Tag: Zeppelin

On a Transatlantic Flight

As a kid, Werner Doehner had loved to travel. He was born in Germany, but his family moved to Mexico when he was a young man. As a result, the family made several trips back-and-forth between Mexico and their German homeland. And every time they traveled, the young man was excited, as excited as he was the first time he ever flew across the Atlantic. One particular trip especially stuck out in Werner’s mind, although he didn’t talk about it until he was an old man. It would be the last trip the five members of his family would take as a group.

Werner’s dad was a pharmaceutical executive for a large German drug firm in Mexico, and he had accumulated great wealth over the course of his career. That allowed the family to travel in style, and that is also what appealed to young Werner when the family made trips back and forth “home” to Germany. It’s always a great way to travel when you can afford to sleep in comfy beds at the nicest hotels, dine at the swankiest restaurants, and luxuriate in the extra large seats on the flights. And that’s the level of luxury that Werner and the family enjoyed on that last transatlantic flight they took together. But there was more. In an effort to make the trip into a true adventure, the Doehner family had booked first-class train travel that would take them on down to Mexico once they had arrived on the flight from Germany into the New York City area. The kids were especially excited over that part of the trip–Werner, his brother, and his sister.

Years later, Werner would talk about that last trip the family made, but it wasn’t until he was an old man and was prodded to talk about the trip by his son. Up until then, Werner didn’t talk much about that flight. As he grew up, he went to a prestigious university in Mexico, majoring in electrical engineering. On another trip back to Germany, he met and fell in love with a woman named Ellin. The couple got married in her hometown of Essen. The young pair moved back to Mexico City, but they eventually immigrated to Massachusetts where Werner made a career with the New England Electrical System before retiring. He and Ellin were married over 50 years. It was shortly before he died in 2019 that he began to open up to his son about the events of several decades before.

Werner finally told his son all about it after keeping it to himself for all those years. He finally spoke of that horrendous fire, the flames that seemed to come on all of them so suddenly. He recalled that his mother first threw his brother out of a window, then she grabbed 8 year old Werner and threw him out before leaping to the ground herself. In doing so, his mother broke her hip. All three of them suffered severe burns. Sadly, both Werner’s father and his sister didn’t survive the fire. And Werner carried the scars he got in the fire for the rest of his life. But the emotional scars were just as real and were the deeper marks of what had happened to him and his family at the end of that flight.

You see, Werner Doehner was the last survivor of the 1937 burning and crash of the LZ-129 Zeppelin, better known to you as the Hindenburg.

On an Air Raid

Everyone knows about the German bombing of London during the war. We see something similar on the news in 2022 with the Russian air attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. However destructive and terrorizing the Kyiv attacks are–and they are–the bombings of London were a shock for a world not used to attacks on the civilian population during the war.

You see, it was the German mentality that war was not only waged by the military, but that it was also fought and supported materially by the civilian population. The chances of German success on the battlefield, the theory went, would be greatly increased if the population that supplied the opposing army would be itself harmed and its ability to supply that army stopped.

Thus, on September 8th, in the war’s second year, the British capital city was first attacked by the air. Massive damage resulted. Twenty-two civilians were killed, and six of them were children. The Germans were promptly labeled “baby killers” by the British public. Besides the blackout orders and bomb shelters that were put in place, anti-aircraft batteries were moved from other places to London to provide improved protection against future attacks by the German air force. Searchlights crisscrossed the night skies above the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham Palace.

The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) also fought bravely to combat the attackers. As the bombings of London increased, the pilots of the RFC took to the air to defend the population. Lt. William Robinson became an instant minor celebrity in Britain for being the first RFC pilot to shoot down a German aircraft during the raids. It seems he was the first to discover the tactic of flying much higher than the German raiders and then attacking them from above. The Germans, much more interested in the placement and release of their deadly cargoes as well as the deadly anti-aircraft fire from below, didn’t expect attacks from above. The tactic changed the course of the air war above London.

By the war’s end, almost 3,000 Londoners had either been killed or seriously wounded by the bombings. What the Germans didn’t kill was the fighting spirit of the British people. In fact, the bombings may have galvanized English public opinion to fight the war to a successful conclusion at any cost. Some of the citizenry felt a sense of pride that they, too, had been under fire during the war. But London would suffer much worse two decades later. In fact, almost ten times worse.

Yes, the German bombings of London in World War I–first by zeppelin, then by large bombers–as terrible as they were, paled in comparison to the London Blitz that would take the lives of 20,000 Londoners in World War II.