Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

Margaret Mather and the Adelts were widely interviewed, and it was revealed that Margaret would write her story for Harper’s (prose, not poetry) and Leonhard’s article (which now had an ending) would appear in Reader’s Digest.

Other survivors-none badly harmed-were frequently quoted, including that rootin’ tootin’ Nazi George Hirschfeld (happily in the arms of some showgirl by now, Charteris hoped) and stockyard king Colonel Nelson Morris-though his businessman friends, advertising man Ed Douglas and perfume king Burt Dolan, had perished, as had Moritz Feibusch, though Moritz’s crony Leuchtenberg, who’d been drunk most of the trip, made it. The Doehner boys also survived, and so did their mother, but they lost their father.

Among the surviving crew members were Chief Steward Kubis, who had jumped from the ship, then turned around and helped the American ground crew rescue passengers and other crew; Chef Xavier Maier and two other cooks; and Dr. Kurt Ruediger, who needed a physician’s help himself, as he had broken his leg on his leap.

Mechanic Walter Barnholzer died in the Paul Kimball Hospital, as did Captain Ernst Lehmann, who on his deathbed spoke of sabotage causing the disaster. Captain Max Pruss survived, with disfiguring burns.

It was said Pruss was in far worse shape than Lehmann, but that the despondent Reederei director had simply lost the will to live.

Thirteen passengers were listed as dead, twenty-two crew members. Charteris noted with wry interest that Eric Knoecher’s name was included on the former list, and Willy Sheef’s on the latter.

Charteris never regretted his decision to keep what he knew to himself: the American commission blamed a hydrogen leak ignited by a spark of static electricity as the most probable cause of the explosion; and the German inquiry decided essentially the same thing, calling the terrible event “an act of God.”

Sabotage never was seriously discussed in either tribunal, as America wished to avoid an international incident on her own shores, and Germany did not wish to acknowledge itself vulnerable to sabotage by a resistance movement within its own borders-a resistance movement its government claimed did not exist, at that.

Still and all, there were interesting scraps of testimony and evidence.

Such as a number of witnesses who felt they had heard a gunshot prior to the first explosion. A mechanic, Richard Kollmer, said he “heard the ‘pop’ of the firing of a gun, a small gun or rifle.” Chicago stockyards magnate Morris, who had been in the writing lounge, also said he’d heard “a report, not loud,” of a weapon.

Even Dr. Hugo Eckener, the father of the Hindenburg, had originally stated his belief that his airship was a victim of sabotage, saying, “Only the firing of a burning bullet into the gasbags from a distance would have accomplished it.” But by the time of the official German inquiry, Eckener had changed his tune to the familiar gas-leak-and-spark scenario.

As the latter explanation settled uneasily into history, Charteris began to think his mystery writer’s mind had imagined it all-at least until he read about two neglected items of evidence found in the wreckage, given no serious consideration by either panel of inquiry:

A solid black chunk of residue identified by the New York City Police bomb squad as the residue of a dry-cell battery.

And a charred Luger-one shot discharged.