80 Years on, Hindenburg Tragedy Seared Into Last Survivor’s Memory

80 years on, the Hindenburg continues to fascinate the collective imagination and spark conspiracy theories.

The now 88-year-old German, Werner Doehner, is the last survivor of the Hindenburg disaster. As reported by The Independent, Doehner‘s family vacation ended in tragedy, with him losing his father and sister. The octogenarian recalls seeing his father for the last time, who died shortly after returning to his cabin after capturing the Lakehurst Naval Air Station on his movie camera.

On 6 May 1937, the 804-foot-long LZ 129 Hindenburg, the largest German passenger airship ever built, burst into flames while trying to dock at the Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst (NAES Lakehurst) in Manchester township, New Jersey, USA. The inferno killed 35 out of a total of 97 people aboard the airship. 

Of the 35 deceased, 13 were passengers and 22 were part of the crew. An on-ground worker was also killed in the catastrophe.

As a fallout of the disaster, lighter-than-air dirigibles became unpopular, and World War II ensured that none of these airships survived.

While many theories have emerged as to the cause of the inferno, a newer one reported by The Independent in 2013, states “static electricity” as the cause.

Preliminary investigations had deduced that a spark had kindled a hydrogen gas leak. However, conclusions could not be drawn as to the cause of the spark or the gas leakage.

The Hindenburg disaster can be summed up in the poignant words of the radio presenter Herb Morrison: “Oh, the humanity!” His radio commentary at Lakehurst was taken to New York and later became a part of the US’s first coast-to-coast radio news programme.

It also became the first ever air disaster of the 20th century to be recorded on multimedia, with Morrison making history with his live commentary on that day. An Al Jazeera report records Ron Simon, senior TV and radio curator, New York City’s Paley Center for Media as saying, “It was one of the real moments in media history that had a broadcaster reacting to something totally unexpected.”

Watch the last survivor of the disaster relive that fateful night: