Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  By Eckener’s standards, Lehmann and Pruss were coming in way too quickly, as they themselves seemed to realize about a thousand feet from the landing circle, when the engines were ordered into full reverse for an entire minute.

  This kind of stylishly fast, aggressive maneuver bore every hallmark of Lehmann, and it’s possible that he was also showing off a little for the benefit of Adelt.

  Veteran American airshipmen watching outside noticed that there was something abnormal about the tight S-curve, and they all professed surprise at the rapidity of the Hindenburg’s arrival.

  Chief Boatswain’s Mate Willie Bishop said that usually the Germans “would come in slowly and gradually. From my observation I saw the Graf Zeppelin last year and they always came in very slowly and made their descent very nicely, while on this night it seemed to me [the Hindenburg] was in a great hurry to get down for some reason or other.” Lieutenant Richard Andrews, in charge of taking hold of the control car when it descended, confirmed that “as the ship came in, she was coming, in my opinion, much faster than usual and backed the engines much longer and harder than I have [ever] seen.”

  It was either Lehmann or Pruss, probably a bit of both, who decided on the “high landing” that came next. Eckener relied on a technique known as a heavy landing, in which he would bring the airship in as low as possible by valving gas so that it would more or less settle into the hands of the ground men, who would then walk the ship into the hangar. It was efficient but required a large, experienced ground team. The Americans, whose ground crew consisted mostly of part-time volunteers, had preferred the high-landing or flying-moor method, meaning that ropes would be dropped from several hundred feet up and winched in by the mooring mast.

  Neither Lehmann nor Pruss had done many high landings, and the reason it was chosen now was that they wanted not only to set themselves apart from Eckener but also to habituate themselves to American practice.

  At 7:21 P.M., the Hindenburg hovered at two hundred feet, and the crew dropped the bow starboard rope, followed moments later by the portside one. The latter was soon coupled to the line attached to the mast as the ground men began working on the starboard rope. A light rain fell upon them as the Hindenburg pulled hard on the port rope, moving up and astern and swinging slowly to the right.

  Somewhere near Cells 4 and 5, below where the top vertical fin connected to the upper spine of the Hindenburg, a thin shear or bracing wire, there to help strengthen the fin, had become overstrained by the earlier, high-speed S-curve. Eckener later said that “the stress on these wires is especially high in such a sharp turn,” though none had ever snapped before on the Hindenburg (at least under his command, he subtly implied).

  But now, tautened beyond endurance by the pull of the airship, one did.

  * * *

  —

  BY SUPREME ILL luck, the wire’s tortured metal strands happened to rend a modest tear in one of the cells, releasing around 1,500 cubic feet of hydrogen a second—an amount as yet imperceptible to the pressure gauge connected to Ziegler’s board in the control car—into the space between the cell wall and the airship’s skin.

  On the ground, R. H. Ward, in charge of the port bow ground team, looked up and saw a weird fluttering of the outer fabric in the area over Cells 4 and 5. The cover seemed to be rippling, like a flag waving in the wind, as if gas were “pushing up” against it from the inside.

  Invisible to nearly everyone, something even more curious happened. Lieutenant Richard Antrim, stationed on top of the mooring mast—allowing him to see from a greater height than those on the ground—noticed a “small flame at the base of the leading edge of the upper fin. This small flame licked forward for a distance, I judge to be 20 to 30 feet. This flame died out.”

  Professor Mark Heald, a history professor at Rutgers University, who had taken his wife and eight-year-old son to Lakehurst, also saw it. His family were standing some distance outside the main gate of the naval air station, giving them, like Antrim, a different view from anyone else. According to Heald, about a minute, likely somewhat less, after Hindenburg dropped its bow lines, he watched a dim “blue flame” flickering above the backbone about a quarter of the length of the airship from the tail.

  At that precise moment, Herbert Morrison was doing his best to describe the landing as sound engineer Charlie Nehlsen recorded his words. “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! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie!”

  Morrison was describing what Heald, Ward, and Antrim had that instant seen for themselves. Antrim confirmed that after the “small flame” disappeared a few seconds passed and “then [there was] a puff of flame on the after end of the ship just forward of the spot where I first saw a flame.” Ward said that the puff suddenly erupted into a mushrooming flower of fire about ten feet in diameter, which Heald estimated burst a third of the length along the airship, so slightly closer to the bow than before, as Antrim had mentioned.

  Within moments of the mushroom appearing, the entire aft of the Hindenburg was consumed as the fire feasted greedily on millions of cubic feet of hydrogen. Rosendahl, himself seeing the first small burst of flame, felt “at once that that spelled the doom of the ship.” He was right. The time was 7:25 P.M.

  * * *

  —

  THE HINDENBURG, LIKE every Eckener airship, had been built with safety in mind. Each part of the system—for instance, the gas cells, the outer cover, the wiring, the infrastructure, the hydrogen—could not be the sole cause of a disaster. They all needed to fail to destroy a Zeppelin, and such an outlandish scenario had never happened on Eckener’s watch. But at Lakehurst that evening, starting with the S-curve, the snapped wire, and the torn gas cell, a cascading series of minor, madly improbable events did happen—and led to catastrophe.

