No Weather For An Airship

LXVII

The radio crackled in the control tower at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in the midafternoon of May 6, 1937. It was Captain Max Pruss, advising Lieutenant Commander Charles Rosendahl U.S.N., the airship port's commander, that he expected the Hindenburg to be over Lakehurst at 4:00 P.M. Somehow, Pruss had managed to regain two hours.

For the 1937 season, American Airlines had arranged with DZR to run a commuter plane service between Lakehurst and Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, making New York City more accessible to airship passengers. The commuter flights, of course, never went into operation

Not that it was going to help. Reports indicated that the airship's arrival was going to almost perfectly coincide with a line of violent thunderstorms that were passing over the area. The gray and unsettled weather that had dogged Hindenburg since Amsterdam seemed to want to spoil its arrival in New Amsterdam.

As a matter of fact, it didn't. The weather cleared as the Hindenburg sailed down Long Island Sound and then down the length of Manhattan Island. The bright streets of New York City seemed a good augury for the end of the colorless voyage. New Yorkers --- some of them anyway --- greeted the airship with the usual horn-honking, but not as many as in the past. The swastika was not a welcome symbol in New York's diverse community.

Emilie Imhof, Stewardess, on the last flight. In keeping with Nazi beliefs about the role of women, Imhof's job was essentially that of a Nanny to the children on board. Imhof died in the fire

She came to Lakehurst just a few minutes after four o'clock. The weather over the New Jersey Pine Barrens was very unsettled. Pruss took one look at the field, and waved off the landing. He couldn't spare the time, but he wouldn't risk the ship. Even the rankest landlubber knew that this was no weather for an airship.

The sky was black. Blowing rain marched across the Hindenburg's landing site propelled by 25 knot winds. A line of thunderclouds flickered in the near distance. Majestically, the Hindenburg turned her back on her American homeport, and Pruss took her for a cruise along the Jersey Shore. This early in the season and with the weather so poor the beaches were deserted.

The Hindenburg sails over The Battery on the day she died. Note the blowing rain

She moseyed up and down the length and breadth of New Jersey until contacted by Lakehurst after six P.M. Reports looked good. The front had passed through with some wild weather, gusting as high as 35 knots but things seemed to be clearing. Pruss turned his ship for home.

The Hindenburg arrived over the field at Lakehurst at 7:01 P.M. She was 650 feet off the ground, and descending. The wind was easterly.

The Hindenburg over Asbury Park, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, just two hours before the disaster

It was still raining, though fitfully. The ground was soaked, as was the ground crew. Captain Pruss could see from the gondola that the ground crew was still assembling, so he circled the field at full speed, turning the ship, now at 590 feet, hard-a-port at 7:09 P.M. to describe a circle around the landing area. At 7:11 she valved 15 seconds of hydrogen to reduce altitude still further.

At 7:12, he ordered "Dead Slow" and the ship came to a near stop at just 394 feet. Ordering "Full Astern" he attempted to line up with the mooring mast, and slowly began closing the distance between the ship's and the mast's docking modules. This was a delicate maneuver. A collision could cause severe damage to either or both the ship and the mast.

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The Hindenburg dumping water ballast. Note the Olympic rings

It was at 7:17 that the wind veered violently to the southwest, shoving the ship out of its rendezvous position with the mast. This was a particularly frustrating development. The "Flight Bible" and experience dictated that Pruss needed to abort the maneuver and circle the field in order to make another approach, but the ship was so close --- just seven hundred feet, less than the length of the ship itself --- from the mast that it seemed foolish to go around again. Plus, there was the time factor. The longer the ship circled without coming to the mooring the tighter her schedule became.

Later, Captain Pruss always denied that Ernst Lehmann had pressured him into making decisions based on the Nazi Party's demands, but both men were dedicated adherents of the Fuhrerprinzip, and totalitarianism does not tolerate thinking outside the box. It denies there is an outside to the box.

 

The Hindenburg, somewhere over the Jersey Shore, May 6, 1937