Images from a ceremony held Saturday night at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst to honor the 80th anniversary of the Hindenburg crash. Watch video
LAKEHURST -- Hundreds of people Saturday evening attended a ceremony honoring the 80th anniversary of the deadly Hindenburg crash.
For the first time in five years, members of the public got to see the site where the German airship burned and crashed in 1937 at what was then the Lakehurst Naval Air Station.
The viewing period was followed by a ceremony honoring the 36 people who died in the fiery crash. The featured speaker at the event was Horst Schirmer, who flew on the Hindenburg when he was 5 years old.
Schirmer's father, Max, designed the aeronautics for the airship. Schirmer, now 85, rode in the 805-foot-long zeppelin during test flights in Germany a year before the Lakehurst disaster.
Col. Frederick D. Thaden, the commander of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, and Carl Jablonski, president of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society, also offered remarks at the ceremony.
The ceremony included a reading of the names of all 36 people who died -- 13 passengers, 22 crew members and one ground worker - and wreaths were presented in honor of the fallen troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.