EPILOGUE

Though events had vindicated Strasser's judgment that bombing operations from the Yambol base were not worthwhile, it seemed for a while as if Bockholt's ideas would once more triumph over those of his former commander. No sooner had "L 59" crashed but that the Naval Command proposed to send another zeppelin to Yambol. Once again, Strasser objected. Once again, the Naval Command overruled him. One can only wonder what had led to the stubborn conflict between the much respected Strasser and the Naval Command.

In the end, no ship was sent to Yambol but the base was kept operational until October 1918 when the collapse of Bulgaria forced its abandonment. At the airfield, the garrison left behind a simple memorial, a rough, unfinished stone bearing a simple plaque inscribed: "In memory of the crew of 'L 59' - Last flight April 7, 1918".

If this seems like only a small memorial to the sacrifices which twenty three courageous men had made during their life times and in death, it is nevertheless in due proportion to the accomplishments of "L 59" in the overall perspective of the great war.

What did the men of "L 59" accomplish with their few, but arduous and dangerous flights? "From a military point of view, the flight to Africa accomplished nothing. This was not the fault of the crew. Their orders were clear — return! There was no room for the exercise of discretion in those orders; the Naval Command had not intended that there should be. Nothing reached Africa that helped Lettow; the Allies were not diverted from their plans. the flight had no propaganda impact because it was kept secret until after the end of the war.

The fundamental reason for the failure of the Africa flight was that it started too late. The rebuilding of "L 57" and "L 59" was accomplished promptly but the Berlin bureaucracy was unable to move as quickly. The Colonial Office took the Africa plan to the Ministry of the Navy at the end of July but it took until the middle of September for the Ministry's recommendation to reach the Naval Command. Perhaps it took this long to explore the novel features of the proposal. However, the additional delay of two weeks to obtain the Imperial approval of the operation seems hard to understand. The Naval Staff and the Ministry of the Navy had already agreed that the mission could and should be carried out. If the Emperor had to approve an airship flight at all, why could the necessary audience be granted more quickly when the acknowledged urgency of the project was so great? However, the most serious and ultimately fatal delay was caused by the destruction of "L 57". Lettow-Vorbeck has been quoted as saying that the flight started four weeks too late. This was precisely the time needed to get "L 59" ready after "L 57" was wrecked. Some of the delay in getting the Africa flight started was also due to Bockholt's decision to fly across Turkey rather than the Aegean, the ropute provided for in the original plan. This complicated his problems. Threading his way through the Anatolian valleys at low altitude, as he did, was difficult and risky. Bockholt chose to fly low because he wanted to provide his heavily laden ship with the greatest possible boyancy. If he had flown directly across the Turkish mountains directly he would have needed alkighter ship. This would have meant less payload. However, a lighter ship would not only have permitted Bockholt to fly a more direct route but would have made him more independent of the vagaries of the weather. Bockholt felt that he had to wait until the weather was just right. With alighter ship he would have had more flexibility, The cold airmasses for which Bockholt had decided to wait, and which did not arrive until the 20th, would have been of lesser importance. The usefulness of the mission would not - have been materially reduced if "L 59" had carried less ammunition. The key to its success was getting quinine to the troops in Africa. Four hundred thousand rounds of rifle ammunition meant roughly eighty rounds for each man of Lettow's force a day's combat. The Ministry of the Navy had been uneasy about the usefulness of this part of the cargo. In its recommendation to the Naval Command, the Ministry took pains to point out that the Schutztruppe was specially trained to use ammunition economically as if to show that this relatively small number of rounds was more significant than it seemed. The temptation to load the ship with as much as it could carry was, of course, was great and there was not enough metereological information to allow a precise estimate of the enormous amount of ballast which was ultimately needed. Only the flight itself could provide the information that was critically needed in the planning stage.

One might also speculate whether the loss of "L 57" and the delays due to the refitting of "L 59" might have avoided by a more seasoned captain with greater experience and knowledge of the weather. Perhaps Strasser had practiced false economy in not giving Buttlar the command of the "China" ship.

Ultimately, however, it is doubtful that the arrival of the airship and its cargo would have greatly influenced the war in Africa. While the arrival and successful unloading of new supplies of quinine and medical supplies would undoubtedly have helped Lettow in the short run, since these supplies were essential to him and he had no way of knowing in advance about the bountiful stores he would capture at Ngomano. In the long run, Lettow's forces were too spent and the enemy's superiority too great. Despite the new supplies, it is likely that Lettow would have had to abandon the small sections of German East Africa which his troops still held. They would still have had to resort to the guerilla campaign which they conducted from November 1917 until their surrender to the British forces on November 23, 1918, 12 days after the armistice in Europe went into effect.

