Helmut Lau

   Crew Member

   Age: about 25

   Hometown: Friedrichshafen, Germany

   Occupation: Helmsman

   Location at time of fire: Ladder leading into lower fin

   Survived


Helmut Lau was born in Friedrichshafen, the son of Bernhard Lau, who was one of Count von Zeppelin's first airship captains. Luftschiffkapitän Lau had been flying Zeppelins since the early days when they would take off from and land on Lake Constance, and had later gone on to command test flights of the Navy's wartime Zeppelin L59 (which was later flown to Africa and back again) and the LZ-120 Bodensee, the first passenger airship built following World War I.

Helmut Lau followed in his father's footsteps, training on the LZ-127 as a helmsman, and then transferring over to the new ship, the LZ-129 Hindenburg, when it was put into service in 1936. Lau was one of three helmsmen on the Hindenburg's final flight, the others being Alfred Bernhardt and Kurt Schönherr. He had been with the ship as a helmsman since its maiden flight on March 4^th, 1936. Lau was also one of three Hindenburg crewmen (the others being Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter and watch officer Captain Walter Ziegler) who were also ranking Nazi officers, Lau himself being a sturmführer (second lieutenant) in the S.S., in which capacity he also served as a flight instructor. According to Captain Heinrich Bauer, despite his official role within the Nazi Party, Helmut Lau was a dedicated airshipman first and foremost.

One of the Hindenburg's helmsmen, probably Helmut Lau, at the rudder wheel. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst on its final flight, Lau was off watch and in the crew's mess eating his dinner when the signal for landing stations was blown shortly after 7:00 p.m. He immediately went aft to his landing station at the auxiliary control stand at Ring 33.5 in the lower fin. He briefly walked forward to look out the observation window on the starboard side of the fin, saw that the ship was still a fair distance from the mooring circle, and returned to his station near the auxiliary elevator wheel. Noting that the ship wasn't yet close enough to the ground for him to need to take variometer readings (Lau was tasked with manning the aft variometer, which measured the ship's rate of descent) he returned to the starboard observation window. He watched as the landing lines dropped from the bow and were picked up and taken up by the ground crew. The Hindenburg had by this time come to a complete stop, and Lau noted that it was drifting slightly to starboard.

Helmut Lau's location at the time of the fire.

(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

Over the years, carefully-selected fragments and paraphrases of Lau's subsequent testimony concerning what happened next have appeared in numerous publications and documentaries. They often appear to support varied and sometimes wildly conflicting theories as to the cause of the Hindenburg fire.

What follows, therefore, is an unedited section from Helmut Lau's subsequent testimony to the Board of Inquiry, in which he describes what he saw at the outset of the fire. The testimony is dated May 18, 1937, and translated (as Lau was making his statement) from German to English for the board by Willy von Meister, director of the American branch of the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei:

"[Rigger Hans] Freund was pulling at the hauling-in line for that steel cable located in the fin. He called out to me that it was not running clear on the starboard side and that I was to release it. I proceeded up to unfasten this line that had fouled and passed by Mr. Sauter [Rudolf Sauter, the ship's chief engineer] who was looking out of the port window. I went up the first ladder, which is approximately two meters high, 6-1/2 feet. I then proceeded along the narrow catwalk that is on the port side of the fin, approximately 7 feet or 2 meters off the lower edge of the fin. I then got hold of the ladder that leads further up to the catwalk, with one hand, and with the other hand I released the steel cable that had fouled. I then waited to see if the cable would go over now that it was being pulled up, and was looking up and was facing the port side of the fin."

I heard over me a muffled detonation and looked up and saw from the starboard side down inside the gas cell a bright reflection on the front bulkhead of cell No. 4. The gas cell was approximately at the line that I have indicated on Exhibit 10. I therefore could see from there to the point that I am indicating. I could see from my position at this point to approximately the position indicated. Here and here I saw no fire at first. I saw it on the front side of cell 4. The bright reflection in the cell was inside. I saw it through the cell. It was at first red and yellow and there was smoke in it. The cell did not burst on the lower side. The cell suddenly disappeared by the heat."

"The fire proceeded further down and then it got air. The flame became very bright and the fire rose up to the side, more to the starboard side, as I remember seeing it, and I saw that with the flame aluminum parts and fabric parts were thrown up. In that same moment the forward cell and the back cell of cell 4 also caught fire, cell 3 and cell 5. At that time parts of girders, molten aluminum and fabric parts started to tumble down from the top. The whole thing only lasted a fraction of a second."

"I turned around and pulled in my head - I had no hat on - and jumped back underneath the girder to which the telephone is attached. Whilst I was jumping back, I noticed that the ship was dropping rapidly. The ship at the moment that the explosion went up had an acceleration down. As I ran back, I saw Mr. Sauter, who was lying on the floor and had his hands over his head, and I did not see the machinist, [Richard] Kollmer, at that moment, who operates the landing wheel. The reason that I did not see him was that I was looking out of the window, watching the ground to gauge the moment when the ship would hit. During the descent it was extremely bright in the lower fin. I did not feel the heat during the descent, only during the descent pieces of aluminum, molten aluminum, and bits of fabric were tumbling down constantly."

"During the descent I stood with my back to the direction of flight. That is, I was looking astern and down. The ship then cracked onto the ground with great force. I felt everything was collapsing from above, and I fell to the right. Freund, who must have been standing somewhere behind me, fell over me at that time, but I did not see him, only after we were lying on the ground I saw him."

"In the moment of the ship crashing on the ground, Mr. Sauter apparently regained consciousness and he yelled at us to get out. At that time, intense heat and smoke was also observed. We were lying on the inside of the outer cover and wanted to get out through the outer cover. This was not possible, however, because the outer cover was resting on the ground. In other words, the lower fin had laid itself over on the left side, on the ground, and I looked up. I saw Kollmer climbing out of the entrance hatch in the fin. Sauter yelled to us that we could get out at that point. Then Freund emerged and got out, and I got out, and Freund assisted me to get out, and Freund ran away, and I looked around once more and I saw Mr. Sauter coming out with blood streaming down his face. I got hold of him and pulled him out. We then ran about 20 meters away from the ship, and I did not see Mr. Kollmer anymore.= Freund and Sauter were still with me.

