Hindenburg still casts shadow over Shore
A memorial ceremony for the 77th anniversary of the Hindenburg airship disaster was held in Lakehurst, NJ.
Seventy-nine years after the Hindenburg ignited into an inferno and crashed in Lakehurst, that moment in history continues to haunt those who gather each year to commemorate the anniversary.
On Friday night, the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society held its annual memorial service to the victims of the May 6, 1937 disaster. As the wind howled and rain fell for most of the day, organizers decided to move the ceremony inside the immense structure of historic Hangar No. 1 for only the second time in almost 30 years. The ceremony is normally staged at the crash site itself, where there is a modest marker on the ground in the shape of the airship's control car.
The 36 people who died in the crash of that giant Zeppelin were Germans, Americans and a Swede, but after all these years there remains an emotional awkwardness in remembering the destruction of an airship that was after all a Nazi propaganda tool, complete with the swastika-emblazoned black, white and red flags of the Third Reich draped over its tail.
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Because of that awkwardness, the occasion is supplemented as an opportunity to also pay tribute to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces who have perished during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Towards the end of the service, a soldier, a sailor, a Marine and a Coast Guardsman all take solemn turns laying a wreath for their fallen comrades.
"We do not honor an airship," said Navy Capt. Christopher Bergen, commander of Naval Support Activity at Lakehurst and deputy commander of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, who addressed the small crowd. For security reasons, those who wish to attend must be invited. "But rather we honor the heroism of those who lost their lives in that disaster; those who took great risk and gave the final measure on that fateful night 79 years ago."
Rick Zitarosa, vice president of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society, observed that the bad weather outside Friday was similar to the conditions that led to the Hindenburg's destruction on that night eight decades ago.
"Thunderstorms that night creating static electricity, which probably played the major part in causing leaking hydrogen to ignite and the Hindenburg to fall burning," Zitarosa said. "Normally, we have the ceremony out on Mat No. 1, and that requires a little bit of theater of the mind. While in here, you actually have true scale. Because the Hindeburg was actually put in this hangar, twice, during her flights of the 1936 season when she came here 10 times. And to give you an idea of how big this thing was — the Hindenburg fit in here with 7½-inches of clearance on each end, with the doors closed. ... It's 187 feet from the floor to the ceiling arches and the Hindenburg came within about 25, 30 feet of that."
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Dr. Horst Schirmer, a physician in Maryland, was five-years-old when he flew on the Hindenburg as a child during a trial test run over Lake Constance in Switzerland. Schirmer's father, Max Schirmer, was an aerodynamics engineer for Zeppelin.
Schirmer faithfully attends the memorial service each year and sounds defensive when speaking about the ship's design, noting that it was Congress who refused to allow non-flammable helium gas to be sold to Germany, forcing engineers to use highly-combustible hydrogen as a lifting gas.
During the ceremony Friday night, Schirmer spent his public remarks criticizing the theory of a retired NASA scientist about what caused the Hindenburg to self-immolate. Addison Bain, a former NASA employee, has argued that aluminum powder applied to the fabric of Hindenburg — a component in some rocket fuels — was the real culprit, not hydrogen, in starting the blaze. Bain's theory has been largely debunked by the scientific community, but it still offends Schirmer.
"An electrical spark, the proposed ignition source, does not have sufficient energy to ignite the Hindenburg's paint," Schirmer said. "In a model test, it would take 23 joules, which is the heat energy that set the paint on fire. But the energy time it took to ignite the paint in the Hindeburg was only 0.01 joule. ... It would have been a thousand times too slow for this theory to hold true and set this magnificent, terrible fatal fire to the Hindenburg."
Carl Jablonski, president of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society, said the organization was already preparing for next year's big 80th anniversary. A dinner and exhibitions are planned, in addition to the annual memorial service which is expected to attract international media attention.
Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or firstname.lastname@example.org