The Technical Story Of The Hindenberg Crash Audio Recording
The Technical Story Of The Hindenberg Crash Audio Report
On May 6, 1937, history was made at Lakehearst, NJ and had it not been for two men from Chicago’s WLS Radio, all we would have is silent newsreel footage of the event. This was more of a human interest story than news, because the German airship was in it’s second year of operation and that’s why there was no live radio coverage. Fortunately, WLS had sent announcer Herb Morrison and engineer Charles Nehlsen to the scene to record the event for playback the next day. Nehlsen was manning the Presto Direct Disc recorder they had carried with them on their American Airlines flight to and from Chicago. The whole program covered four, 16″ discs recorded at 78 rpms. On their return to Chicago, they were edited to two 12″ discs, and for the first time ever, a recorded news event was broadcast on network radio as NBC replayed Morrison’s now famous account on both the Red and Blue networks. The edited discs were taken to Chicago’s WMAQ (NBC O&O) for the NBC feed. Below is the link to the famous clip, that long ago was married to newsreel footage of the disaster. The photo at the far right shows an NBC reporter broadcasting live from the scene the next day via a portable radio unit. Above is Herb Morrison, next, the Presto Disc Recorder, next one of the actual edited discs.
Try again-As Arthur Carlson “The Big Guy” said “As God is my witness I thought turkeys could fly”
And we all remember the WKRP Parody of the crash..”As g
It’s my understanding that Herb Morrison was actually an account executive (salesman) at WLS, and not an announcer.
As a long time “techie” who has always worked behind the scenes, I am more fascinated by stories of the people who made things happen than the people in the limelight. I love these features.
Thanks so much for this interesting post.
Oh the humanity!
With software today, that 3% of difference can be fixed.
Reports are that the recording was about 3% slow, which on playback was 3% fast and made the voice and pitch of emotion a bit higher than they actually were. Morrison was reported to have a much deeper voice than what we hear on this report.
On a Mike Douglas Show in the 70’s, Herb Morrison was introduced to the Studio audience, and he was interviewed about the event that changed his life and that of radio.
My father-in-law sat next to Herb Morrison on a plane flight many years ago. He told some amazing stories about that fateful day.