O! the Humanity When a Dream Ended in a Ball of Fire

Thanks to newsreels, dozens of photographers, and the chilling live radio coverage, for the first time Americans and people from around the world were witnesses to a great disaster.  The impact was profound. 

On May 6, 1937 a dream died with a bang, along with 37 souls.  Up until then, the future of trans-oceanic and other mega-long distant air service looked like it belonged to lighter than aircraft.  Airplanes, it was thought, were too limited by fuel needs and lift capacity to economically serve this need.  They were alright for military use, which was proved in the Great War, and had a place supplementing good rail service in shorter distance travel, but the great dirigibles held the promise of connecting the world with fast, reliable passenger service and a lift capacity that could also eventually become a major freight hauler.

All of that changed when the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg ignited and crashed in a fiery inferno as it attempted to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. The event was captured in all of its dramatic horror by newsreel cameras and described in a live remote broadcast on WLS Radio of Chicago.

Dirigibles were a refinement on the concept of a powered balloon developed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin beginning in 1899.  Unlike their predecessors, Zeppelin’s creations featured a light but rigid cigar shaped envelope inside of which lighter than air gas was contained in a series of bladders.  The envelope provided additional space inside which could be used for freight or passengers.  The ships were powered by two or more gasoline or diesel engines and a cab extending below the envelope served as a pilot station.  

German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin invented and developed the dirigible--a semi-rigid lighter than aircraft capable of long-distance flight and significant lift for military, passenger, or freight service.

Zeppelin built several models of increasing size and lift potential over the years.  In World War I they were pressed into military service and famously bombed London. 

The British, French, Italians, and the U.S. all scrambled to enter the field with lighter than aircraft themselves.  But crashes and failures dogged all attempts. The British R34 became the first dirigible to cross the Atlantic in 1919, but it crashed in a storm two years later.  A larger sister ship R38 exploded in 1921 when its frame snapped, causing a spark which ignited explosive hydrogen gas used for lift. 

The U.S. hardly fared better.  It’s ship, the U.S. Navy’s ZR1 Shenandoah, was built in 1923 and used non-combustible helium for safety.  Despite this advantage Shenandoah broke up in a thunderstorm over Ohio in 1925 killing 19 of 43 crewmen. 

The Navy, which remained committed to lighter than air ships, commissioned the Zeppelin company to build it a ship as part of war reparations from defeated Germany.  The commission kept the company alive while Germany was forbidden by treaty from building airships for its own military use.  Delivered to the Navy in 1924, it was also designed for use with helium.  Designated ZR3 Los Angeles it became the most successful large dirigible yet with a capacity for 30 passengers in addition to crew.  It made more than 250 flights including trips to Puerto Rico and Panama. 

The Navy's  Macon  was an aircraft carrier which could launch and retrieve Sparrow Hawk scout biplanes from the exterior platforms on either side of the ship.  The idea was to be able to cover wide areas giving the Navy long distance eyes in search of any enemy fleet, in anti-submarine operations, or for search and rescue.  She and her sister the Akron represented the pinnacle of military development of the dirigibles.

Impressed, the Navy arranged for the Zeppelin company to license the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to build ships of German design.  The results were the Akron and the Macon both of which could serve as aircraft carriers capable of launching and retrieving 5 light scout planes.  Delivered in 1931, both ships went into service.  But the Akron but was lost in a storm over the Atlantic in 1933 and the Macon crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1935. The Navy then abandoned building new rigid airships, although it continued to fly the Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the British re-entered the race with two new mammoth airships, the largest ever built.  The R-101, with a passenger capacity of over 100, crashed and burned near Beauvais, France, on October 4, 1930 killing 48 of 54 aboard.  The slightly smaller R-100 made a successful round trip to Montreal, Canada, but was withdrawn from service and ultimately scrapped after the R-101 disaster.

Despite the dismal safety record, the fact remained that no dirigible ever manufactured by the Zeppelin company in Germany had ever crashed.  They seemed immune from the stresses of extreme weather that had doomed most other ships.

