"Oh, the Humanity!"

"Toward us, like a great feather ... is the Hindenburg. The members of the crew are looking down on the field ahead of them getting their glimpses of the mooring mast. . . ."

Radio Commentator Herbert Morrison was chattering thus idly into his microphone at the Naval airbase in Lakehurst, N. J. The Hindenburg had made ten round trips to the U. S. in 1936 and this arrival was being "covered" by radio only because it was her first of 1937, nothing sensational. In fact, Morrison's words were not going out over the ether. He was making an electrical transcription to be broadcast the next day.

"It is practically standing still now. The ropes have been dropped and they have been taken hold of by a number of men on the field. It is starting to rain again. The rain had slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are holding it just enough to keep it--

"IT'S BURST INTO FLAME!

"Get out of the way! Get this--Charley, get out of the way please! It is bursting into flames. This is terrible! This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world! The flames are 500 ft. into the sky. It is a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It is in smoke and flames now. Oh, the humanity! Those passengers! I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen! Honest, it is a mass of smoking wreckage. Lady, I am sorry. Honestly, I can hardlyQ+ am going to step inside where I can't see it. Charley, that is terrible! Listen, folks, I am going to have to stop for a minute because I have lost my voice."

Few seconds later Announcer Morrison recovered his voice, went on with his transscription. But by that time the worst and most completely witnessed disaster in the history of commercial aviation was over, the 803-ft. Hindenburg was gone, destroyed in precisely 32 sec. before 1,000 appalled spectators. It was almost as if it had been done as a laboratory experiment, like a discarded battleship blown up for target practice before experts. If such an experiment had been planned, it would have been hard to gather a more competent battalion of onlookers--Commander Charles Emery Rosendahl, No. 1 U. S. airship man; representatives of Deutsche Zeppelin Reederai; aviation editors and reporters from all important newspapers, magazines and press services; pilots and hostesses of American Airlines ready to ferry the Hindenburg's passengers to Newark, and a gay crowd waving to relatives and friends clustered at the airship's windows 300 ft. above ground.

Claimed to be the world's safest means of transport, since no dirigible passenger had ever been killed, the Hindenburg was insured with a score of German and English companies at a 5% premium for $3,750,000 plus $12,000 for each passenger. Last week when it floated up from Frankfort for the first of 18 round-trips there were 39 passengers aboard, none of headline importance. In command was 45-year-old Captain Max Pruss, who went to work for old Count von Zeppelin in 1911, had made 170 flights across the Atlantic. Last year he commanded the Hindenburg on one flight from Lakehurst to Frankfort and on several to South America. As his adviser came famed Captain Ernst Lehmann, second only to great Dr. Hugo Eckener as a dirigible expert. He began flying airships in 1912 and was the man who conceived and supervised the Zeppelin raids on London. Tired old (65) Dr. Eckener, with full trust in his two subordinates, was last week off on a vacation in Austria.

Delayed twelve hours by headwinds, the Hindenburg had reached Labrador at dawn. It swam slowly down the coast all day. At Portland, Boston and New London it dipped in courtesy gestures. About 4 p.m. it nuzzled in over Long Island to New York City, while six airplanes buzzed around it. With the sun glinting on its silver-grey sides and the four huge red swastikas on its fins, it circled once over Manhattan, then headed for its berth at Lakehurst. But a sharp thunderstorm came up and when he reached the Naval reservation, Captain Pruss took no chances, turned off to sea. At dusk, while a drizzle fell from a sombre sky and a fitful breeze jerked the windsock, the Hindenburg once more poked her nose over Lakehurst. began maneuvering to land. It circled twice, then dropped to 500 ft., occasionally spewing water ballast. At 7:20 p.m. precisely, two lines fell from the bow. A trained squad of Navy men grabbed one, a squad of civilians the other. Gently the two groups began coaxing the big bag to the mooring mast. The breeze teasing the tail made it more difficult than usual. Captain Pruss put the two Mercedes-Benz Diesel engines in the stern gondolas into reverse to keep from overshooting the mast. Witnesses noticed that the port motor was backfiring.