"When we first examined each other to see if we were hurt, I had nothing the matter with me; Mr. Sauter had a bleeding wound on his head, and Freund had burns on the back of his head and on the side of his cheek. Kollmer was limping away from the wreck. We could not do anything because the wind was coming from port and was blowing the flames and the smoke to the starboard side. Sauter and Freund and myself then ran around the stern side of the ship to the port side, and I no longer saw Freund. I lost sight of him. Sauter ran for the port rear engine, and there were sailors from the Lakehurst ground crew. They wanted to hold Mr. Sauter back because I think they were afraid that the fuel tanks might still explode at that point. I was still a little further aft, and heard screaming from inside the wreck at approximately this point (indicating)."

Thus, Helmut Lau was the person with the clearest vantage point of the origin of the fire, although by his own admission he didn't literally see the initial burst of fire, but rather heard the "pop" of the fire igniting and the glow of the fire through gas cell #4. As part of his testimony, Lau filled out a diagram on which he sketched the ladders and gas cells near his position, as well as marking his field of view and the point at which he first saw the fire.

Helmut Lau's witness diagram, filled out for the Board of Inquiry investigation.

Helmut Lau testifying before the Board of Inquiry, May 18th, 1937.

Though analysis of the details presented in his testimony can, when taken in context, produce a few different interpretations as to what exactly might have started the fire, it's clear that Lau, along with Freund, Kollmer, and Sauter, was very close to the fire's point of origin (Lau was perhaps 60 or 70 feet below and aft of the spot where he first saw the glow of the fire), and that Lau himself saw the fire take hold and spread from deep within the ship's hull.

Remarkably, Helmut Lau was uninjured in the crash, and returned to Germany via steamship not long after the disaster. He survived World War II, though he did spend time in a British POW camp. Due to his prodigious autodidactic ability in learning multiple languages, Lau acted as a translator for occupation forces after the war. He later worked in Düsseldorf as an engineer, and lived in a number of other places (including Heidenheim and the Spanish town of Dénia) before eventually settling in Merzig, where he married and had two sons and a daughter.

Special thanks to Helmut Lau's granddaughter Irina Philippi for providing details of her grandfather's life.

Captain Heinrich Bauer

Crew Member

Age: 35

Hometown: Frankfurt

Occupation: Watch Officer

Location at time of fire: Control car - ballast board

Survived


Born in 1902, Captain Heinrich Bauer had been flying with Zeppelin crews since 1929. He had been hired by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in 1927, and was initially employed in the firm's design office before being asked to join the crew of the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin in 1929 as a helmsman.

Heinrich Bauer (facing left) at the elevator wheel of the LZ-127
Graf Zeppelin. Dr. Hugo Eckener observes at far left.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Heinrich Bauer (background, leaning over chart table)
in the navigation room of LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Bauer gradually worked his way up through the various positions, from helmsman to elevatorman, elevatorman to navigator, and finally in early 1936 from navigator to watch officer. He transferred to the LZ-129 Hindenburg when the new ship went into service in March of 1936, and flew on all but one or two subsequent flights.

Captain Heinrich Bauer (right) looks on as another man (possibly
Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter) looks out of forward windows of
the Hindenburg's control car using binoculars. Judging from the
fact that everyone is in shirtsleeves, this photo was most likely
taken over the South Atlantic on a flight to Rio de Janiero.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Captain Heinrich Bauer (center, seated) makes a calculation
while one of the Hindenburg's navigators looks on.
The ship's helmsman stands at the rudder wheel at left.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

By the time of the Hindenburg's first North American flight of 1937, Heinrich Bauer had had eight years experience flying Zeppelins. He'd served aboard the Graf Zeppelin during her flight around the globe and to the Arctic, he had flown to South America numerous times aboard both the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg, and as a watch officer he had made ten round-trip Hindenburg flights to Lakehurst the previous year through the far more volatile weather of the North Atlantic. On the Hindenburg's first flight to Lakehurst of the 1937 season the ship was beset by strong headwinds most of the way across the North Atlantic. Other than that, however, Captain Bauer didn't subsequently recall anything at all out of the ordinary about the flight. His last watch of the flight was on the morning of May 6^th, and as the ship left New York to make its way down to the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst in mid-afternoon, Bauer returned to the control car. He was unconcerned by the storm front the ship had to fly along en route to Lakehurst, though he knew this may well end up further delaying the flight.

As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst once the storm front had moved out of the area, Captain Bauer was in the forward part of the control car, standing near the ballast board where he was in charge of dropping water ballast on orders from Captain Albert Sammt, the Hindenburg's first officer who was on watch during the landing. Bauer was also charged with supervising the elevatorman. As the ship approached the mooring circle, Bauer was ordered to drop ballast on three separate occasions, since the Hindenburg was noticably tail-heavy. Once the ship was finally brought into trim, "level as a board" by Bauer's estimation, Bauer then looked out the gondola windows and watched the landing ropes drop from the nose of the ship. He saw the ground crew below connect the portside rope to a winch inside the mooring circle, and then begin to connect up the starboard rope.

Captain Heinrich Bauer's location at the time of the fire.

As he continued to watch the ground handling operations through the portside windows, Bauer suddenly noticed the air station's giant Zeppelin hangar light up brightly. A moment later, he felt an explosion far aft and braced himself against the side of the elevator wheel as the ship began to tilt down by the stern. Still looking out the portside window, Bauer saw flames billowing out of the aft portion of the ship, and watched the portside elevator fin crash to earth. He lost his footing and fell as the ship's inclination became steeper. There was comparatively little panic in the control car. Bauer later recalled, "In the gondola there was an oppressive calm; some crewmen were groaning, others fell to the floor and everyone attempted to hold onto something as the pitch became steeper." For the rest of his life, however, Bauer would be unable to forget the horrible moaning sound that helmsman Kurt Schönherr made as he clung to his rudder wheel while the ship fell.

Bauer soon climbed back to his feet and, instinctively, went to pull the ballast release knobs. He intended to soften the ship's eventual impact with the ground, but got no response from the control cables. Bauer then turned his attention to the nearby windows and prepared to jump as the ship neared the ground. He stood behind navigator Eduard Boetius, who had been manning the elevator wheel, as Boetius clung to the window just aft of the elevator wheel. Bauer urged Boetius to jump, but Boetius called back that the ship was still too high off the ground. As the ship touched down on its forward landing wheel and rebounded several meters back into the air, Bauer called more insistantly to Boetius to jump. Boetius finally leaped from a height of about 10-12 feet, and Bauer immediately followed him, jumping a split second before navigator Max Zabel, who was in the navigation room just aft. Bauer landed heavily on the sandy soil below, then picked himself up and ran as the Hindenburg's hull crashed to the ground just behind him.

