Hindenburg Crash Site, New Jersey
![](https://clui-files.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/presentation_small/public/ludb/nj/18535/2018-06-08-23-26-05adj.jpg?itok=k1dhYvXi)
The site of the most notorious airship disaster in the US is marked with a sign and a stone outline at the spot where the Hindenburg crashed in flames, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. The 800-foot-long Hindenburg was one of two German-made and operated rigid airships that made transatlantic flights between Germany and Lakehurst, New Jersey. It is the most famous airship crash, as it was witnessed by people amassed for its arrival at Lakehurst, including film crews and radio broadcasters. The Hindenburg was designed to be filled with helium, but it burned in this fiery way because it was filled with hydrogen. The US controlled the world’s supply of helium, and banned its export, in part due to limited supply. The US stopped the use of hydrogen in airships by 1925, 12 years before the Hindenburg disaster. Amazingly, 62 of the 97 people on board survived. After the end of the rigid airships of the 1920s and 1930s, blimps continued to crash, though in less dramatic and disastrous ways. In WWII, there were at least ten major blimp accidents in the US, resulting in a total of more than 50 deaths. Since the end of the Naval blimp program in the early 1960s, there have been more than a dozen airship crashes in the USA, though only one with a fatality (when an experimental Forest Service blimp fell apart on a test at Lakehurst in 1986).
![](https://clui-files.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/presentation_small/public/ludb/nj/18535/2018-06-08-23-25-14adj.jpg?itok=q_9T3HCI)
![](https://clui-files.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/presentation_small/public/ludb/nj/18535/2018-06-08-23-10-07adj.jpg?itok=3gYaoguL)