Suddenly a stab of flame gashed the airship's flank near the port stern gondola. So swiftly that to many it seemed instantaneous the flame engulfed the whole rear half of the ship. There was a muffled, booming WHOOSH and a huge belch of white fire and smoke mushroomed skyward.

With a Cra-a-a-ack! the ship buckled. Down on the ground went the stern with a peculiarly gentle crash amid clouds of dust and smoke. As the still undamaged bow tilted up at 45DEG, the flame rushed through the middle and geysered in a long bright plume from the nose. For an instant the Hindenburg seemed a rearing reptile darting its tongue in anger. Then it was a gigantic halfback tackled behind the knees and falling forward on its face. The huge bag settled slowly to earth with fire roaring over it 50 yd. a second. Last place it reached was the passenger section in the belly, about one-third back from the bow. Silhouetted by the holocaust, passengers began dropping out of the windows like peas from a collander. From the control cabin swarmed officers and crew. Struggling figures emerged from the blazing hulk, stumbled, rose, fell again in fiery suffocation or from broken legs, shock, concussion. Down on the slowest ones then smashed the enormous incandescent mass in a blazing blizzard of fabric, crashing girders, melted duralumin. Still out of the inferno crept struggling figures, afire from head to foot, some stark naked, their clothes burned away, their skin and flesh in sizzling tatters.

Out rang the deep voice of Chief Boatswain's Mate Frederick J. Tobin, in charge of the ground crew: "Navy men, stand fast! We've got to get those people out of there!" With tremendous bravery, scores of gobs and civilians dashed headlong back to the conflagration. Though the heat was so intense that thermometers rose in the Navy Aerological School 500 yd. away, the rescuers charged into the control cabin and the passenger quarters. As one observer put it: "Those boys dived into the flames like dogs after rabbits!" Someone found Captain Lehmann, his clothes frizzled to the skin in back, his hair ablaze, his face rutted with third-degree burns, wandering about babbling: "Das versteh' ich nicht!" (I don't understand it) over & over. Another led out Captain Pruss, his clothes mostly gone, his lips like two roasted sausages. A naked man, broiled yellow, staggered out, murmured, "I'm all right," fell dead. One rescuer pulled out two dead dogs. Another brought two children, both with broken bones, horrible burns. Seated in a bonfire of debris, one man dazedly slapped at his burning clothes. Gobs doused him with sand, yanked him away. A Hindenburg steward named Kubis courageously ran back into his ship to save the metal money box. He bore it proudly to his officers. But all the bills within had charred to ashes. Also lost was a valuable 340-lb. cargo of which the chief known items were photo-graphs and newsreel films. Of 240 Ib. of mail, only 200 charred letters were saved.

Ambulances and fire-trucks were now clanging in from every direction. Commander Rosendahl's splendid Navy discipline kept confusion at a minimum. The flames began to subside, but dense black smoke still poured from the twisted heap of redhot girders and the smoldering pud- dle of fuel oil. Not until next morning was the wreckage cool enough for men to pry out all the crisped bodies within, many of them only tentatively identifiable. The dawn score of deaths stood at eleven passengers, 21 crew, while 28 passengers and 49 crew miraculously escaped. One member of the ground-crew-- Civilian Allen Hagaman--also died of burns. Most survivors were badly burned and three more crew and one more passenger presently perished. One of the first to go was Captain Lehmann. Just before he died he said: "I intended to stay with the ship as long as I could, until we could land her, if possible. But it was impossible. Everything around me was on fire. The windows were open in the central control cabin and I jumped about 100 ft. My clothes were all ablaze."

Other survivor stories were equally terse, equally terrible. Passenger Otto Clemens, who jumped safely, told how Passenger John Pannes refused to jump until he found his wife. Mr. & Mrs. Pannes both perished. Mrs. Hermann Doehner related in a husky monotone how she tossed two of her children out of a window, then scrambled out herself with the third. One child died, as did her husband. The others had chances of pulling through. Stewardess Elsa Ernst got away by sliding down a rope. Said she: "I could hear my hair crinkling as it burned." Passenger Herbert O'Laughlin, who ran black-faced into the hangar looking for a telephone to call his mother in Chicago, said: "I was in my cabin . . . packing . . . when I felt a slight tremor. . . . There was very little confusion among the passengers, no screaming, hardly any noise." Captain Pruss said nothing, held incommunicado by doctors who gave him "a 50-50 chance to live."

