Photo originally taken by Murray Becker, AP
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
On 6 May 1937, the German airship Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed while docking at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 97 passengers and crew, 35 died, and one ground worker was killed.
The Hindenburg was called the Silver Giant being 804 feet long and just 80 feet shorter than Titanic. At the time, she was the largest aircraft ever built. For people standing there to see the arrival of this airship, it was a marvel of aviation. Ballon technology had been around since the 18th century, but it was Ferdinand, Graf von Zeppelin who launched the first airship. The first models were only a modest success, but they were used by the Germans in World War I. These airships were used for aerial bombings of both London and Paris. They arrived with little notice sending people into panic though their actual bombing didn’t result in a lot of damage. However shooting them down proved difficult; it took two years for the British to come up with the right ammunition to bring a Zeppelin down.
After the war German engineers turned to making long range passenger airships that would cross the Atlantic. The first transatlantic was in 1919 and a decade later it looked like the dawn of airship travel had begun. The Graf Zeppelin was launched in 1928. The massive airship could carry passengers in accommodations that rivaled those on ocean liners. Commercial airship service between Germany and South America soon began. The Hindenburg, launched in 1936, made roundtrips to the United States and Brazil. It had 25 passenger cabins for two people each, a bar, restaurant, and smoking lounge (pressurized to keep hydrogen gas from getting in). Although originally designed for helium (which was banned by the US for export to Germany), it used hydrogen for its lift and buoyancy. It had 4 Daimler Benz 16-cylinder engines that gave it a maximum speed 80 mph (131 km). A crew of 40 were aboard the airship as well.
The German airships were undeniably spectacular in design and use It took half the time if you went by an ocean liner and its elegance was remarkable with luxurious interiors that to this day has yet to be matched by modern jetliners. Imagine enjoying meals flying above the ocean in an elegant dining room, sleeping in comfortable cabins, and having the ability to gaze out at the sea able to sometimes see dolphins, whales, and of course ships. The future looked good for airships but airplanes such as the Pan Am Clipper were also competition as well.
On 6 May 1937 the Hindenburg was scheduled to dock at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. It flew over Manhattan giving the passengers a spectacular view of the city. On the way to Lakehurst, it was learned that winds of up to 25 knots were expected. Since the airship was lighter-than-air, winds make landings tricky. They headed southward for a while to let the winds diminish. After 6 pm, the airship was notified the storm had passed and was safe for them to approach and dock. The Hindenburg had traveled quite a distance away and turned back. Docking was not to occur until around 7 pm. Hindenburg finally arrived around 7:10 pm and began lining itself up for the mooring mast. It had to drop ballast water and some onlookers who were close got splattered. By 7:21 pm, passengers could be seen looking out the windows at the onlookers. Everything looked good. The flight officers in the cabin saw nothing out the ordinary. Crew were in the tail ready to drop the mooring line and the rear landing wheel.
At 7:25 pm witnesses saw a mushroom sized flame rise from the top of the tail section in front of the tail fin. The crewmen in the tail hear a detonation that was later described as like a burner on a gas stove turned on. The fire spread very quickly in seconds with the md-section engulfed in flames before the tail hit the ground. In 34 seconds, the airship had been totally consumed by flames. Passengers and crew had little time to react. Some jumped but the Hindenburg was still high up and many did not survive the fall. Others were trapped by furniture and passengers who had died. Some managed to walk out when the ship hit the ground or rescued from the burning remains. Survivors were taken to an infirmary while the bodies were removed to a makeshift morgue that normally served as the press room.
It was one for the first well-documented disasters in modern history. All the publicity about the landing of the transatlantic Zeppelin had attracted numerous journalists to watch its arrival. News crews had already been set up to photograph and record the landing. They recorded a disaster instead. While photographs of the event along with news reports will be immediately sent out, it would be the radio report done by WLS (Chicago) reporter Herb Morrison played the next day the most would remember.. Since live audio broadcasts were rare, he recorded what he saw about the landing. And listening to it was riveting. It was recorded at a higher speed than normal, so it was not his normal voice people were hearing. But the commentary as to what he witnessed would go down in journalist history. Later the newsreel footage and his commentary were added, but that was long after the disaster and his reporting was done solely by radio. His full broadcast included interviews with survivors and other witnesses. The full broadcast can be listened here.
An extensive investigation was undertaken to determine what had caused the explosion. Neither the American nor German inquiries found evidence of sabotage. The American report concluded:
The cause of the accident was the ignition of a mixture of free hydrogen and air. Based upon the evidence, a leak at or in the vicinity of cell 4 and 5 caused a combustible mixture of hydrogen and air to form in the upper stern part of the ship in considerable quantity; the first appearance of an open flame was on the top of the ship and a relatively short distance forward of the upper vertical fin. The theory that a brush discharge ignited such mixture appears most probable.
Many theories, in addition to sabotage, have been advanced over the years. They include Lightning, Static Spark, Engine Failure, Incendiary Paint, Hydrogen Leak, and Fuel Leak. MythBusters studied the Incendiary Paint hypothesis and concluded it was not probable. Today many who look at the evidence tend to believe the original conclusion as the most likely and that perhaps a small tear had occurred that allowed hydrogen to leak out.
Aftermath
Zeppelins would continue to fly but their glamour had begun to fade as airplanes started becoming a more acceptable way to fly. The Pan Am Clipper service which began in 1935 had become very successful. Interestingly it had been originally designed for crossing the Atlantic, but the British had banned Pan Am as they wanted to develop their own long range airplane service. Pan Am showed it could fly long range planes with passengers kept in comfort. The disaster and for other reasons (including World War II) ended the era of airships forever.
Sources
—. “The Hindenburg, Before and After Disaster.” Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/story/the-hindenburg-before-and-after-disaster.
HISTORY.com Editors, “The Hindenburg Disaster | May 6, 1937 | HISTORY,” HISTORY, last modified April 30, 2025, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/may-6/the-hindenburg-disaster.
“The Hindenburg Disaster | Airships.net.” Airships.Net. Last modified June 28, 2019. https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/.
