Colonel Haken is completely correct. Except for the bit about hydrogen being safe.

Chemistry Lesson: Hydrogen does indeed make water. When it burns or explodes that is. Burning hydrogen combines with oxygen to make water, according to the formula

2H₂ + O₂ → 2H₂O

Linguistics Lesson: Wasserstoff is indeed the name of hydrogen in German, and literally means water material. This is because it combines with oxygen to produce water. Interestingly, the English word hydrogen has pretty much the same literal meaning, only obscured by the Greek word roots: hydro meaning water, and gen (as in genesis) meaning creation.

History Lesson: In fact, German zeppelins flew through thunderstorms routinely and never caught fire due to a lightning strike. Some non-German ones did, but that only ever occurred when they were venting hydrogen to reduce buoyancy. Hugo Eckener, the head of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, ordered his pilots never to vent hydrogen in a thunderstorm, and his ships remained safe. Whether or not Haken sticks to this policy remains to be seen...

Leaping to Conclusions Lesson: The Hindenburg's skin was doped with a flammable substance similar in composition to solid rocket fuel. But that's irrelevant to today's strip because they're currently on the Graf Zeppelin (I blew up the Hindenburg already), and I already know it, so e-mailing to tell me is neither useful nor productive. ;-)

Fascinating the things you learn, isn't it?

Oh, and in case you're wondering, that's Erwin on the right of the Joneses. They guy talking in panel one is known as Nazi 1 in my scripts.