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Registered: 04-16-07
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This post attempts to refute the theory that cause of the spread of the fire in the Hindenburg crash was the skin of the airship.
Bain, the discredited ex NASA technician, and others claim that the skin was highly flammable and caused the rapid spread of the fire and that the hydrogen gas held on board in large cells had little or no role in the fire; a version of Bain's theory by his collaborator Van Treuren is available, see note [a] below. The main resource for the refutation of the ridiculous theory is a paper by Dressler, see note [b].
The Hindenburg was over 800ft long and the fire took 34 seconds to engulf the entire ship, any theory for the spread of the fire has to account for its very rapid speed. The hydrogen theory perfectly adequately accounts for the rapid speed as hydrogen burns very, very rapidly. The cause of the ignition of the fire is not considered as it has no bearing on the issue of whether the skin or hydrogen was the cause of the spread of the fire. There are some well-founded theories based on eye witness testimony and other evidence that the diesel engines, which were overheating through being highly stressed in the extreme landing manoeuvres, caused the initial fire as fuel lines burnt. Some of the diesel engines were captured in a photograph falling off at an early stage in the fire, see note [d]
Firstly, the flaws in various parts of the skin theory
1) The skin consisted of a cotton fabric base covered in layers of cellulose acetate butyrate dope mixed with either aluminium or iron oxide. Van Treuren in note [a] claims this formulation is similar to "rocket fuel" as the dope provides “more than enough oxygen to support the imbedded aluminum’s combustion”. In fact it would do no such thing; the dope is not an oxidiser, it is considered to be a fuel as it can be burnt (oxidised). An oxidiser is an essential component in a rocket fuel, which is basically a fuel, an oxidiser and additional catalysts. The skin lacked an oxidiser and so the comparison of the skin to rocket fuel is ridiculous. Industry ratings for the dope give it a rating of combustible but not flammable i.e. it burns but self-extinguishes. Only when applied to something that is vaguely flammable, such as the cotton fabric in the Hindenburg skin, can it burn without self-extinguishing. The full skin formulation of cotton covered with layers of dope is still not flammable as shown in experimental tests on skin formulations [c] which is referenced in [b] (Edit: Thanks to hitandmyth for observing correct provenance) . The skin formulations were held horizontally in the test and burned at the rate of about 10cm per minute, which is pitifully slow. This rate is consistent with videos of tests on actual skin [f]. The dope reduces the combustibility of the basic cotton skin ( though, apparently, the Mythbusters found that it improved combustibility). So chemistry and experimental tests indicate the skin formulation of cotton fabric and layers of dope was not flammable but was combustible.
2) Some proponents of the skin theory suggest that the skin, if strongly heated, would have not only been flammable but would have burned in a thermite reaction. A thermite reaction is an iron oxide and aluminium reaction in which the aluminium is oxidised and generates tremendous heat sufficient to create molten iron and aluminium, it is not explos!ve as it does not generate any gaseous products. The top section of skin consisted of cotton fabric 100 gm/m2, iron oxide powder 4.6 gm/m2, and 6 gm/m2 aluminum powder see [b] which is taken from Bain's analysis. The skin could not undergo a thermite reaction because: there was no contact between the reactants as they were held in separate layers of the dope; the reactants were in the wrong proportions; and the reactants were not in sufficient concentrations for a reaction see [b]. The Mythbusters apparently got some sort of thermite reaction but their results are anomalous and their skin formulation must be called into question. The evidence strongly indicates the skin was not susceptible to a thermite reaction.
3) Even if the skin were made of pure rocket fuel, including an oxidiser such as ammonium perchlorate, the burn rate would still be very slow. In the SRBs of the shuttle the rocket fuel is pressurised to increase the speed of reaction but, even then, the rate of burn is no faster than a sparkler see [b]. No formulation of skin that has any relation to the actual skin can account for the rapid spread of the Hindenburg fire.
