Hello Dan, have you read Addison Bain’s book released last year?

I haven’t read it but there is a review suggesting he does make a rebuttal against his critics, pointing out their flaws etc. And he claims he never denied hydrogen didn’t contribute to the fire blahblah.

I think the most important thing is that the outer covering likely couldn’t have been ignited by an electrical spark as some of the IPT critics have asserted. From the documentaries I’ve seen Bain has only ignited it using a continuous current or simply an open flame.

The Hindenburg WAS painted with a flammable component of rocket fuel.

That’s like saying that modern automobiles are painted with a flammable component of rocket fuel. It’s literally true, but misleading and irrelevant.

Does the author have any experience at all on combustion, thermodynamics or heat transfer? (Probably not)

Actually, yes. While my own academic training is in history I have discussed these topics with numerous qualified chemists, physicists, and engineers (including at the Southwest Research Institute and elsewhere) and I have been an observer or participant in experiments by qualified scientists exploring the mechanics of the Hindenburg fire.

Note that it is exceedingly difficult to attain perfect combustion of any large piece of material, even if it is composed of fairly combustible products (see burning newspaper for a quick example, it will even extinguish before being fully burnt) also note that a large piece of combusting anything, is much more likely to burn from the outside in (around the periphery), rather than simultaneously bursting into flame uniformly.

And that is the whole point; without the presence of hydrogen the fabric would have burned more like the newsprint you describe in your example.

HAS the Author ever burned butyrate doped fabric,

Actually, yes.

If the ship had been filled with helium, the inert gas MAY have extinguished, or partly attenuated the blaze, then again maybe not

The relevant point isn’t that helium might have attenuated the blaze. The point is that if the ship had been inflated with helium there probably would not have been a blaze in the first place. But even if you won’t concede that fact and want to assume that the fabric independantly caught fire, if the ship had been inflated with helium it would not have crashed to the ground and been destroyed in half-a-minute with the consequent loss of life.

Hydrogen opponents …don’t want to allow people to know that more crew and passengers were directly affected by burning diesel fuel than were affected by the fire caused by the combusting lift gas.

Your comment that “more crew and passengers were directly affected by burning diesel fuel” is simply false.

As Hydrogen is a common and readily available element, it is not out of order to study means to make it useful in whatever ways it can be used. Studies into effecting fast dumping of the lift gas, (turning the descending ship into a large parachute) or safe jettisoning passenger and crew pods, may be better than banning all uses of hydrogen in whatever future airships are used

Your ideas about “turning the descending ship into a large parachute or safe jettisoning passenger and crew pods” are simply not feasible or consistent with the physics of LTA flight.

This article is unbalanced in trying to place the blame entirely on the gas filled envelopes/bags. There is a slight attempt at rebalancing the argument in the summary, indicating that the covering MAY have been the original site of combustion (static discharges have a habit of doing unexpected things, like making wet stuff catch fire unexpectedly.

The Pro-Hydrogen lobby may be unbalanced in their take, that the Hydrogen was NOT a problem AT ALL.. However both sides taking extreme stances helps no one.

This article showed things like a small patch of fabric on the UNDERSIDE of the envelope non combusted, and some sections that weren’t burning. The tail surface which had unburnt sections of fabric after the fire.

Does the author have any experience at all on combustion, thermodynamics or heat transfer? (Probably not) Note that it is exceedingly difficult to attain perfect combustion of any large piece of material, even if it is composed of fairly combustible products (see burning newspaper for a quick example, it will even extinguish before being fully burnt) also note that a large piece of combusting anything, is much more likely to burn from the outside in (around the periphery), rather than simultaneously bursting into flame uniformly. (the yes crowd obviously didn’t think their responses too carefully)

HAS the Author ever burned butyrate doped fabric, to note that while less combustible than Nitrate doped fabric, it does burn well with thick black rubber-like smoke. Now add powdered aluminium to that dope and see if it burns better or worse.

The real point the hydrogen lobby are trying to make (and partly fail due to hyperbole) is that the Hindenburg did not EXPLODE…. (as opponents of hydrogen claim that any significant conflagration of hydrogen will lead to an intense deflagration) rather the venting hydrogen flared off in a spectacular internal and external flare stack.

It is likely that the flammability of the covering (which DID contain powdered aluminium, which is flammable, self sustaining though it needs a relatively high initial energy input to begin combustion) did play a significant role in the disaster.

If the ship had been filled with helium, the inert gas MAY have extinguished, or partly attenuated the blaze, then again maybe not. Helium would NOT have added to the fire (as the hydrogen undoubtedly did, both within the envelope and externally to great visual effect). However a lot of the effects of the hydrogen on the fire was well away from the cabins and majority of the crew areas. (I Pity the few crew members trapped out at the end of a gangway when a wall of fire headed their way.)

Hydrogen opponents always want to make the hydrogen appear the single initiating and final cause of the disaster and don’t want to allow people to know that more crew and passengers were directly affected by burning diesel fuel than were affected by the fire caused by the combusting lift gas.

As Hydrogen is a common and readily available element, it is not out of order to study means to make it useful in whatever ways it can be used. Studies into effecting fast dumping of the lift gas, (turning the descending ship into a large parachute) or safe jettisoning passenger and crew pods, may be better than banning all uses of hydrogen in whatever future airships are used (manned and unmanned. Helium has much less lifting power than hydrogen and it is a severely non renewable resource (50% difference in lift may make a difference in some applications “you think” )

Postscript: We have learned a lot about better electrical connections of an aircraft components to a single ground plane over the last 80 years (composite craft are prone to suffering significant damage if not electrically connected/grounded and statically discharged)

With better electrostatic management this disaster need not happen to any modern craft using hydrogen as a lifting gas.

Take home Message: Don’t fly a kite in a thunderstorm with a conductor attached to the string. (Unless you are Benjamin)

That’s an interesting take on the spark theory that I hadn’t heard before.

The only problem with it is that no gas had been valved for at least five minutes before the fire broke out. Therefore, even if there was an issue with the valve covers rubbing against some part of the valve structure and generating sparks when opening and closing (and I’ve not heard that the Germans actually experienced such a problem) there is no way that those sparks could have started a fire several minutes after the fact.

But there’s one thing that someone might find interesting: to browse the list of passengers and see what role in history (politics, economy…) some of them might have at the time. 🙂

Both were storage tanks that were positioned alongside the keel walkway. The forward-most one was a 2500 liter waste water tank (it’s clearly missing in the overhead photos of the wreckage from the next day.)

However, I’m not 100% sure if the one further aft is a water tank, or a fuel/lube oil tank, as the wreckage was so compacted at that spot that I can’t spot which tank is missing in the subsequent wreck photos. I honestly don’t think it was a fuel oil tank, though, because both tanks ruptured and spread their contents over quite a wide radius when they hit the ground. If either had been full of fuel oil there would probably have been fire on the ground outboard of the wreckage that burned for awhile after the ship came down, and I don’t believe that this occurred.

My guess is that both were probably water tanks.