Hindenburg 1937: the Lakehurst disaster and the end of the giant airships

There are only a few aviation images that almost everyone knows, even without ever having dealt with aircraft. The burning airship above a mooring mast in New Jersey is one of them. The Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937 cost 36 people their lives and ended an entire chapter of commercial aviation within a few months: travel across the Atlantic by giant airship. This article explains what the Hindenburg was, how the final landing approach went, what investigators found out about the cause and why the airplane took over the oceans afterward.

The Hindenburg disaster: the short answer

On the evening of May 6, 1937, LZ 129 Hindenburg of the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei approached Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey to land after an Atlantic crossing from Frankfurt. At around 7:25 p.m. local time, a few minutes after the mooring lines had been lowered to the ground crew, flames shot out of the envelope at the stern. The hydrogen in the gas cells burned so fast that the ship lay on the ground after a little over half a minute.

There were 97 people on board: 36 passengers and 61 crew members, including several trainees for future airship crews. That almost two thirds survived surprises many who only know the pictures. What often decided it was where someone happened to be: anyone near the promenade windows could jump as the ship reached the ground. Anyone deeper in the hull or in the bow had hardly a chance.

What the Hindenburg was

LZ 129 was built at Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance and set off on its first flight on March 4, 1936. At around 245 meters long and 41 meters in diameter, it ranks, together with its sister ship LZ 130, among the largest aircraft ever built. Its gas cells held up to around 200,000 cubic meters. For comparison: a modern Airbus A380 is a good 70 meters long. The Hindenburg was more than three times as long.

Feature	LZ 129 Hindenburg
Manufacturer	Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, Friedrichshafen
Operator	Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei (DZR)
First flight	March 4, 1936
Length / diameter	around 245 m / 41.2 m
Lifting gas	hydrogen (helium was planned)
Propulsion	four Daimler-Benz diesel engines
Cruising speed	around 120 km/h
Passenger capacity	50, expanded to 72 for the 1937 season

The ship was named after Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, who died in 1934. The Nazi regime used it for propaganda from the start: in March 1936, the Hindenburg flew over Germany together with the older LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, dropping leaflets for the Reichstag election, and in August 1936 it hovered over the Berlin Olympic Stadium. The Zeppelin people around Hugo Eckener, who kept his distance from the regime, had little influence over this role.

Luxury inside the hull

Unlike older zeppelins, the passenger area was not in a gondola beneath the envelope but on two decks inside the hull. There were cabins, a dining room, a lounge, writing and reading rooms and promenades with windows slanting downward. There was even a smoking room on board, sealed off with overpressure so that no gas could get in. A steward managed the only lighter.

You can get a feel for it today at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen: part of the passenger area has been reconstructed there so you can walk through it, including the promenade and cabins.

The 1936 season

In its first year of operation, the Hindenburg made, according to common accounts, ten trips to the USA and seven to Rio de Janeiro, carrying around 1,600 passengers. That made it the first aircraft to offer scheduled passenger flights across the North Atlantic, years before airplanes could. From 1936, the starting point for the North America trips was the new Rhein-Main airport and airship harbor near Frankfurt, the predecessor of today’s Frankfurt Airport.

Hydrogen instead of helium

Perhaps the most important backstory of the disaster is a decision made long before May 6, 1937. The Hindenburg was originally designed for helium, a noble gas that does not burn. At the time, helium in usable quantities existed practically only in the United States, and they would not release it to Nazi Germany, fearing military use.

The engineers therefore converted the ship to hydrogen. The lightest gas of all provides even slightly more lift than helium, but combined with air it is highly explosive. The Zeppelin company had long experience with hydrogen and was considered very safety-conscious. The pressurized smoking room, spark-free tools and strict rules on board show how seriously the risk was taken. In the end, it was not enough.

The final flight: Frankfurt–Lakehurst

The disaster flight was the first North America trip of the 1937 season. On the evening of May 3, 1937, the Hindenburg departed Frankfurt under the command of Captain Max Pruss. Ernst Lehmann, an experienced commander and director of the company, was on board as an observer.

Over the Atlantic, strong headwinds slowed the ship. Instead of the morning of May 6, it only reached the vicinity of Lakehurst in the afternoon, and thunderstorms were passing through there. Pruss therefore flew a loop over Manhattan and along the New Jersey coast to wait for better weather. Only in the early evening did the station report that the thunderstorms had cleared.

The hydrogen was burned off after around a minute and a half, while the diesel fuel kept burning for hours. Captain Pruss survived with severe burns. Ernst Lehmann died the following day. Among the best-known survivors is the acrobat Joseph Späh, who jumped from a window. The last survivor, Werner Doehner, who was eight years old at the time, died in 2019.

The search for the cause

Two investigations took up the disaster: a commission of the US Department of Commerce and a German commission in which Hugo Eckener played a major part. Both arrived at a similar picture without ultimately being able to prove it.

• Leaking hydrogen: The tail-heaviness before landing points to a leak in one of the rear gas cells. Ground crews also reported that the outer skin fluttered at one point. Where the leak came from is unresolved. Among other things, a snapped bracing wire after the tight turn is discussed.
• Electrical discharge as the ignition source: After the thunderstorms, the air was electrically charged. When the damp lines touched the ground, the metal framework was grounded, but the outer skin was not immediately. A spark between envelope and framework could have ignited leaking gas. This explanation is still considered the most likely.

