Witness to history recalls Hindenburg horror

[snopes]

Zeno Wicks Jr. went with his father to meet a colleague arriving on the Hindenburg.

It had been raining off and on that day. Around 7 p.m., the mighty German airship started approaching the field.

Suddenly, it exploded in a giant ball of fire and fell from the sky.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...-witness_N.htm

[hoitoider]

This is another pretty good account:

LAKEHURST, N.J. — At 87, Robert Buchanan says he sometimes has trouble remembering what he did 10 minutes ago. But he can recall in vivid detail the day 70 years ago when he watched the luxurious airship Hindenburg erupt into a fireball.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...ndenburg_N.htm

[Buckle Up]

You know, I've heard that "Oh the humanity!" phrase so many times used as a joke or an off-the-cuff quip. This weekend I heard the actual broadcast and for the first time, I was made truly aware of how awesome and awful that was. You see the black and white picture, and you know people died, but until I heard the sobbing, horrified voice of the newscaster, I wasn't in touch with it.

[jimmy101_again]

It has always amazed me that only about a third of the passangers on the Hindenberg died. How could any of the passangers, let alone the majority, have survived the inferno? And, of the couple hundred (?) service men on the ground in the landing crew only one was killed.

PBS aired the "Secrets of the Dead" episode on the crash last night. It is an old episode but it makes a pretty strong case for the Hindenburg still crashing and burning even if it had been filled with non-flammable helium instead of extremely flammable hydrogen. Nobody really knows what happened and perhaps a helium filled craft would not have ignited.

[Vanilla Gorilla]

Originally Posted by jimmy101_again

It has always amazed me that only about a third of the passangers on the Hindenberg died. How could any of the passangers, let alone the majority, have survived the inferno? And, of the couple hundred (?) service men on the ground in the landing crew only one was killed.

PBS aired the "Secrets of the Dead" episode on the crash last night. It is an old episode but it makes a pretty strong case for the Hindenburg still crashing and burning even if it had been filled with non-flammable helium instead of extremely flammable hydrogen. Nobody really knows what happened and perhaps a helium filled craft would not have ignited.

I am not sure if it was secrets of the dead on PBS, but I know another show on PBS was trying to explain on the fire started. Of course the Hydrogen was blaimed but they recovered a piece of the skin of the Hindenburg and then applied a small electirc current to it. The piece of material ignited immediately and violently...like touching a flame to magnesium. This was supposeably due to the paint and chemicals used to coat the Hindenburg to prevent such a thing. Supposeably the scientist/engineer of the Hindenburg tried to warn Hitler but it was brushed aside so as not to embarrass the Reich.

[diddy]

Originally Posted by Vanilla Gorilla

Of course the Hydrogen was blaimed but they recovered a piece of the skin of the Hindenburg and then applied a small electirc current to it. The piece of material ignited immediately and violently...like touching a flame to magnesium. This was supposeably due to the paint and chemicals used to coat the Hindenburg to prevent such a thing.

The skin theory was debunked by the Mythbusters using the same dope mixture. It burned, but really slow.

[Ali Infree]

Herb Morrison's broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster is a real milestone in electronic journalism. I find it very powerful and very human. Here is a guy with a microphone and a phonograph recorder thinking he is covering the arrival of this luxury aircraft on a rainy day in Jersey.

Then, the flames start and the airship crashes to the ground. His pain is palpable. I think that we have become so scarred by the press of war, famine, and disaster that we now expect our broadcasters to step back from it all, to describe it from a distance, whether of space or of emotion.

I saw the Mythbusters episode as well. Talk about finding a fun job, build something, burn it up.

As for the survivors, the passenger compartment was about maybe 80-120 feet high when the flames started and the airship crashed to the ground. A number of survivors jumped out as it neared the ground or ran out as it hit (you can see them as dark shapes moving against the flames).

I'd still like to go from town-to-town in a zeppelin. Seems safer than most jets.

Ali "no smoking sign is always on" Infree

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by diddy

The skin theory was debunked by the Mythbusters using the same dope mixture. It burned, but really slow.

Sorry to nitpick but I really hate it when people use the verb "debunk" in this context. In order for something to be "debunked", it has to be bunk. The skin theory was a legitimate theory that had been tested before. What the mythbusters did was to offer new evidence. Since their methods are usually for entertainment and not, for example, peer reviewed, I don't see how anyone can seriously accept them as anything more than interesting preliminary investigations. What they have done for the spirit of investigation and rational thought is undeniable but to say that they "debunked" something, especially something that requires much more serious investigation and expert review than they offer on their show, is to abuse the word and insult professional scientists and historians.

[Troberg]

It has always amazed me that only about a third of the passangers on the Hindenberg died. How could any of the passangers, let alone the majority, have survived the inferno?

I've seen this explained as most casualties were crushed underneath the structure, not burned. The heat from the fire (especially when it's a lighter than air gas burning) mostly goes up, while the passenger compartments are slung underneath the structure.

I don't know it is true, but it makes some sense.

