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Hindenburg disaster

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Author Topic: Hindenburg disaster  (Read 1546 times)
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Jason Vorhees
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« Reply #45 on: November 23, 2009, 02:47:58 pm »



Forward half of the Hindenburg towering almost vertically with flames rising
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« Reply #46 on: November 23, 2009, 02:48:43 pm »

Another avenue that has intrigued investigators is the Hindenburg's skin. This subject is of particular interest to a former NASA employee named Addison Bain who believes the hydrogen gas aboard the airship is not to blame for the cause of the fire or its rapid spread. He instead believes the outer skin of the airship first ignited and the hydrogen would never have burned if the skin hadn't already done so. This flammable fabric theory is based on the Hindenburg's skin coating that consisted of iron oxide and aluminum-impregnated cellulose acetate butyrate dope. The doping material is known to be a flammable substance, and iron oxide also energetically reacts with aluminum powder. Since iron oxide is mixed with aluminum to create the explosive substance thermite and aluminum powder is often used to boost the performance of solid rocket motors, proponents of the flammable fabric theory frequently exaggerate by stating the Hindenburg was "coated in rocket fuel."
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Jason Vorhees
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« Reply #47 on: November 23, 2009, 02:48:54 pm »

Evidence supporting the fabric theory is the Hindenburg remaining in level flight for several seconds after the fire began. If one of the hydrogen cells had ruptured due to a gas fire, supporters of the theory argue the ship would have started to tilt towards the ground almost immediately. If the fire were constrained to the skin, however, the cells would have remained intact much longer and kept Hindenburg airborne. Proponents also suggest Zeppelin engineers realized the danger of the skin coating after the disaster and secretly changed its composition on the Graf Zeppelin II. The new coating was said to include a fireproofing agent plus the aluminum was replaced with the less combustible metal bronze.
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Jason Vorhees
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« Reply #48 on: November 23, 2009, 02:49:27 pm »



Hindenburg's nose falling to the ground as it is engulfed in fire
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Jason Vorhees
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« Reply #49 on: November 23, 2009, 02:50:00 pm »

Nevertheless, more recent research conducted at the University of Colorado has contradicted this theory and found the airship's skin could not have been responsible for the fire's rapid spread. This theoretical and experimental research suggests that even if Hindenburg had been coated in actual solid rocket fuel, it would have taken at least 12 hours to burn in the absence of hydrogen. Experiments with recreations of the ship's skin have also found it would have taken some 40 hours for the Hindenburg to be consumed if the fabric had caused the fire. These finding led the researchers to conclude that although the Hindenburg's skin was combustible, it was not flammable.
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« Reply #50 on: November 23, 2009, 02:50:07 pm »

Given the inability of investigators to conclusively determine why the Hindenburg crashed, it is not surprising so many theories to explain its destruction have emerged. Even so, the static spark theory is still considered the most likely since it is the best corroborated by the wreckage, video and photo evidence, and eyewitness reports. This evidence and academic research also supports the belief that the ship's hydrogen gas was ignited by static discharge and not the skin. The hydrogen burned explosively and rapidly spread the flames forward throughout the ship, and the skin only burned as a result of this intense fire.
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« Reply #51 on: November 23, 2009, 02:50:36 pm »




Collapsed and smoldering wreckage of the Hindenburg
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« Reply #52 on: November 23, 2009, 02:50:51 pm »

Regardless of the exact cause of the disaster, its impact on airship travel is without doubt. The fiery demise of the Hindenburg was widely covered by print and radio journalists while photos and video of the crash quickly spread around the world. These graphic portrayals of the crash immediately doomed the future of zeppelins and no rigid airship ever carried commercial passengers again. By the time Graf Zeppelin II was completed in 1938, the clouds of war hung over Europe and the vessel was soon taken over by the Luftwaffe for military use. The ship completed just 30 flights by August 1939 when war finally erupted, but such a vehicle had no future in Nazi Germany. Needing raw materials for new airplanes, head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring ordered the Graf Zeppelin II, the earlier Graf Zeppelin, and the incomplete structure of another airship under construction to be scrapped and melted down. The dismantling was complete by April 27, and the giant hangars that had housed the mighty airships were leveled on May 6, exactly three years to the day after Hindenburg's destruction marked the beginning of the end of the rigid airship.
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« Reply #53 on: November 23, 2009, 02:51:45 pm »



