Evening star. [volume], May 07, 1937, Page A-4, Image 4

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
CRASHED AIRSHIP
WOWSLARGEST
Dimensions and Luxurious
Appointments of Diri* .
gible Given.
B? th« Associated Press.
LAKEHURST. N. J., May 7 —Here is
what the Hindenburg was like before
her crash:
The ship—Largest and most luxuri
ous airship ever built; 803 feet long,
cruising range of 8.500 miles, capacity
of 50 passengers and 60 crew nd 24,
000 pounds of freight, four 1,000
horsepower Diesel engines, giving it a
maximum speed of 84 mile6 an hour.
Passenger accommodation*—Twen
ty-five state rooms, with folding desks
and running water; air conditioning,
dining room, lounge and smoking
room; completely equipped electrical
kitchen, 150-foot glassed-in prome
nade.
Mechanics—Moved by four 4-bladed
wooden propellors mounted on four
• power cars, directed from a forward
control gondola, from which gears,
levers and shafts connecting with
ship's maneuvering apparatus and gas
supply were operated; radio room,
generators for lighting, steering, mag
netic compasses and cooking.
Construction—Aluminum alloy lon
gitudinal girders, giving the ship 36
'sides.” joined by metal rings and
cross girders covered with a strong,
water-tight skin of a cotton material;
two communicating passageways, huge
tanks on either side for engine crude
oil. hydrogen gas bags strung in a
continuous chain from bow to stem.
!
Hindenburg
(Continued From First Page.)
entire length by the time the ground
was reached * * *."
The identification of dead was diffi
cult. The ship's manifest was de
stroyed in the holocaust. Zeppelin
officials were in frequent communica
tion with Germany, checking last
minute changes in the passenger lists.
Reservations had been made for 39
persons, but company officials said
only 36 were aboard, and 61 members
of the crew.
All bodies recovered from the
twisted, fire-warped skeleton were
brought to an improvised morgue In
the hangar, which was closely guarded.
All but officials of the line and Navy
officers were barred entrance.
The entire naval reservation wjs
barred to every one except officials
and newspaper men.
United States troops guarded the
ash-strewn ruins of the airship—the
first of the Zeppelins to carry a com
mercial passenger to death.
Many of the survivors—some of
whom jumped from the liner as it
fell to earth, others who were
catapulted to safety in the impact, and
even some who staggered out of the
inferno alive—were in dangerous con
dition in hospitals near the air station.
Capt. Max Pruss, who was com
manding the Hindenburg for the first
time, was one of those in a critical
condition.
Capt. Ernst A. Lehmann, whom
Pruss succeeded and who was on the
ship in an advisory capacity, also was
in a very serious condition.
Scores of spsctators witnessed the
sudden, shocking tragedy.
One instant they waved greetings
up to passengers standing in the
windows of the observation compart
ment. Then in a flash a cannonading
explosion Jarred the huge, cigar-shaped
craft, a streak of flame lashed out and
the Hindenburg plummeted clumsily to
earth.
Tiny black objects—bodies—hurtled
from the flaming craft. On the ground
woman spectators screamed and cov
ered their eyes in horror.
Carl Weigand. skipper of the S. S.
Deutschland, who rushed to Paul
Kimball Hospital at Lakewood to see
Capt, Lehman, quoted him as saying:
“I don't know what happened. She
just went up.”
"Something strange caused that
tragedy." said Gill Robb Wilson, State
aviation director, announcing imme
diate Federal and State investiga
tions. There was an explosion, he
said, in No. 2 gas cell stern.
"In all my 21 years of flying experi
ence I have seen crackups, explosions,
flaming airplanes.” he said, “but noth
ing measures up to the explosion of
the Hindenburg."
Dazed and bleeding survivors didn't
know- what happened—didn’t know,
in fact, how they had survived.
The 800-foot long swastika-embla
zoned ship, graceful despite her bulk,
sailed into her American port in a
rainstorm, more than 12 hours late
because of headwinds which cut
down speed over the Atlantic.
Unhurried despite a planned quick
turnabout with a record list of pas
sengers, many of them bound for the
English coronation, the ship nosed up
towrard the mooring mast.
Two lines went down at 6:20 p.m.
(E. S. T.) Passengers, spotting rela
tives and greeters on the field 200 feet
below, waved gaily.
Three minutes later—explosion.
The ship settled to earth, its bag
now a solid mass of flame, lta terrified,
bewildered occupants shrieking.
The stories of the tragedy were all
the same.
"A blinding flash,” said Herbert
O'Laughlin of Chicago, a survivor.
“A noise that sounded like bullets
coming out of the gondolas,” said
Robert Seelig, a photographer on the
ground. “I saw the ship Just sink
down and the flames go through it.”
