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Fabric, Not Filling, to Blame
Hydrogen Exonerated in Hindenburg Disaster

The memory of the spectacular destruction of the Hindenburg airship affects people’s perception of hydrogen and their acceptance of the gas as an energy source. The lighter-than-air craft burst into flame—in full view of a crowd of reporters and newsreel cameras—while landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey, U.S.A., on 6 May 1937. Hydrogen has long taken the blame for the disaster, which effectively ended travel by zeppelin.

But retired NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] engineer and long-time hydrogen advocate Addison Bain, who has been conducting extensive research on the incident, concludes that hydrogen played no part in starting the Hindenburg fire. To learn what really happened 60 years ago, Bain used NASA’s latest investigative techniques to analyze original wreckage from the Hindenburg; conducted interviews with the few remaining survivors and those who have detailed knowledge of the Hindenburg’s construction; examined original film footage and other documentary evidence; and visited the airship’s former mooring sites in Lakehurst and Akron, Ohio, U.S.A. The dramatic findings of his research were reported at the National Hydrogen Association’s 8th Annual U.S. Hydrogen Meeting and are the subject of the cover story of the May 1997 issue of the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space magazine, published in observance of the incident’s 60th anniversary. (Bain also plans to publish a complete manuscript with all data as well as two books for the general public and young adults.)

Observations of the incident show evidence inconsistent with a hydrogen fire: (1) the Hindenburg did not explode, but burned very rapidly in omnidirectional patterns, (2) the 240-ton airship remained aloft and upright many seconds after the fire began, (3) falling pieces of fabric were aflame and not self-extinguishing, and (4) the very bright color of the flames was characteristic of a forest fire, not a hydrogen fire (hydrogen makes no visible flame). Also, no one smelled garlic, the scent of which had been added to the hydrogen to help detect a leak.

Bain’s study uncovered two contributing factors: the prevailing atmospheric conditions and the unorthodox method of landing at Lakehurst. First, thunderstorms had come through the Lakehurst area that day; lightning could still be seen at the time of the Hindenburg’s landing. Secondly, the airship made a “high” landing: the zeppelin was moored at a high altitude and winched down to the ground via landing lines dropped from the airship. This, in effect, created a ready-made ground-to-cloud electrical path in the highly charged atmosphere. This combination of factors could prompt severe corona activity on any airship. In fact, an eyewitness reported seeing a blue glow of electrical activity atop the ill-fated Hindenburg before the fire started, which is indicative of the extremely high temperatures typical of a corona discharge.

Bain’s suspicions of the zeppelin’s fabric covering were raised when he learned that a cellulose nitrate dope with powdered aluminum might have been used on the Hindenburg. Bain was able to obtain two 60-year-old fabric samples representative of those used on the airship. At the NASA Materials Science Laboratories at Kennedy Space Center, testing included chemical and physical analysis using the scanning electron microscope, X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy, optical microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, and tests of flammability, electrostatics, conductivity, surface and volume resistivity, thermogravimetric analysis, and corona discharge exposure.

At the NASA lab, one of the fabric samples subjected to a flame propagation test burnt up in seconds, still volatile after six decades. The remaining sample was subjected to high-voltage electrical fields, replicating the atmospheric conditions surrounding the Hindenburg that fateful night. The electric arc burned a hole in the fabric; however, when the sample was mounted so it remained parallel to the arc (as the airship was), the fabric ignited and disappeared in seconds.

The Hindenburg fabric was found to be made of a cotton substrate with an aluminized cellulose acetate butyrate dopant. The observations of the fire listed above, in fact, are consistent with a huge aluminum fire. (The brightness of the space shuttle’s rocket boosters are an example of aluminum-based combustion.) So, it was the extreme flammability of the Hindenburg’s fabric envelope which caused the disaster and not the lifting gas inside.

Files examined at the Zeppelin Archive in Friedrichshafen, Germany, yielded final confirmation of Bain’s theory. Several handwritten letters, when finally translated from German, corroborate what Bain uncovered. Wrote electrical engineer Otto Beyersdorff on 28 June 1937, “The actual cause of the fire was the extreme easy flammability of the covering material brought about by discharges of an electrostatic nature.”

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