Following the success of its Los Angeles for the U.S. Navy, the Zeppelin company began construction of a new airship for German civilian use.  The Graf Zeppelin completed in 1928 was meant to be a prototype and a demonstration for a new generation of air ships meant for passenger packet and airmail service.  It was a huge success.  It made a trans-Atlantic flight to Lakehurst in October and was welcomed with great ballyhoo including a New York ticker-tape parade for the crew and a reception at the White House.  The next year she completed an around the world trip that officially began and ended in Lakehurst after she had crossed the Atlantic again.  After that there were triumphant tours of Europe and trips to South America.  Crossing from Germany to Lakehurst became almost routine, if not yet regularly scheduled.

The company planned for a larger airship to inaugurate regular scheduled service.  Plans for that ship, designated LZ-129 had to be reconsidered after the R-101 disaster.  The ship was made heavier and stronger, but also intended for the safer helium being successfully used by the U.S. Navy.  As the ship was being re-designed the Nazis came to power in Germany.  Despite the resistance of old Count Zeppelin, company's operating chief Dr. Hugo Eckener impressed the Graf Zeppelin and future air ships into a new state-owned airline.  From then on German airships would be ablaze with the Nazi swastika on their tail fins and the air ships would become propaganda tools for the Third Reich. 

Last triumphant moments for the sleek symbol of Nazi pride--the Hindenburg soars over New York City on May 6, 1937.

The new ship was dubbed the Hindenburg by Eckener in honor of the former German President Paul von Hindenburg, much to the annoyance of Nazi authorities who had hoped the ship would be named for Hitler.  She was tested in March of 1937.  But due to the rise of German militarism, the Zeppelin company was unable to obtain helium from the United States, the only nation with a capacity to produce it in large quantities.  Helium was restricted as a strategic material.  Eckener was forced to fly the new ship with dangerous hydrogen under pressure from the government.

After a series of trial flights and an extensive propaganda tour of Germany the Hindenburg made its first trans-Atlantic flight to Rio de Janerio, Brazil.  The ship was then put into the long dreamed of regularly scheduled service.  In 1936 she made ten trips to Lakehurst and seven to Rio. 

The Hindenburg left Frankfurt for Lakehurst on May 3, 1937 on its first scheduled round trip between Europe and the United States that season.  She arrived over New Jersey three days later but attempts to land were delayed until a line of thunderstorms passed Lakehurst.  The press was out in force to cover the still unique event.

When the weather cleared, Hindenburg made a routine descent. Just after she had dropped bow lines to be taken up by Navy personnel on the ground, the ship was rocked by an explosion.  Fire erupted about a third of the way from the ship’s stern.  She dropped to the ground in 37 seconds and was completely engulfed in flames in moments.  WLS announcer Herbert Morrison famously sobbed “Oh the Humanity!” as he attempted to describe the horrible scene.  

His clothing burned off Walter Banholzer is led away for medical assistance by a Navy ground crewman and a Zepplin company steward, both as shocked, stunned, and traumatized as the survivors of the crash.

Amazingly, of the 36 passengers and 61 crew on board, only 13 passengers and 22 crew and one ground crew member died.  Others were severely injured including those with horrible burns.  Whatever the toll, it was enough to end commercial lighter than air travel.  German invincibility in the air was disproven and the image of the burning ship was seared into the public imagination.  The Graf Zeppelin was withdrawn from service and work on its replacement, Graf Zeppelin II was scrapped.

Although many theories abound as to the cause of the explosion ranging from spontaneous combustion to sabotage, no cause has ever been proven.  Ultimately, any airship using explosive hydrogen and at the mercy of any stray spark was probably doomed.  We will never know if the safe operation of the ship with helium might have led to continued development of lighter than air fleets.

The compressed laboratory of wartime soon produced technological innovations that made trans-oceanic service by fixed wing aircraft not only possible, but routine.

Today, despite some efforts to revive them as freight handlers, lighter than air ships are mostly blimps, much smaller gas filled bags used for advertising and as camera platforms for sporting events.  But the rapid development of drone technology is rendering them obsolete. 

 

Raining Death on Chicago—The Plunge of the Wingfoot Express

Wingfoot Express takes off from Grant Park on July 21, 1919.

There were many horrific Chicago disasters in the early 20th Century like the Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903 and the Eastland capsize in the Chicago River in 1915 which are not only well documented but they have become iconic in the city’s history.  But an air disaster back in the summer of 1919 is far less remembered.