Captain Heinrich Bauer (arrow, just to the right of the landing wheel under the control car) drops to the ground after jumping from a window on the control car's port side.

For the moment, however, Bauer didn't even notice his injuries. After he made his way out of the wreckage and took a moment to catch his breath, he turned and ran back toward the passenger decks, intending to help as many passengers away from the ship as he could. He arrived just in time to see steward Eugen Nunnenmacher catch a female passenger as she leapt, clothes and hair aflame, from the portside observation windows. It was Irene Doehner, a 16 year-old girl who had been traveling with her family. As Nunnenmacher struggled to put out the fire on Miss Doehner's burning clothes, Bauer ran up and helped him extinguish the flames, burning his hands in the process. The wreckage, which was currently lying on the ground in such a way as to suspend the portside observation deck about 10-15 feet above the ground, was beginning to settle and a man nearby called out a warning to rescuers standing beneath it. Bauer and Nunnenmacher picked the girl up and carried her away from the wreckage and to a nearby ambulance.

Once rescue operations had gone about as far as they were likely to go, Bauer made his way over to the air station's infirmary to check on survivors, and then over to the DZR office in the airplane hangar next to the giant airship hangar where the less gravely injured crew survivors were beginning to gather. As one of the ship's captains, Bauer began to compile lists of the survivors, as well as those still missing in the smouldering wreckage. While they were still fresh in his mind, he also began to jot down notes on the ship's final approach to the mooring circle, the radio messages sent to and from the ship during the late afternoon, and so forth.

Between his leap from the control car and his having returned to the burning wreck in order to rescue passengers, Captain Bauer had sustained burns to his hands and forearms, as well as a cracked sternum. His injuries grew more painful as the hours passed, and eventually a doctor dressed his burns and wrapped bandages around his chest. Bauer worked through the night, later recalling that "There would be no sleep for me in 'this night of misfortune.'"

Indeed, as dawn crept over the air station the next day, Bauer was still awake. He walked out across the sandy field to the wreckage. Smoke still curled up from a few sections of the ship as Bauer walked the length of the wreck. As he picked his way through the perimeter of the pile of twisted, blackened duralumin, he spotted a flat oval piece of metal. He stooped down to pick it up, and realized that it was a silver serving tray from the ship's dining room, now scorched and heat-warped, but still showing the DZR insignia on its underside. He kept it as a souvenir.

Heinrich Bauer (right) confers with Dr. Hugo Eckener (left) and South Trimble of the US Department of Commerce during Bauer's testimony to the Board of Inquiry on May 19th, 1937. Bauer is consulting a map of the Hindenburg's landing approach path.

Captain Heinrich Bauer stayed in the United States long enough to testify twice before the U.S. Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry into the disaster, on May 19^th, and then again on May 25^th. Bauer then returned to Germany where he later served as First Officer aboard the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin during her short operational life.

In September of 1939, Heinrich Bauer was inducted into the German military for wartime service, where he remained until nearly the end of the war in April of 1945. Bauer served variously as a navigator with the Luftwaffe and as a captain in a field company, fighting first on the Western front, and then later the Russian front. With Allied military forces sweeping across Germany in April of 1945, Bauer was gravely wounded near Hannover. He was subsequently taken prisoner by US forces and spent his internment in a military hospital where he received treatment for his wounds. Meanwhile, his house in Zeppelinheim, along with those of many other former Zeppelin comrades, was confiscated by Allied occupation forces. After Bauer was released by the Americans, his brother-in-law, himself a doctor, brought him to their family home in Immenstaad, on the northern shore of Lake Constance, where Bauer spent the next five years recovering from his wounds. He and his wife Theresia eventually bought a house of their own in Immenstaad, and Bauer found work as an engineer at the Zahnradfabrik gear works in nearby Friedrichshafen.

During the investigation into the Hindenburg fire, and in the years that followed, Captain Bauer developed a theory that the Hindenburg had in fact been sabotaged by an incendiary bullet which had been fired by a gunman hiding in the pine barrens near the Lakehurst air base. He based this theory largely on the fact that a puff of bluish smoke had been seen atop the ship by numerous witnesses and this, Bauer theorized, was caused by the incendiary bullet bursting through the fabric atop the ship after having entered the hull from further down below. As with all other theories concerning the mystery of the Hindenburg fire, however, no firm evidence to support it was ever discovered.

Heinrich Bauer passed away in 1979.


(An excellent piece on Captain Bauer's philatelic collection, particularly the pieces of his own mail that he salvaged from the Hindenburg wreck can be found HERE. It's written by Bauer's son Manfred, in German of course, and it was of great help to me in providing something of Captain Bauer's wartime and post-war experiences.)

Margaret Mather

Passenger

Age: 58

Residence: Rome, Italy

Occupation: Heiress

Location at time of fire: Passenger decks - portside dining salon

Survived


Margaret Graves Mather, born October 11, 1878 in Morristown, NJ, had family who lived in Princeton, NJ, but herself lived in Rome. The daughter of Frank Jewett Mather, a successful lawyer from Connecticut, Miss Mather had seven siblings. In 1906 her brother, Frank Mather, Jr., contracted typhoid fever and moved to Italy to recuperate, and Miss Mather and her parents went along to take care of him. After Frank, Jr. recovered from his illness he returned home in 1910 to take a teaching position with the department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.

Miss Mather and her parents continued to live in Italy. Her mother passed away in 1920, and she took care of her father until he passed away in 1929 at the age of 94. She made periodic visits to the United States, but had become a full-time resident of Rome. A patron of the arts, Margaret Mather acted as benefactor for a number of artists over the years, including Gregorius Maltzeff, a noted Russian painter who had moved to Rome for further study after having graduated from the Royal Art Academy in St. Petersburg. When the revolution broke out back in Russia in 1917, Maltzeff was stuck in Rome and his monthly stipend from the Academy stopped coming. Miss Mather and other local patrons saw to it that Maltzeff was able to both continue his work and support his family.

