Story of the Hindenburg
Just watched an interesting documentary on the History Channel looking into the cause of the Hindenburg disaster (6 May 1937). The story told to us while we were at school was that the 'dangerous' hydrogen inside the airship caught fire and bought the Hindenburg to the ground. We were then reassured that modern airships were safe as they used helium instead, leading those of us with warped imaginations to wonder if a gas leak inside the ship would make passengers to speak in squeaky voices.
It turns out that the disaster was caused by a party metallic protective coating that was applied to the Zeppelin's outer skin. This coating turned out to be highly flammable, especially during that fafeful day where a lightening storm left charged particules in the surrounding clouds. In fact the coating had a similar chemical composition to the fuel of solid booster rockets. From documents that have only been translated in the last 10 years it appears that the Hindenburg Line was well aware that the coating was a likely cause of the disaster, but covered this up so that they would not embarrass the Nazi regime, a regime that had used the Hindenburg for propoganda purposes to show the 'greatness of German engineering'.
Another irony was that in the original designs of the Hindenburg, Dr Hugo Eckner had planned to fill it with helium instead of hydrogen. But the monopoly producer of helium, the United States would not supply Germany with helium as there were concered the helium would be used for war airships to bomb cities, as German airships had done during WWI.
It turns out that the disaster was caused by a party metallic protective coating that was applied to the Zeppelin's outer skin. This coating turned out to be highly flammable, especially during that fafeful day where a lightening storm left charged particules in the surrounding clouds. In fact the coating had a similar chemical composition to the fuel of solid booster rockets. From documents that have only been translated in the last 10 years it appears that the Hindenburg Line was well aware that the coating was a likely cause of the disaster, but covered this up so that they would not embarrass the Nazi regime, a regime that had used the Hindenburg for propoganda purposes to show the 'greatness of German engineering'.
Another irony was that in the original designs of the Hindenburg, Dr Hugo Eckner had planned to fill it with helium instead of hydrogen. But the monopoly producer of helium, the United States would not supply Germany with helium as there were concered the helium would be used for war airships to bomb cities, as German airships had done during WWI.