◆ SpookStack

MES es ee ee nae der TW Stoeckle was on the starboard side of the ship at a window in the passenger lounge when he saw the right landing line dropped. After observing this, Stoeckle went to the cabin to get a coat out of his suitcase, which had been left in front of his cabin door. Stoeckle's cabin was No. i), and was located on the upper pass- enger deck. While Stoeckle was standing in the oorridor in front of his cabin he heard a mffled detonation, and due to the angle of in- cident which followed, he was pressed against the corridor wall. Stoeckle then worked his way to the stairway which went down to the port side of the deck. Half way down this stairway Stoeckle saw - through a window that it was too high to jum. At this time he also saw a reflection of fire on the ground. He waited until the ship touched the ground and the jar buret a window from its frame, and he then realized that the passengers on the upper deck had noticed the danger due to his hearing them running back and forth. When the ship reached the ground Stoeckle used a broken window to get out of the ship, and on landing on the ground he leoked over his shoulder and noticed that the ship was afire at the point he had just left. Stoeckle ran from the ship to escape falling girders, and shortly returned to the vicinity of the ship to assist those who were hurt. Stoeckle estimated the time between the dropping of the landing line and the inclination of the bow to be as long as it would require him to go from the passen- ger lounge down the corridor to the cabin corridor, to the location of his cabin, which was about half way down the cabin corridor, He was wnable to exactly estimate the time that it required him to do this, but stated that he covered this distance in a hurry as he was anxious to get his overcoat. The explosion had no particular effect on Stoeckle, and it was the angle of inclination that caused him to be pressed against the corridor wall. At the time of the explosion Stoeckle noticed no un- usual odor. Stoeckle advised that his experience on airships prior to this trip had been limited to a fourteen hour flight over Germany. He estimated the ight of the airship above the ground to be about eighty or one hundred meters, and drew this conclusion from his observation of the landing line,which is about one hundred twenty meters long, and when the line was thrown from the ship a portion of the line rested on the ground. To Stoeckle's knowledge the freight aboard the ship was stored as follows: films in the control car; bags in the aft part of the ship, and as to other baggage - he had no kmowledge. o