Yes, I have heard the newsreel a few times. The poor reporter was reduced to tears by seeing the disaster happening in front of him. Am I right thinking a few survived by jumping out, though badly injured in the fall?
That era also saw the similar loss of the British airship R101, which crashed-landed and burst into flames in France on its maiden voyage to India. No-one survived. By a terrible irony its passengers included the Government big-wigs who had forced its construction and testing to be rushed, and insisted on changes to the specifications for political reasons, to show a government can be just as good as the aeronautical industry itself at building such things. They wanted R101 in service before its fully-commercial R100 sister-ship, which did fly safely in service until the two disasters so destroyed public confidence in airships that no-one wanted to travel in them.
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The "lead balloon" context may differ across the Atlantic. In use in Britain I have always heard it to refer not to some physical object or enterprise failing, but to the reception of an ill-timed or misjudged comment: "His attempted joke about it went down like a lead balloon".
I once saw the delightful simile "... handles like a lead wheelbarrow!" I think it was actually made by the doyen of vehicle customising, Ed Roth, who insisted that however artistic, the vehicles should also be functional and road-legal, not just static show-pieces. A "lead wheelbarrow" referred to motorcycles with forks so over-long that they would be pretty well un-steerable in normal use.
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You asked about the band. Led Zeppelin was formed in the late 1960s and rapidly became a best-selling heavy rock band whose output was actually very varied in style. Though more straightforwardly blues-based than some of their fellow Progressive Rock contemporaries, they were more inventive than a lot of heavy-metal groups then or since. In later years Led Zeppelin became influenced by folk music and rather fey "magic" themes, in the era when J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings suddenly found a new readership and spawned a fad for writing would-be sword-and-sorcery epics.
I don't know when they disbanded, or if in fact they have, but they have not worked as a band for many years. Lead singer Robert Plant mellowed his style as age mellowed his formidable singing voice, but in recent years he made something of a name for himself in the rather unexpected directions of folk- and gospel- inspired songs. He is also said to be a regular member of his local Pub Quiz team - or was until Covid put a stop to everything.
Durdle 