4) There is incontrovertible evidence from the crash site as to the flammability of the skin. There was a considerable amount of charred and unburnt skin left at the site. If the skin had been so flammable that it would burn over 800ft in 30 seconds then traces of it would not have been left at the site, and certainly not in some half burnt state which had self-extinguished. The crash site evidence firmly shows the skin was not flammable.
5) Experimental tests on genuine Hindenburg skin indicate it is not flammable. Bain’s own videoed test [f] on the iron oxide coated portion of the skin demonstrates that it was not flammable, additionally no thermite reaction took place even under the pretty extreme conditions of a heating current.
6) The film and photographs of the crash provide lots of useful evidence. The film shows there were no thermite reactions; the skin reluctantly burns to a crisp without sparkler-type combustion features [e]. The fire is obviously burning from the inside out and not outside in, this is incompatible with the skin theory. The skin is so reluctant to burn that islands of unburnt skin form until consumed from within by the fire, these long-lived areas of adjacent burnt and unburnt skin are not compatible with a flammable skin. At the nose of the Hindenburg there is some very obvious evidence that the fire is spreading within the ship. The nose ignites completely separately from the skin nearer the main fire, so the nose could not have been ignited by the surrounding skin, and there is no rapid spread of the fire in the skin of the nose to the surrounding skin. In photo [d] large islands of unburnt skin are surrounded by an inferno and the rear horizontal fin is not burning despite being subjected directly to a rising flame. The lower vertical tail fin is also not burning, as would be expected for a hydrogen fire which most strongly affects areas above its source, whereas if the skin were the cause of the spread of the fire, the fire would have advanced rapidly downwards and would have advanced very quickly to engulf the tail. The visual evidence strongly indicates that was no rapid spread of the fire across the skin and that the skin was not flammable.
7) One very important feature of picture [d] are the vertical breaks in the fire. These breaks separate the ship into burning and non-burning sections and are exactly aligned with the hydrogen cells. The skin was continuous across the ship and if it was the cause of the spread of the fire the fire breaks would not exist, whereas a hydrogen fire, compartmentalised by the internal hydrogen cells, would account for the fire breaks.
8) There are claims that the helium-filled airship the US Macon which crashed in 1935 burnt in a fire of the skin and that the skin may even have been the cause of the accident. These claims are completely fraudulent, the airship crashed in a storm due to its tail being blown off. After it crashed into the sea fuel from the engines leaked into the sea and eventually caught alight.
9) Some proponents of the skin theory have claimed that the skin burnt more rapidly than lab tests would suggest because in the Hindenburg crash the airship burnt at an angle and fire spreads much more rapidly upwards than it does horizontally. Picture [d] dismisses all of these claims as the fire spread very rapidly while the airship was still horizontal.
Proponents of the skin theory claim there are various problems with the hydrogen theory of the fire
1) The proponents of the skin theory claim that the colour of the fire indicates that it could not have been a hydrogen fire. Hydrogen in uncontaminated air burns with a blue flame and the fire was essentially orange. Well, as the Mythbusters apparently showed, Hydrogen does not burn with a blue flame in air contaminated with everyday impurities. A fire will burn combustible material it encounters, so the fire would have been coloured by the burning skin and the rest of the combustible materials on the Hindenburg, including glue which was used throughout the airframe. Additionally, observations and film of shot down Zeppelins over Britain in WW1 show that Hydrogen explosions of the ships always created fires that were very similar, if not identical, in colour to the fire of the Hindenburg.
