Mik said:
The duralumin frame was covered by cotton varnished with iron oxide and cellulose acetate butyrate impregnated with aluminium powder.
Hey Mik I was watching a show last night called “Secrets of the Dead” in which they examined the Hindenburg and they determined what they called the “definitive” cause of the disaster, it was NOT leaking hydrogen, or sabatoge. It turns out a new formula used for the doping on the COVERING was extrordinarliy flammable and to top that off it contained powerized aluminum that increased the capaticty of static electric build up, particularly during electrical storms, which were present in the area of Lakehurst at the time of the crash. They also deterimined that the grounding intended to prevent static charge build up during landing was inadequate and that charge could remain and build up in insolated parts of the ship. They theorized that in the heavily charge stormy atmosphere that the static charge built up along one of the poorly grounded sections of the ship until the charge arced, setting fire to the covering which flash fired over the flammible covering devouring the ship in less than a minute, the hydrogen cells burst into flames only after the fire of the covering flashed over them. Witnesses on the port side of the ship reported the fire starting at the port side near the rear tail surface and burned with incredible rapidity as it spread forward and around the ship, also the fire according to all witnesses burned a reddish yellow, hydrogen burns blue! So it wasnt the hydrogen per say! The closer came in two forms, A: they found a piece of the fabric covering that had survived and in an experiement they recreated the circumstances they theorized brought the ship down. They applied a static charge to it, and after 60 years! it burst into a bright yellow flame like it covered in gasoline! and B: They went to thru the Zeppelin company records and found, 60 years later, the never published, official internal company inquiry into the disaster, and in it they confirmed, that the covering used on the Zeppelin, could be set ablaze by static charge build up, and the internal report even confirmed that the germans conducted the same experiment and came to the same conclusion. In the german inquiry experiment they used two sources of fabric covering, one from the Hindenburg, the other from the old Graf Zeppelin, the Graf sample did not burn, but the Hindenburg sample burned with a quickness that frightened the company officials. the postscript was that the fabric covering of the Graf Zeppelin II (edit) which was under construction was immedialty replaced. The Graf Zeppelin II (edit) never flew across the Atlantic, but did fly over nutzie Europe for a couple years before the war permanently grounded them for good, ending the dream of Werner Von Zeppelin.