Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage

Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage refers to the footage filmed by several newsreel companies of the Hindenburg disaster where the zeppelin Hindenburg crashed and burned on May 6, 1937.

The film is frequently played with narration by Herbert Morrison, who was there to watch the zeppelin's arrival in the United States. Morrison was a 31-year-old Chicago radio reporter, and his commentary was recorded, and not broadcast until later. It has since been combined with the separately filmed newsreel footage. To modern eyes it may appear to have been a live broadcast with pictures and sound, but it was not. Most of the original newsreels have their own narration, and many composite edits have been made for documentaries.

One well-known newsreel found on the internet is a silent film with Pathe footage of the first 1936 landing at Lakehurst and Hearst News of the Day Newsreel footage of the disaster, called a "Pathegram" by Eugene Castle of Castle Films. Another edit popularized on video-sharing sites like YouTube uses footage of the Disaster from Paramount and Movietone Newsreel with Herb Morrison's recording. The Pathe and Universal Newsreels are freely available from government archives, but the Paramount and Movietone newsreels are still copyrighted by their respective companies.

Four newsreel teams were in attendance at the time of the disaster. They were positioned close to each other and adjacent to the mooring mast for the airship. As a result, the newsreels do not show the mooring mast for the airship to be moored (other mooring masts appear in the background in many of the reels), unlike many of the press photographs which were taken further away and show the mast. None of the newsreel captured the initial signs of disaster as most cameras were focused on the ground crew at the start of the fire. At least one film taken by a spectator is known to exist, but it remains unreleased.

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