Scientists Speak Out Against Wasting Helium In Balloons

Citation needed. And, while I agree with the XKCD take on mythbusters, they are not a suitable scientific or engineering source to cite.

To back up the claim that the skin of the Hindenburg initiated the fire I will site Engineering Disasters - Lessons to be Learned, by Don Lawson. ISBN 1-86058-459-4, pages 3 to 19. One quote from this section of the book:

"Addison Brian's tests
"In 1994 Dr Bain managed to get samples of the outer covering of the Hindenburg and carried out tests. The outer covering of cellulose acetate butyrate dope and fine aluminum powder was similar to the rocket fuel he was familiar with at NASA. He found that the aluminum and dope had bled through the fabric in places and had combined with the iron oxide on the inner surface. The resulting mixture is similar to a thermite fuse mixture used to achieve high temperatures in welding.

"Dr Bain tested samples of similarly doped fabric for their potential to be ignited by an electrostatic discharge. When an arc struck down onto the fabric samples, it only resulted in local damage. Airships struck by lightning had shown similar localized damage. When the arc was parallel to the surface of the fabric, the electrical energy was sufficient to ignite the sample, which was quickly consumed by fire."

The reference provided for the above quote was: Bain, A. and Schmidtchen, U. (2000) Afterglow of a Myth: Why and How the Hindenburg Burnt, DWV, January, www.dwvinfo.de

Other parts of this section go into further detail, including other hypothesizes for what caused the disaster. If you read Engineering Disasters, he does not claim that they mystery is completely solved. Indeed, It will probably never be solved with 100% certainty. But the theory of lightning igniting the flammable skin appears to be the most probable cause of the start of the fire. Obviously once the ship was on fire the hydrogen burnt, no doubt making the fire far worse. Who knows, maybe Helium would have put out the fire...

Do you have a source better than Mythbusters (and better than Wikipedia and Snopes)? If so, I would be interested....

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/wILwQOebN_w/scientists-speak-out-against-wasting-helium-in-balloons

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