The Hindenburg was the pride of German airship building and, together with her sister ship, the largest airship ever built: 245 metres long and filled with some 200,000 cubic metres of hydrogen. Built by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance and named after the former Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, she first took to the air in March 1936 and flew for the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei.
Her passengers travelled in remarkable comfort, with private cabins, a dining room, a music salon with a lightweight aluminium piano and even a pressurised smoking room. In her first season alone she crossed the Atlantic to North and South America more than thirty times. On 6 May 1937, while coming in to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, she caught fire and was destroyed in little more than half a minute; 36 people died. Captured on film and radio, the disaster brought the age of passenger airships to an end.
