In response to the article (Remember When? March 27) about the German airship seen over Bradford, five T&A readers contacted us.
Doris Marsden writes: “My brother and I remember an airship passing over Hall Road in Eccleshill and flying very low towards Yeadon and Otley.
“This was around midday in May or June of 1935. This Zeppelin, as we then called them, was probably the British-made R100 because, large as it was, it did not compare in size to the Hindenburg or the Graf Zeppelin.
“This could also have been the airship seen over Moorside Road. Even to this day I can still remember how thrilled we were to see this huge object in the sky.”
Doris has put the cat among the pigeons, for the consensus of opinion in the original article was that the airship seen over Moorside Road was probably the Hindenburg, which more than likely made more than one trip across northern England before it blew up in New York on May 6, 1937.
Mrs O Baldwin, of Holroyd Hill, Bradford, says she saw the Hindenburg when she was about ten.
“We lived in Newby Street, West Bowling, and my dad took us to the bottom of the street on Ripley Street. We stood outside the Ripley Hotel. I have never forgotten the experience.”
One suggestion was that the Hindenburg flew over East Morton cemetery in May or June 1936 to drop floral tributes to a German prisoner-of-war.
T&A readers Ken Ramsden and Jack Hogg both saw the airship, in fact Mr Hogg says he saw the Graf Zeppelin in 1929 or 1930 and then, later in the Thirties, the Hindenburg.
Mr Ramsden was on his way home from school for lunch when he saw the Hindenburg. “I was 13 or 14 and was on a tram going up St Enoch’s Road. The Hindenburg was over the Great Horton area. We thought they must be taking photographs for the next war,” he says.
Mr Hogg, 91, was living in Highbank Cottages, off Moorhead Lane, Shipley, when he saw the Graf Zeppelin. How does he know it was that airship and not another?
“The local news said it was coming over and we had to watch out. It must have been 1929 or 1930 because in 1931 we moved to Low Moor. That’s where I saw the Hindenburg. I think the Hindenburg was the bigger,” he said.
Mr G D Burnet, from Guiseley, was living in Apperley Bridge in the late 1920s when he saw an airship flying down the Aire Valley towards Leeds.
“This was definitely the Graf Zeppelin, not the Hindenburg,” he added.
For the record, the Hindenburg was 808ft long and just over 135ft in diameter. It had a cruising speed of 76 mph. It flew from March 1936 until it crashed in May 1937.
Graf Zeppelin was much more successful, operating for nine years from 1928 to 1937. It was smaller than Hindenburg – 787ft long, 100ft in diameter and had a cruising speed of 72 mph.
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