Greek Scientist Solves Mystery of Hindenburg Disaster

Greek Reporter ^ | May 6, 2024 | Tasos Kokkinidis

[nickcarraway]

The mystery of the Hindenburg disaster, the destruction of the largest aircraft ever constructed by mankind, on May 6, 1937, in Manchester Township, New Jersey has baffled scientists for decades.

The airship Hindenburg was nearing the end of a three-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Frankfurt, Germany before it went up in flames. Merely watching the gigantic airship making its way across the skies was a newsworthy spectacle, and onlookers and news crews gathered to watch the 800-foot-long behemoth touch down.

Suddenly and horrifyingly, in less than half minute, it was all over. Flames erupted from the airship’s skin, fed by the flammable hydrogen gas that kept it aloft, and consumed the entire structure, ending 36 lives.

The ship, already famous before its demise, was seared into the world’s memory.

Greek scientist Hindenburg Public Domain The disaster, despite having occurred nearly one hundred years ago, has remained one of the iconic tragedies of the 20th century alongside other accidents that captured the public’s imagination, such as the sinking of the Titanic, the Challenger explosion, and the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

Grecian Delight supports Greece Greek scientist unravels the cause of the Hindenburg disaster But what was the cause of the explosion? Caltech’s Konstantinos Giapis, a professor of chemical engineering, recreated the ship’s final moments and unraveled its secrets for NOVA, the popular PBS science television show.

Giapis, who obtained his diploma from the National Technical University of Athens in 1984 and completed his Ph.D. studies at the University of Minnesota in 1989, began looking into historical records of the accident and soon realized that no one before had undertaken any form of research to discover the cause of the incident.

What has always been known is that the zeppelin, which was designed by the Zeppelin Company, a German firm known for its large and luxurious airships, contained 7 million cubic feet of flammable hydrogen.

Imagine a cigar-shaped balloon as large as a skyscraper filled with explosive gas. Combine that hydrogen with oxygen from the air and a source of ignition, and you “literally [have] a bomb,” Giapis said, according to an interview with Caltech.

The key but long-unanswered question was how the fire even began. The Greek scientist built a model of a portion of the zeppelin’s outer surface in his laboratory on the Caltech campus in his attempt to gain insights.

Greek scientist Hindenburg disaster The Hindenburg flying over New York City just before disaster struck. Public Domain Building a model of the airship The Greek scientist attests that after the ship was grounded, it became more electrically charged. When the mooring ropes were dropped, electrons from Earth’s surface spread to the frame, giving the ship a positively-charged skin and a negatively-charged frame.

In other words, by grounding the frame with the mooring ropes, the landing crew had inadvertently made more “room” for positive charge to gather on the ship, setting the stage for the disaster.

“When you ground the frame, you form a capacitor—one of the simplest electric devices for storing electricity—and that means you can accumulate more charge from the outside,” Giapis says. “I did some calculations and I found that it would take four minutes to charge a capacitor of this size!”

With the ship now acting as a giant capacitor, enough electrical energy to produce the powerful sparks required for igniting the hydrogen gas could be acquired. This, based on eyewitness accounts, may have been leaking from the rear end of the ship located near its tail.

“Hydrogen was leaking at one specific location in this humongous thing. If there is a spark somewhere else on the ship, there is no way you would ignite a leak hundreds of feet away. A charge could move on wet skin over short distances, but doing that from the front of the airship all the way to the back is more difficult,” he says. “So how did the spark find this leak?”

Any place where a part of the frame was in close proximity to the skin would have formed a capacitor, and there were hundreds of these places all over the ship, Giapis says.

“That means the giant capacitor was actually composed of multiple smaller capacitors, each capable of creating its own spark. So I believe there were multiple sparks happening all over the ship, including where the leak was,” he says.

Giapis’ work could help exploration of Mars The Greek scientist was also the head of a team of US scientists which has developed a small, portable device that can generate oxygen from carbon dioxide.