One of the last people to book passage on the Hindenburg's first North American flight of 1937, Miss Mather had been traveling in England and flew to Frankfurt in order to catch the flight on May 3rd. She was making her first trip to the United States in eight years and planned on visiting her brother. Frank Jr. had retired from Princeton in 1933 as Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology emeritus but had stayed on as director of Princeton's Museum of Historic Art, and continued to publish well-regarded treatises on art and art history.

Miss Mather loved to fly, primarily because she was highly susceptible to seasickness. Unfortunately, at the time there were as yet few options for crossing the Atlantic by air, and so when she visited her family in the United States she was usually forced to travel by steamer, " whose lavish comfort and entertainment," Miss Mather later wrote, "meant little to a seasick wretch." This time, however, she found that the Hindenburg's first American flight of the season dovetailed perfectly with her travel plans and was far from being fully-booked. She also learned that the flight would cost her less if she paid half the fare in registered Reichsmarks.

Margaret Mather arrived in Frankfurt by air on the morning of May 3^rd and took her luggage to the Frankfurter Hof, where the rest of the passengers were assembling in preparation for the flight. Since she had several hours until the busses would take them to the airfield, Miss Mather hired a taxi and took a ride through the wooded countryside near Frankfurt, at which point a curious thought occurred to her: "What a beautiful farewell to earth." She had been oddly unexcited by her coming flight across the ocean, which struck her as odd since she loved traveling by air and had been fascinated by the images of the Hindenburg that had appeared in the news since the previous year. She later recalled that "I decided that I was tired and let it go at that."

The customs inspectors began their examination of the passengers' baggage at the hotel at approximately 4:00 that afternoon. The baggage inspection was, Miss Mather said, "courteous but thorough," and upon inspection it was discovered that her baggage was 15 kilos over the 20 kilo limit. When informed that she would have to pay a fine of 5 marks per kilo (which averaged out to about a dollar per pound, or $33 overall) she tried to argue against the fine, since she weighed 20 kilos less than the average passenger. The customs men, of course, did not see it that way.

At around 7:00 that evening, the passengers boarded three busses in front of the hotel, which took them to the airfield where they assembled in the hangar for another passport and ticket check prior to boarding. The odd indifference Margaret Mather had felt before suddenly vanished when she saw the Hindenburg moored in front of the hangar. She also noticed for the first time how few passengers there were for that flight, and how few women were among them. After the latest round of formalities, the passengers were led to the ship. Miss Mather climbed the gangway stairs which lowered from the belly of the ship and was shown to her cabin, which was one of the newly-installed staterooms on B-deck aft of the smoking room. Unlike the cabins upstairs on A-deck, Miss Mather's cabin had its own window. She took a quick look around, and then went up to the portside dining salon on A-deck, where the other passengers were congregating by the observation windows to watch the ship take off.

The Hindenburg cast off for America at 8:18 that evening. Margaret Mather was struck, as were most first-time passengers, by the unique sensation of rising into the sky aboard an airship. She later wrote, "It was an indescribable feeling of lightness and buoyancy – A lift and a pull upward, quite unlike the takeoff of an airplane."

After an hour and a half of cruising over the German countryside, watching small villages slide past below them by the light of the Hindenburg's searchlight. At ten o'clock a cold supper was served and Miss Mather was seated at the right hand of Captain Max Pruss, the ship's commanding officer, who appeared several minutes late. He was quite courteous to her and she noted that throughout the trip he ate lightly (usually no more than a single course at a meal) and drank nothing stronger than mineral water before heading down to the smoking room for a quick cigarette and then returning to the control car.

The next day, Margaret Mather spent most of the day lounging in her cabin, enjoying the view from her window, though there wasn't much to see besides the storm-tossed sea below. She marveled at the fact that, despite the fact that the ship was being buffetted by heavy winds, there was so little perceptable movement onboard the ship, and that she didn't feel the least bit seasick. She remarked on this to Captain Pruss at dinner, and he said that he was glad she was having such a good flight, but that with the stormy weather and the stiff headwinds that were slowing their progress, it was one of the worst trips he'd ever made.

Miss Mather became acquainted with many of the other passengers as the flight progressed. The Ernsts from Hamburg, George Grant from London, Herbert O'Laughlin from Chicago, the Doehner family from Mexico City… all made enough of an impression on her that she later mentioned them (though not specifically by name) in an article she wrote about the flight. She hit it off particularly well with John and Emma Pannes, an American couple flying home from Europe. Miss Mather and Mrs. Pannes spent a good deal of time together during the rest of the flight, watching as icebergs came into sight on the afternoon of the second day, as the Hindenburg approached Newfoundland.

By the morning of the final day of the flight, May 6^th, Margaret Mather realized that her mood had improved steadily over the course of the flight, to the point where she now "awoke in the morning with a feeling of well-being and happiness such as one rarely experiences after youth has passed." She attributed much of this to the fact that, for the first time, she had crossed the ocean with none of the misery and stress of constant seasickness. She watched the New England coast and New York City from the observation windows as the afternoon progressed, with fellow passenger Peter Belin pointing out his alma mater, Yale, as they passed over it. Emma Pannes also pointed out the area on Long Island where she and Mr. Pannes lived. The weather worsened as the Hindenburg flew on toward Lakehurst, and Miss Mather was a bit concerned when they passed over the airfield and flew back out to the Jersey coast to wait out the storm. One of her fellow passengers reassured her, however, that Zeppelins could cruise around indefinitely if needed, pointing out that the Graf Zeppelin had once circled above Rio for three days waiting for a sudden revolution on the ground to end so that they could land.

Miss Mather and Mrs. Pannes watched together as the Hindenburg cruised up and down the Jersey coast. From time to time they'd catch a glimpse of the huge airship hangar at Lakehurst, then lose it again in the clouds. At about 6:30 PM a steward brought a tray of sandwiches around for the passengers. Miss Mather initially declined, but then reconsidered when the steward told her that the ship might not land for another hour or two. She and Mrs. Pannes watched the scenery for awhile longer from the portside observation windows, and suddenly they realized that they were over the airfield again and circling for landing. Miss Mather watched the ship's yaw lines drop from the bow, and saw the ground crew pick them up and carry them off to be connected up to the mooring tackle on the ground.

As Peter Belin stood nearby taking photos of the ground crew below, telling Miss Mather that he'd taken over eighty photographs during the flight, Mrs. Pannes excused herself to go back to her cabin to get her coat. Margaret Mather continued to lean out the open window and watch the men on the ground work to bring the massive airship down to earth.


