I love coincidences.  This evening on PBS, there was a documentary about
what happened to the Hindenburg in Lakehurst NJ.  It was fascinating.  All
my life, I had believed the Hindenburg had burned because it was filled
with hydrogen, a highly combustible, even explosive gas.  The Macon, the
Akron and other American dirigibles where filled with helium, an inert gas.
 Pow, another myth debunked!

Turns out that whilst the Hindenburg did totally burn and rather quickly,
the fire was not initially caused by the hydrogen, leaking or venting.  The
cover of the dirigible caught fire when the ship's mooring lines hit the
ground and discharged most but not all of the static electricity that had
built up on the outside of the ship.  Whilst the ship had been engineered
to handle the static electricity and was supposed to discharge it via the
mooring lines, some panels were not able to discharge their electricity and
sparked with neighboring panels.  The panels had just been covered with a
 new coating made with powdered aluminum.  This coating was supposed to
reflect heat, but instead made the whole covering highly flammable.  Filled
with helium or hydrogen, doesn't matter, that ship was going to burn.

The final few minutes of the program were the most shocking to me.  Here is
a link to the transcript.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/flash/hindenburg_script.html

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 288-7438
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com

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