His brilliant idea could become the foundation of future human missions to Mars, as it could provide breathable oxygen to astronauts who will travel on long space missions to reach the Red Planet.

After completing his Ph.D. studies at the University of Minnesota in 1989, Giapis was employed as a Lacey Instructor in Caltech between 1992 and 1993; as an assistant professor between 1993 and 1998; and an associate professor between 1999 and 2010. Since 2010, he has worked as a professor at Caltech.

He is currently teaching Chemical Engineering Design Laboratory and Heterogeneous Kinetics and Reaction Engineering at Caltech.

With information from Caltech

[mass55th]

In WWI, it took the intestines of 250,000 cows to build one zeppelin. In order to have enough cow intestines to build the ships, the German government banned the making of sausages.

German Zeppelins Were Made with Cow Intestines And It Led To Sausage Restrictions During WWI

[TexasGator]

“My problem is I don’t see how you can’t ground the frame and the skin together. When they attach the carrage to the blimp it is touching the outer skin and is bolted to the frame therefor, no capacitor.”

Instead of making false statements concerning the Hindenburg construction do some research first.

[Paal Gulli]

#1, are we so short on current events that we have to resort to rehashing 3-year-old news?

History's Mysteries: Caltech Professor Helps Solve Hindenburg Disaster

May 17, 2021

Same professor, same theory, THREE YEARS AGO.

#2, He didn't solve JACK-SQUAT, he offers no contemporary evidence, it's just another theory, and IT WASN'T EVEN ORIGINAL.

Static charge, hydrogen caused Hindenburg disaster -report

By Reuters
March 4, 2013 11:30 PM GMT Updated 12 years ago

"...British aeronautical engineer Jem Stansfield and a team of researchers based in San Antonio, Texas, concluded that the airship ignited when the ground crew ran to take the landing ropes, effectively earthing the ship and causing a spark, the newspaper said on its website on Monday...."

Looks to me more like plagiarism than a "solving."

[bosco24]

“Instead of making false statements concerning the Hindenburg construction do some research first.”

Yes sir, will do.

Sir, the research is complete.

The carrage (made of dualium) was rested on the outer skin (aluminum paint) and was bolted (Steel) to the frame therefor the two were electrically connected and could not form a capacitor.

[TexasGator]

Link please

[bosco24]

Bite me!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

He is theorizing that the metal frame and the skin formed a giant capacitor and that the huge charge stored in that capacitor was causing sparks all over the place. One spark found a hydrogen leak at the aft.

[SunkenCiv]

• Greek Scientist Solves Mystery of Hindenburg Disaster [04/21/2023]
• New uncovered footage from a different angle sheds light on Hindenburg disaster [05/21/2021]
• Last Survivor of the Hindenburg Disaster Dies at Age 90 [11/16/2019]
• Zeppelins stopped flying after the Hindenburg disaster. Now scientists want to bring them back [08/20/2019]
• An 80th anniversary: The airship Hindenburg bursts into flames [05/06/2017]
• Oh the Humanity: Today is the anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster. Video is still amazing as ever [05/06/2010]
• Hindenburg Survivors Recall Tragedy 70 Years Later [05/05/2007]
• Hindenburg rescue hero and U.S. Navy ``sky sailor'' dies at 94 [12/03/2005]

[logi_cal869]

He deserves only derision for making claims he has merely validated of others prior.

I’m not looking it up, but this claim was demonstrated YEARS ago.

He ‘solved’ nothing.

[TexasGator]

Where did you get your engineering degree?

[TexasGator]

“I’m not looking it up, but this claim was demonstrated YEARS ago.”

lol!

[logi_cal869]

Alright, DA. Mr Funnyman.