Margaret Mather's location in the portside dining room at the time of the fire.


Suddenly, she heard a dull, muffled boom. She saw "a look of incredulous consternation" on Peter Belin's face, heard somebody cry "We're on fire!" and then the ship tilted down by the stern and Miss Mather was thrown 15 or 20 feet to the back wall of the dining room. She came to rest against the leatherette seat which was attached to the wall next to the rearmost observation window, and was pinned there by several other people who were also thrown aft by the sudden tilting of the floor. For a moment, Miss Mather thought she might suffocate from all the bodies pressing on her but the knot of people suddenly got to their feet, some of them climbing towards the windows to jump.

She stayed sitting where she'd landed, however, pulling her heavy coat up to protect her face from the flames that had begun to burn their way into the dining room. She watched as several of the passengers she'd gotten to know during the flight leapt through the windows and others crawled along the floor, injured from their sudden tumble. She thought to herself that it looked like " a scene from a medieval picture of hell," and waited for the crash she knew had to be coming once the ship reached the ground.

The crash, however, never came. The forward part of the ship, including the passenger section, settled so gently to the ground that Miss Mather never even noticed the impact. She was suddenly aware of two or three rescuers looking into the wreckage of the dining salon, calling "Come out, lady!" Stunned, Miss Mather looked around and realized that they were on the ground. As she got up she dazedly hunted about her for her handbag until one of the nearby rescuers called out "Aren't you coming?" She was led gently out of the wreckage via the gangway stairs in the belly of the ship – the same way she'd entered the ship in Frankfurt a few days before – and was then taken to a nearby car.

It was one of the large limousines which had been waiting to take the passengers to the Zeppelin company office in one of the station's airplane hangars. Now it was being loaded up with injured survivors to be taken to the air station's infirmary. Fellow passenger George Grant, himself hobbled by a broken leg and an injured back, saw Miss Mather being led to the car and said with relief, "Thank God you're safe!" She squeezed into the front seat next to the driver, and asked to be dropped off at the entrance to the air station so that she could try to find her family. The driver refused, saying that he had orders to take everyone to the infirmary. When Miss Mather protested that she wasn't even hurt, the driver said "Look at your hands, lady."

She realized for the first time that her hands had been badly scorched by the flames as she'd held her heavy overcoat tight around her face, and said no more as they crossed the sandy airfield. The car dropped the survivors off at the infirmary, and Miss Mather was taken into a room where a medic applied picric acid to her burned hands. She realized that she was sitting next to Captain Ernst Lehmann, who had commanded the Hindenburg in 1936 and was aboard this flight as an observer in his capacity as Director of Flight Operations for the DZR (the German airship line). Lehmann was, Miss Mather saw, terribly burned over much of his body. The two of them quietly passed the bottle of picric acid back and forth between them, swabbing at their burns as more badly injured survivors were brought in.

The cries of pain and the sight of the steady stream of terribly scorched people were soon too much for Miss Mather, and she needed to get away from the confusion. It wasn't much better outside. Most of the survivors had already been brought in by now, and more and more of the trucks and ambulances arriving from the wreck were carrying corpses. She finally found somebody who offered to drive her over to the air station's entrance to help her look for her family, but eventually it became clear that her family was no longer there. Miss Mather went back to the infirmary to have her hands bandaged, and by that time most of the survivors had been taken to local hospitals. She saw George Grant, his injured leg wrapped in bandages, being carried out on a stretcher. She saw the steward who had served them sandwiches earlier in the evening, walking around aimlessly but amazingly uninjured, his clothes spotless.

Finally, she was shown to an ambulance. The driver told her that they could take her to one of the nearby hospitals, or to the home of one of her family members. She asked to be driven to her niece's home in Princeton. Two Navy men sat with her in the back of the ambulance along the way, and as one of them helped her to sit up, he looked at her back and asked her "Do you know that your coat is all burned?" It was then that it occurred to Miss Mather that the fact that she'd been wearing a heavy overcoat had almost certainly saved her from far serious burns. It was full of holes, a couple of which actually had small bits of metal lodged in them. But it had kept the flames away from her long enough for her to escape with little more than burned hands.

The ambulance finally dropped Miss Mather off at her niece's house, where her family had gone after watching the Hindenburg burn, thinking that there was no chance that Margaret or anyone else had made it out alive. Now, only a couple hours later, here she was at the door. It was, both her brother Frank Jr. and her niece Mrs. Louise Turner, "a miracle."

Margaret Mather returned to Rome and continued to travel often by air for the rest of her life. She wrote an article, entitled "I Was On the Hindenburg" for the November, 1937 issue of Harper's Magazine, in which she gave an extensive account of her experiences during the Zeppelin's final voyage.

She passed away in Rome on December 19th, 1969, at the age of 91, and is buried at Il Cimitero Acattolico di Roma.


Thanks to Michael Axel Maltzeff-McCain for having contacted me to let me know of Margaret Mather's connection to his grandfather, Gregorius Maltzeff. More information about Maltzeff's life and career can be found HERE and HERE at blogs maintained by his grandson.

Eugen Schäuble

Crew Member

Age: Unknown

Hometown: Neu Isenburg, Germany

Occupation: Engineering officer

Location at time of fire: Engine gondola #3, starboard forward

Survived

Eugen Schäuble was one of three engineering officers who worked under the Hindenburg's Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter, the other engineering officers being Wilhelm Dimmler and Raphael Schädler. Schäuble had been flying as a mechanic (and later an engineer) on Zeppelins since at least the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin's early years, and was part of the Graf Zeppelin's crew on the round-the-world flight in 1929. He transferred over to the Hindenburg when the new airship went into service in 1936.

Eugen Schäuble and several friends at Lakehurst in 1936.

As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst on May 6, 1937, Schäuble was at his standby-watch landing station in the engineering center, along with mechanic Robert Moser. Dimmler came in, and offered to relieve Schäuble. Dimmler's off-watch landing station was in engine gondola #3, and since Schäuble had family waiting on the ground to greet him, Dimmler thought Schäuble might prefer to be in one of the engine cars where he might wave to his relatives as the ship landed. Schäuble gladly accepted Dimmler's offer, and climbed out into the forward engine car on the starboard side to watch the landing. His 14 year-old niece, Eleanor Enssle, was booked on the ship's return flight and he tried to spot her and her parents in the crowd assembled near Hangar #1, to the northeast of the mooring circle.

