Hindenburg disaster newsreel footage (1937)

Original title

Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage

Genre

documentary film, silent film

Country

United States

Runtime

5 min

Rating

7.5 of 10 from 23 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Silent newsreel footage shows the Hindenburg zeppelin catching fire and crashing in 1937. Often paired with a famous radio announcer's emotional live commentary, the film captures the disaster from multiple camera angles.

historicalrawunsettlingchaoticvisceralfragmenteddatedeerie

What happens

Newsreel footage of the May 6, 1937 Hindenburg disaster, where the zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg crashed and burned down, was filmed by several companies. The film is frequently shown with narration, by WLS (AM) announcer Herbert Morrison, who was narrating a field recording on to an acetate disc, and was present to watch the zeppelin's arrival. Morrison's commentary was recorded by engineer Charles Nehlsen, but not broadcast until the next day on May 7, 1937, one of the first times that recordings of a news event were ever broadcast. In 2002, the audio recording was selected for preservation into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. It has since been combined with the separately filmed newsreel footage. Most of the original newsreels have their own narration, and many composite edits have been made for documentaries dubbed with Morrison's commentary. Four newsreel teams were in attendance at the time of the disaster. They were positioned close to each other and adjacent to the mooring mast for the airship. As a result, the newsreels do not show the mooring mast for the airship to be moored (other mooring masts appear in the background in many of the reels), unlike many of the press photographs which were taken farther away which show the mast as well as two of the newsreel cameramen with their cameras mounted atop of newsreel trucks. None of the newsreels captured the initial signs of disaster as the cameras had momentarily stopped filming after the ground crew caught the landing ropes (the fire started approximately four minutes after the first starboard rope was dropped at 7:21). At least one amateur film, taken by Harold N. Schenck, is known to exist, showing a side view of the stern on fire and the tail crashing to the ground. In 1997, the original reels were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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