Lakehurst, N.J. – At 87, Robert Buchanan says he sometimes has trouble remembering what he did 10 minutes ago. But he can recall in vivid detail the day 70 years ago when he watched the luxurious airship Hindenburg erupt into a fireball.
Flames roared across the surface of the German dirigible only 100 or so feet above him, singeing his hair as he ran for his life.
“It was a piff-puff, just like someone would leave the gas on and not get the flame to it,” said Buchanan, one of the last living members of the ground crew.
Werner Doehner has trouble discussing the tragedy that killed his father and sister.
“Just instantly, the whole place was on fire,” said Doehner, 78, of Parachute, Colo., the last surviving passenger. “My mother … threw my brother out. Then she threw me, but I hit something and bounced back. She caught me and threw me the second time out. My sister was just too heavy for her. My mother jumped out and fractured her pelvis.”
Doehner, 8 at the time, was hospitalized for months for treatment of burns.
The hydrogen-filled Hindenburg ignited while easing toward its mooring mast at the U.S. Navy base in Lakehurst. The blaze killed 35 people on board and one in the ground crew; 62 people survived.
The huge airship – more than three times longer than a Boeing 747 – was engulfed in flames and sank to the ground in less than a minute. Photographers and newsreel crews on hand for the landing captured the scene, and a shocked radio broadcaster recorded the replayed phrase “Oh, the humanity and all the passengers!”
The Hindenburg was cutting-edge technology, with its fabric-covered, metal frame held aloft by more than 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen. Flammable hydrogen was used because of a U.S. embargo on nonflammable helium.
The cause of the disaster is still debated. The most accepted theory is that static electricity from the day’s storms ignited leaking hydrogen.
The Navy Lakehurst Historical Society planned a private 70th anniversary memorial service today at the crash site about 40 miles east of Philadelphia.