Eugen Schäuble's location at the time of the fire (diagram is top view of the ship.)

As he stood on the gangway leading from the engine gondola to the ship, watching for his family below, Schäuble felt the ship give a heavy shake, and like many other crew members, initially thought that a rope had broken. However, he then saw fire erupting from the hull of the ship, just above and aft of the rear starboard engine gondola and moving forward. He hung on and jumped as the ship neared the ground. He ran a short distance from the wreck and then stumbled. Wilhelm Steeb, a mechanic trainee who had been stationed in the starboard forward engine car and who was running just behind Schäuble, stopped and made sure that Schäuble was all right. Schäuble replied that he was, then got up and continued running. He made it clear, relatively unscathed.

Three of the men from engine gondola #3, German Zettel, Eugen Schäuble, and Wilhelm Steeb (shown in probably just about that order, left to right) stumble away from the Hindenburg as it settles to earth. Their engine car can be seen lying on the ground just to the right of them.

Over by the hangar his relatives, the Enssles, were devastated by what they had just witnessed. As surviving members of the ship's crew began assembling in the hangar, the Enssles tried to find out if Schäuble had survived or not. Finally, they decided to drive over to the air station's infirmary to see if he was over there. On the way over, the car's headlights illuminated a man walking on the side of the road. "Stop the car!" shouted Mrs. Enssle, "That's Eugen up ahead!" Schäuble was dazedly walking nowhere in particular and, according to the later recollections of his niece Eleanor, when he saw his relatives he broke down and wept.

Schäuble was relatively unhurt in the disaster which claimed the lives of, among others, fellow engineering officer Wilhelm Dimmler, who had very likely saved Schäuble's life by switching landing stations with him at the last minute. Schäuble stayed in America another three weeks, giving testimony to the Board of Inquiry on May 19th, and finally sailed home to Germany a week after that along with other surviving crewmates, on the steamship Bremen. The next year, when the Hindenburg’s sister ship, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin was commissioned, Schäuble flew once again as an engineering officer.

Eugen Schäuble survived the war, and later retired near Frankfurt.

Wilhelm Dimmler

Crew Member

Age: 33

Hometown: Friedrichshafen, Germany

Location at time of fire: Engineering room, amidships

Died, either in the wreck or in the infirmary




Wilhelm Dimmler was one of three engineering officers who worked under Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter, the others being Eugen Schäuble and Raphael Schädler. Like his fellow engineering officers, Dimmler had been flying as a Zeppelin mechanic for almost a decade, having been hired away from his machinist job at Maybach Motorenbau in May of 1928 to work for Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. He worked through the summer as LZ put the finishing touches on their new airship, the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, and when the Graf Zeppelin made her first flights in September of that year, Dimmler served aboard her as an engine mechanic. Therafter, Dimmler made most of the Graf Zeppelin's flights, including the round-the-world flight in 1929 and the Arctic flight in 1930. He was transferred to the LZ 129 Hindenburg when the new ship entered service in March of 1936, serving as a chief mechanic.

Dimmler was aboard the Hindenburg's first North American flight of the 1937 season. At the beginning of the 1937 flight season, Dimmler had been promoted to 4th Engineer, and now reported directly to Chief Sauter. As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst at the end of the flight on May 6th, Dimmler was on watch and scheduled to take a landing station in engine gondola #3, forward on the starboard side of the ship. However, Schäuble had family waiting for him in the crowd gathered in front of Hangar #1, and (according to the later recollections of Schäuble's niece Eleanor Ennsle) Dimmler offered to trade landing stations with him so that Schäuble might catch a glimpse of his relatives as the ship approached the mooring mast.

Wilhelm Dimmler's location at the time of the fire (diagram is top view of the ship.)

Dimmler, therefore, remained in the keel of the ship, and was with mechanic Robert Moser in one of the engineering rooms amidships when the fire broke out a short while later. As the ship's hull collapsed to the ground, Dimmler was likely trapped by wreckage and unable to escape.

Wilhelm Dimmler died either on the airfield or in the infirmary shortly after the fire.



Thanks to Herr Manfred Sauter of the Freundeskreis zur Förderung des Zeppelin Museums e.V., whose memorial article on the Hindenburg crew members who lost their lives at Lakehurst (Zeppelin Brief, No. 59, June 2011) provided additional details on Dimmler's career, and to Dr. Cheryl Ganz for providing me with a copy of the article.

Raphael Schädler

Crew Member

Age: Unknown

Hometown: Neu Isenburg, Germany

Occupation: Engineering officer

Location at time of fire: Engine gondola #4, portside forward

Survived



Raphael Schädler was one of the Hindenburg's engineering officers, along with Eugen Schauble and Wilhelm Dimmler, and was directly subordinate to Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter. Schädler had been flying on Zeppelins as a mechanic since the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin's first flights in 1928, and was aboard for the Graf's round-the-world flight in 1929. Since the Hindenburg's maiden flight in 1936, Schädler had made every trip.


Raphael Schädler (center) along with his fellow Hindenburg engineering officers - Wilhelm Dimmler (left) and Eugen Schäuble (right). Photo circa 1930, when the three were engine mechanics on the Graf Zeppelin.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Schädler was therefore aboard the Hindenburg on her first North American flight of 1937 in his usual capacity as engineering officer. The flight proved uneventful, and he was on standby watch at the time the ship approached Lakehurst. When the signal for landing stations sounded shortly after 7:00 PM, Schädler made his way to engine car #4, which was the forward engine on the port side of the ship. Chief Mechanic Eugen Bentele was already there, supervising a new trainee from Daimler-Benz named Theodor Ritter. Schädler was running a little late when the landing station signal sounded, so he had gone straight for the nearest engine car, which happened to be #4, and which was already idling when he arrived at his station. On his last four-hour watch, which had ended at noon, he had inspected all four engine cars and determined that everything was in order and running in a completely normal fashion. Similarly, he didn't notice anything unusual about the landing maneuver itself. As the Hindenburg approached the mooring circle, the engine telegraph in car #4 transmitted an order to set the engine to "full astern" briefly, then back to "idle astern".

Schädler in engine car #4, view looking aft through propeller. Photo from an earlier flight. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Raphael Schädler's position at the time of the fire (diagram is top view of the ship.)

