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00:01Approximately 7 o'clock p.m., May 6, 1937.
00:06The massive Nazi Zeppelin Hindenburg is completing its cross-Atlantic flight from Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey.
00:13Due to the weather, the airship is 10 hours late.
00:17The crew is anxious to get the behemoth moored and trade their departing passengers for new ones hoping to make the return trip.
00:25A trip that will never happen.
00:28This is the German airship's 10th trip to the United States.
00:32It is four years prior to the U.S. entry into World War II.
00:37And while relations with Hitler's Nazi regime are strained, the two nations are at peace.
00:44At Lakehurst, WLS Chicago reporter Herb Morrison is recording a radio broadcast of the Hindenburg's arrival.
00:52His eyewitness account will soon become one of the most famous broadcasts in radio history.
00:59Conditions were still not ideal.
01:01So they were in what we might now call a holding pattern waiting for the weather to clear.
01:07Because the Hindenburg was so late, many of the reporters and journalists left the Naval Air Station.
01:12But since Herb Morrison stayed, he saw as the airship circled around Lakehurst.
01:16And he was getting the updates as they were happening, like you can see here.
01:21Now we've been told that the airship is going to make an attempted landing in the rain.
01:26And if that is the case, we're going to have a mind to find a description of it for you.
01:29Because the men will have the difficulty in keeping footing in the sands and especially since it's wet.
01:36Now the structure is light and yet so strong in the Hindenburg.
01:416.12 p.m. Charles Rosendahl, U.S. Commander of Naval Air Station Lakehurst, radios Max Pruss, the captain of the Hindenburg.
01:52The wind and the rain have died down. The message is clear. Land as soon as possible.
01:58Finally he got the message, come in as fast as you can. The weather has cleared enough that landing is appropriate.
02:08Pruss turns the ship towards Lakehurst for its final approach.
02:12As the ship came in for landing on May 6th, they were circling the field.
02:17They realized that they had a tail heaviness situation and they tried to deal with that.
02:21And they dealt with that both by dropping ballast from the ballast board and also by valving hydrogen from the gas board.
02:29The crew could correct the heaviness that is tail heavy or tail light or whatever by simply dropping ballast water.
02:41And so they did this on this approach to Lakehurst because the tail was seemingly heavy.
02:49So the tail of the ship pointed down, which was visible from the ground. So there had to be a gas leak.
02:56When that wasn't enough, they sent six men forward to try to keep the ship in trim.
03:01As the ship was making its approach to the mast, they also had a change of wind.
03:06And so at the very last minute, instead of continuing on their path, they realized that the wind had shifted.
03:12So they had to make an S-turn, a reasonably sharp S-turn, to realign the ship so that it would land at the mast into the wind.
03:20Puss knows valving hydrogen near thunderstorms goes against long-established safety procedures for hydrogen airships.
03:27But with the turnaround window closing and pressure mounting, he makes a bold decision.
03:32World-renowned Hindenburg expert Dan Grossman walks through the hydrogen valving process
03:38using an exact replica of Hindenburg's control car created for the 1975 film Hindenburg, starring George C. Scott.
03:47If you wanted to make the ship heavier, you went over here. This is the gas board.
03:53This controlled the hydrogen gas that filled these 16 gas cells.
03:58And there were individual toggles for each cell.
04:01So an officer could release hydrogen from a particular cell.
04:05Or you could do something that they did in that last approach in MASICS, and you could valve at the wheel.
04:10And this is the wheel.
04:12And when you turn this wheel, gas cells from the front to the back
04:16release gas evenly, and the entire ship becomes heavier and descends in level trim.
04:23We can only speculate what happened here in those last moments.
04:27But given the high level of experience of all of the officers, all the men who are on this bridge,
04:32who'd served for Zeppelins for years, they had to have suspected that something wasn't right.
04:38Was there a discussion? What should we do? Or did they just continue on on their path?
04:45Dr. Ackner instructed crew members, follow this rule. Do not blow off any hydrogen in a thunderstorm.
04:54This ran counter to every precept that Ackner had tried to drill into his commanders from the beginning.
05:03Now they're coming in to make a landing of the Zeppelin. I'm going to step out here and cover it from the outside.
05:10So as I move out, we'll just stand by a second.
05:16Well, here it comes, ladies and gentlemen. We're out now, outside of the hangar.