Remains of the Hindenburg under guard
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« Reply #54 on: November 23, 2009, 02:52:43 pm »

The Hindenburg disaster has been the subject of many books, movies, and television programs. Some of the best books about the airship include Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships by Harold Dick and Douglas Robinson as well as Rick Archbold's Hindenburg: An Illustrated History with illustrations by Ken Marschall. Though difficult to find, perhaps the best source promoting the sabotage theory is A. A. Hoehling's Who Destroyed the Hindenburg?.
- answer by Joe Yoon, 18 June 2006

www.aerospaceweb.org/.../q0277.shtml
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Jason Vorhees
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« Reply #55 on: November 23, 2009, 02:54:31 pm »



Lakehurst Hangar (the ship had fifteen inches of clearance)
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« Reply #56 on: November 23, 2009, 02:54:50 pm »

When the control car crashed on the ground, most of the officers had leapt through the windows, but became separated. First Officer Captain Albert Sammt found Captain Max Pruss trying to re-enter the wreckage to look for survivors. Pruss's face was badly burned, and he required months of hospitalization and reconstructive surgery, but he survived.

Captain Ernst Lehmann escaped the crash with burns to his head and arms and severe burns across most of his back. Though his burns did not seem quite as severe as those of Pruss, he died at a nearby hospital the next day.
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« Reply #57 on: November 23, 2009, 02:55:32 pm »

When passenger Joseph Späh, a vaudeville comic acrobat, saw the first sign of trouble he smashed the window with his movie camera, with which he had been filming the landing (the film survived the disaster.) As the ship neared the ground he lowered himself out the window and hung onto the window ledge, letting go when the ship was perhaps 20 feet above the ground. His acrobat's instincts kicked in, and Späh kept his feet under him and attempted to do a safety roll when he landed. He injured his ankle nonetheless, and was dazedly crawling away when a member of the ground crew came up, slung the diminutive Späh under one arm, and ran him clear of the fire. [8]
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« Reply #58 on: November 23, 2009, 02:56:00 pm »

Of the 12 crewmen in the bow of the airship, only three survived. Four of these 12 men were standing on the mooring shelf, a platform up at the very tip of the bow from which the forward-most landing ropes and the steel mooring cable were released to the ground crew, and which was directly at the forward end of the axial walkway and just ahead of gas cell #16. The rest were standing either along the lower keel walkway ahead of the control car, or else on platforms beside the stairway leading up the curve of the bow to the mooring shelf. During the fire, of course, the bow hung in the air at roughly a 45-degree angle and flames shot forward through the axial walkway, bursting through the bow (and the bow gas cells) like a blowtorch. The three men from the forward section who survived (elevatorman Kurt Bauer, cook Alfred Grözinger, and electrician Josef Leibrecht) were those furthest aft of the bow, and two of them (Bauer and Grözinger) happened to be standing near two large triangular air vents, through which cool air was being drawn by the fire. Neither of these men sustained more than superficial burns. [9] Most of the men standing along the bow stairway either fell aft into the fire, or tried to leap from the ship when it was still too high in the air. Three of the four men standing on the mooring shelf inside the very tip of the bow were actually taken from the wreck alive, though one (Erich Spehl, a rigger) died shortly afterward in the Air Station's infirmary, and the other two (helmsman Alfred Bernhard and apprentice elevatorman Ludwig Felber) were reported by newspapers to have initially survived the fire, and then to subsequently have died at area hospitals during the night or early the following morning.
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« Reply #59 on: November 23, 2009, 02:56:14 pm »

The four crew members in the tail fin all survived; they were closest to the origin of the fire but sheltered by the structure of the lower fin. They escaped by climbing out the fin's access hatch when the tail hit the ground.

Hydrogen fires are notable for being less destructive to immediate surroundings than gasoline explosions because of the buoyancy of H2, which causes heat of combustion to be released upwards more than circumferentially as the leaked mass ascends in the atmosphere; hydrogen fires are more survivable than fires of gasoline and of wood.[10] The hydrogen in the Hindenburg burned out within about 90 seconds.
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