A Flight of Fancy (Part Two)

LVIII

A companionway lowers from the hull of the Hindenburg

A hypothetical passenger about to board the Hindenburg, having run a gauntlet of ticket agents, skycaps, overly helpful stewards, oooh-ing and aaah-ing spectators, ground crew darting about, fellow travelers. and stern Customs men, would be stopped as her foot touched the gangway. A Steward carrying a small box would ask, "Do you have any lighters, matches or items that can strike a flame either in your purse, your carry-on, your pockets, or otherwise on your person, Miss?"

"I don't think so."

"Would you be kind enough to check please?"

Digging into the sediment of pens, lipsticks, and old compacts at the bottom of her bag, she produces an old Ronson lighter that appears from nowhere. The Steward briskly collects it from her, takes down her name and address, hands her a receipt, and thanks her. "Deutsche Zeppelin Reederi will return this to you by mail to your home address at no cost to you. Don't worry. We're very good about it." And they were. DELAG and DZR's history with lost-and-found items and confiscated lighters was nearly spotless. Even matchbooks were returned, for the airline never knew who was and wasn't a dedicated matchbook collector.

"Why --- ?"

"Safety, dear. So that this big balloon doesn't blow itself up," says Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, breezing past with her two constant companions, her typewriter in its case and Karl von Wiegand her journalistic collaborator and significant other. Old zeppelins hands, they know all the ropes. They've even woven some themselves. They know that a carelessly-dropped match can bring this whole Brobdingnagian sky liner down around their heads and they leave their engraved Colibris at home.

At the top of the gangway, our new friend finds herself on "B" Deck, the smaller of the two passenger decks inside the Hindenburg. "B" deck looks like a warren of passages and small rooms. In fact, at the time of the Maiden Voyage in 1936, there are no actual passenger cabins on "B" Deck. It is more of a service deck.

 

A cutaway view of "B" Deck in 1936, prior to some mid-season alterations

On "B" Deck can be found the galley, the pantries, the cold room and the ship's wine cellar, well-stocked with German and French vintages.

Here too, one is more apt to run into crewmen as their mess / wardroom is on "B" Deck, adjacent to the Officers' mess / wardroom. Stewards are also a common sight. Heinrich Kubisch, the Chief Steward and DZR's Head of Passenger Services has his cabin and office space here.

On a more prosaic level, the toilets, urinals and washrooms are here too, a long row of small cubicles.

Hindenburg's relatively roomy galley

The Hindenburg does have a true innovation on "B" Deck, one that Graf Zeppelin passengers have been clamoring for since, it seems, time immemorial, a shower. The shower works off a small (as it turns out, a too-small) water holding tank beneath the floor of the shower stall. To use the shower, our now- undressed lady friend has to enter the shower stall and pressurize the system by pumping up a small priming handle. When the priming handle locks into place, she then reaches over and opens a small water cock on the shower head pipe. According to the designers, she's supposed to be rewarded with a steady (if brief) stream of warm water from the shower head. But the shower doesn't work as advertised. After priming the system and opening the cock, the water bursts out of the shower head in a violent rush, leaving our unprepared imaginary friend in the stall stunned, drenched, and not appreciably more hygienic than when she stepped in.

Experimenting with the shower doesn't solve the problem. If the system is not fully pressurized the water just dribbles out of the shower head. The water holding tank doesn't even have enough capacity to recharge the system for a second gush. DZR, a bit embarrassed, promises everybody that they'll redesign the system, but that involves a total refit and can't be done until the off-season. Whether it worked better after the refit in 1937 is unknown.

Still, it's a shower, the first and only one to appear on a commercial airliner ever, and with good humor the passengers name it the "Shpritz." Shpritz stories soon become a part of Hindenburg's on-board lore.

Foodstuffs being loaded aboard ship via a hull hatch

Hindenburg also has a Smoking Room. Strictly speaking, it's not an "innovation" --- The U.S.S. Akron and U.S.S. Macon, helium ships, both had crew smoking rooms, and the British R-101, a hydrogen ship, had an asbestos-lined room that could seat 24 smokers --- but it is innovative. Hindenburg's Smoking Room and liquor bar are both contained within an airlock that is pressurized --- or, more accurately, depressurized --- to keep the atmospheric pressure in the two rooms just slightly below that in the rest of the ship (air pressure varies depending on weather and altitude, and the system responded automatically). Ash, smoke, and embers cannot escape the airlock. To make doubly certain, the ship's ashtrays are self-sealing devices that create a vacuum when they shut, starving any errant sparks of oxygen.

The Smoking Room, adjacent to the bar, where one could relax with a cigar and a cognac or a cigarette and a "Maybach 12." Pauline Charteris invented the "Hindenburg" cocktail at the bar. The artwork on the walls displays each of DELAG / DZR's ships. Both the Smoking Room and the Bar were inside the airlock

Both the bar and the smoking room are fitted with dense wood flooring, less likely to burn then carpeting, and the tables and chairs are all scorch-resistant. In the dead center of the smoking room, the ship's only lighter, a flameless electrical device, stands on a special gimballed platform. If the device tips too far from the vertical, a kill switch makes sure it shuts off instantly. Smokers can lift it off the platform (it is attached by a coiled cord like a telephone's) light their cigars or cigarettes, and then return to their seats. Only pipesmokers struggle to negotiate with the lighter, contorting themselves so that they can light their pipes without having the device switch off in the midst of a draw. They have the other smokers' sympathies.

The Crew Mess and Wardroom. Note the artwork of Hitler and von Hindenburg on the walls. Graf von Zeppelin appears to be absent

 

The Officers' Mess and Wardroom. Note the absence of pictures of Hitler and von Hindenburg on the walls. Otherwise, it is very much like the Crew's Mess