2) The proponents of the skin theory claim that the hydrogen couldn’t have been burning in the early phase of the fire because the loss of buoyancy would have caused the rapid descent of the rear of the airship. Well, this claim does not take into account the effect of the huge updraft created by the fire that would have provided enormous lift, nor the fact the Hindenburg presented a huge surface area to vertical movement and therefore had large inertia in that direction ( if you don’t know what inertia is please look it up ). See [b]
3) The proponents of the skin theory claim that as the hydrogen lifting cells contained pure hydrogen there was no oxygen with which the hydrogen could burn. Well there is an issue here, but not a troublesome one, hydrogen will burn in air from a concentration of 4% to 74% by volume see [g]. I think the main fire was started by an earlier fire in the diesel fuel lines and this earlier fire ruptured one of the cells of hydrogen, though many theories suggest that the cells were ruptured due to wires snapping in the extreme manoeuvres executed by the Hindenburg as it tried to land. A ruptured cell would leak its contents and the resultant air and hydrogen mix would eventually become suitable to ignite. The upper skin prevented the immediate loss of any hydrogen released from the cells; hydrogen will rise in air, if unconfined, at 2ms-1. The heat and expansive forces from a hydrogen fire would rupture cells around it and so cause a chain reaction. The mythbusters seemed to have had a very poor model of the internals of the Hindenburg as they did not reproduce the hydrogen cells and continuously mixed in air. This invalidates much of their test.
4) The proponents of the skin theory claim that as a hydrogen fire does not burn downwards then it could not have been the cause of the fire. Well the fire was reluctant to burn downwards as shown by the lower portion of the Hindenburg and the rear vertical tail fin see [d], but of course the hydrogen fire did set fire to numerous other things that would have accounted for the lower portion of the ship eventually burning, most notably the diesel fuel which was burning on the ground for some considerable time after the fire.
Notes:
a) Below is a link to a “Layman’s summary of Dr. Bain’s thesis” written by an airship journalist called Van Treuren who was Bain’s collaborator and key exponent of the flammable skin or “Incendiary paint theory”. Van Treuren wrote a book on the theory in which one chapter was written by Bain so the document should accurately represent Bain’s paper. It has pretensions of being a scientific paper but it is littered with bias, twisted evidence, unfounded assertions and unscientific language, so it is probably a genuine representation of Bain, who was prepared to say and do almost anything, however unscrupulous, to promote hydrogen.
http://www.archivale.com/aerostation/22_1/22_1d.pdf
b) Much of the refutation of the skin theory comes from the papers by Dressler who was 26 years at Rice University as Professor of Space Physics and Astronomy, and 4 years at NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre as Director of Space Science Laboratory amongst other things. Don’t confuse this NASA employee with the unscrupulous and unscientific NASA technician Bain.
Dressler’s first paper is a general refutation of the Bain’s various ludicrous theories
http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.pdf
and
http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire2005jan12.pdf
which details the flammability of the skin
c) An experiment on the flammability of a Hindenburg skin formulation referenced by [b]
sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004-12-17/project1
d) A particularly interesting photo shows the Hindenburg mid-way through the fire while maintaining its horizontal attitude. It also shows the vertical fire breaks which correspond to the hydrogen cells. It also appears to show the falling engines ( the two falling black blobs just under the main body), one of which is well ahead of the fire and suggests that they are intimately linked to the disaster. It also shows the skin in places subjected to intense flame and reluctant to burn. At the rear, a horizontal fin is being subjected to the full force of a rising flame and yet does not burn but is simply enveloped in flame. This photo also clearly demonstrates that at this early stage the fire was burning from the inside to the outside and not from the outside to the inside.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v38/Flossie/hindenburg.gif
e) A video of the crash and fire at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7075337798933139695&q=hindenburg
which is the classic footage, but
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-375557973653978433&q=hindenburg
gives a better view of the whole crash and the behaviour of the skin can be seen on a larger scale
f) An extract from Bain’s infamous video in which he tries to demonstrate that a genuine piece of Hindenburg skin is very flammable and inadvertently proves the opposite. A large current is passed through the sample which heats those parts subjected to the current simultaneously to the point of ignition. Fraudulently, Bain uses this technique to ignite the sample rather than simply igniting one end with a flame to give the impression of a rapid spread of the flame. Not only does it take some time for the current to cause ignition, but the sample only partially burns and self-extinguishes as the flame fails to spread beyond the areas heated by the current.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXpbI-RaUP8
g) http://www.hydrogenassociation.org/general/basics.asp
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