The disaster, writing a fiery finis to
the Hindenburg’s 135,000 miles of safe
transit across the Atlantic, was the
first major wreck to involve a lighter
than-air ship carrying paying passen
gers.
All other crashes, in the 78 years
since Count Zeppelin began the use
of dirigibles, involved military or naval
craft.
Curious humanity, in long untiring
streams of thousands, poured into
Lakehurst throughout the night and
early morning, eager to gaze in awe on
the scene.
The determined crowds abandoned
their cars and pressed forward on foot,
through wood, swamps and thickets, to
the spot where lay the fused, skeleton
ized girders of the colossus of the
skies.
At the big gate, a half mile from
the hangar, throngs milled in the
darkness of early dawn, probing with
flashlights, peering futilely for a sign
of flames, bemoaning the long way
back.
Navy men patrolled the high fence,
which many agile spectators had
climbed before the "keep out” lines
were formed.
Others, undismayed by the guards,
trudged a mile around to the unfenced
section behind the hangar. Immedi
ately more patrol lines were set up.
In the Zeppelin Co.’s office, beside
the hangar, a score of Germans, grim
and nervous, conversed. An officer
with his head swathed in crimson
stained bandages roared thick German
into a telephone.
Eleven times, a truck backed up to
the hangar. Each time it brought
another charred body.
Graphic descriptions of the disaster
came irom eye witnesses.
“All was serene on the ground and
ship when suddenly flames burst from
the Zeppelin’s tall,” said Dr. Carl A.
Gesswern of Matawan. "Her rear
half puffed up and burned, then the
front bulged out and burst into
flames. In less than a minute she was
on the ground, dropping like a deflated
parachute.”
As the flaming mass plunged down
ward, there rose a cry to the ground
crew: "Run for your lives.”
The first bewilderment gone, they
ran back to the blazing, still exploding
wreckage.
"The Navy boys grimly dove into
the flames like dogs after rabbits,”
said officials, lauding their rescue
work.
The passengers and crew, those
that were not trapped in the blazing
belly, sought escape.
Threw Sons Out Window.
Mrs. Herman Doehner of Mexico
City( told Point Pleasant Hospital
aides that she and two sons were In
the dining room when the first blast
occurred. She threw her sons out
of the window and then, with the ship
6 feet off the ground, jumped her
self. A daughter also escaped, but
her husband was not reported in the
early survival list.
“I landed on my stomach and
crawled 30 or 40 yards to escape the
flames.1' Philip Mangone of New York
said in Paul Kimball Hospital.
Theories came from various source*
on the cause of the disaster, such as
had stricken down lighter-than-alr
craft, but officials hurrying to the
scene to make the inquiry said it was
“too early” to try to fix the reason.
P. W. von Melster, vice president of
the American Zeppelin Transport Co.,
general United States agents for the
German Zeppelin Transport Co., the
Hindenburg’s owners, said the rain
may have created a spark of static
electricity when the landing ropes
were dropped, touching off the highly
explosive hydrogen.
He said the tragedy may have re
sulted also from a spark from one of
the engines. Some of the hydrogen,
which the ship had been valving
preparatory to landing, might have
gathered in a pocket under the tall
surfaces, he said, and detonated from
the spark.
The Hindenburg, which had put out
from her home base, Frankfort-on
Main, Germany, 76 hours before, had
cruised majestically over New Eng
land and the skyscrapers of New York
and headed to Lakehurst for an eve
ning landing.
Because of the strong winds that
sweep the broad plain during the day,
the ship always had landed at dusk
or at dawn. Headwinds met on its
voyage prevented the anticipated 6
a.m. landing.
The big ship was sighted at Lake
hurst soon after 3 o'clock, but hov
ered over the pines, awaiting favorable
landing conditions and the clearing of
a light rain and electrical storm.
The ground crew of 90 Navy men
and 110 civilians, in charge of Lieut.
R. K. Tyler, former flight officer, who
flew in lighter-than-air craft during
the World War, moved toward the
mooring mast—7 feet lower than last
year's to permit greater control of
the craft as she was wound in by the
nose.
The motors droned as she ap
proached the mast. Two nose lines
were dropped through trap doors. The
lines were attached and the huge sil
ver bag gleamed despite fast-falling
darkness. A light rain was still
falling.
Lights gleamed from the gondolas.
Then came a crackling roar, and
the few hundred spectators—a mere
handful compared to the thousands
w'ho watched the Hindenburg end her
maiden North Atlantic flight a year
ago this month—gasped.
The detonation tore the ship in
half. She burned as she crumpled.
By the time she settled the 200 feet
to earth she was a blazing tomb.
At first it was feared that all
aboard had perished.
Then a steward and two cabin boys
appeared out of the wreckage, stunned.