05:20And what a great sight it is. A thrilling one. It's a marvelous sight.
05:24Coming down out of the sky, pointed directly towards us and toward the mooring mass.
05:28Spectators and journalists gather near the landing area.
05:31We were waiting to see my dad and excited because it was a big, big deal.
05:38The mighty diesel motors just roared, the propellers sliding into the air and throwing it back into a gale-like whirlpool.
05:44No wonder this great floating palace can travel through the air at such a speed with these powerful motors behind it.
05:49For the moment we have waited for so long. The ship is riding majestically toward us like some great feathers.
05:56Riding the sword was mighty proud of the places playing in the world's aviation.
06:01The ship is no doubt busting with activities we can see.
06:04Orders are shouted to the crew. The passengers are probably lining the windows looking down at the field ahead of them,
06:08getting their glimpse of the mooring mass.
06:10And these giant flagships standing here, the American Airlines flagships waiting to rise into all points in the United States when they get the ship moored.
06:17There are a number of important persons that's on board.
06:20And no doubt the new commander, Captain Max Proust, is thrilled too for this great moment,
06:25the first time he's commanded the Hindenburg.
06:27On previous flight, he acted as a chief officer under Captain Lehman.
06:30It's starting to rain again. The rain had slacked up a little bit.
06:36At 7.21 PM, the Hindenburg floats at 90 meters above the ground.
06:41The mooring lines are dropped from the bow.
06:44For the next few minutes, all is quiet.
06:48All of a sudden there was an explosion.
06:51Helmut Lau, a helmsman stationed in the lower fin, hears a muffled detonation as a strong jolt runs through the ship.
06:59Crew and passengers are anxious to land.
07:02Joseph Spa and his dog, Ula, caught a last minute ride on the Hindenburg to make his dates performing as a professional acrobat at Radio City Music Hall.
07:12Spa was filming on the observation deck for a good portion of the journey.
07:16As they arrived at Lakehurst Airfield, he stuck his 16mm camera out the window.
07:21Spa would be filming at the exact moment the ignition occurred.
07:25He was leaning out the gondola window filming when the Hindenburg exploded.
07:32Now, in this rarely seen footage, witness what passengers saw from inside the Hindenburg the moment the massive airship erupted in flames.
07:40The footage is degraded, but ground crew can be seen assembling on the airfield below moments before the disaster.
07:47And here, for just a few frames, the moment the fire erupted is captured on film.
07:53Burning hydrogen illuminates Hangar 1 at Lakehurst.
07:56Unfortunately, the camera wasn't ready to capture the wide change of exposure about to take place.
08:02They back …
08:13Get us! Get us!
08:14It's mighty!
08:15Get us!
08:17It's mighty!
08:19Get out of the way, please.
08:20It's burning, bursting into flames!
08:22And it's falling on the morning glass!
08:23And all the folks, this is terrible!
08:25This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world!
08:27You can hear what sounds like the explosion.
08:29the explosion. You hear a pop, and then he says it bursts into flames. Okay, I heard it about right
08:38here. Proust and his men had just enough time to see the reflection of the fire on the large
08:50Zeppelin hangar down on the ground before the ship began to tilt, and they all hung on for dear life.
08:59Fire erupted near the tail of the airship, and from that moment, the airship had less than a minute
09:04left to live. Fire raced through the hydrogen cells. It raced along the axial corridor, which was an
09:13open area throughout the very center of the ship, and we can see that fire emerging from the nose of
09:19the ship like a blowtorch. The ship began to lose its structural integrity. The tail began to collapse
09:26and crunch in two. The ship very dramatically tipped up vertically, and this all happened in a matter of
09:3620 or 30 seconds. Whether you lived or died, it was really a question of where you happened to be
09:42when this fire began. If you were by a window, you had a pretty good chance. If you were deep inside
09:49the ship, you had virtually no chance at all. As the ship begins to descend, Ernst Lehmann and Max
09:56Pruss leap from the control car, just as all around them, Hindenburg's white hot frame crashes to the
10:02ground.
10:03What's the best time to jump? Are we too high? Are we going to get higher? If we get lower, will I not have
10:10enough time left?
10:11Lehmann manages to pry himself free, but not before sustaining severe burns.
10:18Pruss also emerges from the wreckage, burned, but alive.
10:22He was burned. He ran away from the ship, then turned around to run back and rescue one of his crewmen.