Theory	Core idea	Assessment
Static discharge	Spark between charged envelope and grounded framework ignites hydrogen from a leak	favored by both investigations, later experiments support parts of it
Flammable envelope dope	The coating of the outer skin started and fed the fire	became popular in the 1990s, tests show at most a contribution
Sabotage	A bomb on board set the fire	widespread in books, dismissed by the investigators and most historians for lack of evidence
Structural failure	Overload in the turn tears open a gas cell	plausible as the cause of the leak, not as the ignition source

The difference between ignition and fire matters: what supplied the spark is disputed. Why the ship burned so fast, however, is clear. It was filled with hydrogen.

The first big aviation media event

That the Hindenburg disaster is still so present today has less to do with the number of victims than with the images. The landing of a zeppelin was an event in the USA, so four newsreel crews stood ready with cameras in Lakehurst: Pathé, Movietone, Hearst and Paramount. They filmed the fire from the very beginning.

Added to that was the report by Herbert Morrison of the Chicago radio station WLS. He had actually come to describe a routine landing for a recording, and kept talking as the ship burst into flames in front of him. His desperate cry “Oh, the humanity” became one of the best-known audio documents of the century. The recording aired on the radio the next day, and with the films in the cinemas, millions of people saw and heard an airship burn.

In Germany, the coverage was considerably more subdued. A disaster of the prestige ship did not fit the propaganda.

Why the era of the giant airships ended

Lakehurst was not the first serious airship disaster. The British R101 had crashed in France in 1930, and the American Navy airship USS Akron off the coast of New Jersey in 1933, with more deaths than the Hindenburg. In the Zeppelin company’s passenger service, however, no passenger had died in decades. The Hindenburg destroyed that reputation in one evening and in front of rolling cameras.

Several reasons came together:

• Loss of trust: After the images from Lakehurst, hardly anyone wanted to board a hydrogen-filled airship anymore.
• No helium: For the sister ship LZ 130, too, the USA refused to export helium in 1938. Without a non-flammable lifting gas, a restart was hard to sell.
• Expensive operation: Giant airships needed huge hangars, mooring masts and large ground handling crews, yet carried only a few dozen passengers.
• The airplane caught up: Pan Am had been flying flying boats across the Pacific since 1935, and in 1939 the airline opened passenger service across the North Atlantic with the Boeing 314 Clipper. More on this in the profile of Pan Am.
• The war: With the Second World War, civilian transatlantic service with German airships was finally over.

What became of the sister ships

The older LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin returned from its last South America trip shortly after the disaster and was retired in 1937. LZ 130, also christened “Graf Zeppelin” and usually called Graf Zeppelin II, flew from September 1938, with hydrogen instead of the planned helium. It never took on paying passengers again. Instead, it flew test and propaganda flights, and in 1939 also a reconnaissance flight along the British coast, during which it was meant to spy on the British radar installations.

In 1940, both zeppelins were scrapped on orders from the Luftwaffe leadership, and their light metal went into aircraft production. In the same year, the airship hangars at Rhein-Main Airport were blown up. That ended the history of the big rigid airships. The whole arc from Graf Zeppelin’s first attempts to the present is told in the history of zeppelins.

Traces of the Hindenburg today

None of the giant zeppelins survives in original form. Even so, there are some places where you can get close to the Hindenburg era, and some of them are right next to an airport.

Place	What you find there	Spotter connection
Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen	walk-through partial reconstruction of the Hindenburg passenger area, models, original parts	the Zeppelin NT takes off from Friedrichshafen Airport
Zeppelinheim near Frankfurt	settlement built for the staff of the airship harbor, with its own zeppelin museum	the Zeppelinheim viewing platform is close to today’s major airport
Lakehurst, New Jersey	memorial with ground marking and plaque at the disaster site, historic Hangar No. 1	on an active military base, limited access
Aeronauticum Nordholz	airship and naval aviation history on the North Sea coast	right at the Nordholz naval air base

In Lakehurst, a chain-bordered field marks the spot where the gondola hit the ground. The memorial was dedicated on the 50th anniversary in 1987. The station is now part of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, so you cannot simply walk in. Tours are mainly offered by the local historical society.

What the disaster teaches about aviation safety

Lakehurst is an early example of a pattern that shows up again and again in the history of aviation accidents: a serious disaster rarely arises from a single cause. A design goal that was politically unattainable, a gas with a known risk, a delayed arrival, thunderstorm air, a tight turn and a landing with wet lines all interlocked.

Later disasters describe similar chains, such as the Tenerife airport disaster of 1977, after which radio procedures and crew training changed fundamentally, or the Ramstein air show disaster of 1988, which shaped air show rules in Germany. With the Hindenburg, however, the industry drew no technical lesson but an even more radical one: it gave up the principle of the giant airship in passenger service.

That airships fly again today comes down to the lifting gas. Modern designs such as the Zeppelin NT are much smaller than the Hindenburg and filled with helium. Anyone who photographs one on Lake Constance is essentially looking at what the engineers of the 1930s wanted to build but were not allowed to.

Conclusion

The Hindenburg was a technical masterpiece and at the same time a child of its time: planned for helium, filled with hydrogen, celebrated as a luxury liner and used for propaganda. On May 6, 1937, it burned in a little over half a minute in front of cameras and microphones, and 36 people died. The exact ignition source has still not been proven; an electrical discharge at leaking gas remains the most likely. For aviation, the result was unambiguous: from then on, the way across the oceans belonged to the airplane.