Annual Hindenburg ceremony marks infamous tragedy
LAKEHURST, N.J. – Overcast with a slight chill in the air and slightly drizzling, it was a perfect night for the annual Hindenburg Memorial Ceremony at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
In fact, weather conditions the night the 800-foot-long, 150-foot high hydrogen-filled airship with the giant swastika on its tail arrived here on May 6, 1937, were similar, said Rick Zitarosa, vice president and historian of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society.
"Earlier, the German airship Hindenburg had encountered thunderstorm conditions while crossing the Atlantic and it was 12 hours late. With a crowd of 300, including spectators and the ground crew, looking up in the sky at the airship hovering at an altitude of 175 feet, it came in for a rushed landing because it was losing buoyancy in its tail section," Zitarosa said.
At 7:25 p.m. the airship burst into flames and crashed to the ground in 34 seconds. Most of the people on the ground scattered, until the commander ordered them to "stand fast" because there were people inside who needed help, Zitarosa said, adding that civilians and ground crew began pulling people out of the burning mass.
The night of the crash, Herbert "Herb" Morrison recorded a reactive broadcast in which he described scenes such as, "those aboard leaping for life from a flaming inferno," and a "twisted mass of girders, the seared and scorched skeleton of what was once a mighty airship."
Morrison's recording of the disaster contains the infamous words, "oh, the humanity!" The Hindenburg disaster was the first recorded on video.
For more than 30 years, the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society and the base community have been holding the memorial services to honor the memory and heroism of the 36 people lost that day and the 300 others who lost their lives in the LTA (lighter than air) program, said Carl Jablonski, society president.
Allen Hagaman, a civilian ground crew member who lived here, was one of those who died that day.
"He was on the ground crew and happened to be on the wrong side of the ship when it crashed," said his grandson, Allen Hurley.
Hurley said his mother, who was 16 when her father died, never talked about the crash and refused to watch documentaries made about it. Later, he said the family found a medal of honor given to his mother by the German government.
"My grandfather was a hard worker. He would go to the base when the airships were coming in for the extra money. He was paid $1," Hurley said.
Dr. Horst Schirmer, whose father Max Schirmer was the aerodynamical engineer who helped design the airship, was five years old when he would visit his father at work and watch the Hindenburg under construction in Germany. He said he got to ride in the airship on a test flight over Lake Constance in Switzerland.
Schirmer said the German airship travel company known as DELAG had six airships that safely transported 56,000 passengers between 1910 and the early part of 1914 and had big plans to expand. However, after several crashes of helium-filled American airships, a British airship, and then the Hindenburg, it marked the end of the airship era.
During its time, the Hindenburg was heralded as a technological marvel and could cross the Atlantic in a mere three days — half the time it took to cross the ocean by ship.