10:31And then he kept running back to rescue other people. And the result of it being that eventually I think they had to stop him.
10:38He was so badly burnt that they actually thought he might die that night.
10:42On the ground, spectators watch in shock. Navy servicemen run towards the wreckage looking for survivors.
10:49For those still inside the ship, survival is a matter of chance.
10:53The youngest crewman, the cabin boy named Werner Franz, thought he would be trapped with flames around him where he was.
11:01And then almost miraculously, a water tank above his head burst and drenched him in water and cleared a path for him to escape.
11:08So there are so many different stories of people escaping different ways.
11:12And of course, there are tragic stories about people who didn't escape.
11:16There was a family, the Danner family. The father was in his cabin on B-deck and the daughter who was by a window with her mother and her sibling who survived.
11:31And the eldest daughter decided to go back in to see if she could find her father, but was so horribly burned that she died shortly after in the hospital.
11:41Passengers who did not survive include five Americans, five Germans, two Mexicans, and one Swede.
11:48Ages range from 14 to 77 years old.
11:52Among the survivors is acrobat Joseph Spa, along with several rolls of film from his personal camera.
11:59My dad, he just threw the camera down on the ground and the flames were coming up.
12:05It started to burn that gondola and he hung out the window.
12:09And during his act, he did a thing that was on the top of his lamppost.
12:14He hung by one arm.
12:17And that saved his life, believe it or not, because he had a tricep look like a broken piece of rope.
12:24It was so strong from doing that one trick.
12:28Viewing footage of the crash, it's difficult to understand how anyone could have survived the fire and the heat.
12:35Oh, it's just like 20, oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, it is.
12:41It's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen.
12:43The smoke and the flames now, and the flame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mass.
12:49Oh, the humanity and all the fire that's just screaming around it.
12:53In a matter of mere seconds, the damage is done.
12:57It was 34 seconds, burning from the tail to the bow, totally gone in 34 seconds, with 97 people on board.
13:11People must have stood with their mouth hanging open, just hard to believe what they were seeing.
13:18Everybody remembers the minute and a half when Morrison yells, oh, the humanity.
13:22But this recording was actually close to 40 minutes long.
13:26He was there before, during, and after the crash.
13:28And his eyewitness account of that day has gone down in history as one of the most famous broadcasts in radio journalism.
13:34And here is another man coming in, he's burned considerably, Mr. Otto Clemens.
13:39Mr. Otto Clemens is safe, although he's burned quite badly.
13:43Now, Clemens isn't burned at all, thank you, thank you.
13:47He's sitting right here, that's composed, and is that his mother with him?
13:51No, no, that's his mother.
13:52A friend of his?
13:53You tell the folks, he was on his way to the cabin, when the flash came, and he jumped out.
13:59He jumped out, he jumped out.
14:01Survivors are rushed to the air station's infirmary and local hospitals.
14:06The last passenger dies on May 15th.
14:09The dead add up to 36 in total, 13 passengers, 22 crewmen, and one man on the ground.
14:17Captain of the Hindenburg Max Pruss and his Nazi-appointed supervisor Ernst Lehmann
14:22lay badly burned at Kimball Hospital in Lakewood, New Jersey.
14:26With slim chances of survival, Pruss receives his last rites from a priest.
14:32Lehmann's condition, however, deteriorates quickly.
14:35So we're about an hour after the disaster here.
14:39The sail went up in the air, and as I told you on previous occasions, that it held up
14:44there long enough for them to jump from the cabin.
14:46And all I could understand him to say was that he jumped.
14:49And evidently was thrown to at the same time because the ship was vibrating.
14:53There were three distinct explosions.
14:55If I remember correctly, I'll have to check back in the earlier part of this podcast and
14:58see if that was not right.
14:59I don't remember hearing three explosions, so let's go back and see if we can hear them.
15:05It burst into flame.
15:07It burst into flame and it's falling.
15:09Okay, so I'm definitely hearing an explosion right here, and then I hear several other popping
15:14sounds, but it's hard to tell if those are just artifacts in the recording or actual explosions.
15:20Morrison recorded this with his sound engineer, Charlie Nelson, on a PrestoDirect disc.
15:25Now, some reports say that when the explosion occurred, the cutting head of the recorder
15:29was moved out of place, and Nelson had to quickly correct it.
15:33That could be the cause of the sound of the explosion, but it's difficult to say.
