The Hindenburg Murders

FIFTEEN


HOW THE HINDENBURG ALIGHTED AT LAKEHURST, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS DEBARKED





CHARTERIS HAD A FRACTION-OF-A-SECOND GLIMPSE of the two men, as they stood frozen, like dance partners startled when the music stopped, the tiny black gun in Erdmann’s hand still held high as Spehl clutched the colonel’s arm and wrist, the gun up, angled toward the back of the ship, where the weapon had dispensed a wild bullet.

The sound of the gunshot had been a small pop—almost like a cap pistol—harmless sounding; but Erdmann’s bullet, a small silver pellet whose shape was not unlike the airship’s, had traveled down the hollow body of the dirigible and into a billowing hydrogen-filled gas cell, the center of which flared brilliantly, red and yellow and blue spreading out beneath the fabric like colorful spilled liquid, before the gas cell dissolved in crackling flame.

Then the whoom of detonation announced blossoms of orange fireballs that rolled inexorably, hungrily, down the length of the zeppelin, expanding as they came, scattering scraps of white-hot aluminum and raining down scorched fragments of fabric along the way.

Somewhere a voice screamed, “Stay down!” in German, and Spehl abandoned his dance partner, scrambling along the catwalk away from the oncoming conflagration, leaping for the nearest engine-gondola gangway, trying to shimmy out of the path of the surging fire.

Flushed with heat, as if some mammoth oven door had dropped open, Charteris ran, looking back as he did, not wanting to, but—like Lot’s wife—unable not to. And the last thing he saw, in the burning belly of the beast, was Erdmann consumed by the typhoon of flames, the sizzling saboteur turning black and orange, but the colonel did not scream, rather stood and stoically received the fiery fate he’d conceived.

Then the author bolted through the door, running pell-mell down the keel corridor, toward the stairs, knowing damn good and well that the flames, and time running out, were nipping at his heels.

In thirty-seven seconds, the Hindenburg would be, for all intents and purposes, as dead as Colonel Fritz Erdmann.

Moments before the first blast, Leonhard and Gertrude Adelt were standing with Hilda Friederich, leaning out over the slanting windows on the starboard promenade deck, by the lounge. It was drizzling again, flecks of rain glistening on the windows like tiny jewels. The airship had just swung sharply into the wind, and they were watching with no little interest from their balcony perch the show below: the ground crew—one hundred and fifty feet down—scurrying toward and beneath the ship, a mixture of American civilians and navy men, the latter easy to pick out in their white sailor caps and navy-blue coats. A pair of ropes that had been dropped from the bow and stern were latched onto by two columns of these men, who were tugging the ship toward the mooring mast.

Leonhard noted a remarkable stillness had settled over the deck—no motor drone could be detected, no one spoke, not a command, no cry or call, as if the collective ship were holding its breath.

And the ground crew had suddenly stopped scurrying, were instead looking up with wide eyes and open mouths. Some of them were pointing up—Leonhard could not know it, but the members of the ground crew had spotted the small mushroom-shaped puff of flame, high toward the back of the ship, forward of the upper vertical fin, where a tiny unseen bullet had burst through, disappearing into the mist.

Then a muffled, dull detonation broke the silence, seeming to Leonhard no louder than popping the cap of a beer bottle.

“What was that?” Gertrude asked him, clutching his arm.

Hilda’s hands came up and covered her mouth, eyes wide, trembling all over. She was looking out and down.

Leonhard followed her gaze. The crew on the ground were suffused in a rosy glow, as if the sun were rising; the sandy ground itself was basking in the eerie twilight sunrise, spreading from the bow of the ship, banishing its usual blue shadow. And then the men down there were scurrying again—but in a different direction.

Running away from the ship in terror.

“Sweet Jesus,” the journalist told the two beauties. “We’re aflame.”

The second detonation was no mere echo: it overshadowed the first explosion with its force and terrible bellow, as if the airship itself were howling in anguish, and—though no one on the Hindenburg could see it—this explosion sent flames erupting through the skin atop the ship, telling everyone on the ground that the previous tiny burst of flame had been only a hint of what was to come.

Charteris had made it to the end of the corridor by the time of the second explosion, which threw him like a rag doll, tossing him rudely, and when he stopped rolling and careening, he found himself facedown on the floor of the retracted gangway.

He scrambled to his feet, grabbing a quick look out the B-deck windows, seeing the ship was still high over the ground; then he was heading up the stairway to A deck, where the Adelts and Hilda and the others awaited. He could hear the hell that A deck had become, the stampedelike sound of passengers panicking, running back and forth, some yelling, others screaming.

