THE HINDENBURG (A&E Television Networks, $29.95)
When the German airship Hindenburg burst into flames over the Lakehurst naval base in New Jersey on May 6, 1937, it marked the end of an era of rigid airships that had been kings of the sky since the early days of World War I. This two-volume video program details–through black-and-white film footage; photographs; interviews with an airship pioneer, crew members and passengers who survived the accident, and eye witnesses; and the famous radio broadcast of Herb Morrison, who informed the world of the tragedy as it happened–the development of Germany’s rigid airships and the success of its most famous dirigible, the Hindenburg, which was only 78 feet shorter than the ocean liner, RMS Titanic, and glided above the Atlantic Ocean at eighty miles per hour. The disaster detailed in the film occurred as the airship was executing a routine landing. Suddenly, the seven million cubic feet of hydrogen gas that kept the ship aloft ignited and burned in just 37 seconds, leaving 35 passengers and crew dead, but with an incredible 62 people surviving the inferno.