15:42So we're at the Charles Rosendahl collection at the University of Texas in Dallas.
15:48Rosendahl left his entire collection of papers to the archive here, I think in 1977.
15:54Certainly late 70s, and it's just a wonderful collection of his complete papers, and he was
15:59really the key figure in the American lighter-than-air community.
16:03So this is an absolute treasure trove for anything having to do with airships in the United States
16:08Navy.
16:08So these are great photos.
16:10This photo shows Hindenburg at Lakehurst successfully moored to a low mooring mast in one of the
16:17mooring circles, and this is how that last flight was supposed to end, with the ship safely
16:23moored to a mast at the circle in front of Hangar 1.
16:26Of course, it didn't actually end that way that day.
16:31Some theories claim that the disaster was caused by incendiary paint used on the ship's
16:36outer covering.
16:36And this is a great series of photographs.
16:42This one in particular is interesting because you can see the flame that has pretty much
16:47completely consumed the tail, but almost simultaneously there's also flame coming out of the middle
16:52of the ship, which means that this hydrogen fire burned and spread so rapidly.
16:59And you can really tell that this nonsensical idea that people have about the fabric being
17:08very, very flammable, it doesn't make any sense.
17:11This photograph sort of tells that story because in between these two areas of flame, the fabric
17:16isn't burning at all.
17:17So clearly what has moved this flame so quickly is the burning of the hydrogen that's inside
17:22the ship.
17:22This is folder 13 in box 18 here at the UT Dallas Charles Rosendahl archives.
17:31And these are supposed to be photographs of the Hindenburg disaster.
17:35And yeah, look at these.
17:37These are photos showing exactly what the people at Lakehurst saw on May 6, 1937.
17:45And you can see just how dramatic the destruction of this airship was.
17:53And you see actually spectators, people, you can see that they're on the other side of the
17:57fence, actually.
17:58So these are just members of the public.
18:00And everyone that we see here looked at this and knew that there were human beings in there.
18:06It's just hard to imagine what thoughts went through their heads.
18:10On May 6, 1937, Hugo Echner, the face of commercial airship travel, is in Austria promoting airships
18:18as the future of aviation.
18:20That night, he receives an urgent phone call.
18:23When news of the Hindenburg crash reaches Hugo Echner, in the middle of the night, he gets
18:28this phone call from a journalist who says, you know, that Hindenburg has exploded, it's
18:33destroyed.
18:33And Echner is absolutely forlorn.
18:37And it seems that in half a sleep, when the journalist says, do you think it's sabotage?
18:42Echner says, oh, it should be.
18:44And therein starts one of the rumors.
18:48Within hours of the crash, the German air ministry commissions its own team of experts
18:54to represent German interests at the Lakehurst crash investigation.
18:57Hugo Echner is made part of this commission.
19:02But before sailing to New York, he is summonsed to Berlin to meet with Reich Minister for Air
19:07Hermann Goering.
19:09Dr. Echner was under orders from the air ministry in Berlin not to pursue sabotage as a possibility.
19:17It would have been incredibly embarrassing politically, both for the Germans and for the United States,
19:23to have had a German airship destroyed by sabotage on an American military base.
19:32Someone from the air ministry, who was there likely to offer technical advice, but also
19:39likely, as a representative of Hermann Goering and the Nazi regime's air ministry, to keep
19:44an eye on what people said and how it made Germany look.
19:48Renowned airship historian Dan Grossman revisits Hugo Echner's first stop in the U.S.
19:57This is the house where Charles Rosendahl lived when he was the base commander at Lakehurst in
20:021937 when Hindenburg crashed.
20:04And Hugo Echner walked in that door and talked to his old friend, old colleague, old flying
20:11mate, Charles Rosendahl.
20:13These two men, who each knew more about flying airships and about Hindenburg in particular
20:18than anyone else in the world, must have talked to each other and said, what could have happened?
20:24And at some point during that conversation, Echner would have had to say, I need to tell
20:29you what Berlin wants us to say.
20:32The investigation board includes men loyal to the National Socialists who were assigned
20:37to make sure Echner follows the party line.
20:41The presence of the German ambassador and a military attache is meant to be intimidating
20:46for Hindenburg's crew and keep them from saying anything deemed out of line.
20:54Two days after the crash, the twisted and scorched metal wreckage has finally cooled.
21:00Footage of the fiery destruction of the once-mighty Hindenburg circulates the globe.
