On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:34:29 -0400, Wild_Bill wrote:
I couldn't tell ya how many times I've seen the film of the Hindenberg
airship, and I've never once heard it described as an explosion.. it burned,
and the airfield and the town were still there after the fire was put out.
No mushroom cloud, no deafening boom.. you could hear the reporter
describing the devastating umm, fire.

Mythbusters got some pretty exciting results trying to reproduce the
event.

A science/aeronautics show on PBS indicated that the most recent research
had proved that the fabric skin burned the way it did, because the formula
of the paint was essentially.. Thermite.
Iron oxide, aluminum powder and the flammable binder of resins that made up
the paint.
The researcher was well experienced and well educated in what he was
analyzing, and he had an actual sample of the ship's fabric.

Interesting. I wonder if that was before, or after, mythbusters did it.
Same conclusions.