  Even then, had it not been for the weather, all would have been well: The tear in the gas cell would have quickly been found and patched and the wire replaced with a spare. No one would have given it a second thought.

  The atmosphere above Lakehurst had become highly electrically charged by the thunder front earlier, and though it had dissipated somewhat, the air around the Hindenburg had been reenergized with voltage by the arrival of a second, less detectable, and less severe front over Lakehurst just before the airship approached.

  In itself, this was not at all dangerous—every single metal part on the Hindenburg, as on its predecessors, was bonded to another to distribute electrical charges evenly—and airships had been struck dozens of times by lightning with no harm coming to them. Neither was it dangerous to drop bow ropes to ground the airship’s charge with the earth; the ropes, when they fell, were bone dry and as such, poor electrical conductors.

  But because of the drizzle and the decision to use the high-landing method, the ropes had had time to become damp—and thus better electrical conductors. The Hindenburg’s accumulated electrostatic charge, then, was quickly equalized with that of the earth, which in turn created a sudden, drastic, and dangerous differential between the Hindenburg’s framework charge and that of the surrounding, still highly electrified air.

  The airship’s outer skin, too, contained its own charge and was naturally less conductive than the metal skeleton. To reduce chafing between the cover and the framework, thousands of thin (less than half an inch) wooden dowels had been inserted between the fabric and the outer edge of the duralumin girders. Again, this was perfectly safe, but it did mean that the cover retained its charge for longer than the frame.

  Normally, none of this would have mattered. But in this unique instance, the conditions were ripe for a small electrostatic arc discharge—of the same sort that happens when you shuffle across the carpet and shock your friend—to leap the doweled gap between the wet cover and the framework. And such a spark would otherwi
se be harmless but for the leakage of hydrogen caused by the broken wire tearing the gas cell.

  This gas combined with the oxygen in the space between the top of the cell and the inner surface of the cover to form an oxyhydrogen mix. With the Hindenburg stopped and little wind present, there were none of the usual drafts that blew through the body of the airship in flight to disperse any stray gas through the vertical vents that poked through the airship’s skin to the outside. As a result, the oxyhydrogen had begun to accumulate and lurk there.

  The arc discharge ignited this relatively small volume of oxyhydrogen. The small flame that Heald and the others had seen, then, was the first, pale-blue burst of lit oxyhydrogen as it exited a wood-and-fabric vent-shaft hood on top of the Hindenburg. It continued to burn inside, which no one could see, acting like a pilot light for the second, larger burst witnessed by ground observers.

  In the Hindenburg, the heat was melting the cover of Cell 4. Helmut Lau, who was stationed near the bottom vertical fin, then saw a “bright reflection” inside Cell 4 above him. “It was at first red and yellow and there was smoke in it,” he said, and “the cell suddenly disappeared.”

  The flames had met highly purified hydrogen, which burned exponentially faster than the diluted oxyhydrogen, and Lau heard a whoosh sound similar to that of lighting a kitchen gas range left on for a time.

  This almost instantly resulted in a colossal, high-velocity chain reaction to the other cells, one after another progressively rupturing and releasing their hydrogen to feed the insatiable maw of the fire.

  In roughly half a minute, this succession of wildly remote possibilities, none inherently dangerous in and of itself, turned into lethal certainty.

  * * *

  —

  INSIDE THE HINDENBURG, many people, like the cook Albert Stöffler, radioman Herbert Dowe, Third Officer Max Zabel, Boetius the elevator man, and Watch Officer Heinrich Bauer, heard either a “metallic tearing” or a “dull thud.” Max Henneberg, a cabin steward, who had “heard so many explosions in my life during the War,” likened it to sounding “like a big gun, you know, boom.”

  When a strong vibration subsequently quaked the ship, those in the control car assumed that the port rope had snapped. Annoying, but fixable. Sammt looked out the window and was confused to see that the rope was fine.

  On the ground, Morrison the reporter had seen the burst of flame and cried: “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 worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! Oh, it’s [unintelligible] it’s flames….Oh, it’s crashing, oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it…it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The ferocity of the combustion of millions of cubic feet of hydrogen cracked the rear quarter of the Hindenburg, arching the bow sharply upward. Inside, Stöffler recalled that in the kitchen all the dishes fell down, and hot water streamed all over the floor, probably from a broken pipe. Xavier Maier, the chief cook, fell over, while Severin Klein, one of the stewards, was thrown into a corner, with the nearby passengers also tumbling. Fritz Deeg, a cabin steward standing in the dining room, managed to hold on to a windowsill but everything else, “including chairs, everything not fixed on the ground, fell to the back.” In the control room, too, the officers slid about and the log book, drawers, and other objects crashed to the floor.

  The airship fell in slow motion, its back agonizingly broken, as fire billowed out from its nose.

