The Hinderberg Disaster

The following video is real footage of the disaster that Santiago mentioned in his earlier post

The Hindenberg was a very efficient airship invented by the Germans in the 1930s.

Along with its sister-ship LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II, it was the largest aircraft ever built. It was 245 m long (804 ft) and 41 m in diameter (135 ft), longer than three Boeing 747s placed end to end and 78 feet (23.8m) shorter than the Titanic.

The Hindenburg was originally intended to be filled with helium, but a United States military embargo on helium led the Germans to modify the design of the ship to use flammable hydrogen as the lift gas.

As Santiago mentions in his post, Hydrogen is a HIGHLY flammable gas, so this modification was ultimately to prove fatal.

Germany had much scientific and technical experience with hydrogen, and hydrogen-related fire accidents had never occurred on civil zeppelins, therefore, the switch from helium to hydrogen did not cause much alarm. It also gave the craft about 8% more lift capacity. Knowing the risks of hydrogen gas, the engineers used various safety measures, including treating the airship's coating to prevent electric sparks. Such was their confidence that the airship carried a smoking room, pressurized to keep hydrogen out.

Harold Dick reported in his first hand account of his experiences as Goodyear Zeppelin representative during construction and operation of the Hindenburg, "The only entrance to the smoking room, which was pressurized to prevent the admission of any leaking hydrogen, was via the bar, which had a swiveling air-lock door, and all departing passengers were scrutinized by the bar steward to make sure they were not carrying out a lighted cigarette or pipe.

On May 6, 1937, while under tow to dock at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester, New Jersey, the Hindenburg met its demise in a surprise flash fire that downed and destroyed the airship and killed 36 passengers, crew and ground crewmen. The incident goes down in the annals of history as one of the most devastating accidents to be witnessed in modern time. There has never been derived an absolute cause for the disaster, which has left history open to a number of unresolved theories.



More information can be found on Wikipedia or on the web about this disaster, and Akira, you may be interested in looking up the technical details of the Hindenberg and other Zepellins and putting them up on your airplane board

But for now pupils, sit back and witness for yourself one of the great explosions of the 20th century...

Digitally coloured version