In the 1930s, the most glamorous way to cross the Atlantic wasn't by ship or plane. It was by airship. The Hindenburg was a floating luxury liner, the longest class of flying machine ever built. Then, on a stormy spring evening in New Jersey, it was gone in less than a minute.
Here's what happened. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg caught fire while trying to dock at Naval Air Station Lakehurst in Manchester Township, New Jersey. The airship was filled with hydrogen, a highly flammable gas, and the flames consumed it in roughly half a minute. Of the 97 people on board, 35 died, along with one person on the ground. Remarkably, 62 people survived.
A Long, Late Trip
The Hindenburg had made its first flight in March 1936 and completed ten trips to the United States that year without trouble. On May 3, 1937, it left Frankfurt, Germany, on the first of ten planned round trips between Europe and America for its second season.
Strong headwinds slowed the crossing. By the time it reached Boston on the morning of May 6, it was hours behind schedule, and thunderstorms near Lakehurst meant more waiting. Captain Max Pruss took the airship over Manhattan, where people rushed into the streets to look up, then cruised along the New Jersey shore until the weather cleared.
Thirty-Some Seconds
Around 7 p.m., the airship made its final approach. It made sharp turns to line up with the mooring mast as the wind shifted, and ropes were dropped to the ground crew. At about 7:25 p.m., some witnesses saw fabric fluttering near the upper tail fin, and others reported a dim blue glow moments before flames appeared.
From the first signs of fire to the bow crashing to the ground took about 32 to 37 seconds, according to various reports. The hydrogen burned out within about ninety seconds. Reporter Herbert Morrison was recording a radio report on the field, and his famous cry, 'Oh, the humanity,' was broadcast the next day. Newsreels and photographs carried the images around the world.
Stories of Survival
Where people happened to be standing made a huge difference. Wind pushed the flames toward one side of the ship, and many passengers on that side were trapped. By contrast, nearly all of the passengers on the other side survived, some barely hurt.
Werner Franz, a 14-year-old cabin boy, was dazed until a water tank burst above him and put out the flames around him. He dropped through a hatch, ran away from the wind-blown fire, and escaped without injury. An acrobat named Joseph Späh smashed a window with his movie camera, hung from the ledge, and let go about 20 feet up. A ground crewman scooped him up and carried him clear.
The last survivor, Werner Doehner, was eight years old at the time. He later recalled that his mother threw him and his brother out of the ship and then jumped after them. He died in 2019.
What Caused the Fire?
Nobody knows for certain. At first, sabotage was a popular theory. Hugo Eckener, former head of the Zeppelin Company, later became convinced that a spark of static electricity ignited leaking hydrogen. In 1996, a retired NASA scientist proposed that the coating on the airship's fabric skin helped spark and spread the fire, an idea other experts dispute. Investigators and historians still debate the details.
What isn't debated is the result. The publicity shattered public confidence in giant passenger airships and brought the airship era to an abrupt end.
Today the Hindenburg remains one of the most famous images of the 20th century. But behind the flames are quieter stories: a cabin boy saved by a burst water tank, a mother's quick thinking, and dozens of people who walked away from the impossible.
