The Hindenburg was built as a flying luxury hotel, a Zeppelin the length of three football fields carrying passengers across the Atlantic in private cabins with a dining room and a smoking lounge, all lifted by hydrogen gas. This film traces the airship from its German design and construction through the golden age of passenger travel it represented, when airships looked set to rival ocean liners as the way to cross continents. It builds toward the 1937 landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, where the Hindenburg caught fire and burned in under a minute, killing 36 people in front of newsreel cameras and a live radio broadcast. Archival footage, photographs, and expert interviews walk through the competing theories for what ignited the hydrogen, from static electricity to sabotage, and explain why the disaster, captured on film and broadcast to the world, ended public confidence in airship travel almost overnight and handed the future of long-distance flight to the airplane.