Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage

"Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage" [http://www.archive.org/details/hindenberg_explodes] is a 1937 documentary film which shows the burning, explosion, and crash of the zeppelin "Hindenburg". (See Hindenburg disaster.)

The film is narrated by Herbert Morrison, who was there to watch the zeppelin's arrival in the United States. At that time, Morrison was a 31-year-old Chicago radio reporter, whose commentary was recorded and not broadcast until later. It has been combined with the separately filmed newsreel footage. To modern eyes, the result may appear to have been a live broadcast with pictures and sound, but it was not. Four newsreel cameramen were in attendance (though there may have been fifteen in the start some may have left), but none captured the "Hindenburg's" first flames on film.

The newsreel cameramen wanted a spectacular incident like that of the USS Akron to happen (when ground crew get pulled up), so they decided to focus all their camera lenses on the ground crew. All four stopped rolling momentarily, all missing the first flames. One of them (Pathe) only started to roll when the ship's tail was on the ground.

In 1997, the original reel was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Multiple reels

There were four newsreels of the fire, filmed by Pathé, Paramount News, Movietone News, and Hearst. The Universal Newsreel cameraman was present but had left because of the bad weather to go watch a Broadway play.

The following is a description of each of the newsreels:
*Pathe: As the camera aimed at the ground crew, the ship exploded. The camera then stopped rolling until the ship's tail was on the ground and the side collapsed inward [http://www.itnsource.com/en/Entire-Archive/Search/ShotListNonDigitised/?ref=%2fBpathe%2f0000%2f00%2f00%2fBP00000052821.htm&links=HINDENBURG&duration=&rating=0&thumb=%2fimg%2fassets%2fno_preview_available_pathe.png] .
*Paramount: This one films the disaster from up close and starts rolling a few seconds after the initial explosion [http://www.bufvc.ac.uk/itnstudy/encodings.html] .
*Movietone: As with the Pathe cameramen, the Movietone News cameras also aimed at the ground at the time of the fire, but didn't aim down as much. It only started to roll again when the tail touched the ground [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGCTsqGWoUk] .
*Universal (possibly filmed from another newsreel team, Hearst): This newsreel caught most of the explosion. Aimed at the ground crew from a far away distance, the ship explodes and in five seconds (the time it took for the stern to be consumed by the fire) the camera pans upward filming the fire as the tail drops down and the nose burns like a blowtorch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V5KXgFLia4] .

equence of events caught on film

# The rear third of the ship is burning.
# The bow goes up, while the stern stays level to the ground.
# Just when the ship's tail touches the ground, flames roar out of the nose "like a blowtorch" (first part of sequence only caught in still pictures, not newsreels).
# The section just in front of the engines bends in, causing a small explosion to occur.
# The ship is now on the ground, and as the word "Hindenburg" gets "erased" by the flames, the ship touches the ground and bounces up again, and the ship crushes to the ground.

Quotation

*"Oh, the Humanity!!"

See Herbert Morrison for more details on the broadcast.

External links

* [http://www.archive.org/details/hindenberg_explodes Internet Archive]
* [http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Hindenburg Google Video]