That was when the world upended, the ship tipping back on its stern, dramatically, sitting itself down on its tail, beginning to collapse in on itself in so doing. Spectators would say the ship looked like a Japanese lantern, lighting up from within, showing off the ship’s aluminum framework even as it consumed itself.

Fortunately he’d been holding on to the stair rail, and now he was holding on with both hands, his ears filled with the sound of tables and chairs and other normally friendly objects making deadly nuisances of themselves to the passengers on A deck above, from which reverberated more screams, and the awful sound of human beings tumbling like so many dice.

Gritting his teeth, sucking in air not yet tainted by smoke, Charteris dangled there, the stairs above him taking quite the opposite tilt proper stairs could take. Dirty bedclothes, piled at the end of the hallway above, plummeted past him, spilling down as the dying dirigible did its topsy-turvy backstand, blankets and sheets fluttering like the wings of dying birds.

Pulling himself up and along, with only the railing to keep him from plunging to injury or death, he yanked himself upward, where he might help his friends.

Moments earlier, before the second explosion, with the knowledge that the ship was in flames—flames that had not yet reached them, though they could hear the fire’s deep deadly hissing, like a thousand stirred-up snakes—Leonhard Adelt, on the starboard side, had taken his wife by one arm and Hilda by the other.

“We have to get out through the windows!” he told them. “It’s our only chance!”

“It’s too high!” Gertrude said, eyes huge with horror.

“We’ll go lower, believe me! Wait a bit….”

They were at a distance of perhaps one hundred twenty feet now—the distance to the ground diminishing by the second, but not quickly enough to suit the two women, who looked terrified; and so was Leonhard, but he did his best not to betray that.

“I’ll go get some bed linen,” he told them confidently, “to soften our fall!”

But he didn’t go, because that was when the second explosion shook the ship like a naughty child, sending Adelt and Gertrude and Hilda and every other passenger on the starboard promenade tumbling backward, toward the bulkhead by the stair corridor, slamming into it, even as tables and chairs pitched forward, crashing down on them, barricading them in.

Their world almost upside down, Leonhard quickly acted to ascertain the condition of his little group. Thank God for this lightweight furniture! He brushed aside a chair, pulled a table off the two women, who were stunned but that seemed to be all, merely shaken, clothing torn, but no blood visible.

That could not be said for others around them. Elsewhere on this upended deck, George Hirschfeld was clinging to a bench, hanging down the deck’s steep incline, a bloody gash on his forehead, and Ed Douglas had slammed into a wall of the lounge, pinned behind a stack of tables and chairs, unconscious. In the corner, where the bulkhead met the slanting windows, Herman Doehner, father of the two boys, was similarly unconscious, head bloody from banging it on metal railings as he tumbled down the treacherous slide the deck had become; but his wife was awake and the two boys—very wide-eyed but not crying—were fussing over the papa.

And Moritz Feibusch lay unconscious, dying, his head cracked open against a metal railing, with forty-three unaddressed, unsigned postcards in his pocket, the rest still in the mailroom, waiting to be posted, waiting to burn.

The officers in the control gondola, in their forward position, were perhaps the last on the ship to know of the tragedy they were piloting.

Ernst Lehmann, observing in the gondola, had felt an odd tremor, rather like an ocean wave lapping onto shore.

“Is a rope broken?” he asked Captain Pruss.

“No,” Pruss said, unconcerned.

“I felt a heavy push, Captain….”

That was when someone on the ground yelled, “Run for your lives!”

And the rudder officer began to moan, “Oh, no, oh, no!”

Somewhere a fire bell was ringing, and a red glow was spreading on the ground, like a rosy rash.

The watch officer said, like a man sleepwalking, “I should get the logbook.”

Lehmann barked his first official order of the voyage: “Drop the water ballast!”

The second explosion came just then.

That one they heard, all of them, and it shook them, physically, and otherwise—but they could see or hear no flames, could smell no smoke, not yet. The captains of the Hindenburg stood helpless, impotent, the red reflection of unseen flames like a blush of embarrassment on their dazed faces.

On the portside deck, by the dining room, a chaos similar to that on the starboard had ensued. Fewer passengers on this side, though all of the stewards were over here, in part for the sake of distributing weight, but also for Kubis’s staff to put away dishes and such, including placing leftover sandwiches in the pantry dumbwaiter.

Margaret Mather had been leaning out an open window, chatting with one of the college boys, who was taking photographs with a Kodak, when mysterious sounds from the engines caused her to grasp his arm and look at him for reassurance.

