FIERY CRASH

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 450, 4 June 1937, Page 6

FIERY CRASH

AIRSHIP DISASTER Backfiring Seen In Ait Scores of spectators witnessed -the Sudden, shocking tragedy of the fiery crash <-f t.re German Zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6. Ameriqati newspapers which have reached Auckland contain. graphic descriptions’ of th e disaster by survivors and eye-witnesses on the ground. The backfiring of a motor of the dirigible as it flew over New Jersey was reported <o have been seen by a former United States naval officer who was about 29 miles from Lakehurst when -he Hinfcnburg flew overhead

Ckrl Weigand, skipper of the s.s. Deutschland', who rushed to hospital to see Captain Ernest Lehmann, commander of the airehip on previous voyages, who made the last fatal trip in an advisory capacity, quoted him as saying: “I don’t know what happened Sh e just went up!’ Captain Lehmann died before he could add his testimony to the public investigation held’, but he seemed baffled by the disaster. “Next time we come over,” he said before his death, “I hope we’ll be using helium in the bags.”

Soundef Like Shots. The stories of the tragedy were all the same. “Blinding flash,’ said Herbert O’Laughlin, of Chicago, a suerveyo'r. “A noise that sounded like bullets coming out of the gondolas,” said Robert Seeling, a photographer on the ground. Graphic descriptions of the disaster came from eye-witnesses. “All wati serene on the ground, and ship when suddenly flames burst from the Zeppelin’s tail," said Dr. Carl A. Gesswein, Matawan. "Her rear half puffed up and burned, and then the front bulged out and burst into flames. 1 . In legs than a minute she was on the ground, dropping like a, deflated parachute."

As the flaming mass plunged downward there ros e a cry. to the ground crew: “Run for your lives.” The first; bewilderment they ran back to the blazing, still exploding wreckage.

Mrs. Herman Doehner, of MexicoCity, told Point Pleasant Hospital aides, she and two sons were in the dining-room when the first blast occurred. She threw her sons out of the window and then, with th e ship six feet off the ground, jumped' herself. A daughter, li'ehe Doehner, died in hospital. "I landed on my stomach and crawled thirty or forty .yards to escape the ftamsf," Philip Mangone, of New York, said. Rescuers Took Heart. The big, sandy, pine-bordered plain, a few minutes before gay with the laughter of relatives envisioning a happy homecoming, became a place of death. Doctors and nurses summoned by a State-wide alarm, sped in ambulances from many sections of the State. Fire trucks pumped, water for hours into the crumpled hulk. At first it was feared all aboard had perished. Then a steward and two cabin boys appeared out of the wreckage, stunned. Rescuers took heart. Perhaps there was hope for more. The ground crew found the dead as well as the living. It was the job of the first watch, as E. Z. Matthews, first-class' machinist,s mate, related, "to haul the dead ones out of th e wreck.” “Have you ever seen a guy who was burned so badly that he shouldn't be walking, but he does?” he said. “We found a sailor who knew if there were any burnt clothes, on him he would be stripped, taking' his flesh with him, so he had taken off everything except his underclothing. Wo saw him wandering around all black f 1 om his hands to his elbows, apd from the feet to the, knees, and still he walked. He had no more than an inch of skin all over him.”

AU evening long, reports of the number of dead varied. It went down to 75, then 50, and then dropped by ones and two as persons listed as missing were found in nearby hospitals'.