panoramic windows embedded in the
concave hull provided spectacular views for those on the promenade deck.
From the start of
the trip, Captains Max Pruss and Ernest Lehmann had to confront a number of
problems, all of them due to bad weather conditions. Storms first kept the
airship from crossing the English Channel and then delayed its journey across
the Atlantic. Blown off course to Newfoundland, it passed over Manhattan behind
schedule at 3:00 p.m. on May 6. It finally reached the Naval Air station in
Lakehurst, New Jersey, at 6:00 p.m. but heavy rain kept the airship from
initiating landing procedures. After an hour, the storm passed and the Hindenburg
approached the mooring mast. It was to be a high landing, known as a flying
moor, after which the airship would be winched down to ground level. This type
of landing maneuver reduced the number of necessary ground crew, but required
more time. The landing was initiated at 7:00 p.m.
At 7:09 p.m.,
however, the airship made a sharp full speed left turn to the west around the
landing field because the ground crew was not ready. Two minutes later, it
turned back toward the landing field and began to slow. Three minutes later,
Captain Pruss ordered all engines full astern so that the airship could be
stopped. At 7:17 p.m., the wind shifted
direction to the southwest and Pruss was forced to make a second, sweeping
sharp turn, this time to the starboard. Two minutes later, the airship made
another sharp turn and dropped its water ballast because the Hindenburg was
stern-heavy. Six men were also sent to the bow to trim the airship, which
allowed it to be on an even keel as it stopped. At 7:21 p.m., the mooring lines
were dropped from the bow. The starboard line was dropped first, followed by
the port line. The port line was connected to the post of the ground winch. The
starboard line was left dangling.
At 7:25 p.m., a few
witnesses saw the fabric ahead of the upper fin flutter as though gas was
leaking. Other witnesses also reported seeing blue discharges, possibly static
electricity, moments before fire erupted on top of the ship. Several other
eyewitness testimonies suggest that the first flame appeared on the port side
just ahead of the port fin, and was followed by flames that burned on top. On
board, people heard a muffled explosion and those in the front of the ship felt
a shock as the port mooring rope jerked on its winch. The officers in the
control car initially thought the shock was caused by a broken rope.
Moments later, the Hindenburg
caught fire and became engulfed in flames.
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The
Hindenburg bursts into flames. The series of photos below shows the airship as
it slowly descended – on fire – to the ground.
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The fire quickly
spread. Almost instantly, a water tank and a fuel tank burst out of the hull
due to the shock of the blast. This shock also caused a crack behind the
passenger decks and the rear of the structure imploded. The stern of the ship
lost its buoyancy and the bow lurched upwards.
As the Hindenburg's tail crashed into the ground, a burst of
flame came out of the nose, killing nine of the twelve crew members in the bow.
As the airship continued to fall with its bow pointing upwards, part of the
port side directly behind the passenger deck collapsed inward and the gas cell
there exploded. The airship’s gondola wheel touched the ground, causing the
burning ship to bounce upwards. At this point, most of the fabric had burned
away. Finally, the airship went crashing onto the ground, bow first. The Hindenburg
had been completely destroyed.
Various theories
have been suggested as to the cause of the fire on board the airship.
Contemporaries suspected sabotage or a lightning strike, while more recent
experts believe that maneuvering in the storm may have caused a build-up of
static electricity in the ship’s envelope. An electric discharge could have
ignited the hydrogen. To this day, no one knows for sure.
Unbelievably,
despite the violent fire, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of the 36
passengers and 61 crew members, thirteen of the passengers and 22 members of
the crew perished. As the burning airship had crashed down on the landing
field, the American landing crew had fled in a panic, but one linesman, Allen
Hagaman, had been killed by falling debris.
