May 6th, 1937. For the Germans, it was a beautiful day, after the WWI, German had recovered quite well. On the plain field of Frankfurt station stood a party of peoples, mainly consists of rich travelers and minority of them are crews. Floating above them was the mighty German Zeppelin – Hindenburg.
For years, Germans were the pioneer in zeppelin building, but this time the Germans decided to make the greatest Zeppelin to serve as luxury cruise across the Atlantic ocean. The zeppelin was build in the year 1936. for the first year it had flied well and became the proud of the Germans. But faith is unpredictable, it will have its last and flight in the next year. On this day, that’s May 6th, the zeppelin take off from the Frankfurt
station and headed West towards America and without the knowledge of its crew, this would be their last flight, the flight towards doom.
When the land finally appear in front of them, the zeppelin lower their altitude and to make the journey more interesting they decided to take a tour around Boston, New York and New Jersey. The American were fascinated by the giant that hover over them. But they’ll soon get shocked of what will happened to the zeppelin.
The Lakehurst air field is in the view of the crew, they prepared to land. But the weather start to change, black cloud gathered on the sky above. This causing some delay of the landing time. At 7.22am, the
anchoring lines were threw and the zeppelin decent from the sky.
Just at this moment, the zeppelin caught fire suddenly. Within a few seconds, the whole ship turned into a towering inferno. In an instant, the ship was down. Down to the ground. All left was its skeleton and some skin remains.
In the end, 35 casualties were recorded. The investigation were carried out. The theory was, the cause of the fire was the ignition of the hydrogen gas in the zeppelin. So the case was closed. But few decades later, the
case was reopened again. Some people noticed that the flame of burning hydrogen should be blue in colour. But the picture shows the flame in orange colour. There must be some mistake behind the theory.
Finally, I watched a documentary call “MythBuster” and they tested it. Finally the result was out, the actually cause of the fire was the composition of the skin. The skin of the ship was covered with acetate aluminum, which will easily caught in fire if exposed to charges like lightning, and the flame produced was orange in colour. This time the theory matched the cause exactly. It was unbelievable, the coating was design to reflect the sunlight and protect the zeppelin from heat to prevent it from explode, but in turn it was the cause of the destruction of Hindenburg, what a tragic accident.
This post is dedicated to those who died in the tragic destruction of Hindenburg. May the painful memories always in peoples mind, so that this incidence won’t repeat again.