Of course, fewer people died when the flaming Wingfoot Express crashed through the skylight of the Illinois Trust & Savings Bank at in the Loop at LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard on July 21.  Seventeen were killed and 27 injured compared to more than 800 drowned on the Eastland.  But you would think for shear drama, nothing could beat an air ship disaster on the cusp of rush hour on a summer afternoon in the downtown of one of the busiest cities in America.

Despite the great advances in airplane technology during The Great War, fixed wing powered aircraft were still too limited in lifting capacity and operational range to be considered viable for commercial use.  As it had done since the days of Jules Verne, the world still looked at lighter-than-air craft as the future of commercial aviation.  The Germans under the skillful hand of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin led the world in the development of dirigibles, which had famously bombed London in the War.  The British, French, and Italians were all scrambling to catch up, mostly using German Zeppelins surrendered as war reparations as models.

The United States was lagging far behind.  The Navy, which had operated blimps for anti-submarine patrol, had the most experience and was preparing to go into the dirigible business using one of those German aircraft.  In 1917 the Navy had contracted with Goodyear Tire and Rubber to design and construct its Blimp fleet mostly because the company had developed a rubberized fabric ideal for the construction of the aircraft’s gas bag.

Now in the post war era, Goodyear was eager to find a commercial use for its technology.  And Chicago business tycoons were just as eager to secure the city’s place as the nation’s transportation hub by making it the center for air ship packet and mail service.  By early 1919 local investors had agreed to bankroll a demonstration aircraft with the hope that it would lead to regular inter-city service.

Goodyear was ambitious.  It recognized the fragility of its blimps, essentially just streamlined balloons with engines and a passenger compartment slung underneath, meaning that any rupture to the skin of the bag would lead to the crash of the aircraft.  It decided to jump to the construction of a small dirigible. 

A dirigible has a rigid frame holding tanks of buoyant gas inside the envelope.  Theoretically this would be safer as a puncture might only affect one tank allowing the aircraft to stay aloft or descend safely, and dirigibles could be built much larger and therefore have greater lift capacity.

But there were some major problems.  First was that Goodyear engineers had no experience with dirigibles.  Second was that the contract called for construction and delivery to Chicago in just a few months.  Finally, despite the availability of non-flammable helium in the U.S. they decided to go with cheaper and more widely available hydrogen as the lift gas.  Unfortunately hydrogen is explosively flammable.

Goodyear also decided to experiment with new, more powerful rotary engines with which it was unfamiliar.  In the rush to complete construction the two engines were slung below the airframe without being tested—or balanced.  As events would show they were slung too close to the envelope.

Still, everyone was excited when the Wingfoot Express, named for Goodyear’s Mercury foot logo, was built in a hanger at the White City Amusement Park on the grounds of the old Columbian Exposition on the city’s South Side. Heavily promoted in the press, especially in the Chicago Tribune, crowds flocked to the park to get a glimpse at the ship.  The plan was to demonstrate its airworthiness by using it on short excursions between White City the downtown Grant Park.

The troublesome twin rotary engines and the open gondola slung beneath the envelope.  Captain Jack Boettner at the controls.

The Wingfoot Express successfully made two test flights on the morning of Monday, July 21 on a route that took the aircraft safely over Lake Michigan.  The lead engineer observed the twin engines throwing off sparks and hot oil that splattered on the envelope.  Moreover the unbalanced engines made the ship hard to control.

Despite these observations, plans went ahead for a third trip later that afternoon. 

The ship was smaller than those Goodyear envisioned for packet service—the envelope 180 feet long and 30 feet in diameter.  On board was a full 200 gallon tank of gasoline, enough fuel for days of excursion flights.

It was a hot but near picture perfect late afternoon on when the Wingfoot Express took off from Grant Park for her third trip.  This time it was a virtual press junket.  On board were pilot Jack Boettner, mechanics Henry Wacker and Carl “Buck” Weaver, White City press agent and well known former sportswriter Earl Davenport, and Tribune photographer William G. Norton.

After they were airborne, Norton asked Captain Boettner to deviate from his flight plan and fly over the Loop so he could take pictures.  Despite the fact that he was operating an experimental aircraft with less than two hours flight time and that he was just as new as the airship having never before that day operated a ship with the rotary engines, Boettner likely at the urging of Davenport, agreed.  It was a fatal mistake.