I looked it up: This is recycled news. In fact, the article is a copy/paste repost from 2022

https://greekreporter.com/2022/04/17/greek-scientist-solves-mystery-of-hindenburg-disaster/

But it’s worse than that: The hyperlink under his name at the article below dates to the ORIGINAL article from 2022, but Greek Reporter autodirects to the new 2024 post

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg

Worse still, this may be the show which showcased information I’d read prior (but that I’m also not expending any more time on) but it was years prior where another scientist analyzed the doping structure the Germans used and found that it would hold a charge. To geeks, the concept is rather “Duh,” as was the PBS show

https://www.edn.com/a-new-look-at-the-design-of-the-hindenburg

The PBS show broadcast May 19, 2021, almost a year prior to the 2022 Greek Reporter article which, ironically, references this PBS article.

Yes, Konstantinos Giapis was the one who solved it, but - as I stated - YEARS ago.

The Greek Reporter post is recycled news and they hide the only reference to the earlier news under a hyperlink, failing to even cite the air date of the PBS documentary, let alone its name. Almost 100% copy/pasted.

Clickbait.

Tasos Kokkinidis & Greek Reporter have some ‘spaining to do.

[TexasGator]

“But it’s worse than that: The hyperlink under his name at the article below dates to the ORIGINAL article from 2022, but Greek Reporter autodirects to the new 2024 post”

How is that worse? It merely means that his work was earlier.

[cpdiii]

Pure hydrogen burns, it only explodes when mixed with the proper (2:1) stoichiometric ratio with oxygen.

You are mostly correct. It can explode either side of the perfect stoichimetric ratio but not with complete reaction of the hydrogen and oxygen depending on what side of the ratio you are on. Think fuel air bombs. It is not stochimetric but is devastating. It will still be a hell of an explosion.

The Hindenburg did not explode, it simply burned as the hydrogen burned after one of the bladders started the process from a probably leak and then a combustion source that is unknown. If it had truly exploded it would have dropped like a rock and none would have survived. The shock wave would have killed them anyway in a true explosion. Out of 97, 35 perished. The reason is the cabin was suspended below the dirigible and as the hydrogen burned most the flames were directed upward as the passenger compartment area rather slowly descended.

Odd point of history is that Germany wanted to use Helium instead of Hydrogen. The USA had virtually all the Helium production at that time. Because Germany was then prewar Nazi, we would not sell it to them and that was a good decision.

I would love to fly across the Atlantic in a dirigible using Helium, hydrogen no thank you. It was the height of luxury if flying. The ocean liner ships were even more luxurious as they had no weight penalties and could bring on board anything a guest would want. I would be willing to pay a lot of bucks for a flight like this. The Pan Am Clipper Ships did start flying the Atlantic in 1939. You had to be wealthy to do this. Luxury for passengers is what they did. You did not eat from a seat back table. You sat at a table like in a fine restaurant and served fine food.

[TexasGator]

“Worse still, this may be the show which showcased information I’d read prior (but that I’m also not expending any more time on) but it was years prior where another scientist analyzed the doping structure the Germans used and found that it would hold a charge. To geeks, the concept is rather “Duh,” as was the PBS show”

Duh. The Germans AND Americans all knew it would hold a charge in 1937. The new work is how the charge could build up.

[x]

Did somebody say "Greek scientist?"

Who's the go-to Greek scientist?

[x]

Did somebody say "Greek scientist?"

Who's the go-to Greek scientist?

[TexasGator]

“Yes, Konstantinos Giapis was the one who solved it, but - as I stated - YEARS ago.”

You never stated that.

[TomEd]

A.A. Hoehling connect the dots very convincingly in his 1962 book "Who Destroyed the Hindenburg?"

• The initial ignition sounded like flashbulbs going off.
• The airship was 90 or so minutes behind schedule.
• Rigger Erich Spiehl was seen running towards the point of ignition, looking worried, just before it happened.
• Erich was a photographer with access to such things as timers and flash bulbs.
• Erich had a Russian girlfriend to impress.

[logi_cal869]

Yes, I did,