Arrival
Not long after Commander Rosendahl's last message, the Hindenburg appeared over Lakehurst. The Hindenburg made a pass over the airfield before coming in for landing. Circling over the airfield, Captain Pruss tried to slow down the Hindenburg and to lower its altitude. Perhaps worried about the weather, Captain Pruss made a sharp left turn as the airship approached the mooring mast.
Since the Hindenburg was a little tail heavy, 1,320 pounds (600 kg) of ballast water was dropped (often, unwary onlookers who had ventured too close to an approaching airship would get drenched from ballast water). Since the stern was still heavy, the Hindenburg dropped another 1,100 pounds (500 kg) of ballast water and this time did drench some of the onlookers.
At 7:21 p.m., the Hindenburg was still about 1,000 feet away from the mooring mast and approximately 300 feet in the air. Most of the passengers stood by the windows to watch the onlookers grow larger as the airship decreased its altitude and to wave at their family and friends. The five officers on board (two were just observers) were all in the control gondola. Other crewmen were in the tail fin to release mooring lines and to drop the rear landing wheel.
A Flame
At 7:25 p.m., witnesses saw a small, mushroom-shaped flame rise from the top of the tail section of the Hindenburg, just in front of the tail fin. The crewmen in the tail of the airship said they heard a detonation which sounded like the burner on a gas stove turn on.5 Within seconds, the fire engulfed the tail and spread quickly forward. (Picture) The mid-section was completely in flames even before the tail of the Hindenburg hit the ground. It took only 34 seconds for the entire airship to be consumed by flames. (Picture)
The passengers and crew had only seconds to react. Some jumped out of the windows, some fell. Since the Hindenburg was still 300 feet (roughly equal to 30 stories) in the air when it caught fire, many of these passengers did not survive the fall. Other passengers got wedged inside the ship by moving furniture and fallen passengers. Other passengers and crew jumped from the ship once it neared the ground. Even others were rescued from the burning bulk after it had hit the ground.
The ground crew, which had been there to assist the craft in mooring, became a rescue crew. The injured were taken to the airfield's infirmary; the dead were taken to the press room, the impromptu morgue.
On the scene, radio broadcaster Herbert Morrison captured his emotion-filled first-hand experience as he watched the Hindenburg burst into flames. (His radio broadcast was taped and then played to a shocked world the following day.)
Considering the quickness of the catastrophe, it is amazing that only 35 of the 97 men and women on board, plus one member of the ground crew, died in the Hindenburg disaster. This tragedy - seen by so many via photographs, news-reels, and radio - effectively ended commercial passenger service in rigid, lighter-than-air crafts.
Though it was assumed at the time that the fire was caused by a hydrogen gas leak ignited by a spark of static electricity, the cause of the disaster is still controversial.
For More Information:
1. Rick Archbold, Hindenburg: An Illustrated History (Toronto: Warner/Madison Press Book, 1994) 162.
2. Archbold, Hindenburg 162.
3. Archbold, Hindenburg 178.
4. Archbold, Hindenburg 178.
5. Archbold, Hindenburg 181.
Archbold, Rick. Hindenburg: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Warner/Madison Press Book, 1994.
