On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, the German airship LZ 129 Hindenburg was preparing to land at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey. During the mooring maneuver, a spark caused the fire that ended the lives of thirteen passengers and twenty-two crew members of the 97 people who were on board. Reporter Herbert Morrison recorded the accident for Chicago station WLS. “Oh, humanity!”: that night, American radio stations opened the news with their broadcast.
Airships: novelty, weapon of war and Nazi pride
With precedents in the 18th century, the origin of airships dates back to 1852, when the Frenchman Henri Giffard created an aircraft that could be guided. However, it was German businessman Ferdinand von Zeppelin who added gasoline engines decades later. Their use was crucial for Germany during the First World War, since they were used to launch bombs. They soon became a comfortable and safe option for traveling, until the Hindenbug tragedy occurred.
The LZ 129 airship, named after the then German president Paul von Hindenburg, was built in 1932 by the Zeppelin company. Measuring 245 meters long, 41 meters in diameter and with four Daimler-Benz engines, it reached 135 kilometers per hour. This made it an alternative for transatlantic trips, since it allowed you to travel in three days what would be equivalent to two weeks by boat.
In 1936, its first year of flight, the Hindenburg traveled some 300,000 kilometers, crossing the Atlantic seventeen times to the United States and Brazil. The Nazis, in power for three years, appropriated the image of the airship, which became a symbol of German greatness and pride. So much so that at the opening of the Berlin Olympic Games he flew over the stadium while Hitler presided over the event.
The Titanic of the air
However, geopolitical rivalries had conditioned the construction and this, in turn, the fate of the Hindenburg. The airships ran on helium, but since the United States had a monopoly and refused to sell it to the Nazis, German engineers opted for hydrogen, a more flammable gas. To counteract this weak point, they made the Hindenburg with duralumin, an alloy with high resistance to room temperature. Additionally, they reinforced the wrap to prevent static electricity from building up.
But precautions would not be enough. The Hindenburg left Frankfurt on its first transatlantic voyage in 1937 and, despite the winds and thunderstorms, danger came with the landing. To descend, the bow had to be oriented towards the mooring tower and lose altitude, releasing gas and water, until the wind forced the zeppelin to abruptly reorient. This twist snapped a cable that tore a bag of hydrogen, and the gas pooled on top. When the crew released the moorings for ground teams to tie down the balloon, the ropes became wet with rain and touched the ground, which accumulated static electricity. All this caused a spark to fly that, in 35 seconds, precipitated the airship covered in flames.
The LZ 129 Hindenburgfrom sabotage theories to the end of airships
Speculation about possible sabotage to the Hindenburg did not wait. At first, designer Hugo Eckener and commander Charles Rosendahl denied the ship’s unsafety and attributed the accident to human action. The Germans investigated the bricklayer Erich Spehl, who had a communist girlfriend, while the FBI did the same with the acrobat Joseph Späh, who on the trip had joked about Hitler and the Third Reich and had visited his dog several times in the wineries.
Although both countries would dismiss the conspiracies, the LZ 129 Hindenburg tragedy ended an era of the zeppelin that had already left accidents. The British R101, modern but hastily built in 1930, crashed in France while en route to India, leaving 48 of the 54 crew dead. Three years later, off the coast of New Jersey, the USS Akron sank after being struck by wind. 73 of the 76 crew members died.