Erich Spehl

Crew Member

Age: 26

Hometown: Göschweiler, Germany

Crew designation: Rigger

Location at time of fire: Mooring shelf in bow

Died in naval station's infirmary


Erich Spehl was born on December 5th, 1910 on a small family farm in the Black Forest village of Göschweiler. His mother died when he was young, his father later remarried, and eventually Spehl was part of a family of nine children. When he was 18 he left the farm and took an apprenticeship with a saddler and upholsterer named Karl Gratwohl in the village of Markdorf, near Friedrichshafen. Spehl spent the next three years learning the saddler's trade. By the time Spehl was ready to go out on his own, however, the Great Depression had hit Germany and like millions of other Germans, he could not find steady employment. He spent the next couple of years as an itinerant laborer, and finally enlisted for a one-year stint in the new Nazi government's labor corps.

After his government service had ended, in 1934, Spehl managed to find a job with the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen. This was likely due in part to the fact that his father had been a member of the Nazi party since the 1920s, and had the connections that such a long-time association would tend to bring. But since Spehl quickly moved from a job in the airship construction facility to a position as a rigger with the crew of the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, his success at the Zeppelin Company was almost certainly based primarily on his own merits and abilities. And in fact, a note from his employment record from shortly after Spehl joined the Graf Zeppelin's crew states, "He dedicates himself to his new job with great care and enthusiasm."

Erich Spehl first flew as a rigger on the Graf Zeppelin on a flight to South America in November of 1934. He learned the rigger's trade under the tutelage of Chief Rigger Ludwig Knorr, a Zeppelin Company "old-timer" who had been an airship rigger since before the first World War. The skills Spehl had learned during his saddler's apprenticeship, particularly those involving needle and thread, served him well as a rigger and he learned to maintain and repair the Graf Zeppelin's outer cover, its ballast bags and control cables, and its huge gas cells.

Erich Spehl looking out porthole on starboard side of the Hindenburg's lower tail fin, near emergency control stand.

When the Zeppelin Company completed the LZ-129 Hindenburg in 1936, Spehl was transferred to the new ship where he continued to serve under Chief Knorr. He was aboard the Hindenburg's maiden flight on March 4th, 1936 and flew on most, if not all, of the ship's flights for the remainder of the year, including seven round-trip flights to South America and ten round-trip flights to the United States.

Erich Spehl (l.) and unidentified crewman on mooring shelf of the Hindenburg during a landing at Lakehurst, NJ, 1936.

Erich Spehl (r.) and Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter (l.) pose atop the mooring mast at Lakehurst, 1936.

Spehl, whose father passed away in 1936, would still visit his family in Göschweiler when he had free time in between flights. A shy young man, Spehl would speak occasionally with his family and closest friends of his experiences on the Zeppelins and of his journeys across the sea to Rio and New York. He was, however, very proud to be a member of a Zeppelin crew.

During the winter of 1936-1937, the Hindenburg made no flights and was instead laid up in its hangar for a winter overhaul. Erich Spehl, along with a number of his fellow crewmates, served out eight weeks of compulsory military service during this time. Because of their position as members of a Zeppelin crew, and since the Zeppelin Company fell under the purview of the Reich Air Ministry, Spehl and his comrades were allowed to do their time at boot camp with a Luftwaffe unit. They were all back aboard the Hindenburg, however, when flights commenced in March of 1937.

Erich Spehl was aboard the Hindenburg for its first North American flight of 1937, which began in Frankfurt on the evening of May 3rd. As usual, Spehl's chief was Ludwig Knorr, and the two of them rotated watches with fellow rigger Hans Freund. The flight proceeded smoothy, without incident. On the evening of May 6th, Spehl finished his last two-hour watch of the flight at 6:00 PM and went to the crew's mess for dinner. The Hindenburg approached the landing field at Lakehurst, NJ about an hour later, and when the signal for landing stations was sounded shortly after 7:00 PM, Spehl went forward to the mooring shelf at the tip of the ship's bow. Here, he would man the telephone extension to the control car and relay orders to the other three men (helmsman Alfred Bernhardt, elevatorman Kurt Bauer, and senior elevatorman Ernst Huchel) who were tasked with dropping the landing ropes and winching down the thick steel mooring cable.

