The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, May 7, 1937, Page 1

Telephone | THE BISMARCK TRIBUNE [2 Wain 2200 | — . a } Fenty ESTABLISHED 1873 BISMARCK, N. D.; FRIDAY, MAY 7, 1987 | PRICE FIVE CENTS tonight. | 30 Perish As Gigantic Dirigible Explodes Landing at Lakehurs SCHOOL CHILDR xk &k * es x wk * : OREN : [Hindenburg Torn FLOCK 10 CAPITOL '* FOR CONVENTION 800 to 1,000 Young Citizens to Hear Governor, Thomp- son and Wemett EDDY YOUTH IS PRESIDENT Two Full Days of Education and Entertainment Provided Young Visitors Between 800 and 1,000 grade school children from all sections of North Dakota were gathered in Bismarck Friday for the annual two-day con- vention of the Young Citizens League, scheduled to open in the capitol at 1:30 p. m. Master Lloyd Frazier, Eddy county school boy and junior president of the league, will call the session to order in the chamber of the house of rep- tesentatives and will deliver the ad- dress of welcome, after which three speakers prominent in state affairs “will speak. A radio broadcast beginning at 2:30 p. m, over station KFYR will carry a part of the program to hundreds of rural North Dakota farm homes where parents will be listening in to the program in which their children are playing a major part. A business meeting, will be elected, will end the meeting. Other officers of the league in ad- dition to Frazier and Wemett are Ver- non McCulley, Emmons county junior vice president; Pauline Fos- ter county, junior secretary; Stevens, superintendent of schools in Dickey county, senior vice president; and Mrs, Lorene snr, Bismarck, sen- for the state convention are Eva Fogderud, superintendent of schools in Briggs county; Marie Huber, super- intendent of schools in Burleigh coun- ty, and Sidney Lokken, superintend- ent of schools in Stutsman county. A banquet in the main dining room and the terrace gardens of the Patter- son hotel at 6 p. m. Friday was to conclude the day’s activities. The banquet program will consist entirely of musical numbers. Places will be laid for between 700 and 800 guests, at wag stated. Saturday the visitors will capitol under the guidance Nelson, custodian, and will vicinity. Tonight the capitol will dis- play the letters “‘Y.P.L.” in colored lights as a special tribute to visiting twembers of the league. from rural districts, many of them from one-room schools. Its purposes are to inculcate good citizenship in its members and thus foster the well-being of the communi- bin of which they are the growing ns. Stomach Operation Performed on Burke John Burke, justice of the state su- * preme court, underwent an operation at St. Mary’s hospital in Rochester, States and a long-time member of the supreme bench, had suffered from a stomach ailment. He first went to Rochester several weeks ago for - sultation with physicians there. returning home he again left for chester on Apr. 27, in company with Mrs. Burke and their daughter Mar- iv and has been there since that Justice Burke was re-elected to s 10-year term on the supreme court bench Jast fall. 20 Thoroughbreds to Run for Derby Crown Louisville, Ky. May 7.—(7)—With no unexpected developments, 20 of the country’s outstanding 3-year-olds, 19 colts and one gelding, Friday were entered for the 68rd running of the $50,000 added Kentucky derby over a mile and a quarter at Churchill Downs Saturday. a CAPTAIN PRUSS * 8 '& * & Ina picture that defies words to describe, the spectacular disaster that destroyed the dirigible Hindenburg at the U.:S. naval base near Lake- hurst, N. J., is recorded for The Bismarck Tribune read- ers to see (above). Snapped almost at the instant of the explosion that set the air- ip afire, it is evident how quickly the fire spread and trapped scores of ‘the 100 persons, aboard it on the first North Atlantic trip of the 1937 season. Exploding hydrogen sends up a plume of sparks and flame at\ the stern, while the as yet un- - damaged bow keeps the wreckage afloat. * * * * * For a few futile moments after the explosion the un- harmed portion of the Hin- denburg kept the wreckage in midair — then it plum- meted to earth (right), to lie grimly silhouetted by the flames on the field of the na- val air base at Lakehurst, N. J., a death trap for scores of passengers and crew in one of the mest tragic air disasters in America. In command of ihe ill-fated ship was Capt. Max Pruss, who was seriously burned. Acme Telephotes (Special to The Bismarck Tribune) vis NEA. 3 Asunder by Blast As It Noses Down 68 Persons Jump to Safety, Many Badly Burned, as Zeppelin Ends Flight From Germany; Spark or Sabotage Blamed Inflammable Hydrogen in Cell at Stern Exe plodes; Flames Rip Through Greatest Air- ship; Plunges to Earth Mass of Fire Hindenburg disaster photos will be found on Pages 2, 7 and 9. —$—————— (By the Associated Press) _ _ Lakehurst, N. J., May 7.