21:05As the Commerce Department and the German Commission officially investigate the disaster
21:09at Lakehurst, a new government agency known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation begins
21:15chasing down its own leads.
21:18Young FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is eager to prove himself in the public spotlight.
21:23It's very much a potential PR stunt for him.
21:26And they wound up coming up with a fairly lengthy investigation file.
21:30Was the Nazi's premier airship the target of a deliberate attack?
21:38In Germany, Hitler and his warmongering Nazi regime prepare for further expansion of German territory.
21:45A growing Nazi war machine intimidates Eastern Europe.
21:50In one year, they will invade and annex Austria.
21:54The following year, they will take Poland.
21:58The investigation of the FBI alludes to, of course, the notions of conspiracy.
22:04Notably, for example, workers may be colluding to protest against Nazi Germany.
22:08Some of the early FBI reports made mention of possibly someone having shot at the Hindenburg.
22:15Meanwhile, Captain Ernst Lehman, head of the airline that flew Hindenburg, dies of severe
22:21burn injuries.
22:24Before he died, he expressed his belief that it had to have been sabotage.
22:29He used a German word which translates as hell machine, often called infernal machine.
22:36Max Pruss, the captain of the Hindenburg, is in the hospital, badly burned, but stable.
22:42My great-grandfather was able to escape the burning Hindenburg.
22:45He jumped out just as it was coming down, but he came away with terrible burns that marked
22:50him for the rest of his life.
22:52Although he was too badly injured to testify during the investigation, Max Pruss also
22:58believed that the crash had been no accident.
23:02In a 1960 interview with the Columbia University's Center for Oral History, he once again raises
23:08the specter of sabotage.
23:10So you don't think it was lightning that did it?
23:15What, do you think it was sabotage?
23:18I mean, it's interesting to know what you think.
23:26I think it was sabotage.
23:30To his dying day, my great-grandfather believed that the Hindenburg was sabotaged and that it
23:35was a bomb that essentially destroyed the ship.
23:38I spent a lot of time considering why Max was so adamant about the sabotage theory.
23:46And I think if you consider that he spent more or less 20 plus years of his life dedicated
23:53to this industry and to this dream of the airship, that seeing it crash and burn like that and
24:02coming to an end and essentially the Hindenburg disaster was the end of the airship industry,
24:09I think that's something very difficult to wrap your head around.
24:12I think he truly believed that it might have not been his wrongdoing or at least he was
24:21not willing to look at it from that perspective because that would have put the entire blame
24:25of this disaster on him.
24:28Amid a media frenzy and public outcry for answers, the US Navy and the FBI begin probing.
24:35Shortly after the crash, agents from the FBI began to show up at Lakehurst and conduct
24:41investigations.
24:42This was early in the days of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and he was really trying to expand and grow
24:48this relatively young criminal investigation agency.
24:53FBI agents scour Lakehurst and track suspicious characters.
24:58Their main focus, sabotage.
25:00Days after the Hindenburg's fiery crash, Hoover's FBI investigates a series of articles published
25:08by communist newspaper, The Daily Worker.
25:11These articles had warned of an imminent attack on a German airship.
25:16The FBI was well aware of the fact that there were publications such as The Daily Worker that
25:22were generating anti-Nazi sentiment among German Americans here in the States.
25:27They wanted to investigate whether some of these people maybe tried to sabotage the Hindenburg.
25:32Both Rosendahl and Pruss go to their deathbeds, never letting go of the belief that the Hindenburg
25:37was sabotaged.
25:39Their main suspect, the man with the dog, acrobat Joseph Spa.
25:44One of the things that the FBI looked into was the suggestion that Joseph Spa, who was on board
25:51the ship, that he might have had access to the crew areas of the ship and that he might somehow
25:59have planted a bomb.
26:00There was never any evidence to suggest that that was the case.
26:04But there are plenty of pages in the FBI file in which they talk about this as something that
26:10they looked into.
26:11One of the reasons people were suspicious of Joseph Spa was because he was an acrobat and
26:16it would have been easy for him to climb and move around the internal structure of Hindenburg.
26:22My dad was a suspect for years because, first of all, he was a survivor.
26:27Second of all, he was up in amongst the bags where the explosion happened.
26:33The kennel was up there and he got to walk the dog every day.