Rescuers took heart. Perhaps there
was hope for more.
A man crawled out of a gondola, his
clothes burned off, his body seared.
A woman leaped from a window. More
came stumbling out.
The ground crew found the dead, as
well as the living.
It was the Job of the first watch,
as E. Z. Matthews, first machinist’s
mate, related, "to haul the dead ones
out of the wreck."
"Have you ever seen a guy burned
so badly that he shouldn't be walking,
but he does?’’ he said. "We found
a sailor who knew if there were any
burnt clothes on him he would be
stripped, taking his flesh with him,
so he had taken off everything except
his underclothing.
"We saw him wandering around all
black from the hands to the elbows,
and from the feet to the knees, and
still he walked. He had no more than
an inch of skin all over him."
Under Ship When it Fell.
E. Z. Matthews, first-class machin
ist's mate, United States Navy, gave
this vivid eye-witness account of the
disaster:
“I saw the explosion, the whole
thing, since I was underneath the very
center of the dirigible when it fell.
I was on the port side. I heard a
terrifying explosion overhead and I
was knocked down by the blast. I
caught my balance and started to run
when the second explosion hit me, and
no more had I got up from that than
another blast hit me, and at the end
I was no more than a hundred feet
away from the burning ship.
"The port side of the ship gave way
first, and then the opposite side, both
opposite the motor nacelles on the big
balloon.
‘‘That was only the beginning of
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the trouble. As soon as the ship
came down, the first watch had to
haul the dead ones out of the wreck,
and It was the most horrible experi
ence I ever expect to go through.
"At the end, after we had taken
all the living and the Injured away,
there were still the bodies In the
wreckage, and with most of them we
had to burrow with our hands to find
enough of the poor fellow to cart
away and cover with a blanket.
"It was nasty work. Plenty of us
couldn’t sleep last night.”
RI.AMES ENGINE SPARK.
Former Shenandoah Commander
Doubts Static Electricity Theorv.
SAN DIEGO, Calif., May 7 (>PJ.—
Capt. Prank McCrary, one-time com
mander of the Ill-fated dirigible
Shenandoah, said today he believed
destruction of the Hindenburg prob
ably was caused by a spark from one
of the craft’s Diesel engines.
Modern dirigibles are built with
their Joints reinforced and protected
so that there is practically no change
of picking up static electricity and
causing an explosion of hydrogen gas,
McCrary said
The retired officer, once commander
of the Lakehurst, N J., Air Station
where the Hindenburg crashed, said:
"It is more reasonable to assume that
a flame from one of the Diesel engines
ignited the hydrogen.’’
"These engines are pretty safe in
that they carry no Inflammable gaso
line. But when they are in operation
they continually give off flame. In
event of a leak in one of the hydro
gen cells this could instantly become
dangerous."
The Navy's dirigible Shenandoah
was wrecked September 3, 1925, in a
storm In Ohio, killing 14 men.
Inquiries
(Continued From First Page.)
in llghter-than-air operations. Jones
was one of the Investigators of the
New London, Tex., school explosion.
Fagg and Schroeder were Joined at
Lakehurst by Assistant Secretary of
Commerce J. Monroe Johnson and
Col. Harold E. Hartney, Copeland
committee investigator. Secretary
Roper said public hearings would be
gin before a Commerce Department
board at Lakehurst, probably this
afternoon and not later than tomor
row. Johnson was in Indianapolis
at the time of the accident. He flew
here during the night and took of!
from Washington at 10 a m. for Lake
hurst.
Although personnel of the Commerce
Department board has not been an
nounced. it is planned to invite a rep
resentative of the German Ambassador
and Comdr. Charles E. Rosendahl,
commanding the Lakehurst station,
and Gill Robb Wilson. New Jersey
aviation commissioner, to sit with the
board, Roper said. The Commerce
board will work in co-operation with
the Navy board.
Roper explained there are four in
tercets IriVolved In the Investigation—
the ship was German, the accident
occurred on United States Navy prop
erty; the site of the accident is in the
State of New Jersey and the Commerce
Department is directed by law to con
duct investigations in civil aviation
accidents.
Senator Copeland explained that he
had no evidence indicating sabotage,
but wished to make certain there was
none. He said the Senate committee
also wanted information upon which
to base possible legis!at:an governing
the use of airships in internation use.
The German ambassador, Dr. Hans
Luther, flew to Lakehurst last night
in a chartered plane. He took off here
at 9:30 p.m. after issuing an appeal
to the world not to lose faith in
lighter-than-air craft. In the Ameri
can Airlines plane he carried with him
clothing for German friends aboard
the Hlndenburg whose possessions had
been destroyed.
“I am horrified," Dr. Luther told an
Associated Press representative before
caking off. “I am convinced the cause
could not have been a technical fault.