What happened next was a blur to Schädler. He suddenly looked out the back of the gondola and saw that the ship was on fire, and then felt the ship begin to drop to the ground. He remembered being rather far forward in the engine gondola near the side window, but never remembered jumping. He suddenly found himself lying on the ground outside the gondola feeling as though his chest had been crushed, and was having trouble breathing. Navigator Eduard Boetius found Schädler lying there, helped him up and found some members of the ground crew to take Schädler to a truck bound for the air station's infirmary.

Schädler, smoking a cigarette, being carried to a
truck after his escape from the wreck.

Once at the infirmary, Schädler's name was written down and eventually placed among the survivors on the blackboard in the press room in the large Zeppelin hangar. He appeared on some of the earliest survivor lists sent out on the news wires, often with his name misspelled almost beyond recognition - in many newspapers, for example, he was listed as "Ray Fields Stahler."

Raphael Schädler was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, where he spent some weeks recovering from his injuries. He was interviewed in his hospital bed by investigators from the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry on May 25^th, 1937. He subsequently returned to Germany, and the next year flew as part of the crew on the maiden flight of the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin. He survived the war and lived out his life in Frankfurt.

Erich Knöcher

Passenger

Age: 38

Residence: Zeulenroda, Germany

Occupation: Manufacturer

Location at time of fire: Passenger decks

Died in hospital


Erich Knöcher was born on September 9^th, 1898 in Zeulenroda, Germany. As a young man he served as a soldier in WWI, and then returned home to Zeulenroda where he married and had three daughters, and where he eventually built a small wire-weaving factory. Erich Knöcher & Co. produced various wire mesh products, including mosquito netting. Knöcher would occasionally make business trips out of the country, and had sailed to the United States in 1934 aboard the steamship Europa. When he needed to make another such business trip to the States in the Spring of 1937, Knöcher chose to book passage on the Hindenburg's first North American flight of the year, which left Frankfurt on the evening of May 3rd.

Eric Knöcher's possible location in the starboard lounge at the time of the fire.

As the Hindenburg approached the landing field at Lakehurst, NJ three days later on the evening of May 6^th, Knöcher was on the passenger decks along with his fellow travelers. It is not certain precisely where Knöcher was at the time of the fire, however – probably somewhere on the starboard side. Once the ship was on the ground he did manage to escape from the wreckage, but was apparently badly injured in the process. He was, however, able to walk away from the wreck with the assistance of rescuers, and to later send a telegram to his family letting them know that he had survived.

Two men lead Erich Knöcher (far left) and Captain Albert Sammt (in uniform) from the Hindenburg wreck.

Erich Knöcher (center) leans dazedly on the shoulder of a badly burned survivor (probably crewman Ludwig Felber) as sailors load them into an ambulance to be taken to the Lakehurst air station's infirmary.

He was taken to Fitkin Memorial Hospital in Asbury Park, NJ where he lingered for the next couple of days. Though he had been given a blood transfusion shortly before midnight, Erich Knöcher passed away sometime around 7:00 on the morning of Saturday, May 8^th, 1937. His body was sent back home onboard the steamship Hamburg, which sailed from New York on May 13^th, 1937. He is buried in Zeulenroda.

(Special thanks to Herr Knöcher's daughter Jutta, who was kind enough to provide biographical information and a photo of her father.)

Karl Otto Clemens

Passenger

Age: 28

Residence: Bonn, Germany

Occupation: Photographer

Location at time of fire: B-deck, starboard hallway

Survived


Karl Otto Clemens was a young press photographer from Bonn, where he ran a camera shop and photographer's studio on the Münsterplatz. He was traveling to the United States to visit his second cousin, Mrs. Hilda Neandross, in the town of Ridgefield, NJ. A rather frail man who, as a child, had suffered from rheumatic fever, Clemens was also making the trip for rest and relaxation. He made arrangements with the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei to take in-flight photographs of the Hindenburg for their publicity department in exchange for a reduced, half-price fare.

On Monday, May 3^rd, 1937, Clemens assembled at the Frankfurter Hof with other passengers awaiting the bus ride out to Frankfurt's Rhein-Main airfield. DZR officials had made it clear that due to safety and security issues, he was not to bring flashbulbs or photographic processing chemicals onboard the Hindenburg. His photographic equipment, therefore, consisted of four cameras (including a Leica and a Contax) and several cartons of film (some of which was color.) Nonetheless, customs inspectors thoroughly searched his luggage until they were satisfied that it contained no proscribed items.

The man at the far right edge of this photo (indicated by arrow) may be Karl Otto Clemens. Fellow passenger Lt. Claus Hinkelbein is at left, watching icebergs through one of the Hindenburg's observation windows. Image is from home movies shot during the flight by passenger Joseph Späh.

He roamed the ship often during the flight, taking photographs. Dr. Kurt Rüdiger, the ship's physician, accompanied him around the ship, primarily to double-check that Clemens wasn't using flash bulbs. Clemens shot pictures of the interior of the ship, including the auxiliary control stand in the lower fin. He also took shots of the ground below from the unusual vantage point of the ship's engine gondolas, and at noon on the last day of the flight, managed to catch the engine mechanics during a watch change and took several photographs of them clambering to and from the forward starboard engine gondola along its narrow access catwalk.

An engine mechanic crosses over to engine car #3. This may possibly be one of the photos that Clemens took during a watch change on May 6th, 1937.

As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst on the evening of May 6^th, Clemens was in the portside dining room. The story that is usually told of Clemens' subsequent escape - that he was snapping photos through the dining room window when the fire started, that he then turned to fellow passenger John Pannes and told him to jump but Pannes wouldn't leave without his wife, and that Clemens then jumped from the portside dining room window - is actually not exactly what happened. Recent translation of a brief radio interview that Clemens did after his escape has shown that the details were somewhat different than what has been commonly written over the years. The facts seem to be these:

When the ship began its final approach to the mooring mast, Clemens decided to go downstairs to his cabin (one of the new deluxe cabins that had just been installed for the 1937 season) to get his suitcase. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he encountered John Pannes, who was waiting for his wife Emma to get her coat out of their cabin which, like Clemens', was just aft of where they were standing. It's not known whether the two men had time to chat or to look out of the windows lining the floor of the B-deck hallway in which they were standing. Clemens may have taken a couple of photos of the ground crew through these windows (as has also been attributed to him). Or it's equally possible that Clemens merely had time to reach the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly, he saw a flash outside the windows and felt the entire ship shudder and shake.

