Hindenburg Explosion Now Attributed to Static Electricity After 76 Years

76 years after the Hindenburg explosion, the disaster is now attributed to static electricity by an engineer and his team conducting tests to explain the mystery.

On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg airship was attempting to dock at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey when it exploded. 36 people were killed in the disaster that remained a mystery for 76 years.

Like most disasters, as soon as it was over, theories about the cause of the explosion began to surface. The most popular theory was sabotage, and it was the basis for many books written about the Hindenburg. At the time nobody would have thought static electricity was the cause of the Hindenburg explosion.

Officials at the time agreed that a spark had ignited leaking hydrogen gas. However, they were not sure what created the spark.

Hence the Hindenburg mystery was born.

At team of experts based at the South West Research Institute, led by British engineer Jem Stansfield, conducted tests to determine what caused the Hindenburg explosion.

The team blew up and set fire to models of the airship so they could rule out the theory that a bomb was planted on board. Another tested theory was that the paint used on the Hindenburg had explosive properties. Neither of these theories turned out to solve the Hindenburg mystery.

In order to truly determine the cause of the Hindenburg's crash, scientists in the recent study created scale models of the blimp more than 78-feet long, meticulously examined archival footage of the tragedy and also closely studied eyewitness accounts. The biggest insight was that the fire from the explosion appears to have begun on the tail-end of the blimp, igniting the hydrogen. Researchers now believe the Hindenburg went through a thunderstorm that caused a build up of hydrogen, that when combined with electrostatic, caused the explosion. 

"I think the most likely mechanism for providing the spark is electrostatic," said Stansfield, according to The Independent. "That starts at the top, then the flames from our experiments would've probably tracked down to the centre. With an explosive mixture of gas, that gave the whoomph when it got to the bottom."

Airship historian Dan Grossman agrees with Stansfield's assessment. "I think that's exactly what happened. I think you had massive distribution of hydrogen throughout the aft half of the ship; you had an ignition source pull down into the ship, and that whole back portion of the ship went up almost at once," Grossman said.

The final piece of the mystery came together when the team realized that the crew on the ground "earthed", or grounded, the ship when they went to grab the landing ropes.

This meeting of charged opposites caused the fire that killed 36 people.