3-023-420 - British Pathe Ltd/Heritage Images

The German Airship Hindenburg, its Rear Half Destroyed And Obscured By Smoke, With its Nose and Body in Flames and Crashing to the Ground at the Landing Site at Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA, As Silhouetted Figures Run Away from the Fire, 1937. The '...largest and most impressive of all lighter-than-aircraft. Because of Hitler's general attitude, the United States had refused to sell Germany helium for their ship. She had to make do with thousands of cubic feet of flammable hydrogen...the Hindenburg arrives after her Atlantic flight. Over the fields she cruises for three hours, while making vain attempts to bring her tail up to the level of her nose. Ballast is dropped again and again, but in vain. Then she drops her mooring ropes and, [explosion, screams]...Death of an airship, and, in truth, death for all airships, because from this blazing moment, they lost any hope of a future'. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew members were killed. The publicity surrounding the disaster shattered public confidence in giant, passenger-carrying rigid airships, and marked the abrupt end of the airship era. From "Time To Remember - Sense Of Values", 1937 (Reel 3); documentary film about the events of 1937, war in the Far East, build up to war in Europe.