Fire at Lakehurst: The Night the Airship Era Ended

The Ship That Shouldn't Have Been There

Sixty-one people survived. That's the fact that tends to get lost.

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The Machine Itself

Start with the scale of what the Hindenburg actually was. Eight hundred and four feet long.

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The Hydrogen Problem

Here's the thing that sits underneath the whole story. The Hindenburg was designed to use helium.

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May Sixth, Nineteen Thirty-Seven

The Hindenburg was arriving at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey on the evening of May sixth. It was the first transatlantic crossing of the nineteen thirty-seven season.

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The Voice That Made It History

Herbert Morrison was a radio reporter from WLS in Chicago. He was at Lakehurst that evening to record a routine arrival, a feature piece on transatlantic travel that was meant to capture the glamour of the Hindenburg docking for listeners who'd never seen one.

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The Swastika on the Tail

There's a dimension of this story that doesn't get enough direct attention. The Hindenburg carried a large Nazi swastika on its tail fins.

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The Comparison That Gets Forgotten

Four years before Lakehurst, another airship disaster killed far more people. The USS Akron, an American helium-filled military airship, crashed off the New Jersey coast in April nineteen thirty-three.

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Thirty-Four Seconds and a Century

The Hindenburg disaster is sometimes described as the end of the airship era. That's accurate, but it understates how sudden the ending was.

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