The majority of the
airship crew who died were up inside the ship’s hull, where they either had no
easy escape route or were too close to the bow of the ship, which hung burning
in the air, for them to find a way out. Most of the passengers who were killed
were trapped in the starboard side of the passenger deck. Not only had the wind
blown the fire toward the starboard side, but the ship had also rolled slightly
to that side when it hit the ground, sealing off the observation windows and
cutting off the escape of any passengers on that side of the ship. To make
matters worse, the sliding door leading from the starboard passenger area to
the central foyer and gangway stairs (through which rescuers led many
passengers to safety) jammed shut in the crash, which also trapped the
starboard side passengers. A few of them did escape, but most did not. By
contrast, all but a few of the passengers on the port side of the dirigible
survived the fire, most escaping virtually unscathed.
When the control car
crashed to the ground, most of the officers jumped out of the windows and
became separated. First Officer Albert Sammt found Captain Max Pruss going back
into the wreckage to look for survivors. Pruss was badly burned on his face and
he required months of hospitalization and surgery, but he survived. Captain Ernst Lehmann escaped the crash with
burns to his head and arms and severe burns across most of his back. Although
his injuries did not seem as severe as those of Captain Pruss, he died at a
nearby hospital the next day.
Out of the twelve
crewmen in the bow of the ship, only three of them survived. Four of these men
were standing on the mooring shelf, a platform at the very tip of the bow from
which the front landing ropes and mooring cables were released to the ground
crew, and which was directly in front of gas cell #16. The rest were standing
either along the lower keel walkway ahead of the control car, or were on
platforms beside the stairway that led up the curve of the bow to the mooring
shelf. During the fire, as the bow hung in the air at a steep angle, flames shot
forward and burst through the bow, roasting the unfortunate men alive. The
three men from the forward section that survived, elevator operator Kurt Bauer,
cook Alfred Grözinger and electrician Josef Leibrecht, were those furthest aft
of the bow, and Bauer and Grözinger happened to be standing near two large
triangular air vents, through which cool air was being drawn by the fire. They
managed to escape with only superficial burns.
The other men either
fell into the fire or tried to leap from the Hindenburg when it was
still too high in the air. Three of the four men standing on the mooring shelf
inside the very tip of the bow were actually taken from the wreck alive, though
one of them, a rigger named Erich Spehl, died shortly afterward in the Air
Station’s infirmary. The other two, helmsman Alfred Bernhard and apprentice
elevator operator Ludwig Felber, initially survived the fire but died at area
hospitals later that night.
The four crew
members who had been in the tail fin survived the disaster. Although they were
closest to the origin of the fire, they were sheltered by the structure of the
lower fin. They escaped by climbing out of the fin’s access hatch when the tail
hit the ground.
The Hindenburg disaster
remains one of the most widely known calamities in American history, thanks
largely to the wide press coverage that the airship fire attracted. There was a
large amount of newsreel coverage and photographs taken of the crash, as well
as Herbert Morrison's recorded, on-the-scene, eyewitness radio report for
station WLS in Chicago, which was broadcast the next day. This was the first
transatlantic flight by a Zeppelin to the United States that year and it was
heavily publicized, bringing many journalists to the scene.
The photographs and
film footage of the scene were tragic but Morrison’s radio broadcast remains
one of the most famous in history:
It's practically
standing still now. They've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship; and (uh)
they've been taken ahold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting
to rain again; it's... the rain had (uh) slacked up a little bit. The back
motors of the ship are just holding it (uh) just enough to keep it from...It's
burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it's falling, it's crashing! Watch
it! Watch it! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie; get
this, Charlie! It's fire... and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my!
Get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames and the...
and it's falling on the mooring mast. And all the folks agree that this is
terrible; this is the one of the worst catastrophes in the world.
[indecipherable] its flames... Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into
the sky and it... it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and
it's in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the
mooring mast. Oh, the humanity! and all the passengers screaming around here. I
told you; it—I can't even talk to people Their friends are out there! Ah! It's...
it... it's a... ah! I... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it's just
laying there, mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe
and talk and the screaming. Lady, I... I... I'm sorry. Honest: I... I can
hardly breathe. I... I'm going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie,
that's terrible. Ah, ah... I can't. Listen, folks; I... I'm gonna have to stop
for a minute because [indecipherable] I've lost my voice. This is the worst
thing I've ever witnessed.
