Intro: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts. Content: Herbert Morrison was an announcer for the radio station WLS in Chicago. He was in Lakehurst to describe to a live radio audience the arrival of the Hindenburg on that overcast May afternoon. This is the voice of Herbert Morrison.

"...It's practically standing still now. They've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship, and it's been taken a hold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; the rain had slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it, just enough to keep it from --" "It burst into flames! ... It's fire and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning, bursting into flames and is falling on the mooring mast, and all the folks agree that this is terrible. This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! ...There's smoke, and there's flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast...Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here!"

The official investigation laid the blame on an atmospheric charge of static electricity, but speculation remains to this day that the incident was the result of anti-Nazi sabotage. Thirty-seven persons died that day, as did the reputation of the passenger airship. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. A Moment in Time is produced by Steve Clark. Resources

Dick, Harold G. The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships, Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985.

Hoehling, Adolph A. Who Destroyed the Hindenburg? Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1962.

Meyer, Henry Cord. Airshipmen Businessmen, and Politics, 1890-1940. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.

Mooney, Michael Macdonald. The Hindenburg. New York: Dodd, Mead Publishing, 1972.

Vaeth, Joseph. Graf Zeppelin: The Adventures of an Aerial Globetrotter. New York: Harper Publishing Company, 1959.

Copyright 2002 by Dan Roberts Enterprises, LLC