Columns » Local Columns

Subscribe

Remembering the Hindenburg 72 years later

  • Print
  • •
  • •
  • Post a Comment
  • •
  • Favorite
  • •
  • Report an error Report error
    • Thank you for your submission.
      Error report or correction
      Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  
      Sending report
    • Close
  • •
  • Originally published May 5, 2009 at 6:15 p.m., updated May 6, 2009 at 8:06 a.m.

"It's smoke, and it's in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity!"

Herbert Morrison,

radio reporter

May 6, 1937

The giant airship Hindenburg became known as the Titanic of the sky after it crashed while trying to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey 72 years ago Wednesday.

Wow! Seventy-two years, but Herbert Morrison's plaintive cry of "Oh, the humanity" makes it seem like I am there every time I hear it and see the newsreel footage of Hindenburg falling in flames while desperate passengers and crew tried to jump to safety.

The difference is that Titanic took over 1,400 people to the bottom of the North Atlantic, while Hindenburg's death toll was only 36 (one of those was a ground crewman). Sixty-two people on board survived.

Of course, every life is precious, and that's why Herbert Morrison was so upset as he watched that at one point he said, "I ... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen ... I'm going to step inside, where I cannot see it ... Listen, folks, I- I'm gonna have to stop for a minute ... This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed."

The '30s was the golden age for giant zeppelins like Hindenburg. They routinely crossed the Atlantic between Europe and the U.S. For $400, its privileged passengers enjoyed plush accommodations and fine dining.

Hindenburg was named for German Gen. Paul von Hindenburg. After Germany lost World War I, the victorious allies set up its government and called it the Weimar Republic. Hindenburg was the second leader of the republic, but in 1933 he appointed a man named Adolf Hitler to be chancellor of Germany. And that ended Hindenburg's power, as the Nazi Party continually gained momentum. He died the next year.

So, it could be said that the name carried a sort of curse with it, a jinx that culminated on that windy evening about 7:30 p.m. in New Jersey, when the pride of the German airship fleet came down in flames.

I've tried to imagine what it would have been like to be Herbert Morrison when his taped broadcast (it didn't air live, but was broadcast the next day) changed from routine coverage of a news event to that wailing account of "the worst thing I've ever witnessed."

But there is no imagining what he felt, not really, although his voice certainly gives a hint of it.

"Oh, the humanity!" he cried.

And even today, you can feel the grief for those poor people, way down deep, when you hear his words.

Jim Bishop is a senior reporter for the Advocate. Leave him a message at 361-574-1210 or jbishop@vicad.com or comment on this column at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com


Sign Up
CLOSE

  • Print
  • •
  • •
  • Post a Comment
  • •
  • Favorite
  • •
  • Report an error Report error
    • Thank you for your submission.
      Error report or correction
      Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  
      Sending report
    • Close
  • •