When the Wingfoot Express appeared over the Loop shortly before 5 pm flying at a relatively low 1300 feet, it naturally attracted a lot of attention.  People had never seen anything like it.  Pedestrians on the ground craned their necks.  Denizens of downtown buildings leaned far out of their open office windows to catch a glimpse.  Others climbed out on fire escapes or made their way to roof tops.  So there were an astonishing number of eye witnesses to all or part of what happened next.

In the most frequently quoted eyewitness account, Irwin A. Phillips later testified that

I saw a little black spot above the equator line on the bag, and then a yellow flame broke out. Then the flame spread up and down and on both sides. I saw the men jump and I saw the bag fall. When it passed from my view the rear end of the bag was (still) inflated.”

This testimony brings up an interesting point.  Various sources writing about the disaster refer to the ship as a blimp—a powered balloon—or as a dirigible.  The non-technical public used the terms interchangeably, although blimp was more familiar to American ears.  Phillips’ testimony which refers to a “gas bag” clearly indicates he thought it was a blimp even as he noted it did not lose its shape as it sank.

The confusion persists.  One writer tries to split the difference and calls the ship a “non-rigid blimp” containing individual gas cells like a dirigible.  But a blimp could not have maintained its shape without the internal pressure of the lifting gas.  The Wingfoot Express had to have had a rigid frame to support the envelope.  Which is why Phillips noted that it had maintained its shape.

When the passengers and crew first noticed the fire, there was obvious panic on board.  There was a scramble for the parachutes, which would not have been worn but stowed for quick retrieval.  One by one the men scrambled to put one on and jump. 

Captain Boettner was the first man out, for which he was heavily criticized by those who held with the romantic notion that the captain should go down with the ship.  Maybe not a hero, but smart.  He cleared the wreckage and landed safely.  The chief mechanic also got out with minor injuries.  The other mechanic’s parachute snagged on the ship and he was dragged down to his death under the wreckage.  Photographer Norton jumped clinging to his heavy camera equipment and exposed glass plates—a bad mistake.  He landed hard breaking both legs and incurring massive internal injuries.  His photographic equipment was destroyed.  He died days later asking if his precious photographs had survived.  Weaver, the press agent, never got out of the gondola.

The ship was fully engulfed in flames in seconds. As the envelope disintegrated, the gondola, engines and gas tank became detached and fell—right into the glass skylight of the Illinois Trust & Savings Bank.  

The Illinois Trust & Savings Bank before the disaster.

It was 4:56 pm.  Banking operations for customers had ended at the then customary 3 pm and employees were finishing up the day’s business were just getting ready to leave.  Caught directly under the skylight were the mostly women clerks on the top floor.  Many died instantly, crushed by the heavy equipment and in the raining fire.  The heavy engines and the gas tank plummeted to the ground floor where the gas tanks burst, spreading the fire.  The heat was so intense that the glass and frame of the skylight melted adding their molten destructive heat to the inferno.

On the first floor many found some protection under the heavy marble teller counters, but others were trapped there.  Those who could scrambled for exits or even jumped out windows.  Survivors recounted scenes of unspeakable horror.

The Fire Department responded quickly but there was little that they could do but let the fuel burn itself out and attempt sometimes heroic rescues.  But the core of the smoking rubble was too intensely hot to enter for hours.  The final toll on the ground either killed immediately or dying of wounds was 10 bank employees, mostly women but including ten year old and 14 year old boy messengers.  27 others were injured badly enough to require hospitalization, scores more burned, bruised, or battered.  The total death toll including one crewman and the two passengers on the ship was 13, an unlucky number.

The charred bank lobby after the crash and fire.

The public was both aghast and fascinated by the accident, snapping up each new updated extra edition of the newspapers as they hit the streets.  It was a newsboy’s once in a lifetime opportunity.  Meanwhile various players swung into action.

With the fire still smoldering bank officials tapped the huge reservoir of “the reserve army of the unemployed” hiring hungry men off the streets to enter the building to salvage anything they could.  They were working side by side Firemen and police digging for the bodies of victims through the night.

