Contrary to your first guess, no, this is not a picture of the Hindenburg.  Instead, the picture appeared on the cover of Popular Science one hundred years ago this month, March 1919, a full 18 years before the Hindenburg’s crash on May 6, 1937.  The picture is actually of an explosion during inflation of an observation balloon at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The article explained that this scene was a thing of the past thanks to the discovery of the element helium, and its great availability as a byproduct of the decay of radium in Kansas,  Oklahoma, and Texas.  But the article hints at the later disaster by asking how the first world war might have been different if the Germans had helium for their zeppelins.

As we previously wrote, despite the Roosevelt Administration’s eagerness to sell the strategic gas to Germany, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes nixed the idea, keeping helium out of the hands of the Germans.