General Forums > Generic Discussion

Hindenburg Fact and Myth

(1/2) > >>

billnotgatez:
It is hard to believe that any scientist (chemist) would embrace the theory that incendiary paint was the driving factor behind the Hindenburg disaster. The airship was full of hydrogen as a lifting gas, which has been shown to be very combustible. This paint theory has spread across the Internet and now seems to take on an air of fact when it has a likely hood of being untrue. The web location below has a link to a pdf file that debunks the Addison Bain theory. Integral to this refutation is an analysis of the chemistry involved.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.htm

Regards,
Bill

jdurg:
I've never actually believed that it was just the paint, nor just the hydrogen, that led to the disaster.  It was a combination of things.  They had nitrocellulouse as a padding material for the hydrogen cells, then they had powdered aluminum covering an iron oxide sheeting over those cells.  The combination of the hydrogen gas, the thermite covering, and the guncotton insulation all led to the disaster.  If it was just the hydrogen, then the disaster would not have been nearly as bad as there was no way that enough oxygen could fuel the fire.  As soon as the cells burst, the hydrogen would easily escape and diffuse up into the atmosphere.  It was the guncotton and thermite reaction going on which helped fuel the fire.

Mitch:
I would have to say Jdurg is right on this one, you have freaking thermite resting on guncotton in a balloon of hydrogen. If you look at those references they are all physicist by the way.

Corvettaholic:
Who would design a flying bomb like that? I mean, really, thats just asking for it. Then again, did chemists know about all that stuff back then? I KNOW they knew about guncotton, cause that showed up in the upper half of the 19th century.

jdurg:
Chemists didn't design the Hindenburg.  Government people did.  To the government, it's all about the money; safety comes second.  Germany did not have access to any helium, but hydrogen is very easy to come by.  So they decided to use hydrogen.  It worked just fine for them on many, many, many occasions.  The Hindenburg incident was just a one-in-a-million occurance where everything that needed to go wrong for it to explode went wrong.  

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page