SAN ANTONIO — When the hydrogen-filled German airship Hindenburg exploded and crashed in New Jersey on May 6, 1937, after a swift Atlantic crossing, images of the spectacular disaster were captured for eternity.
“It was the first major catastrophe people could see with their own eyes. It was filmed. It was photographed. None of previous things, the Titanic, the Galveston Flood, had been,” said Dan Grossman, 49, a Hindenburg expert.
“We watched 9/11 in real time, but in 1937, it was a new experience and it was very shocking. That’s why it’s taken hold and people are fascinated,” he told the San Antonio Express-News.
The crash killed 36 people, dented Nazi prestige and put a quick end to lighter-than-air commercial flight. It also left questions that have lingered for almost eight decades about what really brought the great ship to earth.
While both German and American commissions concluded shortly afterward that the cause was static electricity, other theories included an angry farmer taking potshots at the hovering craft, anti-Nazi sabotage and someone onboard smoking.
Most historians and scientists always have subscribed to the static electricity theory, but no one ever had shown scientifically how it could have occurred on what was the Hindenburg’s 63rd flight. Until now.
Last fall, a British television production company came to San Antonio and enlisted scientists at the Southwest Research Institute to try to resolve the mystery once and for all.
“They wanted us to do a forensic analysis of the Hindenburg to determine if we could narrow down the cause of the incident,” said Matthew Blais, the institute’s director of fire and technology research.
The three-week effortled to a show on the Discovery Channel in December and another this week in England.
“We proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it was a static electricity discharge that ignited leaking hydrogen that was mixed with oxygen in the vent shafts. It was a spark between the airframe and the skin of the aircraft,” Blais said.
He said they were able to account for the rapid movement of the combustion through vents inside the craft, and to debunk the theory that the skin of the Hindenburg was highly flammable.
Grossman believes the long-lingering uncertainty about the Hindenburg’s terrible end now is resolved.
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