26:38The FBI actually investigated Joseph Spa, interviewed his neighbors and did a full write-up on him,
26:46came to the conclusion he was a family man.
26:49My dad never let it bother him.
26:53He was sensible enough to realize that he'd be a suspect because of all the circumstantial
27:00evidence against him.
27:02The FBI saw absolutely no reason to suspect that Joseph Spa had sabotaged the Hindenburg.
27:08Before the FBI can explore any further, the investigation is interrupted and taken over by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
27:15The FBI was not the official investigating body. The FBI did not do an official Hindenburg investigation report.
27:22The official investigation was conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the German Investigation Commission.
27:28Dr. Echner was not opposed to discussing, at least privately, the possibility that the Hindenburg had been sabotaged,
27:35but he was essentially under orders from the air ministry in Berlin not to pursue sabotage as a possibility.
27:45If you are able to prove the thesis of a bombing, of a terrorist attack,
27:52then this suggests that the Nazi regime is not so solid as it seems.
27:56And that's why you still have a controversy that exists today between people who say there may have been a bomb,
28:03there may have been a conspiracy, and people who say, nonsense, it was a technical failure.
28:09In this interview, Captain Proust suggests that Lakehurst commander Charles Rosendahl may hold the answer.
28:15I think the Admiral Rosendahl is writing now on a book.
28:23He's writing a book?
28:26Yes, and he said to me that he will bring new evidence.
28:32Oh, he will bring proof, new evidence?
28:36Rosendahl completed but did not publish his book before he died of natural causes in 1977.
28:42His manuscript, which he donated to the University of Texas Archives, provides no evidence of sabotage.
28:50But sabotage was very much on Rosendahl's mind in 1937.
28:55Captain Wittemann went up to Commander Rosendahl and said,
28:59I need to speak with you at your earliest convenience.
29:02And Wittemann told him that Lehman had had a bomb threat letter in his pocket.
29:07We really need to look and see if somebody sabotaged the Hindenburg.
29:11The letter was never mentioned during the Board of Inquiry investigation.
29:16Captain Proust was not even made aware of this letter's existence until 1938.
29:21So it was not something that was discussed at the time.
29:25And to be perfectly honest, the Board of Inquiry and the German Investigation Commission,
29:31neither of them really wanted to pursue sabotage as a possibility.
29:37That would have opened up a whole can of worms.
29:39They would have had to launch a major investigation.
29:43They didn't know what they would find if they went down that rabbit hole.
29:47Both Rosendahl and Wittemann knew of the bomb threat.
29:51Both testified during the investigation.
29:54And Rosendahl was an advisor to the investigating board.
29:56But in over 1,000 pages of sworn testimony, neither mentioned the bomb threat.
30:03And when asked at the end of their testimony if either had anything else to add,
30:07both said, no.
30:10It is unknown if the bomb threat letter still exists or if it has been lost to history.
30:16What we do know is the contents of the letter were not mentioned or discussed during the investigation,
30:21nor seen anywhere in the official reports.
30:24It would seem this clue was deliberately concealed by both the U.S. and German witnesses.
30:32If the idea of sabotage was deliberately omitted from the testimony given during the investigation,
30:38it raises the question of what else was left out by witnesses.
30:43Negligence or any hint of a mistake made by the German crew
30:46would have been far more embarrassing to the Nazi regime than sabotage.
30:50With the Nazi airship 12 hours behind schedule and pressure mounting on the captains and crew,
30:57the landing was made in haste.
30:59Were safety protocols overlooked?
31:02German airshipmen had developed strict rules over the years
31:06for the safe and efficient operation of hydrogen-filled zeppelins.
31:10They knew never to valve hydrogen or land in an area undergoing thunderstorms.
31:16And they knew the dangerous effects of electrical charges at different altitudes.
31:21But under pressure to land, those concerns were set aside.
31:26One of the ideas that people talk about with regard to the Hindenburg is that
31:30during that final last turn when the ship had to reorient its direction so it would land into the wind,
31:36that perhaps a bracing cable snapped and slashed a gas cell.
31:41One of the biggest problems with that concept is that the timing doesn't match
31:44because a lot of the efforts that were taken to address the tail heaviness situation
31:49occurred long before that final turn.
31:52So if hydrogen was leaking from the tail, it wasn't as a result of a turn that happened later.
31:59With an airship coming high, the higher it is, the more electricity, static electricity, it has collected.
