Airship Hydrogen resupply

[JuliaL]

Oh cool, Julia, did you know this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_gas

I think I sort of knew about it.  There seems to be a couple of industrial processes used to generate lighting gas starting in the late 18th century and persisting till the introduction of electrical lighting.  History of Manufactured Gas  Isn't the internet amazing...at least, I'm still amazed.  I expect that my sons will find it dull & pedestrian to have any subject they wish to investigate immediately available and take it for granted as I take for granted the electrical distribution grid.
My vaguely remembered introduction to lighting gas production came from an elementary school reading primer where he big event in one story was having that new-fangled thing, gas lighting, installed in town.  We also had some exotic civil engineered facilities for storage that were demolished in my time.  They were basically a pool with a frame above that guided an inverted tank like a giant upturned cup.  The gas was pumped in from below and the weight of the tank provided pressure for distribution.

I also remember when the  'sticking your head in the oven' method of suicide became impractical as the CO in cooking gas was replaced by CH4.

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So I don't see how there is enough structure such that removing 6 tons of it would still leave the airship able to hold itself together.

I don't know if you've seen The Flight of the Phoenix?  The reconstituted machine need not be much like the original.  Besides, we're in a novel, it's going to run on narrativium anyway.