The Hindenburg was a luxury airship, from nazi Germany. This "Titanic of the skies" (no pun intended) was destroyed by a flash fire in 1937 while landing in New Jersey after making its 10th transatlantic crossing. Thirty-five of the 97 people aboard and one ground crew member were killed when the blimp burst into flames and was rapidly consumed by the fire.
The Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen gas which is lighter than air. The gas was stored in sixteen large gas cells inside the ship. Like all gases, hydrogen expands when heated. If the hydrogen gas in the Hindenburg were to overheat, the gas could expand enough to burst the gas cells and send the ship plummeting to earth. The Hindenburg's engineers knew about this potential danger and came up with a solution to the problem; they painted the surface of the airship with a chemical "doping compound" that contained powdered aluminum and iron oxide. This compound was chosen because it did a good job of reflecting the rays of the sun, therefore ensuring that the gas cells inside the ship would not overheat.
There have been three main theories as to what happened to cause such a disaster. The official story has always been that the Hindenburg disaster was caused by the ignition of the flammable hydrogen gas used to lift the zeppelin. This has been over and over proven to be incorrect because witnesses of the explosion proclaim that it was like a fire works display, ummm... hydrogen burns without color.... Even pictures depicting the explosion show that the blaze from it contains pigment!
The second theory is that the cause of the explosion was an electrical conductor. The “doping compound” that was used to prevent the hydrogen from heating up was extremely flammable. On the night before the Hindenburg was landing their was an electrical storm, and the surface of the ship became electrically charged. Engineers had already planned for this however, they attached mooring lines, ropes, that would go down to the ground and take the static charge to the ground with them as the ship landed. There were, however, panels that remained charged. Eventually, this built-up electricity inside the remaining panels took the form of a spark. Since the charged panels were covered with the doping compound's highly reactive metal powders, this spark caused them to ignite and burn very rapidly.
On May the 7th 1915 the Lusitania sank, taking with it the lives of one thousand, two hundred and one people including ninety-one children and thirty-one infants. Despite the fact that it was the largest and fastest ship at that time, the German torpedo still found its mark off the South Coast of Ireland while the ship was travelling between the United States and England. The failure to prevent the tragedy despite the warnings given, the actions (or lack thereof) of the Admiralty and the neglect in ensuring that the lifeboat system and the ship itself would offer maximum protection; puts the primary blame unto the British Admiralty and the Cunard Company.
The unsinkable Titanic sank, and more than half of her 2200 passengers died. The indestructible Titan also sank, more than half of her 2500 passengers drowning. Went down bow first, the Titan actually capsizing before it sank.
Unfortunately, NTSB was unable to locate the source of ignition, but several theories of explosion where explained within this report. These theories include probability of the fuel flammability within the conditions before the aircraft's explosion and the Failures of the electrical components
...ames over Lakehurst, New Jersey. After having made ten successful round-trips across the Atlantic Ocean, the Hindenburg exploded in flames as it came in to dock at the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, N.J., on May 6. The craft was destroyed in just one minute, with 35 of the 97 people aboard perishing in the flames. The cause of the disaster was never identified, though there was speculation that a spark from the zeppelin's engines or atmospheric static electricity ignited highly inflammable hydrogen gas leaking from the craft, causing the explosion. The possibility of sabotage against Nazi Germany was widely rumored but never proven.
...elp his own election bid. Therefore, I think that the Reichstag fire was started by the Nazis, so they could take power and crush all their opposition as there is more reliable evidence to support this theory. But some of the evidence could lead me to believe that Van Der Lubbe was alone in setting the fire.
How many times do you get in your car, thinking it will explode? probably never. The passengers on the Challenger didn't think so either. The Challenger explosion was a disastrous and life changing event in history.
No one in Europe wanted this war to last because they felt and shared a common belief that the economies of the European nations would not be able to survive a war of this scale. (MAJ (P) Charles E. Heller, USAR) Therefore, Germany started looking into using gas a weapon within keeping in mind of the Declaration on the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases; Ju...
