On March 4, 1936, the largest airship, the Zeppelin LZ 129 "Hindenburg", was taken out of the airship assembly dock. It was the largest aircraft ever flown above the ground. 245 meters long and with a maximum diameter of 41.2 meters; 200,000 cubic meters of gas in cylinders (completed volume; nominal volume - 190,000 m³). Equipped with four Daimler-Benz diesel engines with a maximum capacity of 1200 hp. from. each capable of lifting up to 100 tons of payload into the air, the zeppelin developed a speed of up to 135 kilometers per hour (150 with a favorable wind). For that time, these were very high rates.
Thursday, May 6, 1937, 18:25. The airship "Hindenburg" (LZ 129 "Hindenburg"), having covered thousands of kilometers over the Atlantic, appeared over the outskirts of New York. The airship is landing at Lakehurst Naval Base in New Jersey. Suddenly, a jolt shakes the airborne colossus, flames of flame soundlessly appear from inside - after 32 seconds, a miracle of engineering is a fireball - a charred aluminum frame falls to the ground.
The tragedy claimed the lives of 35 out of 97 passengers and crew members, and another base employee died on the ground under the rubble of the aircraft.
It was the largest flying ship in the world. The length of the airship reached 245 meters, which is only 24 meters shorter than the legendary Titanic.
In March 1936, named after German Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, the airship first appeared in the skies over Germany during the elections to the Reichstag. Together with another airship - "Graf Zeppelin" - he shuttled from Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Nazi pennants fluttered on the fuselage, the tail was decorated with a swastika, a rain of propaganda leaflets rained down on the crowd, and from the loudspeakers was heard: "Do your duty - choose a Fuhrer!" According to official data, in the elections on March 29, 1936, the NSDAP party received 99 percent of the votes on a single-mandate list.
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A little later, an air liner was made from it, which flew on the route Frankfurt am Main - New York. Soon the number of transatlantic flights reached 30 and flights began to be perceived as routine. The 36 passengers were served by 61 crew members, including several waiters and one flight attendant.
On May 3, 1937, the countdown of the last flight of the Hindenburg began. The airship took off at 20.16 and headed for America. Due to the strong headwind over the Atlantic, the travelers were almost 10 hours late. On average, the journey to New York took 65 to 70 hours. Finally, at 15 o'clock, Manhattan appeared in the distance. According to the memoirs of the airborne officer Boëtius, sitting at the open windows, the guests of the aircraft admired the panorama of the American metropolis, and stared at the New Yorkers who met them, who honked their horns with might and main.
An hour later, deafened by sirens and beeps, the passengers began to gather for the exit, but another unforeseen situation arose. The commander of the Lakehurst military base, Charles Rosendahl, in connection with the impending terrible thunderstorm, did not recommend approaching the mooring mast. In an emergency situation, the captain of the airship Max Pruss decided to patrol in the vicinity, in order to wait out the bad weather. The Hindenburg turned around and swam along the coast towards New York.
The experienced navigator Boetsius took up the elevators. “When Rosendal told us on the radio that the thunderstorm over Lakehurst had subsided, we turned back again and got into the thunderstorm front,” Bootsius wrote. “I clearly felt turbulence in my legs. Heavy intermittent rain did not stop either."
At 7 o'clock in the evening, the airship landed for the second time that day. At 19.21 the zeppelin was still 80 meters above the ground. The airship's nose, directed towards the mooring mast, fell sharply downward. Eduard Boyotsius, who was still in the navigator's room, felt the blow. He could not believe that disaster was about to break out. At the same time, the cabin boy Werner Franz, who was then 14 years old, was in the officers' mess. The teenager was suddenly thrown violently onto the wardrobe. After being thrown from side to side several times, he saw a gigantic wall of fire rushing towards him from the tail section. Zeppelin, initially leveled, again stood on the priest.
The guy was revived by the water pouring onto his poor head from numerous overturned tanks. Franz saw through the hatch that the ground was no more than two and a half meters and jumped out of the burning hell. Downstairs, radio reporter Herbert Morrison watched what was happening, leaving us a description of the disaster through the eyes of an outsider.
