On Thursday 22 February 2007 10:14, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > >And the surprising truth, learned years later, was that the hydrogen > >had little or nothing to do with the fire. > > This was discussed in the book, "Tomorrow's Energy." See the essay, > "Don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." Frankly, I disagree. No > doubt the burning fabric contributed to the fire, but I expect the > flame was started by hydrogen. Other famous airship accidents were > caused by hydrogen explosions, notably the R101 disaster in France > (1930), and all of the German airships shot down in World War I. The > R101 skin was soaking wet when the ship exploded, so I do not think > the fire started there. > > - Jed
The Discovery Channel has a program called 'Mythbusters', hosted by a zany 'crewe' of a former military diver, a studious type, and a cute gal that just glories in 'blowin stuff up'. They did a program on the Hindenberg and mentioned the prohibition on the sale of helium to Germany by the United States during this time. They also did a model test of the destruction of the Hindenberg. In it they timed the destruction of the models by fire and extrapolated the various results to the real world event. Variables like how much 'rocket fuel' doping of the skin were also researched. Included also was a try with filling the model with helium instead of hydrogen, all other variables held constant. The helium ship took a long time to burn, and even had to be re-lit. Turns out the problem with the 'rocket fuel' doping was not so much its flammability as its weight. Too much of the stuff and the model did not even take off well. One experiment was to really overload a model with the 'rocket fuel' doping. This did marginally better at combustion time, but not enough to force a deviation from the generally held conclusion that the hydrogen gas really did the old Hindenberg in on that dark day in the thirties of the last century. Standing Bear.