The film footage at
the scene, as well as Morrison’s passionate recording, shattered public faith
in airships and marked the end of the giant passenger-carrying airships. The Hindenburg
crash certainly marked the end of an era – closing the story with a scene
of horror that still resonates today as an eerie haunting at the Naval Air
Station hospital.
The hospital, known
officially at that time as Naval Dispensary Lakehurst, was in the middle of the
disaster on the night the Hindenburg fell burning from the sky. The
doctors, nurses and corpsman that were stationed there in 1937 offered their
assistance during the tragic event, although little detail is known about how
the medical personnel on the site triaged the wounded or cared for the dead. It
is known that the dispensary was utilized after the crash, though, and that
many of the injured were brought there. The role the hospital played has been
commemorated by the state of New Jersey and has been listed on the registry of
historical sites.
And many New Jersey
ghost buffs have listed the hospital as one of the state’s haunted sites, as
well.
The Naval Air
Station in Lakehurst played an important role in transatlantic airship flights.
The base commanding officer at the time was Lieutenant Commander C.E. Rosendahl,
who eventually rose to the grade of vice admiral, and was a longtime proponent
of airship aviation. The base hospital, which is now known as the Branch
Medical Clinic of the National Naval Medical Center, became a key player in the
events that followed the Hindenburg crash.
Lieutenant Carl
Victor Green, Jr., the Naval Air Station base physician, along with his son,
Robert, was among those watching the airship as it approached the mooring
tower. The Hindenburg was running late and Robert had anxiously looked
forward to seeing it arrive at the base. “It was evening, but quite light,” Lt.
Green recalled in an interview many years later. “The nose of the silver ship
was pointed toward the town of Lakehurst. She was poised for her pulling down
and landing tower docking.”
Suddenly, there were
three rapid explosions. Green remembered, “The rear half of the vessel was
totally enveloped in bright orange flame. A blast of heat blew over us,
standing a half-mile away.” He and his son watched in shock and terror as the
mighty Zeppelin fell to the ground in a blazing ball of fire.
"I hurried to
the base hospital. I watched people walking in, carried into the hospital or
ambulance garage, which had become a temporary morgue,” Green said.
Fortunately, only one man from the ground crew died at the hospital. The hull
of the ship fell on him after he tripped and fell on the railroad tracks used
to stabilize the airship after mooring. Many of the injured were treated at the
hospital and several of them died.
On the morning after
the disaster, smoke was still rising from the black and twisted skeleton that
had once been the world’s largest flying vessel. Eyewitnesses on the scene
claimed they would never forget the horrible smell of burning flesh that was in
the air. A number of bodies were unidentified and they were moved into the
crew’s quarters in the hangar. It had been hastily transformed into a temporary
morgue. A small group of men and women filed past the charred remains of 26 of
the victims in an attempt to identify them. Detachments of sailors were posted
as guards around the ruins of the airship and no information was given out to
the curiosity-seekers who flocked to the area. Men who served on the base at
that time stated that they would never forget those darks days in 1937.
The Branch Medical
Clinic of today, once a full-service naval hospital, was built in 1921 when the
base first opened as an airship station. Officers and corpsmen stationed at the
clinic will say without reservation that it is a great duty station for
enjoying the Jersey Shore and nearby cities like Philadelphia, Atlantic City
and New York but they will often add that strange things happen at the old
hospital that cannot easily be explained.
It is not uncommon,
they have said, to hear mysterious footsteps, rattling doors, loud crashes,
voices, and to see lights flashing off and on. Many who have been stationed
here have come to believe that some of those who have died in the building do
not rest in peace. The majority of them believe that the spirits of those who
died in the Hindenburg disaster have remained behind to haunt the clinic
and the surrounding buildings.
Is the naval station
haunted? Many who have worked here believe that it is. But whether you believe
in ghosts or not, the crash of the Hindenburg remains a tangible part of
the history of the Lakehurst Naval Station that will never be forgotten.
For more
details about the disaster – and much more about the ghost stories surrounding
the crash – see the book AND HELL FOLLOWED WITH IT, available in print from the website and in Kindle and Nook editions.