If one accepts the judgment that the expedition started too late, the question inevitably arises as to why the flight started at all. Why was it not cancelled while "L 59" was still safely in Yambol? Berlin knew that speed was required if the supplies were to arrive in Africa in time to do any good. It also knew that its plan was steadily falling behind schedule. The news from Africa was constantly growing worse, yet nobody seems to have been willing to consider whether time had not overtaken "Operation China". On November 20th, the day before Bockholt's departure, the Naval Command finally showed a consciousness that time was running out on the venture when it told Bockholt that he had to start without further delay. However, the record as a whole shows little inclination to critically reconsider the mission as the days went by. Perhaps the dispersion of authority among the Naval Command, the Ministry of the Navy and the Colonial Office made it too tempting to let someone else make the unpleasant decision to acknowledge failure.

Equally strange is that while Berlin was waiting for Bockholt to take off, nobody in the Colonial Office or the Naval Command stood by to evaluate the nightly news broadcasts from London as soon as they were received. The broadcasts were practically the only source of information that Berlin had about the fast moving events in Africa. This information becaine ever more important as the days went by. "L 59" was still in its hangar when the London evening dispatches of the 20th, the very ones which led to the cancellation of the Africa mission, were received in Berlin. Had these dispatches been acted upon at once rather than left to wait until Major Göring arrived in his office the next morning, it would have been possible for the efficient German communications system to deliver the decision not to proceed to Yambol before the take off of "L 59". As it was, the decision to cancel the mission was not made until about 13 hours after the news upon which it was based was received. By then, the ship was already well under way on its hazardous journey and beyond the range of the Yambol radio station. Yet in thinking about these apparent misjudgments, it must be borne in mind that the mission was in all respects a venture into the unknown.

The public did not learn of the "China" story until after the end of the war when a former naval captain, Lothar Persius, wrote a book which was highly critical of the organization and tactics of the German navy. He mentioned in passing that the engines of the naval airships had proven unreliable. The Maybach Engine Company, which had manufactured these engines, published an advertisement in rebuttal in Feburary 1919. It proudly pointed to the performance of its engines during the 95 hour flight to Khartoum and back. The breakdown of the forward engine of "L 59" was not mentioned. Presumably, this would have complicated the story too much. The Maybach advertisement was quickly followed by other reports in the German and foreign press. A spiderweb of careless error and patent deceit guickly enmeshed the "L 59" story. An English reporter who spoke no German, interviewed Buttlar, who spoke no English, and announced that Buttlar had commanded the "China" flight. Another writer decorates Bockholt with Germany's coveted decoration, the "Ordre Pour le Mérite", and still another dubbed him "von Bockholt", evidently on the assumption that every German officer was a nobleman. A book stated that "L 59" was transported to Bulgaria in sections and assembled there. Why a zeppelin could not fly the 1,200 miles to Yambol when it was expected 'to fly 4000 miles to Africa is a question which seems not to have troubled the author. In announcing his order to turn back, Bockholt faced the threat of the first sky-jacking in history according to still another author. And finally, in a popular German war book, Bockholt's death is lifted to the plane of classical apotheosis:

"Near London, the dashing Bockholt, after he made the famous Africa trip to help Lettow-Vorbeck, takes his zeppelin up to 23,600 feet to escape an English airplane. But it succeeded in climbing even higher, its machinegun sends a volley of incendiary bullets into the hull of the ship. Burning, the ship and crew sink into the sea. As not a few of them, flaming pillars of sacrifice and German heroism".

In this hothouse of fantasy, another group of stories began to flourish, stories "explaining" why "L 59" was ordered to break off its flight. To many, there was something odd about the decision to recall the ship. Something was missing, logically and psychologically. If the decision to start on the 21st was the right one, did the recall on the 23rd manifest a loss of nerve? Conversely, if the decision to recall "L 59" was correct, was the start on the 21st an error? To admit an error in launching this odyssey seemed iadmissable to the patriotic German of the day. There also was something inconsistent between the bold inspiration which gave birth to this feat and the sober calculations which ended the venture. There had to be a more satisfactory answer.

