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CE Fas Te A Ll 2 ee | Ay. that it then proceeded to the Southeast of the station and they could have landed the ship at this time, he believes, if the ground orew had been available, but as indicated above, this had been arranged for 6 p. m. He advised the storm continued later until about 6:30 p. m. Daylight Saving Time and the ship endeavored to land at 7 p. m., Daylight Saving Time; that it came in from the Southwest, passed over the mooring mast and swung in a large circle to the left and approached the field from the West. The cable had been laid out in a Southeasterly direction; that the weather changed and tha eable was moved to a Northeasterly direction and the ship came in at about 150 feet elevation West of the mooring mast. The ship has sufficient speed to steer,and reversed its engines and it was about 7:<0 p. m. when they dropped the ground ropes. He indicated he was about 100 yards from the mooring mast between the bow and stern of the ship 3; that he observed the stern of the ship throw out water ballasts three times, which would indicate that possibly the ship was heavy in the after part. The handling ropes on the stern had been dropped. These do not, of course, touch the ground. The ship was settling to a landing when he observed a reflection of light on the entire edge of the upper fin and there appeared, at the same time, flames out of the port side, just above and forward of the port fin. The tail started to sink and the flames were traveling along the top of the ship and coming out in two or three places in spurts of flame. The ship broke in the middle and the nose was the last to fall. Water was discharged from the front of the ship and when it came down it was in total collapse. He thereafter ran in to help in the aid of people trying to leave the ship. The above meeting was adjourned at 2:30 p. m. in order that the various members of the Board of Inquiry and the Technical Advisors could proceed to the vicinity of the wreck of the Hinden- burg where they made casual observations from the sidelines and various photographs were taken by the newspaper fraternity. In connection with my prior above reference to Lieutenant Colonel Harold B. Hartney and Roger Williamson, Mr. Williamson in- dicated to me that he had discussed with Commander Rosendahl the advisability of assigning numerous naval personnel to make a search of the terrain on the naval air station field and that he had dis- cussed this with Senator Copeland who was very much surprised to learn that they had not made a search of the ground in the vicinity