Untitled Document

06 May 2004

Hindenburg

At 7:25 p.m. on May 6, 1937, the German airship Hindenburg was nearing the mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air station in New Jeesey. It was completing its flight across the Atlantic from Germany. Souls on Board were 36 passengers and 6l crew.

That is an astonishing ratio, if you think about it, but the Hindenburg was about the advertisement of Germany's new national power and the economics of the enterprise were purely secondary.

The Hindenburg was a thrilling sight. It was three football fields long, and cruised at a stately 80 knots. It used to fly over my Dad's house at 98 Sagamore Road in Millburn, New Jersey, on the way to Lakehurst. He said the swastikas the ambitious airship executives had painted on the fins were quite visible, and that the great airship occasionally took a few rounds from idle woodsman as it cruised over the Piney Barrens in the southern part of the state.

Hundreds of people were at Lakehurst to watch it land.

Remember the newsreel? The cameras were running. A tongue of flame appeared near the stern, spreading rapidly, and the seven-million cubic feet of Hydrogen went up all at once. The great dirigible settled swastikas first onto the tarmac, the delicate skeleton of aluminum melting and buckling. It only a half minute for it to happen, exactly as long as it takes to read the next paragraph aloud:

"Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen, and what a sight it is, a thrilling one, a marvelous sight... The sun is striking the windows of the observation deck on the westward side and sparkling like glittering jewels on the background of black velvet... Oh! Oh! Oh!... It's burst into flames... get out of the way, please, oh my, this is terrible, oh my, get out of the way, please, it is burning, bursting into flames and is falling... Oh! This is one the worst... Oh! It's a terrific sight... Oh! and all the humanity..."

R. Tennyson Phillips was on the microphone, providing background patter for his listeners on the Mutual Network.

The end of the Hindenburg is perhaps the most dramatic public event caught on film until the 9-11 attacks.

I am surprised the pundits haven't made the connection. Maybe it is too obvious and they are leaving it up to me.

I am trying to think about other things, but not succeeding. A car bomb, the first big one in a few weeks, crashed intro the Green Zone in Baghdad. The attack was timed to catch the Iraqi civilians as they reported to work. There are five dead, and an American soldier. The Administration is chafing about having to go up to the Hill and request another $25 billion in supplemental funds for the occupation.

It is an uncomfortable situation, and the election is not getting any further away. Mr. kerry has been muted about this. He voted for the war in the Senate, and it was in the Senate years ago that he accused U.S. forces of atrocities in Vietnam. He has to be delicate in how he plays this.

The President was cross with Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday, unhappy he had to see the pictures from Abu Ghraib on the television first. There is some talk in the media that based on the precedence set in the Balkans, the Chief Executive could wind up at The Haig on war crimes charges.

I don't think so, and I doubt that Rumsfeld will get canned. There has been talk about that before, and he survived. But the senior individual being court-marshaled thus far for the abuse is a sergeant.

That clearly has to be fixed. I'll be interested to see who the senior person is that is forced to take responsibility. There is still hope that some sort of victory that can be salvaged out of this. It will take some focus, and I do not know if the angry young men will give us the luxury of the time to do so.

I read the text of an angry sermon in a mosque yesterday. It dripped with the militancy of the Wahhab, lashing out at the corrupt West. The words were bitter and the call for the scourging of the unfaithful and the subjugation of the unchaste was strident. The curious thing to me was that the sermon was given at a holy place next to a McDonalds restaurant in Morgantown, West Virginia.

So the struggle continues on a variety of unexpected fronts.

There was talk during the early planning for the construction of the Empire State Building that they would put a mooring mast for dirigibles at the very top of the World's Tallest Building. That would have been quite a sight, watching the great airships make their approach over Midtown, stately and grand.

And they are still arguing about whether the crash of the Hindenburg was sabotage, an act of terror. Imagine if it had happened in downtown New York?

I suppose there is nothing new under the sun.

R. Tennyson Phillips was not a one-hit wonder. He was a thoughtful man. He observed that "Freedom in these United States is not cheap, but it must never become unaffordable."

He got that right. Freedom is not free. It requires constant vigilance.

Accordingly, it is a good thing that Mr. Greenspan has kept the interest rates low. If we need to, we can always put a little extra on the credit card.