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The Hindenburg The Inferno The arrival of the Hindenburg, thirteen hours behind schedule, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on the evening of May 6, 1937, promised to be routine. The ship had an unblemished safety record on eighteen previous Atlantic crossings. In fact, no passenger had ever lost his life on any commercial airship. Still, because this was the beginning of the most ambitious season yet for airship voyages, reporters, photographers and news reel cameramen had their eyes …

…burning of the Hindenburg made it clear once and for all that dirigible travel was merely a blind alley in the evolution of flight. The giant airships’ remaining loyalists were abandoned, along with Gill Robb Wilson, the landing supervisor at Lakehurst that fateful evening, "Those of us long in the air know what it is to reach out in salute to the embodiment of our hopes, and suddenly find our fingers filled with ashes(Marben 59)."