32:07So there was a thunderstorm that went through.
32:10That was lots of negative and lots of positive or vice versa on the airship.
32:16And so the captains, of course, should have known that.
32:21Lehmann should have known that.
32:22And of course, Rosenthal should have known that.
32:25And none of them talked about it.
32:27The Hindenburg crash certainly involved two elements.
32:29There was a source of ignition and then there was leaking hydrogen.
32:35We don't know and we'll probably never know for sure why the hydrogen was leaking.
32:41We'll never know for absolute certainty what the source of ignition was.
32:45It seems that hydrogen was leaking.
32:49But did any member of the crew notice a problem during the landing?
32:53In his book, My Zeppelins, Hugo Eckner recalls how Rudolf Sauter, quote,
32:59stated most positively that immediately before the catastrophe,
33:03he had noticed that one of the stern cells had risen very high
33:06and had apparently lost a lot of gas, end quote.
33:10Yet at the inquiry, when asked if anything unusual happens before hearing the detonation
33:15and seeing the fire, Sauter answered, no.
33:19As chief engineer, Rudolf Sauter was one of the airship's most senior officers.
33:25And as a general in the Storm-Up Tyloom, also known as the Brownshirts or Stormtroopers,
33:31Sauter had an especially strong incentive not to embarrass Germany or himself.
33:36Sauter and other crew members were sat across the investigators' table
33:41from representatives of Hermann Goering's air ministry.
33:45Knowing they would be returning home to Nazi Germany in just a few days,
33:49the German crew testified, one after another, in lockstep,
33:53that everything about the landing was perfectly normal.
33:56But it was anything but normal.
33:58The ship burned.
33:59Was this a massive cover-up orchestrated from Berlin?
34:03The problem is that now the Zeppelin is a compromised symbol
34:09because it has burned to the ground with its swastikas.
34:12And so it's basically a difficult symbol to handle now.
34:16It's no longer going to be front and center in the context of German propaganda.
34:21More than eight decades ago,
34:23broadcaster Herb Morrison provided remarkable insight as a witness
34:27that still bears up to this day.
34:30We have not yet been able to find out what caused the explosion,
34:33but it's very evident that there was a spark set the nitrogen on fire.
34:38There wasn't any electricity.
34:39There was no electrical storm.
34:40It was raining previously to that,
34:43but no electricity could have set it on fire
34:45unless it was static electricity
34:47because we had had a thunderstorm,
34:49a very light thunderstorm,
34:52but there was a lot of electricity in the air,
34:53so maybe a spark jump from one of the beams in the tail surfaces across.
34:57That would be a logical interpretation of it.
35:00Inasmuch as they were coming in close proximity to the ground,
35:03the static electricity may have increased
35:05and caused an explosion like that.
35:08Wow.
35:09It's amazing that just an hour after the explosion,
35:12he already had such a clear understanding of what happened.
35:15And it's incredible that his theory
35:17is what the investigation committee ultimately decided is what happened.
35:20It seems like witnesses do have theories of sabotage,
35:25but they never mentioned it.
35:27From the very start, it was always just a spark.
35:31Surprisingly, however,
35:33the Hindenburg tragedy in and of itself
35:35did not deliver the death knell for the airship industry.
35:39Eckener's attitude once the Hindenburg is destroyed
35:42is to keep on fighting.
35:45It's almost like a fortress mentality,
35:48the sense that you are right,
35:49you have the right answer
35:50and you can keep on showing them
35:52with the sister ship of Hindenburg,
35:55which becomes a Graf Zeppelin II, LZ-130.
35:58What really ends it all for Eckener
36:00is the start of World War II.
36:02LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin
36:05and LZ-130,
36:07also named Graf Zeppelin,
36:09are moved to a hangar in Frankfurt.
36:11Hermann Göring, as an aviation expert,
36:14understood the limitations of airships.
36:16He understood that they were militarily useless.
36:20He was afraid that the airship program
36:23would take resources that he needed
36:26to concentrate on heavier-than-air developments
36:29for the German Luftwaffe.
36:31He didn't like the idea
36:33that airships were competing
36:36with a dying technology
36:38when he was trying to build
36:39a modern German air force.
36:42Hermann Göring personally made sure
36:44that the airships would never fly again
36:47by ordering the destruction
36:49of the airship hangars
36:51so that none could ever be built again.