Göbel, the meteorologist at Yambol, wrote a factually corect account of the voyage and described how the radio station at Nauen managed to reach the ship with its message to return. Yet, he goes on to muse: "The Balkans, which for ages past, have been the playground of cunning espionage, were no exception in this respect during the World War. Detail after detail seeped out in 1917 already. London was quite well informed about the flight of "L 59" to Khartoum. This is not the most farfetched explanation of the recall message which reached 'L 59' over the Sudan". But what was this "farfetched explanation"? Göbel acknowledged that the order recalling the zeppelin originated in Berlin. Still he implies foul play; what it is he will not say.

Others were less reticent. One theory had it that it was all the fault of the British. They fooled the Naval Command into ordering "L 59" to return by spreading exaggerated rumors about the situation in East Africa! Buttlar and Lehmann, who had been close to the "China Affair", re in this vein. Others made the misleading rumors more specific —- London had falsely broadcast that Lettow had surrendered. The fact that the British never claimed to have captured him was ignored. When most of these "we were misled" claims were made, both General Lettow-Vorbeck and Governor Schnee had already written books about the war in Africa and it would have been possible to check their accounts against the allegedly misleading news reports from London. The comparison would have shown that the English reports were substantially correct and that the Naval Command, far from being misled by then, / was reasonably well informed.

The false rumor school was soon outdone by a much bolder claim: the recall message was a fake and had been sent by the British Secret Service.

The earliest version of this claim seems to have been into circulation by none other than an English Intelligence officer, who, by reason of his former duties, gave the story greater credence than it deserved. It was quickly taken up in Germany. At first, the Forged Message thesis was stated on a tentive basis:

"There is a theory, and a number of probabilities support it, that the radio message containing the order to return was sent from England. Thanks to an excellent espionage organization, the British were probably informed about the Africa trip and possibly took certain countermeasures with this radio message".

The author thought this a reasonable hypothesis because: "The fact of the matter is that at the time the radio message was sent, Lettow-Vorbeck was in no particular difficulties; to the contrary, he had just won new successes on the Makonde Plateau...", an explanation which might have surprised Lettow, Schnee and others. A popular magazine, the "Koralle", painted a more vivid picture. After relating how the front engine was finally repaired so that "L 59" could again receive radio messages (the reader will recall that this engine failure did not impede radio reception), the first encoded message is received. It is quickly deciphered and handed to Bockholt.

"His lips tighten grimly. He has flown thousands of kilometers across enemy territory without mishap. He is close to his goal. Return? At once? Was all this for nothing? But a German officer can do only one thing - obey! At the same hour, Lettow-Vorbeck's entire force still stands exactly where 'L 59's' nose points, on the Makonde Plateau. Not one of his troops has been captured. The German Naval Command knows nothing about the alleged defeat of the Germans. It therefore cannot have sent the signal. The whole message is a hoax. The British Intelligence Service has fashioned a masterpiece. It has camouflaged itself as Nauen, enciphered its message in the secret German code and accomplished what its own aviators, what the elements had been unable to achieve".

If such stories are needlessly false and often absurd, they do serve a purpose. They permit the story teller to enhance his tale, they also conveniently absolve those guilty of a possibly flawed judgment in launching or stopping the "China Affair". They permit the cancellation of the mission to be blamed on "pusilanimous politicians", as one German airforce officer did, a mini-version of the "stab in the back" theory applied to the "China Affair".

Man does not like to see his heroes fall victim to the ordinary vicissitudes of life. It is antithetical to the concept of a hero for he is something larger than life. So a hero may not be defeated by an ordinary being nor may his quests fall victim to happenstance, stupidity or error. To remain a hero, he must succumb to a force of at least equal magnitude. From this arises the stab-in-the-back theories of history. Siegfried, the German folk hero, is slain by Hagen only after he treacherously tricked Siegfried's wife into revealing the spot on her husband's back which had not become armored by the bath which Siegfried had taken in the blood of the dragon he had slain. So too, the heroism of the German armed forces in the first World War could be brought to nought only through immense treachery at home, the "Dolchstoss Legende" — the stab in the back theory. And so too, the noble enterprise of "L 59" could not fail because, through error Or accident, it started too late; it could not end through the dry calculations of some staff aide, balancing probabilities of failure against the chance of success. It had to fail in the heroic vein, the unconquerable hero falling before the base, but magically potent villain. To many Germans, that villain has always been the British Secret Service. "L 59" had to end ensnared in its net.

As a result, to this day the story repeats itself that: ".,.. some time presumably had to elapse before Bockholt recovered from his chagrin on learning that the orders from the German Admiralty had been sent by the British".

