ZEPPELIN/HINDENBURG: ZEPPELIN/HINDENBURG: Extremely rare, m...

Hammer

£15,500

ZEPPELIN/HINDENBURG:

ZEPPELIN/HINDENBURG: Extremely rare, most probably unique, Hindenburg crash recovered silver plated hollowware pitcher marked DZR with the DZR logo. This pitcher together with the serving tray are quite possibly the only examples of their type to have survived. This lot shows obvious evidence of extreme heat damage with seared fire effects that include an open seam on the handle resulting from heat expansion, as well as heat blistering. In the direct aftermath of the disaster on Thursday 6^th May 1937, as the LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, Matawan, New Jersey, volunteer Fire Chief Leroy Smith rushed to the crash scene with five others. After performing his duties, he recovered the pitcher and tray being sold in the next lot and buried them in the surrounding sand. Guards were allowing no objects to be removed from the site. The fire chief returned several days later and 'rescued' these items, together with six full bottles of beer, which he shared with his five co-rescuers, one of which was sold by Henry Aldridge & Son in 2009 for £11000. Maker's stamp Gebrüder Hepp Pforzheim 4T. 5½ins.

The engineering and construction of the airship Hindenburg was one of the very highest achievements in early aviation history. The idea of the Zeppelin airship had its roots in the Midwestern United States, where Graf von Zeppelin travelled just after finishing his duties as a Prussian observer of the American Civil War in the 1860s. After progressive developments between the first Zeppelin test flight over Lake Constance in 1900 and the construction of the Hindenburg in 1936, an eventual fleet of airships was to enter regularly scheduled frequent passenger and mail service to North and South America. While the Hindenburg was a de facto prototype of the future airships, its dramatic crash on May 6^th 1937 put an end to this plan and to all future Zeppelin flights. The first international flight of the 'Graf Zeppelin' was to New York in 1928; famously, it circumnavigated the globe in 1929. The Hindenburg entered service in 1936. Measuring just over 800 feet long, 78 feet shorter than the Titanic, 135 feet in diameter at its largest point, and with a gas capacity of over 7 million cubic feet, it and its never placed in service sister ship 'Graf Zeppelin II', were the largest aircraft ever flown. More than three times the length of an Airbus, it was destroyed in 90 seconds.

The radio reporting of the crash by Herbert Morrison, "OH, THE HUMANITY", is one of the highlights of Twentieth Century broadcasting: "It is burning, bursting into flames and is falling on the mooring mast and all the folks we… this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world!...Oh, it's four or five hundred feet into the sky, it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen....Oh, the humanity and all the passengers!" The successive images of the enormous flames tearing through the body of the airship as it falls, breaking apart, people running from the airship, some in flames, make a set of moving images of the Twentieth Century that many consider unmatched.

Ex Townsend/Wolff Collection.