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azraelswrd -

Originally Posted by azraelswrd

I remember the History channel special on the Hindenburgh... yeah, the material they used to cover it was VERY VOLATILE. Even in the film footage of the airship coming down it isn't exploding into a "Michael Bay extravaganza" as most people seem to think but the skin is literally burning away and the fire is being fueled by the hydrogen cells within.

Remember that quite a few of the passengers did walk away from the collapsing airship. Most deaths occured from people JUMPING out of the vessel when it was still in the air.

Just another example of "doomed by design". We'll probably never know for sure what was the exact cause (because there are so many things to blame from static charge, sabotage and lightning to hydrogen leakage...) but yeah, not exactly the same thing as jackal said.

There were more deaths in a helium-filled airship (USS Akron) than in the Hindy.

USS Akron (ZRS-4) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah, I don't think of the Hindenburg disaster as representative of the "danger of hydrogen" :

LZ 129 Hindenburg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Use of Hydrogen instead of Helium

Helium was initially selected as the lift gas as it was the most commonly used gas in airships. However, a United States military embargo against Germany forced the re-engineering of the Hindenburg to use hydrogen for lift. The United States is the world's largest producer of helium and Germany was left unable to procure the huge quantity of helium necessary. Although the danger of using hydrogen, which unlike helium is flammable, was obvious, there were no alternative gases that could be produced in sufficient quantities that would provide sufficient lift.

CarloSW2