—Trapped in a flaming hell of high-explosive gas, 33 persons were listed as known dead Fri- day in the crash of the mammoth, silver-painted Zeppelin Hin-- denburg at 5:23 o’clock (CST) Thursday afternoon. The tragedy, striking with lightning swiftness as the giant craft hung 200 feet aloft, preparing to moor at the end of its twenty-first voyage across the North Atlantic, left 68 surviv- ors—many of them terribly burned and injured. Lieut. Commander Charles E. Rosendahl, commandant of the naval air station, announced that 24 of the ship’s 36 passen- gers and 44 of the crew of 61 had been accounted for. Twenty- six bodies had been recovered at dawn. The known dead or missing are 13 passengers, six of the crew and 10 others, mostly crew, whose names were not known. One of the fatalities was a member of the ground crew, caught amid the blazing debris that spilled from the skies in a fiery rain. Dozens of the survivors, catapulted or stumbling dazedly from the holocaust, hovered between life and death Friday in hospitals nearby the scene of the disaster. . apres. CHARRED) MUHLATED FORMS ee ARE SCANNED FOR IDENTIFICATION And with many of the dead still to be identified, anxious relatives and friends scanned charred, mutilated forms lying in the temporary morgue established in the airport garage. Even as U. S. army troops poked through the still smould- ering ruins at dawn, continuing their search for missing bodies, a federal investigating committee began to probe the disaster which struck the “queen of the skyways” with incredible swiftness. : Intimations that the mystery explosion “might have been caused by sabotage” came from German dirigible experts at widely-separated points—from Dr. Hugo Eckener, veteran commander of the ill-fated craft, in Graz, Austria, and from Count C. C. von Zeppelin, a nephew of the famed German in- ventor of the lighter-than-air craft, in Chicago. By a strange coincidence, both promptly suggested sabot- age as a possible cause of the tragedy. i 7 “I cannot grasp that flames have turned ‘our pride’ into a smashed skeleton,” muttered Dr. Eckener, when informed of the explosion. SCORES OF SPECTATORS WITNESS SUDDEN TRAGEDY Scores of spectators witnessed the sudden, shocking trag- edy. One instant, they waved greetings up to passengers stand- ing in the windows of the observation compartment. Then, in a flash, a cannonading explosion jarred the huge cigar-shaped craft, a streak of flame lashed out, and the Hin- denburg plummeted clumsily to earth. : Tiny black objects—bodies—hurtled from the flaming craft. On the ground, women spectators screamed and covered their eyes in horror. : In the span of seconds before flames enveloped the silvery fabric of the world’s largest dirigible, some of the passengers and crew jumped, crawled or were hurled clear of the falling ship. : P apt: Ernst Lehmann, a Zeppelin commander in the World war, and commander of the ship on previous voyages, stumbled from the wreck, gravely injured. P i So was Capt. Max Pruss, the veteran airman making his first voyage as Lehmann’s successor in command. Lehmann made the trip in an advisory capacity. SCREAMS OF PERSONS TRAPPED IN BAG AUDIBLE TO THOSE ON GROUND : Others were trapped in the blazing stern, their screams audible to the comparatively small crowd gathered to witness what they considered a “routine” arrival of the big Zeppelin. What happened to the airship that had made so many safe crossings to this and other countries remained a mystery. Carl Weigand, skipper of the S. S. Deutschland, who rushed to Paul Kimball hospital at Lakewood to see Captain Lehmann, uoted him as saying: > a a “TI don’t know what happened. She just went up. “Something strange caused that |tragedy,” said Gil Robb Wilson, state laviation director, announcing immedi- ste federal and state investigations. ‘There was an explosion, he said, in No. 2 gas cell stern. Fred D. Fagg, director of the federal bureau of sir commerce, arrived from New York and said an inquiry would be held Friday or Saturday. Dazed and bleeding survivors didn’t know what happened—didn’t know, jin fact, how they had survived. Came In During Storm The 800-foot long swastika-em- blazoned ship, graceful despite her bulk, sailed into her American port in a rain storm, more than 12 hours late because of headwinds which cut down speed over the Atlantic. Unhurried despite a planned quick turn-about with a record list of pas- sengers, many of them bound for the English coronation, the ship nosed up toward the mooring mast. Two lines went down at 5:20 p. m. (CST). Passengers, spotting relatives and greeters on the field 200 feet below, waved gaily. Three minutes later—explosion. The ship settled to earth, its bag! now a solid mass of flame, its terri- fied, bewildered occupants shrieking. The stories of the tragedy were all the same. “A blinding flash,” said Herbert O'Laughlin of Chicago, s survivor. It was America’s fourth major trag. edy of its kind, the other three being the naval dirigible Shenandoah, which broke in two during « Ohio, Sept. 2, 1925, with s di of 14; the destruction of off Barnegat Inlet, Apr. 4, 73 killed, and the plunge of (Continued on Page