In Germany it was 2 a.m. when the telephone tinkled by Adolf Hitler's bed at his mountain nook at Berchtesgaden. After he heard that Germany's greatest transport pride was no more, he paced his room nightlong, too upset to say anything.

Reached at Graz, Austria, Dr. Eckener nearly broke down at the body blow to his life's work. Voice husky and goatee aquiver, the Jieavy old man sagged like one of his airships short of gas as he hurried back to Berlin.

At Friedrichshafen, where a larger sister of the Emdenburg is nearing completion, stunned workers doggedly kept at work though even Dr. Eckener admitted: "It is impossible to foretell what effect this acci- dent may have on the future of the airship."

Everywhere in Germany flags went to half-mast. German newspapers unanimously exhorted the people to bear up, saying that "young and strong nations" can bear such tragedies. Chancellor Hitler tarted a fund for the bereaved families with a gift of $12,000. General Goring declared: "We men of German aviation will till show the world that the idea and the enterprising spirit of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin are upheld. . . . We bow to God's will and at the same time we face the uture with an unbending will and passionate hearts."

Helium for Hydrogen-Inquiries by all authorities soon passed over sabotage (incendiary bullets) as the cause of the disaster. Next discussed was static electricity, harges of which all aircraft accumulate, especially when flying in thunderstorm areas. The fact that the Hindenburg's, ground lines had been down for three minutes before the blaze began, thus presumably drawing off all static charges, opposed this theory.

Professor Otto Stern of Carnegie Institute of Technology observed that hydrogen Drotons escaping through a small aperture become ionized, or build up a small positive electric charge, through the friction of their escape. Hydrogen burns on contact with oxygen. The presence of a slight negative charge of static electricity in the airship fabric or in the air might thus cause a spark sufficient to start the fire. Zeppelin men scouted this idea, however, pointing out that many a German airship came back from bombing London shot full of holes which caused no hydrogen fire.

The fire spread so fast that few stories of its origin jibed. But several witnesses clung to their story of the port rear engine racing and spouting sparks. These might have ignited hydrogen valved out during the descent. Airships usually valve gas in landing. The vents are on top and the gas is so light that it usually rises straight up. The Hindenburg was slightly nose down at the instant of the fire and still moving fairly fast. Conceivably a freak breeze might have combined with the slipstream to waft a whiff of gas into engine sparks.

Whatever the spark's origin, the fire probably meant the end of hydrogen in passenger airships, though the Germans have lost few ships from that cause. The Hindenburg was LZ129. Of her 128 German predecessors, ten never left the drawing board, 25 were lost by storm and accident, six by causes unknown, 21 were dismantled, 46 were wrecked by the War, eleven were surrendered to the Allies, seven were sabotaged to prevent surrender, two are left-the decommissioned Los Angeles at Lakehurst and the sturdy old Graf, which arrived the day after the tragedy in Frankfort from Rio de Janeiro, carrying 23 passengers. She was promptly grounded by the Reich. Having read full reports from Lakehurst, Dr. Eckener announced: "There must be no more flying with hydrogen. We must make an about face. We must use helium."

There lay the real cause of the Hindenburg disaster, for Germany has no helium. It is a U. S. monopoly. The willingness of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt to sell Germany enough helium to fly the Graf and the Hindenburg on peaceful missions was offset by the price factor (more than 30 times as expensive, for 20% less payload efficiency) and by covert political opposition. As Columnist Dorothy Thompson wrote: "The destruction of the Hindenburg was an act of sabotage. For the peaceful world today, the world that seeks to join hands in the perfection of greater technologies, that seeks mutual enrichment and mutual understanding by all means of physical, intellectual and spiritual intercourse, is, indeed, being sabotaged by the fear and the threat of war. The Hindenburg represented the world and for that reason our eyes lighted when we saw its silver grandeur in the sky. It contended with another world which might make it at any moment an object of terror and of hatred."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.