36:53On the third anniversary
36:55of the Hindenburg disaster,
36:57the era of the airship
36:58officially comes to an end.
37:00On May 6, 1940,
37:01the order comes from the air ministry
37:03that both airships
37:05are to be dynamited.
37:08They'd been emptied, of course,
37:10of their hydrogen prior to that,
37:12and that the scrap metal
37:14is to be put into the war industry.
37:17Officially, the German air force
37:19needs this area for its army base,
37:22and no matter what Zeppelin officials do,
37:25they are forced to accept this destruction.
37:28As far as Göring was concerned,
37:30when they pleaded with him,
37:32he reportedly heard the noise
37:34of an airplane engine
37:36in the background
37:37and turned towards it
37:38and said,
37:39this is what I prefer to hear.
37:41For generations to come,
37:43only the iconic images
37:45of Hindenburg's destruction,
37:47along with the words,
37:48oh, the humanity,
37:49are all that remain
37:50of the passenger airship enterprise.
37:53Hindenburg belongs to these
37:55great machines of the 20th century
37:57that did not work out.
37:59It's not the first one,
38:01and it wasn't the last.
38:02We actually were exposed
38:03to sort of the fragility
38:05of technology.
38:07We like technology.
38:08It gives us a sense of power,
38:09but we realize that
38:10it is only as strong
38:12as we design it to be.
38:14Titanic met its doom
38:15because it came up against
38:17a rather gigantic
38:19and fairly immovable object.
38:22Hindenburg was probably destroyed
38:24because of a tiny spark.
38:26This great, giant,
38:28physically large symbol
38:29of German and Nazi supremacy
38:32was most likely taken down
38:35by a spark that's no bigger
38:37than when you walk across a carpet
38:38and you touch a doorknob.
38:41And that's all it took
38:43to bring this two-and-a-half-football-field-long aircraft
38:47to burning ashes
38:49in less than a minute.
38:50The Hindenburg cover-up
38:52has little to do
38:53with what caused
38:54the Nazi airship's fiery demise.
38:58Instead,
38:58it's a tale of what happens
39:00the days and weeks
39:01following the crash,
39:03the lacking cross-examination
39:05of what appears to be
39:06highly coordinated testimonies,
39:08and a letter threatening sabotage
39:10that goes unmentioned
39:12at the inquiry.
39:14Why?
39:14Who benefited?
39:16So we are stuck in many ways
39:17with this image
39:18of the Hindenburg
39:19being a German machine,
39:21a great machine,
39:22but also a deeply flawed one.
39:24One could say that in some ways
39:25the Hindenburg culturally
39:27becomes a metaphor
39:29for the Nazi regime.
39:34Conceived as a weapon of war,
39:36the airship evolved
39:37into the ultimate means
39:39of traveling the world
39:40in luxurious comfort and style.
39:42Hindenburg,
39:44the grandest
39:45and most romanticized
39:46of them all,
39:47served as a magnificent symbol
39:49of all that was possible
39:51in an exciting new era
39:52of engineering marvels.
39:55The naval air station
39:57at Lakehurst
39:58was Hindenburg's home
39:59when it traveled
40:00to the United States.
40:01The colossal hangar
40:03was where it was birthed,
40:04and this field
40:05is its final resting place.
40:07Here, a memorial ceremony
40:11is held each year
40:12to mark the tragedy.
40:15This was the final event
40:18for as safe as possible
40:22passenger travel.
40:25It finished the travel
40:28of people, mail, packages,
40:32and whatnot
40:33over the whole world.
40:36May 6, 1937
40:38was for all practical purposes
40:41the final day
40:43of passenger travel
40:45in light of the air.
40:48In the end,
40:49the story of the Hindenburg
40:50is a reminder
40:51of human fallibility,
40:53of the fragile line
40:54between the grandest of dreams
40:56and the most humbling
40:57of nightmares.
41:03Travel the globe
41:04and discover
41:05the ultimate culinary pleasure
41:07with the best-selling author,
41:08travel guide,
41:09and bad boy of Bistro,
41:11Anthony Bourdain.
41:12Anthony Bourdain,
41:13no reservations.
41:15Stream free on SBS On Demand.
41:26See you next time.
41:27Bye!
41:28Welcome to the Hindenburg
41:30of B alderman.
41:35See you next time.
41:44merism anduje celebrate
41:45The Hindenburg
41:47of B 100th
41:50We will see you next time.
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