Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a huge airship flying over the main square in Carmarthen.
The picture says it all. Shoppers and workers stand in Lammas Street, looking up in awe as a giant of the sky makes its way above Wales’ oldest town.
But does this picture capture one of the most famous aircraft in human history, a doomed German airship called LZ 129 Hindenburg?
On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, the huge Zeppelin airship, which measured 245 metres in length (almost four times the size of today’s Boeing aeroplanes) was cruising above Manhattan, New York.
It had departed from Frankfurt in Germany three days earlier on the first of ten round-trips from Europe to the US.
People would come out in force to look up at this behemoth above - a cruise liner in the sky. It was, after all, the largest Zeppelin ever to fly.
About three hours after the world’s most famous airship floated above the world's most famous city, it was destroyed in a matter of seconds.
The cause of the fire is still argued about to this day, but the most widely accepted explanation ascertained by crash investigators was that hydrogen inside the structure was ignited by a static spark.
In scenes that have come to define the idea of air travel disaster, the airship burst into flames while trying to land at an airfield in New Jersey.
The disaster was covered on the ground by one journalist who uttered the haunting words: “Oh, the humanity! I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
In total 36 people died, comprising of 35 people on-board and one person on the ground.
The death-toll is as remarkable as it is tragic when one considers there were 97 people travelling on the airship when fire ripped through it like it was a bit of tissue paper.
For anyone who has seen the footage, the idea that anyone walked away from the inferno is unbelievable.
For years, it was thought that the doomed airship had flown over Carmarthen before its tragic demise.
The Carmarthen Journal published the image at the top of this story in 2010, and debate has raged for some time that what the people of Carmarthen were looking at was the Hindenburg.
However, as a local historian explains, this was not the case.
Instead, the image was actually taken 100 years ago, 19 years before the disaster, and captured a huge airship flying over Guildhall Square, heading towards Dark Gate and Lammas Street.
“In 1918, there were two of these huge airships that flew over Carmarthen,” said historian Simon Ratty.
“The first one came over on Friday, March 8. It hovered over Carmarthen Park and was described as a ‘monster airship’, with large crowds gathering to see it.
“The following day, on March 9, a second airship came over Carmarthen, and this is the one in the picture. It was part of an effort to raise money for the war effort, as the First World War was still going on at the time.
“Leaflets were dropped from the airship over the town, urging people to buy war bonds and to raise £25,000 for the war effort. It was part of a week-long event to raise money, and the people of Carmarthen raised a staggering £54,703 - more than £20,000 of that in just one day.
“That’s still a lot of money now, but 100 years ago it was an incredible amount.”
The airship in the picture apparently came from a Royal Navy Air Service base in Pembrokeshire, and not, as some have believed, from Germany.
The Hindenburg did have a full year of cross-Atlantic travel in 1936 - a year before it perished in the fire - so it’s possible that it did fly over Carmarthen at some point on its journeys from central Europe to the US. But no confirmed sightings have ever been recorded.
The image is striking enough - people turn their heads to the sky in unison at the giant in the air - but why has the myth continued to breathe over the past 80 years that it was the doomed German Zeppelin?
“I think people put two and two together and came up with five,” added Mr Ratty.
“When I first saw the picture I thought straight away it wasn’t the Hindenburg. While it’s an impressive airship, it’s not as big as the Hindenburg and isn’t the same shape. As for the people in the picture, their clothing isn’t right for the 1930s.
“Their dress is far more in keeping with the 1910s. So, after doing some digging, I managed to confirm that the photo was indeed taken in 1918, and not 1936 or 1937.”
If clarification on this point steals from Carmarthen a little bit of aviation history, fear not. As Mr Ratty explains, the old town has something to shout about when it comes to the annals of air travel.
“These two airships that came over Carmarthen in 1918 weren’t the first to fly over the town,” he revealed.
“On Monday, June 8, 1908, an 80ft long airship filled with coal gas took off from Carmarthen Park and landed later in Llanarthne - the first ever airship flight in Wales.”
Mystery solved: the LZ 129 Hindenburg was not captured flying over Guildhall Square in Carmarthen, but the image remains a powerful one that encapsulates a time when airships represented the future.
They were to be the next generation’s main mode of commercial air travel.
All that changed in New Jersey in May 1937.