Karl Otto Clemens' location on B deck at the time of the fire.

The starboard B-deck hallway where Karl Otto Clemens was standing when the fire broke out. The view is facing toward the bow of the airship, and Clemens jumped through one of the windows at right. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

On the ground, over near the air station's giant Zeppelin hangar, two of Clemens' cousins, Hilda Neandross and Walter McColl, were onhand to meet Clemens. Mrs. Neandross watched with horror as the airship carrying her cousin suddenly "lit up all inside."

Up inside the ship, Clemens hung on as the floor suddenly tilted sharply beneath him. He turned to John Pannes and called to him to jump through one of the windows. But Pannes turned back towards the doorway to the passenger cabins a few feet behind them, saying that he first needed to go find his wife. That was the last that Clemens saw of Mr. Pannes.

As the ship neared the ground, Clemens vaulted over the railing separating the hallway from the row of windows, and dropped through one of the thin celluloid windowpanes. He landed on the ground, then got up and ran before the wreck could fall on him. Of all of the cameras that he had brought with him, Clemens had a single Leica camera around his neck, with which he continued to take photos of the scene before heading off to find his relatives. He was miraculously unhurt.

Meanwhile, Hilda Neandross and Walter McColl had walked over to one of the small airplane hangars, where both U.S. Customs agents and the Zeppelin Company had their offices. They saw that survivors were being brought in, and they waited near the customs area, hoping to hear that Clemens had survived. They began asking anyone they could find if there was any word on their cousin, but in all the confusion, nobody knew anything yet.

Then McColl heard two sailors talking about a survivor who was sitting in one of the customs office's rooms, and asked them who the man was. He was shown to the room where Clemens sat, unscathed but in shock. McColl and Mrs. Neandross found a customs agent, Louis P. Nolan, and asked that Otto be processed so that his family could take him home and, if necessary, find him medical help from there. Nolan jotted down Clemens' information and told him that he was free to go.

As Clemens' relatives were leading him through the crowded airplane hangar, looking for the exit, they were approached by Chicago radio announcer Herb Morrison. Morrison had recording equipment set up in that same hangar, had been making a description of the Hindenburg's landing approach when the fire occurred, and was now looking for survivors to interview. A noticeably stunned Clemens agreed to be interviewed, and briefly told (in German) of his escape. It was most likely Walter McColl who served as his translator.

Morrison: Well, Mr. Clemens, how did you manage to get out alive?

(crosstalk)

Translator: Wie hast du da rausgekommen?

Clemens: Ich bin, uh... was ist das? Radio?

Translator: Ja.

Clemens: Ja? Ich bin an der Passagierkammer, also unterm Speiseraum, zu meinem Koffer gegangen, und im Moment kommt nun eine Flamme, und das Schiff fängt an zu schwanken, sinkt nach unten, und ich springe dann an der Luke heraus, die unten neben der äh... neben der Bar ist, unten, am unteren Gang wo jetzt die neuen Kabinen eingebaut sind, nicht?

Translator: He was on his way to his cabin when the flames...

Morrison: All right, you tell the folks, will you please?

Translator: He was on his way to his cabin when a flash came, and he jumped out.

Morrison: Jumped out of the cabin?

Translator: Jumped out.

Morrison: And how, uh… and, uh, he didn’t get hurt a bit I understand

Translator: No, he isn’t hurt a bit. He’s not hurt at all.

Morrison: Oh, I’m so thankful for you. I’m so thankful for you. And uh, you tell him in – in your language that we’re thankful that he got out alive.

Translator: Er sagt, er ist sehr dankbar...

The complete English translation for Clemens' statement to Morrison is as follows:

Translator: How did you get out of there?

Clemens: I was... what is this, radio?

Translator: Yes.

Clemens: Yes? I was going to my cabin - that is, under the dining room - for my suitcase, and just then came a fire, and the ship started shaking, sank down, and so I jumped through the window that's down there near the bar, down in the lower hallway where the new cabins are now, you know?

Finally, Clemens and his cousins made it out of the airplane hangar and over to the nearby visitors' parking area. Bypassing the air station's overcrowded infirmary altogether, Walter McColl drove Clemens and Hilda Neandross back to her home in Ridgefield. Once they arrived, Mrs. Neandross sent a cablegram to Clemens' sister, Liesel Stuch, in Bonn. It read simply, "Otto safe." It was the first Frau Stuch knew of the disaster.

Clemens was by now too stunned to talk. He said no more about the disaster, but merely sat at the piano, endlessly playing classical pieces late into the night, chain-smoking cigarettes. His cousin was amazed at the extent of his repertoire, and he just kept on playing, never saying a word.

Otto Clemens had been intending to stay in the United States until June - with trips planned to Chicago and California - and to then fly back to Germany aboard the Hindenburg on a later flight. As it was, he sailed back to Germany aboard the steamship Europa ten days later on May 16^th. Throughout the summer of 1937 kept in mail contact with the DZR, asking after his other three cameras, which he hadn't had with him when he jumped from the burning ship. Eventually, one of his plate cameras was salvaged from the wreckage and sent to him in Bonn. Unfortunately, it was irreparable.

Clemens never talked much about his experiences on the Hindenburg after that. He did, however, work out a deal with the DZR to photograph the Hindenburg's new sister ship, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin, the following year in 1938. His only stipulation was that he take all of his photographs from the ground.

He later took photographs for the Westdeutscher Beobachter, a state-run newspaper, and also served as a photographer with Organisation Todt, the Third Reich's civil and military engineering division, which was responsible for the construction of, among other things, Germany's Autobahn and the Siegfried Line fortifications along Germany's western border.

In late 1942, Karl Otto Clemens developed an infection following an ear operation. The infection proved fatal, and he passed away on January 3rd, 1943 at the age of 33.

Special thanks to Dr. Caroline Cornelius, who was kind enough to help me to transcribe and translate Karl Otto Clemens' interview with Herb Morrison, without which I would not likely have been able to piece together an accurate version of Clemens' escape story.

I would also like to thank Walter McColl, the grandson of Otto Clemens' cousin Walter McColl. Walt was kind enough to provide a number of factual corrections to this article, as well as some additional information on his grandfather, on Hilda Neandross, and on Otto Clemens.

Thanks also to Cem Akalin, A German journalist who provided me with information about Otto Clemens' later work with the German government, as well as the date of Clemens' death.