Hindenburg:The New Evidence on NOVA

[airnutz]

Tonight on PBS 8pm Central, might be interesting.... If you miss it there are several encores Thursday and Friday showing.

[Chris Brame]

Interesting in that the newly-rediscovered amateur 8mm footage shows the fire from a side angle rather than the mostly head-on shots of the newsreels. Unfortunately, like the newsreels, the cameraman caught the scene a couple seconds after the initial flash, but the footage does give another perspective on the speed of the disaster. The rest of the show is mostly caught up with explaining how a static charge from the dropped lines - intensified by wet fabric skin - traveled through the Hindenburg, delivering a spark that would eventually reach the leaking gas in the airship's aft section (we don't get any explanation or investigation about the cause of the leak). One question I wish had been asked was why hadn't this happened before - had there never been any gas leaks on the airship? Still a good job by the producers.

[OD/NG]

Excellent documentary that I really enjoyed. The best part for me was the newly released film footage of the explosion from a different angle that we are all used to seeing. That was like seeing the JFK assassination from another angle - really riveting stuff. Here is an excerpt of that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFCgipjR2ow&t=2s

Good job on the documentary by the producers. Though the "wet ropes" theory has been around for a while, it was nice seeing it validated by scientific rigor as presented in this documentary.

As a fan of LZ-129 history, I would love to see a Mark Allen Hindenburg thread with high res photos, hint, hint.

[Chris Brame]

Thanks OD/NG! First clear frame:

[RyanShort1]

Watched the whole thing last night online and that was one of the better documentary efforts I've seen in a while.

[Kyleb]

The rest of the show is mostly caught up with explaining how a static charge from the dropped lines - intensified by wet fabric skin - traveled through the Hindenburg, delivering a spark that would eventually reach the leaking gas in the airship's aft section (we don't get any explanation or investigation about the cause of the leak).

Help me reconcile this:

Leaking hydrogen rises. So any leaked gas would have been towards the top of the ship.

The ropes seemed to be attached near the bottom of the airship. I assume (yeah, I know) that they were attached to metal structure. So if there was a charge difference between the Hindenburg and the ground, I'd have thought any spark would have happened at ground level when the ropes got within arcing distance of the ground.

How does that cause a spark close enough to the top of the airship to ignite the (presumed) leaking hydrogen?

[phil65]

If you watch the show, they go into great detail about that.

Phil

[TAdan]

I watched it last night and enjoyed it. I liked watching the tests in the lab as much as the un-seen footage.

[hurricane_yank]

Didn't air locally here (Indy).

[RyanShort1]

Didn't air locally here (Indy).

It's on YouTube already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFCgipjR2ow&t=33s

[OD/NG]

Didn't air locally here (Indy).

It's on YouTube already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFCgipjR2ow&t=33s

Just a small correction here. That link is not the full episode, it's only a 6 minute preview.

The full episode can be watched here:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/hin ... -evidence/

This should be available anywhere in the world. If, for some reason, your country's IP is blocked, just go around it with a VPN.

[RyanShort1]

Didn't air locally here (Indy).

It's on YouTube already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFCgipjR2ow&t=33s

Just a small correction here. That link is not the full episode, it's only a 6 minute preview.

The full episode can be watched here:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/hin ... -evidence/

This should be available anywhere in the world. If, for some reason, your country's IP is blocked, just go around it with a VPN.

Weird, I grabbed the wrong link, but regardless, you got the right one!

[hurricane_yank]

Looks like we will get it tomorrow night.

[airnutz]

An interesting and excellent presentation, watched it a coupl'a times. Next NOVA, electric aircraft...

[p51]

I found it quite interesting. I've been in the area of the crash a few times but never had the time to stand where she struck the ground.
But looking at all the info in the Nova show, it only makes you wonder why the Hindenburg burned up then, and not at any point earlier? Unlike the Titanic, which came as shock to everyone when it went down, this airship's demise probably surprised nobody in aviation circles when it happened. The loss of the airship Roma forced the US out of hydrogen and even with a monopoly on Helium at the time, should have told the world, "You really shouldn't mess with this stuff in airships." Yet the same mindset that decades later led to the loss of the NASA orbiter, "Challenger," guys in suits decided they were smarter than the given odds of something going very badly with a known peril.