For those who accept that Berlin did indeed recall "1 59", the debate is not ended, however. Should the order to return have been given at all, keeping in mind the military and psychological results at which the "China Affair" had aimed?

Even those who argue that "L 59" should have continued its flight despite what Berlin perceived the military situation in Africa to be, do not say that a safe conclusion of the venture was guaranteed. Rather, they emphasise the psychological results which had been expected from the flight. The flight was to dramatize the genius of German technology and the willingness to fight with all means possible and where ever possible. Even if the progress of the British campaign in Africa and Lettow's change in tactics in October and November of 1917 had deprived the flight of its military significance, would not the arrival of an airship in Africa, even if too late, still dramatize the superior technical skills and determination of Germany? Did those responsible display sufficient political skill and insight? Was the Colonial Office and the Naval Command justified in throwing away these potential advantages?

The question whether of "L 59" should have continued its mission in face of certain failure and with grave risk to the lives of the crew raises a nice question of military ethics. There will be occasions when under the imperatives of the situation a military commander must carry out an operation even though it has little chance of success and presents great dangers to the men involved. History is not without examples of death incurred in making a symbolic gesture, justified by the profound impact it had on the course of the conflict. Whether the hoped for psychological results of the completed, but unsuccessful flight of "L 59" would have justified the likely sacrifice of its crew is a question which these critics do not raise.

There is little doubt that if the operation had been successfully completed, it would have aroused the highest admiration from friend and foe alike. However, the tendency to discount failure, even gallant failure, is great. If the mission had been able to continue to its bitter end, it might easily have turned into an opéra bouffe or worse, into a reprehensible, futile sacrifice. What would have been the world's reaction to Grussendorf manfully parachuting into the midst of what turned out to be British troops or of "L 59" stranding while vainly searching for Lettow who was then marching south into Mozambique, knowing nothing of the relief Berlin was sending him? What would have been the focal point of a picture of the giant airship falling prey to the waiting British planes - would the focus have been upon the German ability to make the unprecedented flight or upon the British ability to frustrate its success? The heroic aspects of the flight might easily have been swallowed up by the judgement that the flight was quixotic and irresponsible.

The proposition that the expedition should have been continued for psychological and political reasons has been seriously supported by many, though not by all Germans. The German Official History of the War finds that the order was proper in the circumstances. Some may be inclined to discount this conclusion because of a suspicion that the account was likely to approve whatever the German command had done but the Official British History of the Great War also arrived at the judgment that "L 59" should have been ordered home.

Like the Africa trip, Bockholt's Mediterranean campaign must be written off as a wasted effort. Strasser's view that it was not possible for the airship to mount a sustain bombing effort was fully vindicated, During the three months that "L 59" operated in the Mediterranean, it completed only one successful mission, the raid on Naples.

Yet the British Intelligence Service saw the Mediterranean as a promising field of operations for airships. The role which the Royal Navy envisaged for airships was as scouts for German and Austrian submarines, guiding the U boats to their targets, inducing the convoys to scatter or shepherding them towards the submarines. Special instructions on how to deal with these tactics were issued to Allied Mediterranean convoys. Bockholt mentioned the valuable assistance which he could render the submarines in determining Mediterranean shipping routes in his proposal of December 16. However, he apparently did not mean that this should be done on a systematic basis, but rather he thought of it as an incidental benefit of other flights, just as he had reported the convoy he had sighted in the Karpathos Straits on his way home from Africa. The emphasis of his proposals to the Naval Staff and in the operations orders which were issued to Bockholt on the basis of them was on bombing operations. The Germans never attempted to combine aerial and submarine operations in the First World War. Insufficient range and endurance of the standard naval airship, unreliable communications and dependence on the weather may have acounted for this but even in the North Sea, where the proximity of the German bases minimized these shortcomings, there were few occasions on which fleet and airships cooperated in offensive operations. "L 59" never attempted to work with German and Austrian naval units and since its other successful operations were confined to a single raid on Naples, the ship's presence in the Mediterranean theater of war made no discernible impact on the course of the war there.

