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Helium for Hydrogen-Inquiries by all authorities soon passed over sabotage (incendiary bullets) as the cause of the disaster. Next discussed was static electricity, harges of which all aircraft accumulate, especially when flying in thunderstorm areas. The fact that the Hindenburg's, ground lines had been down for three minutes before the blaze began, thus presumably drawing off all static charges, opposed this theory.
Professor Otto Stern of Carnegie Institute of Technology observed that hydrogen Drotons escaping through a small aperture become ionized, or build up a small positive electric charge, through the friction of their escape. Hydrogen burns on contact with oxygen. The presence of a slight negative charge of static electricity in the airship fabric or in the air might thus cause a spark sufficient to start the fire. Zeppelin men scouted this idea, however, pointing out that many a German airship came back from bombing London shot full of holes which caused no hydrogen fire.
The fire spread so fast that few stories of its origin jibed. But several witnesses clung to their story of the port rear engine racing and spouting sparks. These might have ignited hydrogen valved out during the descent. Airships usually valve gas in landing. The vents are on top and the gas is so light that it usually rises straight up. The Hindenburg was slightly nose down at the instant of the fire and still moving fairly fast. Conceivably a freak breeze might have combined with the slipstream to waft a whiff of gas into engine sparks.
Whatever the spark's origin, the fire probably meant the end of hydrogen in passenger airships, though the Germans have lost few ships from that cause. The Hindenburg was LZ129. Of her 128 German predecessors, ten never left the drawing board, 25 were lost by storm and accident, six by causes unknown, 21 were dismantled, 46 were wrecked by the War, eleven were surrendered to the Allies, seven were sabotaged to prevent surrender, two are left-the decommissioned Los Angeles at Lakehurst and the sturdy old Graf, which arrived the day after the tragedy in Frankfort from Rio de Janeiro, carrying 23 passengers. She was promptly grounded by the Reich. Having read full reports from Lakehurst, Dr. Eckener announced: "There must be no more flying with hydrogen. We must make an about face. We must use helium."
There lay the real cause of the Hindenburg disaster, for Germany has no helium. It is a U. S. monopoly. The willingness of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt to sell Germany enough helium to fly the Graf and the Hindenburg on peaceful missions was offset by the price factor (more than 30 times as expensive, for 20% less payload efficiency) and by covert political opposition. As Columnist Dorothy Thompson wrote: "The destruction of the Hindenburg was an act of sabotage. For the peaceful world today, the world that seeks to join hands in the perfection of greater technologies, that seeks mutual enrichment and mutual understanding by all means of physical, intellectual and spiritual intercourse, is, indeed, being sabotaged by the fear and the threat of war. The Hindenburg represented the world and for that reason our eyes lighted when we saw its silver grandeur in the sky. It contended with another world which might make it at any moment an object of terror and of hatred."