Hindenburg disaster

On the evening of 6 May 1937, the German passenger airship Hindenburg burst into flames while trying to moor at Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey. Of the 97 people aboard, 35 died, together with one man on the ground. Filmed, photographed and described live for radio, the fire ended public faith in large hydrogen-filled airships and, with it, the era of airship travel.

The Hindenburg, registered D-LZ 129, was a rigid airship operated by the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei in Nazi Germany. It was the largest airship ever built by envelope volume and was lifted by hydrogen. After its first flight in March 1936 it made ten trips to the United States without incident. Its 1937 season opened with a return flight to Rio de Janeiro, and on the evening of 3 May it left Frankfurt on the first of ten planned round trips to North America that year.

Headwinds slowed the crossing, and the airship was hours late when it passed Boston on the morning of 6 May. Thunderstorms over Lakehurst delayed the landing further, so Captain Max Pruss flew over Manhattan and along the New Jersey shore to wait for better weather. On board were 36 passengers, about half the ship's capacity, and 61 crew, including trainees.

Shortly after 7 p.m. the Hindenburg made its final approach, planning a "high landing" in which lines are dropped to the ground and the ship is winched down to the mast. A sharp turn and an S-shaped course brought it towards the mast. Because the airship was heavy at the stern, the crew released water ballast and sent six men forward to the bow to balance it. At about 7:21 p.m. the mooring lines were dropped from a height of roughly 90 metres, and a light rain began.

At about 7:25 p.m. flames broke out near the top of the hull towards the tail. Witnesses disagreed about the exact spot. The fire spread forward through the gas cells within seconds; the stern fell to the ground while the bow pointed upwards, then the whole frame collapsed. Accounts put the time from the first flames to the bow striking the ground at between 32 and 37 seconds. The diesel fuel kept burning for hours.

Thirteen passengers and 22 crew died, along with a civilian member of the ground crew. Most people in the hull near the bow were killed, and many passengers on the starboard side were trapped as the structure fell in on them. Many on the port side escaped. Some jumped from windows, including the acrobat Joseph Späh, and the 14-year-old cabin boy Werner Franz survived when a water tank burst above him. Ernst Lehmann, the airline's director of flight operations, died of his burns the next day.

The first transatlantic arrival of the season had drawn many reporters. Four newsreel teams filmed the disaster, photographers captured the burning ship, and Herbert Morrison's emotional eyewitness report for the Chicago station WLS, recorded on the spot, was broadcast the next day.

Inquiries were set up by the United States Commerce Department and by a German commission under Hugo Eckener. Sabotage was suspected at first, and the airship's commander and the Lakehurst station chief both later argued for it. The explanation accepted by the official investigations was that leaking hydrogen was ignited by a spark of static electricity. Other theories have blamed the doped fabric of the outer skin, a snapped bracing wire or a stuck gas valve, and the question is still debated.

The disaster, together with the arrival of faster aeroplanes on transatlantic routes, ended the age of the great passenger airships. Since 1987, the 50th anniversary, a marked pad and a plaque at Lakehurst have shown where the gondola came down.

Our 1938 map shows Nazi Germany, where the airship was built, and the United States in the year after the crash.