If the operations of "L 59" had no impact on the course of the war, neither did they have any influence on the future development of military airship operations in Germany. The day of the German naval airship was almost over. For all practical purposes, the end came on August 5, 1918 when five airships crossed the North Sea to make a new attempt to bomb London. Strasser was on board "L 70", the navy's newest ship of an improved design. It was under the command of von Lossnitzer, a former aide to Strasser with comparatively little airship experience. He had been given command of the ship quite out of the normal order of seniority. As the zeppelins approached England, Strasser horrified his captains by sending out an overly long radio signal, long enough to let the British direction-finding stations get a fix on the approaching airships by radio triangulation. Strasser may have thought that the great height, 16,500 feet, at which his flotilla was approaching was sufficient protection for the ships. He had always seen altitude as the dimension in which the airship could outperform the airplane and find safety. However, the radio call was not Strasser's death warrant; a lightship had already spotted the zeppelins in the light of the setting summer day. Fifteen planes took off to meet them, three heading out to sea to try for an early interception. A De Havilland DH 4, a new light bomber which had been drafted into airship defense work because of its 23,000 foot operating ceiling, caught "L 70" and shot it down in flames before it reached the English coast. The remaining ships abandoned the raid. It was the last raid ever mounted by German airships. Strasser's energy and elan were lost to the service which he had created.

In the meantime, Claudius Dornier, one of Count Zeppelin's engineers, was developing flying boats which by 1919 could have taken over the reconnaissance and patrol work of the naval airships. The airship officers had been forced to the reluctant conclusion that the airplane had gained "temporary superiority" over the airship. After the war, the German army and navy made no further plans to use airships. The Treaty of Versailles, which had ended the war, forced the Germans to turn over all of its remaining airships, a few had been sabotaged by their own crews, to the Allies and forbade further construction of airships though this ban was later lifted. This Prohibition would not have stopped the Germans, had they wanted to develop military airships, anymore than the prohibition against constructing military aircraft had stopped Col. Thomsen from planning anda developing a new airforce for Germany. The use of military airships ended when the Germans saw that the zeppelin was no longer needed to patrol the North Sea and that it was too vulnerable for military use. It was no longer a military asset.

The abandonment of the rigid military airship by the Germans did not end the military use of airships elsewhere. The United States and England, concerned with controlling the wide ocean spaces surrounding them, experimented with rigid airships as long range reconnaissance vehicles. They were, however, unable to develope them into sufficiently useful and reliable instruments. Non-rigid airships, however, fared better. Less spectacular than the zeppelins, British and French "blimps" and Italian semi-rigids, had enjoyed a great measure of success in the First World War, primarily in coastal patrolling and anti-submarine warfare. In pre-war Germany, Major Gross had experimented with small, non-rigid airships and Parseval had successfully built a number of semi-rigid craft. German officialdom, particularly Strasser, did not like them. The Parsevals suffered the additional handicap that they required large amounts of rubber for their envelopes and rubber was in short supply in wartime Germany. They were also too small and fragile to serve as bombers, a role in which the zeppelins served until the end of the war. Whether the Germans would have been better off foregoing the zeppelin raids and using smaller and cheaper craft for patrol purposes is difficult to say. The cry: "Gott strafe England" (God punish England) was a powerful one and the zeppelins were the means to inflict this punishment. Even Ludendorff did not try to meet this argument when the admirals advanced it to counter his demand that the navy give up its airships. The threat of the zeppelin raids certainly required a large anti-aircraft establishment to be maintained in England but the lack of bomber airships might also have encouraged the army to put the far more effective "Gotha" bombers into service much earlier than it did. Perhaps the blimps were also too slow for tactical reconnaissance but whatever arguments may be made for or against the non-rigid airships, their potential was not developed in Germany. 'The Allies got good service from them. British ships flew over 11,200 missions in the First World War and the French flew 3,300. One British blimp, "NS 11", made a 101 hour flight in 1919, covering over 3000 miles, a respectable performance compared to that of "L 59". As if history had sought to repeat itself, "NS 11" later crashed in a thunderstorm with the loss of all its crew. The performance of blimps was further improved during the Second World War. They again served the United States Navy in fighting German submarines. They made 55,900 flights and escorted 89,900 vessels without loosing any of their charges to the enemy. After 1945, the U.S. Navy built additional blimps for antisubmarine and early warning duties. One flew 7,000 miles non-stop without refueling during its eleven day journey. However, they too became technically obsolete and after one of the blimps collapsed in mid-air in 1960, they were retired in during the next year. The last series of blimps built had attained a displacement 20% greater than Bockholt's "L 23", For German commercial airship operations, the "China" flight of "L 59" proved a great stimulus. It was a harder and more realistic test of the possibilities of using zeppelins for long distance overseas flights than "LZ 120" had provided. The record set by "L 59" was soon challenged. In 1919, the Atlantic was crossed by a dirigible, the English "R 34", though it had lost the honor of the first Atlantic crossing to Lts. Alcock and Brown and their Vickers "Vimy" aircraft. "R 34" had remained in the air seven hours longer than "L 59", The Germans, however, were rightfully able to point out that "R 34" was a faithful copy of one of the super-zeppelins which had been shot down over England. Before peace was formally restored, the Germans had already built two small, fast commercial zeppelins, "Bodensee" and "Nordstern" which they operated on a regular, scheduled service between Friedrichshafen and Berlin. However, these two ships shortly had to be turned over to France and Italy as replacements for the ships which the German navy aircrews had sabotaged after naval vessels, lying at Scapa Flow, scuttled themselves to avoid falling into Allied hands. Neither Italy or France made any use of the airships they had received.

