The shadow of the Hindenburg seems to erase, on the green and gray sea, this heroic era. Its builder, Ernst Lehmann, is convinced that the "lighter than air" provides the safest and most economical solution to the problem of crossing the Atlantic. Besides, each of his trips is a success.
On May 6, 1937, a thousand people await the arrival of the Hindenburg at Lake-hurst, in New Jersey. It's 6 p.m. The dark sheet of the sky is cut, as if with scissors, by long mauve flashes of a storm prowling on the horizon. The humid air smells of sea, ozone and germinating earth. The sailors of the naval air base have prepared the landing mast, a sturdy pylon supported by beams.
The airship appears at an altitude of 90 meters. The four 1,200 HP motors idle. It maneuvers slowly to place, above the end of the mast, the mooring nose, located at two-thirds of the length.
— They have turned on the searchlights, someone says.
A silver-pink glow illuminates the rear fins, but it is not that of a projector. A fire has just broken out. First, it's a fast, horizontal flame, then, almost immediately, a huge sheaf of fire shoots out, the crackling sparks of which seem to reach the low clouds.
Screams fall from the nacelles, in the distance , as already from another world. In a few minutes, the Hindenburg is nothing more than a pile of twisted beams heated to white heat from which a few survivors will escape, screaming. Among them, Commander Pruss and Ernst Lehmann, who did not survive the loss of his airship.
According to the official explanation of the disaster, the hydrogen in the balloons was ignited by a spark due to the electricity with which the stormy atmosphere was charged.
After this tragedy, the airships lose all their chances in the Atlantic competition. The loss of the English R-101, that of the American "air cruisers" Akron and Macon, had already underlined the vulnerability of the "lighter than air".
A little less than two months more later, another news mourns the air force. Amelia Earhart disappears in the Pacific and, with her, it is a certain romanticism of the wings that goes away.