  Back to Morrison: “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 on there! Ah! It’s…It…It’s a…ah! I…I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it’s just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. 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 I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”

  From the first glimpse of the flame to the time the immolating Hindenburg settled on the ground, just thirty-two seconds elapsed. As the holocaust petered out, the molten duralumin structure crumpled inward as black clouds, caused by the burning of the diesel fuel, swirled and enveloped the stripped, glowingly red carcass.

  In the control car, everyone knew enough about airships to know that the best thing to do was to get out. Those present found the closest window and jumped. Lehmann, Sammt, and Pruss leapt from the starboard side while Boetius chose the port. Ziegler followed the first three out, but girders fell and a curtain of flame rose before him, so he ran back to the control car and jumped through a window in the navigation room when he saw a gap in the flames to the left.

  Heinrich Bauer, too, had discovered that in the forward part of the ship the port side was the safer option, and he managed to sprint twenty yards away. Likewise, Anton Wittemann was hoping to follow Lehmann and the others, but the window collapsed. He looked out and saw Lehmann, Pruss, and Sammt cut off by flaming framework crashing into the ground. Desperately, he looked for another avenue of escape and noticed that the wind was blowing smoke and flame starboard, and “then I saw a clear opening shortly after on the port side, and with a quick decision I ran there and without difficulty [charged] through a short streak of fire.” He would suffer nothing but a slight ankle sprain.

  Herbert Dowe was also extraordinarily lucky. He had been on a stairway next to the control car when one of the Hindenburg’s gigantic water ballast tanks burst above, drenching him. When the infrastructure collapsed on top of him, “I threw myself on the ground, and the heat became so intolerable, so great, that I started to burn on the head and the face and the hands, then I crawled into the wet sands…and I waited until the outer cover burned off.” Then he stumbled around until two ground men brought him to the dispensary for treatment.

  Elsewhere, crewmen sought the closest exit—a door, a window, a hatch—it didn’t matter where. The nearer you were to some kind of exit the higher the likelihood of surviving. Of the eleven mechanics in the outboard engine cars, for instance, nine survived, and ten out of twelve men in the control car would live, but of the nine souls forwardmost in the inescapable bow, none did. There was also a higher fatality rate among those personnel deeper inside the ship or on the starboard side, onto which the Hindenburg now leaned.

  There were exceptions, such as chief electrician Phillip Lenz. He was trapped in the switch room amidships and “could not get out, because the doors were distorted.” The fire started burning above him so “I found a metal cover and held it as a shield against my face. Then the air got extremely hot, so that one could hardly breathe anymore. Then I thought, ‘This is the end.’ And then the room was hotter and hotter and I turned around, and all of a sudden, standing on the outside” was a fellow crewman who took hold of him. It seems the fire had burned a hole for him to crawl through.

  Helmut Lau, in the lower fin, was also trapped but saw mechanic Richard Kollmer climbing out of a hatch, and Rudolf Sauter, the chief engineer, yelled at him to move. Hans Freund, one of the riggers, helped pull Lau out. Sauter had blood streaming down his face, and together they extracted him as well. Freund had burns to the back of his head and one of his cheeks, Kollmer was limping, but otherwise they were safe, though they could hear dreadful screams coming from within the wreck.

  All seven stewards and five cooks plus messboy Werner Franz had been waiting in the passenger service areas (lounge, dining room, kitchen, cabin corridors) when the Hindenburg sharply inclined. Heinrich Kubis, the chief steward, had just finished setting up a table
for the Immigration and Customs officials who were due to board to check passports (Meister had really upgraded the arrivals process), when he was thrown off his feet and knew instantly “there was something out of order.” Keeping his head, he opened the center window and ordered the other stewards to keep the rest open. Eugen Nunnenmacher, a dining room steward who had been preparing a platter of sandwiches, called out to him, “Mr. Kubis, jump out,” only to be told by Kubis not to let anyone jump—they were too high up to survive.

  Then a passenger jumped. Kubis looked down and saw that at about fifteen feet it was dangerous but necessary. He shouted to anyone who could hear, “Get out!” and then followed him, as did Nunnenmacher and Max Henneberg, who momentarily clung to the window frame, scared, before letting go.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN THE AIRSHIP had lurched upward, many passengers hadn’t the presence of mind to grab onto something sturdy. Those who did and then headed straight for a window survived, for the most part. George Grant, for instance, saw the flames to starboard and urged his fellow passengers to jump alongside him through a port window, but some had not realized the severity of their predicament, or had frozen in fear, or were too slow.

  Anyone who went deeper into the ship to fetch a loved one died. John Pannes, the New York manager for the Hamburg-America steamship line, was in the dining room and at a window about to jump when he discovered that his wife, Emma, had returned to their cabin to get her coat. He went to find her, and they weren’t seen again. Hermann Doehner, who was traveling with his family, had returned to his cabin shortly before the fire, and Irene, his fourteen-year-old daughter, left her mother and two brothers to go find him. Neither survived.