[jimmy101_again]

I agree with ganzfeld, Mythbusters really are not capable of disproving a theory. They don't have the technical expertise for it. Where did they get the sample of the dope and fabric? How much voltage, and at what current, did they try to ignite it with? (The Hindenburg could have easily had a static charge of tens of thousands of volts at tens or even hundreds of amps. That would be enough energy to crispy a person who grab the mooring lines before they had been dragged on the ground for a while.)

What Mythbusters can do (sometimes) is prove that a theory is plausible. Or, more commonly, that something that might be an urban legend is indeed possible. For example, the exploding packages of biscuit dough. They set up a reasonable model of a car sitting in the sun and showed that the dough package can explode.

If their dough experiment had failed that would not have proven that the packages cannot explode. Given their level of expertise, I wouldn't take any of their negative results as evidence of anything.

Though it seems a bit counter-intuitive, if you jumped ship you had a good chance of dying by being crushed. You'd hit the ground, stumbled or be unable to get up and run, then got crushed or pinned and burned.

No one who stayed in the passenger compartments and rode it to the ground died. They just stepped off, were pulled out by the naval crew, or battered their way out.

It must have been an over powering sight as the largest aircraft ever came down in flames like that.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by Jeu D'Esprit

Though it seems a bit counter-intuitive, if you jumped ship you had a good chance of dying by being crushed. You'd hit the ground, stumbled or be unable to get up and run, then got crushed or pinned and burned.

I don't think that's counter-intuitive at all. I do, however, think people's instinctive reaction when on something that is falling is to get off. Unfortunately, riding the thing down is often many times safer than trying to get off (viz forklifts).

Seaboe

[Vanilla Gorilla]

Originally Posted by diddy

The skin theory was debunked by the Mythbusters using the same dope mixture. It burned, but really slow.

I enjoy Mythbusters, but in all due fairness the guy on this PBS show had an actual piece of the Hindernburgs skin which he ran through an electrical current(simulating lightenting or a sharp charge of static electricity) as compared to a simulated piece. I could not find a full description of the episode to see what they did exactly to simulate it. But on the show I saw they mentioned that the paint would become more unstable as it was exposed to the elements(i.e. sun and such). By the sounds of the short description of the episode of Mythbusters they spent 3 days on this experiment while the Hindenburg was in service for 2 years. Not saying that hydrogen didn't contribute to the fire but rather that
the skin was what started the fire. Mind you this is not my theory but this guy at NASA who deals with hydrogen.

Wilkipedia looks like it has quoted this same scientist I saw...of course Wilkipedia can never be 100% trusted.

Lightning theory
A. J. Dessler, former director of the Space Science Laboratory at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and a critic of the incendiary paint theory (see below), favors a much simpler explanation for the conflagration: natural lightning. Like many other aircraft, the Hindenburg had been struck by lightning several times. This does not normally ignite a fire in hydrogen-filled airships, because the hydrogen is not mixed with oxygen. However, many fires started when lightning struck airships as they were venting hydrogen in preparation for landing, as the Hindenburg was doing at the time of the disaster. The vented hydrogen is mixed with air, making it readily combustible. Dessler cites an airship rule from the time: "Never blow off gas during a thunderstorm."

[Bryan With a 'Y']

Originally Posted by jimmy101_again

PBS aired the "Secrets of the Dead" episode on the crash last night. It is an old episode but it makes a pretty strong case for the Hindenburg still crashing and burning even if it had been filled with non-flammable helium instead of extremely flammable hydrogen. Nobody really knows what happened and perhaps a helium filled craft would not have ignited.

If the skin was really that flammable, and was touched off by an outside source, then I don't see why it couldn't have ruptured the skin and eventually caused the crash. It seems as if, even granting all that, it wouldn't have come down as quickly if it were helium-filled - once the helium was escaping, it might actually suppress the flames, while the hydrogen would be likelier to feed them.

Also, when did this test with an actual piece of the Hindenburg's skin take place? If it had aged decades since the crash, then it might not be any more comparable than the Mythbuster's recreation.

[Vanilla Gorilla]

Originally Posted by Bryan With a 'Y'

Also, when did this test with an actual piece of the Hindenburg's skin take place? If it had aged decades since the crash, then it might not be any more comparable than the Mythbuster's recreation.

Good point. Mind you from what they were showing(on the PBS show) the skin had been kept in an airtight container and all but still it had been stored for like 60 or 70 years(think the show I saw was in 2002-2003). Really the only way to really test this theory would be to re-create the skin(like they did in Mythbusters) then let it sit out and be exposed to the elements for a year or two.

Also from what I gathered from the short description of the Mythbusters show, they started their simulatied Hindenburg fire with a blow torch. The the test on the PBS show I saw he used an electrical current. Not sure if there could be a difference, but if you are testing to see if something started due to lightening or static electrcity then you probably should test it with an electrical charge.

[Ali Infree]

Well, of course the Mythbusters used a torch. Their entertainment value is never higher than when they burn, blow up, or otherwise destroy something, never mind the myth.
Remember the concrete truck that they blasted? The myth was that a little dynamite could loosen cement that hardened in the mixing truck. It wasn't, how far will the transaxle go if we fill the truck with explosive?

Ali "like no business I know "Infree