Construction of the "Los Angeles" for the United States Navy kept the Friedrichshafen works alive and after the ban on the construction of airships by Germany was lifted in 1924, the Zeppelin Company laid down its 127th ship. It displaced 3,708,600 cubic feet, 50% more than "L 59". It had accomodations for twenty passengers. "LZ 127" was powered by five 530 h.p. engines which could use either gasoline or hydrocarbon gas. 'The latter had the same weight as air. As it was used up, the cells in which it was carried could be refilled with air. This helped to solve the problem of how to keep the airship balanced as the consumption of fuel lightened the ship. In the days of "L 59", this could only be done by releasing precious lifting gas. The new ship carried a crew of seven officers and thirtyfour men, enough to allow a complete crew change every eight hours and provide the passengers with a commissary officer, a steward and a cook besides. On July 9, 1928, the ship was proudly christened "Graf Zeppelin". German airship navigation had been reborn and no more fitting name could have been given to the ship than that of the man who had nurtured an idea, conceived in a captive balloon over St. Paul, Minnesota, into a grand reality. "Graf Zeppelin" was one of the few exceptions to the rule that hydrogen filled, rigid airships could not Operate safely for long.³¹ During its life, it made 590 flights, including 144 ocean crossings, carried 13,110 passengers and 235,300 pounds of mail without the slightest mishap. Those who flew on the "Graf" described it as the most enjoyable form of transportation ever devised - quiet, smooth, retaining some of the charm of shipboard life and flying low enough so that the ground below remained real and alive and was not flattened out into the abstract, seemingly endless two dimensional pattern which passes below the air borne traveller today.

The success of the "Graf Zeppelin" led to the construction of the "Hindenburg". Germany was now alone in the field of commercial airship flight. Britain had tried and failed. Hoping that the rigid airship might knit together its farflung empire, England had embarked on an ambitious "Empire Communications Scheine", a network of airship routes reaching from London to Australia. Two large airships, "R 100" and "R 101" were built in 1930, but the badly constructed "R 101" crashed in France on its first operational flight. All but six of its fifty four passengers and crew died. With that, the British gave up the use of airships, civilian and military. In 1935, the crash of the U.S. naval airship "Macon" brought American rigid airship operations to an end.

The "Hindenburg" was completed in 1936. With a length of 803 feet and a displacement of 7,063,000 cubic feet, it was the largest airship ever built. Cruising at 78 m.p.h., its four 1,100 h.p. Mercedes diesel engines were capable of driving it at a top speed of 84 m.p.h. It could carry 50 passengers for a distance of 8750 miles. It began a regular transatlantic flight service. The eastbound crossing took on the average 65 hours. With the prevailing winds over the Atlantic being from the west, the homeward trip was made in 52 hours. On May 5, 1937, the "Hindenburg" was about to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, to open the second transatlantic season, when the now famous tragedy occured. Its hydrogen gas burst into flames and the ship crashed. A discharge of static electricity near a gas leak may have caused the loss. Thirty six passengers and crewmen died. Among them was Ernst A. Lehmann, once the commander of "LZ 120". The captain of the "Hindenburg", Max Pruss, formerly one of Baron Buttlar's helmsmen, survived.

Determined to end the ungovernable menace of hydrogen gas, the Germans built the next airship, a modified Hindenburg type, for helium operation. Helium was an inert gas which would not burn or explode. The United States, however, refused to sell helium to Nazi Germany and there was no other source from which the Germans could obtain sufficient quantities. Without helium, the new ship, the "Graf Zeppelin II" had to be inflated with hydrogen gas. It made only a few was found wanting in the scales of commerce and technological progress buried the rigid airship in the crypts of history, the world is the poorer for no longer being able to see its majestic progress through the skies.

Finis.