Max Collins: The Hindenburg Murders

Many new buildings designed for airplanes had been constructed here in recent days, for what was being planned as a combined airship and airplane harbor, to accommodate passengers from all around Europe seeking passage to North or South America.

But what set this airfield off from all others was the immense zeppelin hangar, a virtual Olympic stadium with a roof, a staggering thousand feet long and twenty stories high, seeming ghostly and unreal in the misty twilight. Just beyond the yawning doors of the hangar, floating on its nose cone tethers, was the great seamed silver ship, an impossibly small ground crew scurrying beneath, like ants carrying off some enormous gourd from a slumbering giant’s picnic.

Miss Mather gasped in wonderment. “Forget what I said, Mr. Charteris…. Such majesty sweeps any of my doubts away.”

The archness of his poetic companion aside, Charteris also felt a wave of elation roll through him. They would soon be boarding the largest aircraft ever to trade earth for the heavens, a ship only a few feet shorter than the fabled ocean liner Titanic.

Once through the main gate, the buses drew up alongside the hangar, where the passengers were again rudely herded by Reederei officials in paramilitary midnight blue, into the cavernous building, the inside of which was illuminated by arc lights-or least partly illuminated: the greenish glow gave way to shadow in the upper recesses of the man-made grotto.

Yet again the travelers were subjected to queuing up at a table where another group of Nazi-uniformed customs agents inspected tickets and passports, and checked one last time for lighters, flashlights, or camera equipment (numerous books of hotel matches were confiscated). Dusk gave way to darkness as this tedious process continued, and Charteris approached his new old friend, Fritz Erdmann.

“Why all these precautions, Fritz?”

The Luftwaffe officer in mufti stood with arms folded, a posture more of supervision than observation. “Would you have the Zeppelin Company take chances with its passengers’ safety? The Reederei have a flawless record; I’m sure they’d like to maintain it.”

Very quietly, Charteris said, “It’s a bomb scare, isn’t it?”

Erdmann’s eyes tightened in an otherwise impassive mask. “I told you before, Mr. Charteris… I’m merely an observer, here.”

“Please, Fritz-it’s ‘Leslie’… and, since we’re friends, I must beg you please not to insult my intelligence. Hydrogen is the most flammable, hottest-burning gas in the world… and that big silver sausage is filled with it.”

“And that is why such careful precautions are being taken… excuse me.”

But before Erdmann could wander off, Charteris gripped him by the arm. “Why the hell don’t you people use helium, instead? Of course, you couldn’t make as much money that way, could you?”

With cheap, buoyant hydrogen, the Hindenburg could lift an extra sixteen and a half tons of cargo and passengers than with inert helium, a gas so safe you could smother a fire with it.

“I’m surprised at your ignorance… Leslie.” Erdmann plucked off the author’s hand as if removing a bothersome insect that had landed there. “The Americans control the world helium market… and their government refuses to export it to us.”

“Hell, that’s a difficult one to figure. Who wouldn’t want to help your man Hitler keep his airships safely flying?”

Erdmann chuckled hollowly. “I believe boarding is beginning, Mr. Charteris… Leslie. Perhaps you and your wry wit should make your way aboard.”

Stewards in white jackets and dark ties were escorting the ladies the brief distance between hangar and zeppelin. Umbrellas were available for the men, as well, and Charteris snatched one and sidled up to the Viking blonde before one of the stewards could beat him to the punch.

“May I?” he asked, offering her an arm, tipping the umbrella’s shelter above her.

She gazed at him with an amusement that wasn’t as detached as it pretended to be. Her full, lushly red-lipsticked lips pursed in a smile that was tantalizingly near a kiss.

But, as she’d said nothing, he repeated his question in German.

“We have not met,” she said, in German-accented English.

“Well, then by all means we should. Allow me to introduce myself-I’m the man who’s going to keep your lovely braids from getting damp. And you are?”

Now she laughed, lightly, and it was fluid, musical. “I am the woman who is going to allow you to do so.”

They began to walk across the final expanse of hangar toward the drizzle and the airship.

“I thought you already had a female companion,” she said, nodding toward Miss Mather, who was on the arm of a young steward.

“I think I’m a little old for her. By the way, my name is Leslie-Leslie Charteris.”

“Hilda-Hilda Friederich. May I ask a favor, Leslie?”

“I hope you will.”

“Could we go for a quick stroll on the airfield? I would like a better look at this balloon that promises to swallow us up.”

“Certainly,” he said, already liking this woman, who seemed as sharp as she was alluring. “After all, I’m sure Jonah would have appreciated a closer look at the whale.”

Rain beating an uneven tempo on the umbrella, they walked out onto the runway, the plump silver airship looming; they couldn’t seem to get far enough away from it to get a decent look at the beast. Finally they stopped and he tilted back the umbrella and they both gaped, unable even from this distance to take it all in without moving their heads side to side, a motion that seemed to express their disbelief. Monocle flecked with droplets, Charteris squinted behind the glass and opened his other eye wide as he surveyed the airship he and Hilda would soon be flying.

The overall impression was of a stupendous streamlined seamed silver specter; but here and there were markings and mechanical manifestations that indicated this was indeed, for all its size, a man-made object. Perhaps a quarter of the way back from the nipplelike mooring cone, lower-case Old English lettering spelled out in red the designation: HINDENBURG. Almost directly below, underneath the belly of the flying whale, extended the boothlike control gondola, seeming ridiculously small. Moving aft, fairly low, lay a long narrow bank of observation windows; farther aft, toward the final third of the ship, perched the propellers of an engine car, like a bug hopping a ride. Another such bug was farther aft still, but between it and its prop-driven predecessor, higher up, were bold block numerals: D-LZ129. Toward the tail, a rocketlike fin separated the rudder-bearing fins above and below-both of which wore the Nazi hakenkreuz -the swastika.

“It is impressive,” Hilda said.

“Size isn’t everything,” Charteris pointed out, and-as she seemed to ponder this concept-walked her toward the ship, skirting puddles.

Despite the drizzle, the Hindenburg was not without spectators to see her off, prominent among them a detachment of Hitler youth in their Nazi uniforms, and a brass band in blue-and-yellow finery, their instruments festooned with matching streamers. Right now they were playing a German folk song, “Muss I denn?”-which, coincidentally, that drunk had already executed (in several senses of the term) on the bus.

A pair of puny-looking aluminum retractable stairways served as the gangway of the ship; between the two sets of hinged stairs, stewards collected umbrellas-the underbelly of the ship providing a roof away from the rain-as the passengers climbed up the flimsy steps into the Hindenburg.

Immediately, ooohs and aaahs of pleasant surprise drifted up the stairwell, as only passengers who (like Charteris) had flown this very ship before could have anticipated such splendid surroundings. Unlike the zeppelins that preceded her, the Hindenburg boasted two decks of luxury-liner lavish passenger accommodations. (Even the grand Graf Zeppelin had housed its passengers in a cramped gondola slung under the ship.)