A Year: Day to Day Men: 6th of May
The Full Stretch
On May 6, 1937, the German airship Hindenburg caught fire while attempting to dock.
The Hindenburg, Luftschiff Zeppelin #129, had a duralumin structure, incorporating fifteen Ferris wheel-like main ring bulkheads along its length, with sixteen cotton gas bags fitted between them. The airship’s outer skin was of cotton doped with a mixture of reflective materials intended to protect the bags from light damage and overheating from the sun. There were small passenger quarters in the middle flanked by large public rooms Long slanted windows ran the length of both decks.
Helium was initially selected for the lifting gas because it was the safest being not flammable. Despite a U.S. ban on the export of helium under the Helium Control Act of 1927, the Germans designed the airship to use the far safer gas in the belief that they could convince the US government to license its export. When the designers learned that the National Munitions Control Board would refuse to lift the export ban, they were forced to re-engineer Hindenburg to use hydrogen for lift. No alternative lighter than air gases could provide sufficient lift.
On the fateful May 1937 trip, the Hindenburg took off on time, it ran into delays crossing the Atlantic due to headwinds and approaching storm fronts. The crew radioed Lakehurst announcing they would delay their arrival time by 10 to 12 hours, from 6 a.m. on May 6 to late afternoon. This allowed the airship to float over the Boston and New York City skies during daylight hours, which was not part of the original schedule.
The airship arrived at Lakehurst at about 4:15 p.m., only to begin circling again because of bad weather. By 6:15 p.m., the storm had subsided and Lakehurst’s commanding officer told the ship’s captain to land as soon as possible to beat another approaching storm. Shortly after 7 p.m., the Hindenburg neared the mooring mast, but the tail felt heavy and the winds prevented the ship from being level. In response, the captain released hydrogen from cells 11 to 16 for 30 seconds in hopes of reducing the buoyancy of the bow and keeping the ship in level trim.
At the same time, the winds shifted, leaving the airship little room to maneuver. So the crew executed a sharp turn to align with the mooring mast. In the end, it was a lot of adjusting, leveling and quick decision-making that all could been factors what ended up happening. At 7:21 p.m, with the airship 180 feet in the air, the forward landing ropes were dropped. Then the airship caught on fire; at 7:25 pm, little was left but rubble.
Hindenburg left Frankfurt with ninety seven people onboard; 62 survived the crash at Lakehurst, although many suffered serious injuries. Thirteen of the thirty-six passengers, and twenty-two of the sixty-one member crew, died as a result of the crash, along with one member of the civilian landing party.