Over Lakehurst

LXVIII

It was starting to rain more heavily again as at 7:17 P.M. on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg moved into position near the mooring mast at Lakehurst N.A.S.

At 7:19 P.M on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg dropped water ballast three successive times as she tried to correct her trim. Her tail-heaviness is just about noticeable in this picture

The ship was planning on accomplishing a "flying" moor or a "high" moor, where it would be tied to the mast while in flight and then winched down to the ground. It was a technique the Americans had used regularly with the Shenandoah, the Los Angeles, the Akron and the Macon, and, for that matter, with the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg itself several times. It was not the Germans' usual, or preferred, landing technique.

A sudden gust of wind pushed the big dirigible out of its proper docking alignment.

According to "the book" the Captain should have moved off, circled the field, and lined up again, but such a maneuver would take about twenty minutes, a precious fragment of time in the Hindenburg's tight flying schedule.

And there was no guarantee that another gust of wind wouldn't gum up the works again.

The ship still had to land its passengers, refuel, reprovision, take on new passengers, lift off, fly to Germany, repeat the process, and then repeat it again to reach London, all by May 11th so that it could undertake its own questionable participation in the Coronation of the new British monarch.

Of course, Pruss and Lehmann and the other three captains aboard seemed to overlook one factor, that if the Hindenburg left Lakehurst in a timely fashion --- it didn't have to be the helter-skelter one Pruss was set on --- it would pick up the headwinds it had battled coming westward. Only now they would be tailwinds speeding the ship toward Europe. There was every chance the Hindenburg could regain the twelve hours it had lost.

But it never seemed to occur to anyone.

Captain Pruss decided to ignore the book. He ordered hard-a-starboard, and the ship veered --- very hard, in what has been described as a tight "S" --- over toward the waiting mooring mast. It was 7:18.

This wasn't a misdemeanor, a felony, or even an invitation to disaster. After all, there was nothing in the book about flying blind through the Stanovoy Mountains, tipping a ship on its tail and then its nose to overfly electrical wires that could have caused a mass-destruction event, or traveling to the North Pole, and Dr. Eckener had done all of that in the Graf Zeppelin.

But Pruss wasn't Eckener and the Hindenburg was not the Graf Zeppelin.

A few moments later, the ship's commutator showed her down at the stern. Pruss ordered hydrogen valved from the bow, and then three ballast dumps totaling nearly 3,000 pounds of water, over the next minute in order to bring the ship level. When nothing seemed to work, he ordered a half-dozen men into the nose. Finally, at about 7:20, she evened out.

7:20 P.M.: A seaman giving directions to Captain Pruss as the Hindenburg nears the mooring mast. Note the assembled ground crew

What had happened should have alerted the bridge to a very serious problem. Somewhere aft the ship was losing buoyancy. And it was losing buoyancy because it was losing hydrogen. But, oddly, no one on the bridge recognized the problem.

Pruss went on trying to land his ship. If anything could have been done to save her, the opportunity was leaking away by the moment along with the ship's lifting gas.

It was at this point that people on the ground noticed an odd "flutter" at the very top of the ship's envelope just ahead of her upper vertical stabilizer. A few wondered what it was. Fewer realized that they were watching lighter-than-air gas escaping through the Hindenburg's fabric skin.

At 7:21, Pruss ordered the hemp mooring lines dropped from the nose and the stern. The ropes snaked down through the rain and landed with splatting noises as they hit the drenched earth. After a few moments, the ground crews picked them up and began working with them. They were pulling the ship toward the mast. They made her fast and began to winch her down toward the ground.

From the gondola, Captain Pruss waved to Commander Rosendahl who had come outside to watch the landing. Waiting family members called up to familiar faces at the Promenade windows. The ship was coming closer to the ground.

 

7:25 P.M.: The last known photograph of the intact Hindenburg. Note the mooring line trailing from the bow

Four minutes later, they all heard a dull pop, "like the burner of a gas stove being switched on."

 

An eyeblink later . . .