Bootsius also appeared at the open window. Some of his comrades shouted: "Eddie, jump!" It was high enough and Edward was biding his time. When the airship's nose was pulled down again, he jumped off. Near him fell three of his colleagues, who miraculously escaped the flame of a giant furnace. Jumping to his feet, Boetsius rushed to the fallen, rapidly melting before our eyes, zeppelin to help the rest of the passengers get out.
It was "an instinctive urge," he would say many years later in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. And then Hitler himself personally awarded him a certificate of honor for heroism in the fire.
Soon after the disaster, a commission of inquiry considered several reasons for the death of the Hindenburg: a thunderstorm, shots from the ground, sabotage on board and a breach in the technology of covering the airship's shell. All of them are accepted as working hypotheses. No more. There is not enough evidence to put an end to this case.
The following version seems to be the most ridiculous. The airship, as you know, repeatedly flew over a certain bird farm, the owner of which threatened to knock out the flying colossus from his grandfather's gun. The owner of the farm assured that the noise of the zeppelin made his chickens run badly, and he would soon go bankrupt. The commission confirmed the facts of threats and the presence of the antediluvian gun on the farmer, but he did not use it. Moreover, experts have proved that it is possible to pierce the skin of the airship with a gun, but not cause it to ignite.
The considerations regarding a possible terrorist attack can be considered just as wild. Such a "duck" was launched by the commandant Charles Rosendal, who headed the group of experts from the American side. Then, in the 1960s, German-American Adolph August Hoehling was one of the first to announce that there was a low-ranking technician on board the Hindenburg, whom his "left-wing radical girlfriend" persuaded to destroy this "symbol of Teutonic aggression." A pensioner who lived in Hesse at the time, when she found out what she was accused of, called this provocation "slander and slander".
Michael McDonald Mooney stated in his book that the disaster was carried out by 24-year-old anti-fascist Erich Spel, who later died of burns in the hospital. Awarded by the Fuhrer, Eduard Boetzius, decades later said in an interview with Der Spiegel that "Hitler's policies made us an object of hatred abroad." A third Zeppelin officer confirmed the existence of a Jewish conspiracy or act of sabotage by the American airline Pan American Airways, who saw the Germans as their competitors. The son of Boetsius developed his speculations about the dark times of Nazism in the book "Phoenix from the Ashes".
Oddly enough, the Nazi elite itself was involved in the termination of the investigation. At first, through the mouth of the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, they tried to present the death of the airship as an "act of retaliation" for the destroyed Spanish Guernica. Destroyed by raids from the Condor Legion. But then they turned exactly 180 degrees. The famous pilot of the First World War Hermann Goering, who was very fond of airplanes, could not stand airships. He called them "flying sausages" and did not recognize any future for them. The death of the "Hindenburg" came in time to put an end to all development projects for this means of aeronautics.
The most serious, but also not completely proven, hypothesis is that the reason is in hydrogen and the coating of the airship shell. In the 1930s, the Americans, who owned it monopolistically, prevented the replacement of hydrogen with safer helium. The lights of St. Elmo or a brush discharge (some witnesses spoke of the visible glow on the surface of the airship) penetrated through the imperfect coating inward. One spark was enough to instantly destroy the miracle of technology of the 20th century.
Be that as it may, one thing remains indisputable: the terrible disaster of the Hindenburg practically put an end to the programs for the development of airships all over the world. The mysterious disaster of the flagship of the German air fleet made a heavy impression on Hitler himself, who gave the order to stop the construction of two more zeppelin at the shipyards of Friedrichshafen. The British also abandoned the secret project of creating airships-bombers. Soviet Osoaviakhim relied on airplanes. The echoes of the terrible explosion at the American base at Lakehurst reached even South Africa, where the government scrapped its own program of building zeppelin. Four seconds was enough to end such a generally short era of airships. A flat circle of wet sand under the mooring mast at a US Air Force base on May 6, 1937, turned into a grave for an entire direction in aeronautics.
