The Hindenburg Disaster, Rediscovered
Rarely-seen photos taken by a teenager, a courier, an acrobat, and a "Yale Man," offer alternate angles of the doomed German airship.
On the rainy afternoon of May 6, 1937, sixteen-year-old Foo Chu went on a joyride with his buddy in a sleek new Lincoln. On his way out the door he grabbed the family camera — a Leica. Their destination: Lakehurst, New Jersey. The Hindenburg was landing.1
“Like a great feather,” the giant German airship made its final approach. Then suddenly, at 7:25 p.m., it burst into flames. Chu lifted his Leica.
“I took the first shot at f/3.5 at one-tenth of a second, because the light was bad. It was just after a storm,” Chu recalled. “I was too busy shooting to be scared.”2