The second explosion—the first had barely been noticed—rocked the ship and sent many of them, passengers and stewards alike, to their knees.

Chief Steward Kubis picked himself up, saying, “Everything will be all right!”

That was when the ship lurched, sitting back on its stern, and began crumpling into itself, and the sudden tilt took the floor out from under them, stewards and passengers toppling and tumbling, furniture cascading after them.

Lightweight Margaret Mather—wrapped up in a navy-and-white herringbone coat due to the cool rainy weather—was hurled twenty feet into the end bulkhead and soon was pinned against the projection of a window bench by a crush of German passengers. She thought she was suffocating, thought she might die from the weight pressing on her, but the passengers clambered to their feet and grabbed onto railings and window ledges, hanging there as the floor canted under them.

Relief flowed through her, and then the fire blew in.

Long tongues of flame, she thought, strangely detached and typically poetic, bright red and so very beautiful.

Though it was mere seconds, the trip up the back-tilted stairs seemed to take forever, and strained the formidable muscles of the well-toned author’s arms. Charteris had never been more glad that he had never allowed his sedentary calling to keep him from physical activity.

As he reached the top of the stairs, the floor under him seemed to right itself somewhat—the stern disintegrating in flame had allowed the bow to drop. Snatching up a blanket that had draped itself over the stair railing, he moved into the starboard promenade deck, where he came upon a picture of chaos, people and furniture scattered like so much discarded refuse. Some of the people were unconscious, perhaps even dead; others had made their way over and around the furniture and the fallen to get to the windows.

Leonhard and Gertrude were poised to jump, pausing to look back urgently at Hilda, who stood fear-frozen, hands covering her face. As Charteris neared them, fire swept into the room, right past them, not touching them, as if seeking the helpless unconscious and dying in the lounge. Flames jumped and danced and crackled, and the Adelts just jumped. Charteris swept Hilda up in the blanket, bundled her in his arms like a baby; she put up no resistance but her eyes were wild. The hissing of flames was at their back and the screams and yells around them were like dissonant notes standing out from a hellish symphony. He kissed her forehead, gave her a tight reassuring smile, and waited as long as he could, till the ship had lowered to about ten feet.

Then he dropped her, gently as possible, hoping the sandy ground below would greet her the same way.

Like Margaret Mather, Joseph Spah was on the portside, and the acrobat was climbing out a window, following two men who’d gone out before him and dropped to the ground too soon, crashing to earth, one hundred feet or more, bouncing as they hit, and now lay unconscious or dead, flaming linen and molten aluminum raining down on them.

Sitting on the ledgelike sill, Spah waited, waited, waited, seconds that seemed forever, and would be forever, if he couldn’t find the right moment; all he could think of was, thank God he swung from a lamppost for a living!

Ravenous flames were seething behind him, and he could wait no longer—forty feet now, he guessed. He could do that. He was an acrobat—just keep his feet under him, knees bent, roll when he landed, feet under, knees bent, roll, under, bent, roll….

“It’s too high!” a voice said.

Spah turned.

It was the chief steward, Kubis.

“Too high!” Kubis repeated, his eyes almost crazed.

“No,” Spah said. “It’s too hot.”

And he jumped.

Moments later, so did Kubis.

Leonhard and Gertrude Adelt landed softly in the grassy wet sand, having jumped only fifteen or so feet, collapsing to their knees not in pain but in relief.

Short-lived relief: almost immediately they were enveloped in oily black clouds through which deadly tongues of fire licked and taunted. They got to their feet, found each other’s hand, but soon parted company, as no path for two could be found in the dangled maze of crumpled wreckage. It was like making their way through a jungle of dangling hot metal wires and glowing cables and jagged debris, under the continued downpour of burning fabric and dripping metal.

Leonhard felt no pain as he bent apart white-hot aluminum framing, to make a door to dive through, into the sea of fire; in shock, it all registered as an eerie dream to him, his body weightless, floating like a star through space.

Then he saw that Gertrude had fallen and some semblance of reality snapped back. He ran to her, hopping red-hot girders, pulled her up and gave her a push—she tottered off like a mechanical toy. He followed after her, but tripped and found himself sprawled on the oil-soaked ground, and it felt good to him, despite the flames dancing all around him; it gave him such a wonderful sense of well-being, to just stretch out on the soft sand and await death.

“Leonhard!”

His wife’s voice.