It was a most marvelous ship, as I
remember from my trips to this coun
try last Autumn. My inclination
would be to have two more built.”
Grieved at Americans’ Deaths.
His voice trembling. Dr. Luther said
he was especially grieved over the
deaths of American passengers.
Admiral Cook, chief of the Navy
Bureau of Aeronautics, flew from
Washington this morning to take
personal charge of the Navy's in
vestigation. He was accompanied by
Comdr. Lawrence Reifsnider, chief of
the naval press section, taking off
from Anacostla Naval Air Station at
7:46 a.m.
The Navy will continue to study the '
possible utilization of airships for naval
purposes. Secretary of the Navy Swan
son said. The Hindenburg tragedy,
he said, "will not adversely affect the
Navy decision,” because it resulted
from a hydrogen fire, and American
ships use non-inflammable helium.
The War Department announced
that a detachment of eight officers and
115 enlisted men from the 51st Signal
Battalion and two hospital corps men
under command of Maj. S. H. Sherrill,
Signal Corps, had been sent to Lake
hurst from Port Monmouth. N. J . at
midnight. The Memorial Hospital at
Asbury Park was provided with 50
Army cots and 150 blankets for use
I of the injured from the airship.
Leaders concerned with military
policy in Congress today expressed a
belief that the Hindenburg disaster
would crystallize sentiment against
building any more Government dirig
ibles. Admiral Cook, before leaving,
said the 106s of the German ship
taught no new lesson, but only em
phasized the advantages of non-ex
plosive helium over the hydrogen with
which the Hindenburg was inflated.
Secretary Hull cabled the Govern
ment's sympathy to Baron Konstantin
von Neurath. German foreign minister.
Pending the results of the inquiries,
officials withheld comment on the poe
stble effects on plans for American
participation in trans-Atlantic air
service.
Congress recently provided funds to
promote oceanic airplane service in
carrying the mails. No action ever
has been taken, however, on the rec
ommendation by President Roosevelt's
Aviation Commission three years ago
for a $17,000,000 appropriation to start
trans-Atlantic airship service.
The plunge of the Navy dirigibl*
Macon into the Pacific, off the Cali
fornia coast, in February, 1935, led the
House Naval Committee to shelve that
proposal.
The Akron crashed off the New
Jersey coast in April, 1933, and eight
years before that, the Navy’s first
helium-floated ship—me Shenandoah
—was demolished in Ohio. The semi
rigid Roma, bought from Italy for the
Navy, fell in flames in 1922.
Admiral Cook, a believer in helium
for dirigibles, pointed out that the
three American craft apparently were
“lost because of structural failures.”
Comment of Walsh.
Chairman Walsh of the Senate
Naval Committee said the Hindenburg
accident showed the soundness of "re
fraining from further ventures Into
the experimental field of lighter-than
air craft.”
Both he and Chairman Sheppard
of the Senate Military Affairs Com
mittee predicted it meant a setback for
dirigible construction. Sheppard and
others said use of helium might have
averted the tragedy.
Senator Thomas, Democrat, of Utah,
a member of the Military Committee,
said pending legislation to increase
the helium supply and reduce its price
probably would be sped.
Chairman Hill of the House Mili
tary Committee commented:
"Had that been an American dirigi
ble. we would have been using helium
which might have had considerable
effect.”
He pointed out that his committee
has under consideration a bill to per
mit the Government to sell or lease
supplies of helium, of which it con
trols almost the entire output, to pro
vate concerns for commercial and
medical purposes.
Sales Ordinarily Forbidden.
Exports of the gas. produced In
Texas, ordinartly are forbidden. After !
the Macon was destroyed in 1935 '
President Roosevelt indicated exports
might be allowed for scientific and
experimental use.
Germans here said their country
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ally, because It had Insufficient foreign
exchange to pay for the gas.
Furthermore, the greater lifting
lifting power of hydrogen, they said,
made It possible for the Hindenburg
to carry a 33 per cent greater pay
load.
The study. Senator Copeland sug
gested, would delve into the compara
tive construction of the Hindenburg
and the ill-fated Macon and Akron.
Such an investigation would revive
congressional discussion of whether
the United States Government should
foster lighter-than-alr transportation,
long a moot question in Government
circles.
Dr. Luther conferred at Lakehurst
with officials ol the Zeppelin Corp.,
the Air Commerce Bureau and the
State of New Jersey until early morn
ing, according to the Associated Press.
Luther was accompanied by Lieut.
Gen, Priederlch von Boettlcher, mili
tary attache at the embassy here.
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Young Judea and the Junior Mlzraehl,
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The principal speaker was William
Levy, German expatriate, who empha
sized the importance of Palestine in
the future of the Jewish people.
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