On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg carrying 61 crew and 36 passengers arrived hours behind schedule at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Inclement weather forced this delay. Buffeted by winds and rain, the craft hovered in the area by most accounts for about an hour. The presence of lightning storms were recorded. The landing of the Hindenburg with these types of conditions was against regulations. However, by the time the Hindenburg began its landing, the weather was clearing up. The Hindenburg seems to have been traveling at a fairly fast speed for its landing and for some reason, the Captain attempted a high landing, being winched to the ground from a height of about 200 feet. Soon after the mooring lines were set, some eyewitnesses reported a blue glow on top of the Hindenburg followed by a flame towards the tail section of the craft. The flame was almost simultaneously succeeded by an explosion that quickly engulfed the craft causing it to crash into the ground killing 36 people. Spectators watched in horror as passengers and crew were burned alive or jumped to their deaths. As Herb Morrison announced for the radio, "It's burst into flames.... Get out of the way, please, oh my, this is terrible...Oh, the humanity and all the passengers."
The day after this horrible tragedy occurred, the papers started speculating about the cause of the disaster. Up until this incident, the German Zeppelins had been safe and highly successful. Many theories were talked about and investigated: sabotage, mechanical failure, hydrogen explosions, lightning or even the possibility that it was shot from the sky.
This is the actual recording of news footage that was following the Hindenburg as it attended to dock...
Obviously I was not born at this time, but have always known about this because of my study of History in school. The picture shown at the top is one that I scanned from an old Atlanta Journal that I have. When we moved into our house in Brookfield, we discovered when pulling up old linoleum flooring, that newspapers had been used as insulation. This is one of the papers found.
Also, when we lived in New Jersey (1971-1972), I had the opportunity to visit the location were the Hindenburg crashed and burned.
