The destruction of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, 1937
Passengers sit at table in a room with slanting windows; then fire bursts from the airship's hull, and its frame burns on the field.
Men in dark suits sit at small tables in a bright room with a slanting row of windows, served by a steward in a white jacket, a room that resembles the passenger deck of the Hindenburg; beside the curve of the great hull, white fire and smoke erupt and tear the covering away; the girders of the airship lie in a burning, crumpled lattice across the landing field under a towering black cloud, while ground crew and onlookers run.
On the evening of 6 May 1937 the German airship LZ 129 Hindenburg, arriving at Lakehurst from Frankfurt, caught fire as she came in to moor; the hydrogen that filled her cells burned in about half a minute. Thirty-five of the 97 people on board and one man on the ground died, and the age of the passenger airship ended with her. The pictures ran in Hearst's newsreel News of the Day, released by MGM.
