>>1000162To the end of his life, Pruss believed the Hindenburg disaster was the result of sabotage. In a 1960 interview, he dismissed the possibility that an electrical discharge could have caused the accident, arguing that zeppelins had passed through thunderstorms and even lightning many times without incident:
Pruss: You see, we have on every flight to South America we have lightning and thunderstorms. In about 4 degrees north of the equator they have thunderstorms all the time, and we were going with a ship traveling right through the thunderstorms and never was there trouble. During the First War, we had lightning hit the ship. At the bow you have a little hole through was going lightning in [i.e., lightning burned a small hole at the bow], and then [the lightning went] through the framework and then the radio station and the antenna was blown up, and no more [i.e., nothing else happened]. This thing happened at Lakehurst two times–we had big thunderstorms before the start. Passengers which were coming with airplanes [i.e., flying from Newark to Lakehurst on American Airlines], must come with buses, because flying was forbidden. And we were waiting outside the ship, because we are thinking not that the next lightning would go in the ship. And when the passengers were there, we took them inside, and we [flew] through the thunderstorm toward the sea.
