Word: airship
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...been done as a laboratory experiment, like a discarded battleship blown up for target practice before experts. If such an experiment had been planned, it would have been hard to gather a more competent battalion of onlookers—Commander Charles Emery Rosendahl, No. 1 U. S. airship man; representatives of Deutsche Zeppelin Reederai; aviation editors and reporters from all important newspapers, magazines and press services; pilots and hostesses of American Airlines ready to ferry the Hindenburg's passengers to Newark, and a gay crowd waving to relatives and friends clustered at the airship's windows 300 ft. above ground...
Suddenly a stab of flame gashed the airship's flank near the port stern gondola. So swiftly that to many it seemed instantaneous the flame engulfed the whole rear half of the ship. There was a muffled, booming WHOOSH and a huge belch of white fire and smoke mushroomed skyward...
Aboard the airship were a crew of 61 and 39 passengers, making a total of 100. First reports said that all had died, but according to a later bulletin 64 survived...
...Hindenburg" was the largest airship ever built, being 811 feet in length and having a gas volume of 7,063,0000 cubic feet. Its weight was 200 tons. The American ships "Akron" and "Macon" were both 785 feet long. The "Akron" crashed in a storm off New Jersey in 1933, causing the death of 73 people. The "Macon" fell off California in 1935, only losing 2 lives...
...Other airship disasters and fatalities have been: the French "Dixmude" in 1923, 52; the U.S.S. "Shenandoah" in 1925, 14; the "Italia", lost in the Arctic in 1928 with Commander Nobile and seven others; the British R-101 in 1930, 46; Its sister ship, the R-100, was dismantled. The "Roma" crashed in Virginia in 1932 with the loss of 34 lives...