He pushed himself up, saw her beyond the wreckage, beyond the flames, safe, reaching out to him, calling out to him, and he sprang to his feet and ran for his wife, and life.

Then he was beyond the fire zone, breathing air not smoke, and as Gertrude took his hand, he looked back at the fallen giant, swirling with smoke and flame, cracked in the middle now, forward section reaching for the sky as flames shot out the bow like a monstrous blowtorch.

A husky sailor was shouting, “Navy men stand fast!”

And the same ground crew who had fled the falling, fiery airship were heading back to pull people out of there. And figures were emerging on their own, as well, running like Jesse Owens, fleeing the flames, or just staggering, some of them with the clothes burned off their bodies, others with eyes seared shut.

“We should help,” Leonhard said, coughing.

“No,” his wife said. “We need help.”

He looked at her, her blue eyes pleading, her lovely face smudged with soot, burned black in places, her hair smoking, sizzling.

Then he nodded, and they stepped over a smoldering body, and walked away, hand in hand.

The ship was nearly to the ground when Charteris jumped.

He hit on all fours, a soft sandy landing, then bounded to his feet, sparks and embers falling around him like red snow.

“Help us!”

A woman’s voice, behind him.

Glancing up, he saw the two terrified little boys, the Doehners, climbing out the sill. Their frantic mother pushed them out, one at a time. Charteris caught the boy, and in one fluid motion flung him with all his force, the child sailing in an arc, landing beyond the fire zone. The other boy landed in the sandy earth, not so near by; another passenger—it was the cotton broker, Hirschfeld!—snatched up the lad by the hand and sprinted with him through the obstacle course of flames and debris.

Charteris had seen Hilda drop like a bundle, get to her feet, gather the blanket around her like an Indian and dash into and through the flames.

Now it was his turn to navigate the gauntlet of flaming framework and burning linen and glowing beams and red-hot wires. Covering his head with his sport jacket, he ran a zigzag path through the wreckage; around him others were doing the same—some falling to the earth screaming, burning.

But Charteris emerged from the smoke and flames fairly unscathed—he’d sucked in smoke, and his hair and mustache were singed, though his monocle was gone.

The Saint might have gone back in, looking for it.

Charteris, a ground-crew member taking him by the arm and leading him away, would let it go.

Margaret Mather had watched the men and women leaping from the promenade windows, but she just remained where she’d fallen against the bench, lapels of her coat shielding her face. Flames were flitting all around her, like butterflies, and occasionally they’d land on her sleeves and she would brush them off with her bare hands. The scene around her seemed out of a medieval picture of hell, and she had remained detached, composed, while all around her gave in to hysteria.

She kept her eyes covered and decided that she agreed with whoever it was who was screaming, “Es ist das Ende!” and quietly waited to die, hoping it would not be too prolonged and painful an experience, waiting for the crash of landing.

Then someone was yelling through the window: “Come out, lady!”

She opened one eye, then another.

Framed there in the window was an American—a sailor boy!

She stood primly, looked around for her handbag, finding it between two corpses; then she did her best to crawl out the window in a ladylike fashion, the sailor helping her down.

And then the nice young man walked her out through the bits and pieces of burning this and that.

All but one of the officers in the control car walked away from the burning wreck. Captain Pruss emerged from the curtain of smoke, hatless, his hair burned away; badly burned, but alive.

Charteris—who was wandering the periphery, looking for Hilda—saw Ernst Lehmann stagger from the black billowing smoke, looking stunned but not seriously harmed. The author ran to the dying ship’s former captain, to see if he needed help. Lehmann was walking along as if strolling through a park, or so it might have seemed if his face hadn’t been fixed in such glazed confusion.

“Are you all right, Ernst?” Charteris asked.

Lehmann looked right through him, eyes unblinking despite the smoke, saying, “I don’t understand…. I don’t understand…”

Then the director of the Reederei moved past Charteris, revealing that the clothes had been burned from the back of him, leaving the naked skin from the top of his head to the heels of his feet a charred black blistered mass.

An American officer ran to Lehmann’s side and walked him to the waiting ambulance.

Charteris turned to look at the ship, whose linen skin was almost gone now, fire erasing the Gothic red letters spelling Hindenburg, leaving a glowing skeleton trailing white-hot entrails and streaming smoke as black as the coming night.

Somewhere, within that colossal smoldering corpse, were the cremated remains of Colonel Fritz Erdmann. And probably those of Eric Spehl, as well.

Then, coughing, he sought out one of the navy boys, to see if he could hitch a ride to the base hospital.

Maybe Hilda was there.