Hindenburg zeppelin

It has recently been shown that the flaming disaster of the Hindenburg Zeppelin in 1937, in which 36 lives were lost, may have been caused by static electricity igniting the outer fabric. This was shown to contain an iron oxide pigment and reflecting powdered aluminum. Such a combination, known as a thermite mixture, results in the highly exothermic Gouldshmidt reaction (first reported in 1898) ... 

Prior to the fire, the Hindenburg had completed 10 round trips between the U.S. and Europe. A sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin, made regular scheduled transatlantic crossings from 1928 to 1939 with no incidents. There were 161 rigid airships that flew between 1897 and 1940, almost all of these used hydrogen and 20 were destroyed by fires. Of these 20, seventeen were lost in military action where in many cases the fires resulted from enemy fire during World War I. 

A well-known case is the detrimental influence on the development and use of hydrogen in the transportation industry caused by the Hindenburg accident in 1936. The Zeppelin company chose to blame hydrogen for the accident, although they seemed to have known that the cause was the use of a... 

The Hindenburg was designed to be filled with helium, a safer gas than the highly flammable hydrogen. But in those pre-World War II days, the United States suspected that Germany s new leader, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), had military plans for helium-filled ships. So the United States refused to sell helium to the Zeppelin airship company. Seven million cubic feet of hydrogen were used instead. This made the crew very nervous about the potentiai for fire. Passengers were even checked for matches as they boarded ... 

The Hi nburg accident in 1937 at Lakehurst is very familiar to the public if the talk is on hydrogen. In fact, the 220 tons Zeppelin LZ-129 Hindenburg, the largest airship... 

The Grafand the Hindenburg s successor, Graf Zeppelin II, continued to be flown within Germany for several years, but finally Germany destroyed both airships in 1940 to salvage their aluminum for the war effort.The era of zeppelins was over. 

Fig. 2.6 On May 5, 1937, at 19 25 the German zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and was utterly destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock with its mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New...

Duggan, J. (2002). IS 129 Hindenburg -The Complete Story, Zeppelin Study Group, Ickenham, UK, ISBN 0-9514114-8-9. 

For a detailed biography of H. Hdnel see H. Wittmann-Zinke Osterr. Chem. Z 57 (1990/2). Otto Reichhold met an untimely death at the age of 40 when the Zeppelin airship Hindenburg caught fire during the landing operation on May 6,1937, in Lakehurst, New Jersey. 

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