PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Hindenburg Documentary 17th September 2007
Old 18th Sep 2007, 12:15
  #2 (permalink)  
Footless Halls
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: London
Posts: 190
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Very good prog, actually. Not sure who made it. Even though there wasn't any proof, it left little doubt in my mind that the cause of the accident was fire triggered by structural failure towards the tail of the ship.
The ship had experienced strong headwinds all the way across the Atlantic and was 12 hours late. The officers were under strong pressure to get it down quickly. The weather at their landing ground was stormy and the air turbulent.
As they arrived they presumably experienced turbulent air and also made at least one turn a lot tighter than was prudent (shades of the R37?). A tight turn could easily snap an internal rigging wire, which equally easily could puncture a gas bag. After that on their final approach they dropped a lot of ballast from the tail, indicating that the ship had become tail heavy. One can postulate that this was as a result of a hydrogen leak from one of the bags in the tail. This much seems pretty plausible - likely indeed. The only thing left a mystery is what the actual source of ignition for the hydrogen was.
Contributing to the disaster was a possible conflict between the Captain (Preuss?) and a superior officer in the comapny who was accompanying him (Lehmann?) - (shades of the Tenerife disaster?).
All very sad.
Footless Halls is offline