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost due to structural failure in the left wing. On take-off, it was reported that a piece of foam insulation surrounding the shuttle fleet's 15-story external fuel tanks fell off of Columbia's tank and struck the shuttle's left wing. Extremely hot gas entered the front of Columbia's left wing just 16 seconds after the orbiter penetrated the hottest part of Earth's atmosphere on re-entry. The shuttle was equipped with hundreds of temperature sensors positioned at strategic locations. The salvaged flight recorded revealed that temperatures started to rise in the left wing leading edge a full minute before any trouble on the shuttle was noted. With a damaged left wing, Columbia started to drag left. The ships' flight control computers fought a losing battle trying to keep Columbia's nose pointed forward.
In a matter of seconds a massive ball of fire arose over the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst New Jersey. Black clouds of smoke filled the sky, and people ran in terror, trying to find safety. The explosion of the Hindenburg on Thursday May 6, 1937, was reported to be the biggest disaster in history due to the lack of technology and engineering human errors. In that short period of time 35 people lost their lives and many of the 97 passengers were brutally injured (The Hindenburg Disaster). We will always remember this tragic day, but because of this the means of transportation have improved greatly and many travel the world safely, not having to worry about fatal accidents like the zeppelin perishing in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
Was the "Hindenburg disaster" a result of sabotage committed by the opponents of the Nazi organization? Did a bolt of lightning strike the zeppelin? Or was one of the most devastating accidents in aviation history nothing but a cunningly planned insurance fraud?
His notorious “incendiary paint theory” (IPT), which was the star of the PBS documentary Secrets of the Dead: What Happened to the Hindenburg?, has a large array of deficiencies. Dr. Alexander J. Dessler of Arizona University wrote an individual 21-page paper, titled The Hindenburg Fire: Fatal Flaws in the Addison Bain Incendiary-Paint Theory, and a collaborative follow-up piece named The Hindenburg Fire: Hydrogen or Incendiary Paint?, addressing the precise dilemmas encountered with Bain’s theory. For example, Bain used the continuous electric current of a Jacob’s Ladder to light a fabric sample of the Hindenburg during his initial experiment –– and thus provided a stimulus not synonymous to the atmospheric conditions during the time of the real incident. Bain’s theory was also bashed on the season-opening 70th episode of the hit television series MythBusters. The details of how the IPT is inaccurate are important, but the more crucial point is that the IPT has been proven faulty. If incendiary paint was officially pegged as the cause of the Hindenburg disaster, then the theory and its appropriate methodology would have to hold despite retesting and duplication of the initial experiment. Yet the IPT has indeed been disproved on multiple occasions since its formulation. So it would be rather erroneous to ever logically accept that the IPT is a
On its first day in orbit NASA engineers came to the conclusion that the foam debris that hit the left wing might have caused severe damage to the shuttle and could prevent it from a safe reentry.
The Hindenburg was made to be filled with helium, but it was filled with very flammable hydrogen because of restrictions made from the United States. Later in 1936 the Hindenburg became a commercial air service. No one knows what actually happened to spark the fire that brought down the Hindenburg. Some people say it was caused by static electricity in the atmosphere when the hydrogen mixed with the oxygen, others say it was caused from the paint they used to paint the Hindenburg. There were no warning signals that would have told anyone the Hindenburg was about to catch on fire. The whole thing happened in about 37 seconds..
was lit on fire. This caused great damage to enemy ships, but also made the
At 9 a.m. on February 1st, 2003, disaster struck the space shuttle program: Columbia had disintegrated upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere just 16 minutes before it was supposed to land at Kennedy Space Center (National Geographic News par 2-3). The shuttle had been damaged by little more than foam from the external tank but it was enough to make it susceptible to the high temperatures it faced as it descended through the atmosphere. The idea that a space shuttle can endure damage that is unforeseen or unavoidable is well within reason. However, in retrospect it was found that foam strikes were present on most shuttle missions and NASA had a history of diminishing their recognized danger in favor of increasing the chances of meeting mission deadlines. Columbia and its crew of seven astronauts were doomed from launch due to a combination of the damage it sustained and the unwillingness of program managers to allow anyone to investigate it further during the mission. The Columbia disaster should spur NASA to reevaluate their policies in order to pay closer attention to matters of safety in their space programs.