Devil Doc
When Death smiles, Corpsmen smile back
It was on this day in 1937 that the Hindenburg, the largest aircraft ever to take flight, caught fire as it was landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing thirty-five people. The disaster effectively ended the burgeoning business of passenger flight in hydrogen-filled airships.
The Hindenburg was about as big as the Titanic. It traveled at eighty miles per hour, so the trip between Frankfurt, Germany, and Lakehurst, New Jersey, took two and a half days, half the time needed by the fastest ocean liner of the era. Passengers on the Hindenburg paid $400 for a one-way trip. They had sleeping compartments, sitting and dining areas, as well as a 200-foot promenade deck with a spectacular view of the ocean passing below. Passengers were free to roam about, to eat meals at a table on the best china, and to sample the best wines from France and Germany. The passengers could even dance to the music of a lightweight, aluminum grand piano, probably the only grand piano ever to provide entertainment for people in a flying machine.
The Hindenburg wasn't the first airship to crash. There had been more than five crashes already. But the Hindenburg was the highest-profile crash, in part because the destruction was caught on camera.
A photographer Sam Shere saw the ship come into view and drop its heavy mooring lines from the bow. Suddenly there was the sound of an explosion. Sam Shere saw a flash of light, and just at that moment took a picture with his camera, without even looking through the viewfinder. A moment later, the explosion knocked him to the ground, and the camera flew out of his hand. But the photo that he developed became the defining image of the disaster, showing flames erupting out of the top of the ship.
The disaster was also covered live on the radio. Correspondent Herb Morrison described his own horror as he watched the Hindenburg catch fire.
The result of the Hindenburg disaster was that the public soured on traveling by airship. People assumed that the hydrogen gas was too dangerous. It would be two more decades before a Pan American Airways DC-7 made the first nonstop trans-Atlantic flight by a commercial airplane.
Doc.
The Hindenburg was about as big as the Titanic. It traveled at eighty miles per hour, so the trip between Frankfurt, Germany, and Lakehurst, New Jersey, took two and a half days, half the time needed by the fastest ocean liner of the era. Passengers on the Hindenburg paid $400 for a one-way trip. They had sleeping compartments, sitting and dining areas, as well as a 200-foot promenade deck with a spectacular view of the ocean passing below. Passengers were free to roam about, to eat meals at a table on the best china, and to sample the best wines from France and Germany. The passengers could even dance to the music of a lightweight, aluminum grand piano, probably the only grand piano ever to provide entertainment for people in a flying machine.
The Hindenburg wasn't the first airship to crash. There had been more than five crashes already. But the Hindenburg was the highest-profile crash, in part because the destruction was caught on camera.
A photographer Sam Shere saw the ship come into view and drop its heavy mooring lines from the bow. Suddenly there was the sound of an explosion. Sam Shere saw a flash of light, and just at that moment took a picture with his camera, without even looking through the viewfinder. A moment later, the explosion knocked him to the ground, and the camera flew out of his hand. But the photo that he developed became the defining image of the disaster, showing flames erupting out of the top of the ship.
The disaster was also covered live on the radio. Correspondent Herb Morrison described his own horror as he watched the Hindenburg catch fire.
The result of the Hindenburg disaster was that the public soured on traveling by airship. People assumed that the hydrogen gas was too dangerous. It would be two more decades before a Pan American Airways DC-7 made the first nonstop trans-Atlantic flight by a commercial airplane.
Doc.
unless you were talking about a White House bash sponsored by Coors.