By morning the Bank had secured near-by space and using equipment salvaged from their building and borrowed from other banks, opened for business on time on Tuesday morning.  Employees not dead or still hospitalized were required to report for work, despite being traumatized and many were still bandaged.

Missing was flamboyant Republican Mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson and a gaggle of Chicago movers and shakers who were off playing cowboy at a Western dude ranch and declined to break up the fun to come home to deal with the disaster.  The City Council, however, swung into action at a meeting the next day.  It considered an ordinance banning flights over the congested central city, but after the immediate howls of businessmen still hoping to cash in on future air commerce elected instead to study regulating such flights.  Any regulations developed promptly went into a drawer and were forgotten.

The Chicago Daily News, competitor of the Tribune which lost a photographer in the crash, ran a screaming banner head in it's last edition the day after the disaster.  But it seemed to focus on the bank funds endangered rather than lives lost.

The States Attorney launched an immediate investigation which included the arrest of all of the survivors of the crash, including those in their hospital beds and the dying reporter.  After interrogations, Captain Boettner was put in jail and indicted.  Joining him was Goodyear’s project manager for the construction and operation of the Wingfoot Express, W.C. Young. 

To its credit, Goodyear stepped up and accepted responsibility, promising to pay the medical expenses of all of the injured, as well as the funerals of the dead.  The company, in what modern public relations experts would call “getting ahead of the story,” publicly instructed its employees to fully cooperate with authorities and provided without protest all documentation on the design, construction, and brief flight life of the dirigible.  It made no attempt to cover-up the hurried construction, the use of untried and untested engines, lack of engineering standards and adequate testing. 

At the trial Boettner admitted that prior to the day of the crash he had no experience with the aircraft and had trouble controlling the unbalanced engines.  Young testified that he was unfamiliar with the engines he selected, the need to balance their speed and torque, and had not tested operations for a safe distance from the envelope.

The dead from the memorial service program for the victims.  Tribune photographer William G. Norton died of his injuries later.

Other testimony at the trial included hearsay reports from one of the injured crew that one of the passengers may have been at the controls when the ship caught fire.  Boettner leapt to his feet calling that charge a “damnable lie.”  But the injured man was never called to testify if the reports of his hospital bed conversations were accurate.

Several expert witnesses offered contradictory testimony about possible causes for the fire that led to the disaster which made it difficult for the prosecutors to prove criminal negligence.  One of the most absurd speculations came from Army Colonel Joseph C. Morrow, the head of training and operations from the Army’s new lighter-than-air craft program headquartered at Goodyear’s Ohio facility at Wingfoot Lake.  That sounds more credible than it was, because the Army was far behind the Navy and had no operational experience beyond a few Signal Corpsmen who had gone up in observation balloons.  In fact, Morrow was being trained for his job by Goodyear.

He was the sole passenger on the second flight of the day and testified on what he had observed of the ships performance.  He seemed unaware of the problems of sparks and hot oil being thrown off the engines as reported by the chief mechanic from his hospital bed.  Col. Marrow speculated that the fire may have started from sparks generated by the silk gas bladders inside the envelope rubbing against each other, a virtual impossibility which ignored eyewitness testimony that the fire seemed to originate on the envelope, not inside of it.

In the end no firm cause was determined, although modern researchers give heavy credence to theories involving overheated engines.

The prosecution was unable to prove criminal charges against the two defendants, both of whom returned to work for Goodyear.

One of the more tangible long-term results of the crash was the closing of the air terminal in Grant Park and the eventual authorization of the Chicago Air Park on the South Side, a comfortable distance from the center city which opened with a single runway in 1923.  That facility would eventually be named Midway Airport.

But none of this explains why the memory of the crash seemed to fade so quickly.  Perhaps it was because of another event which erupted just five days later—the deadly Chicago Race Riots of 1919 which raged until August 3.  At least 38 died—most of them Blacks—and hundreds were injured in fighting across the South Side that included widespread arson and looting. 

And then there was the fact that the most important newspaper in town, the Chicago Tribune—the one which heavily promoted the project and whose photographer had been held as partially responsible downplayed the investigation as much as possible and let the story disappear at the earliest opportunity.

After all of the excitement and terror, the crash of Wingfoot Express was almost erased from memory.