AIR DISASTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22725, 11 May 1937, Page 11

AIR DISASTER

OFFICIAL INQUIRY. WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT WITNESSES TO TOTAL 150 ' By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received May 10, 6.45 p.m.) NEW YORK. May 9 The Navy Department has decided to defer its inquiry into the Hindenburg disaster until the Department of Commerce has completed its investigation, which is fexpected to occupy a week. The Department of Commerce announced that 150 witnesses to be called. It is hoped that Captain Preuss, commander of the airship, and Captain Stampf, second in command, will have recovered sufficiently to testify. Otherwise their depositions will be taken in hospital. FORMER COMMANDER ZEPPELINS IN THE WAR EXTRACT FROM HIS BOOK • CHERBOURG, May 9 The wife of the late Captain Lehmann, formerly commander of the Hindenburg, was not aware of her husband's death until she arrived at Cherbourg to-day from Berlin. It is recalled that Captain Lehmann's book " The Zeppelins" revealed that he was the designer of a plan during the Great War for 20 Zeppelins to rain 6QOO bombs on London, especially on the Bank of England, in the hope of paralysing the economic, system. The plan never reached the Kaiser. Captain Lehmann wrote: " None of us desired to be a party to it, as it would involve at least 1,000,000 women and children, and we did not desire to destroy, without necessity, a city which is such a precious possession to civilised human kind. " When raids were authorised later, there was an express stipulation to avoid Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral." AIRSHIPS FOR SOVIET MOSCOW, May 9 Russia is not. deterred by the Hindenburg disaster and intends to continue building dirigibles.