I was just watching the Hindenburg episode of Mythbusters again, and more than any other episode, this one drives me completely nuts. I've just gotta get it off my chest.

So the "myth" they set out to disprove is that the Hindenburg was coated in "rocket fuel" and that is what caused the conflagration. They also state that it is a verifiable fact that the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen.

So it seems to me what you want to test here is if there's a difference between a hydrogen-filled zeppelin with the historically accurate paint and a hydrogen-filled zeppelin coated with something that is definitely not incendiary. That way, the only change you make is to the coating in question, which is what they want to test.

But that's not what they do. They make two scale-model zeppelins, one filled with hydrogen and coated with the historically-accurate paint, and another filled with normal air and coated with the historically-accurate paint. In their test, they found that the one filled with hydrogen burned faster. Shocking!

It seems to me what they determined is that hydrogen is highly flammable. I don't think that anyone should be surprised by that conclusion. I don't think that anyone would claim that hydrogen is not flammable, or that it had no effect on the Hindenburg fire.

Argh!