Shortly after the four men arrived at their landing station, elevatorman trainee Ludwig Felber was sent forward on orders from the watch officer, and he replaced Bauer, who climbed down from the mooring shelf and found a spot about a hundred feet aft along the lower keel where he watched the landing through a hatch. About five minutes later, several more crewmen were sent forward to help trim the ship for landing, and several took positions alongside the stairs leading to the mooring shelf, just below Spehl and the others.

Erich Spehl's approximate location at the time of the fire.
(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

A few minutes later, the Hindenburg caught fire and almost immediately began to tilt steeply aft. Fire came shooting forward through the gas cells and along the axial catwalk, which ended just behind the mooring shelf. Spehl and the others were right in the path of this huge pillar of flame and were immediately engulfed by the fire. Most of the other men nearby leaped through the burning outer cover and fell to their immediate deaths. Spehl, along with Felber and Bernhardt, somehow managed to hold on and survive the initial crash, and the three men were pulled from the wreck by rescuers.

Erich Spehl, still alive but horribly burned, was taken to the air station's infirmary. As he lay in one of the beds, he managed to communicate to one of the attendants that he wished to send a telegram to his girlfriend back in Frankfurt. The attendant searched through the infirmary for somebody who spoke both German and English, so that the telegram could be written down and sent as soon as possible. Passenger Joseph Spah, slightly injured, returned with the attendant to Spehl's bedside, and copied down the address. Spehl then managed to dictate a two-word message: "Ich lebe." ("I live.") However, as Spah turned to go and send the message, Erich Spehl passed away.

His body was taken back to Germany and buried in Göschweiler.

Erich Spehl's grave in Göschweiler

Approximately 25 years after the Hindenburg disaster, a theory that the Hindenburg had been sabotaged was published in A.A. Hoehling's book "Who Destroyed The Hindenburg?", and Erich Spehl was named as the alleged saboteur. Ten years later, author Michael Mooney, writing a tie-in book for a planned Hollywood feature film about the Hindenburg disaster, repeated and expanded upon Hoehling's sabotage theory. In short, it was alleged that Erich Spehl had planted a time bomb next to one of the gas cells in the aft section of the ship, intending that it detonate after landing (and in front of American reporters) in order to gain international exposure for the German anti-Nazi resistance movement of which, it was further claimed, Spehl and his girlfriend were a part.

The accusation that Erich Spehl was a saboteur who destroyed the Hindenburg was and remains absolutely baseless and without merit. Hoehling based his theory on the thinnest of circumstantial evidence, half-truths, and cherry-picked fragments of eyewitness testimony, all designed to support a sabotage theory that, it was hoped, would sell books. Key figures interviewed by Hoehling subsequently disputed Hoehling's conclusions as well as his interpretation of some of their own statements. Hoehling himself was, in his own book, only able to offer Spehl as a potential saboteur, so shaky was the ground on which his theory had been constructed.

Mooney, despite presenting his book as a work of non-fiction, merely took Hoehling's work and added layer upon layer of fictionalization, effectively turning Erich Spehl into a character from a pulp novel. While Mooney implied that he had done extensive interviews in Germany, it turned out that he had spoken only briefly (and through a translator who spoke very little German) with a single relative of Erich Spehl - a sister-in-law who had married Spehl's older brother some time after the Hindenburg disaster. From this, Mooney concocted a fanciful back story for Spehl that seems to have existed primarily in Mooney's own imagination, and which was once again designed to sell books (and also, given Mooney's movie deal, to sell movie tickets.)

Unfortunately, these two books and the movie were enough to link Erich Spehl's name with the concept of a sabotage plot in a number of subsequent publications and documentaries - though few (if any) serious students of airship history have ever granted the theory the least bit of legitimacy. Research into the process by which the Erich Spehl sabotage story was originally constructed has shown that the theory was, to put it mildly, essentially an act of libel.

Special 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 Spehl's career, and to Dr. Cheryl Ganz for providing me with a copy of the article.

Ludwig Knorr

Crew Member

Age: 45

Hometown: Kohren-Sahlis, Germany

Crew designation: Chief Rigger

Location at time of fire: Either in bow or on axial gangway

Died in wreck


Ludwig Knorr was born Alexander Heinrich Ludwig Knorr on October 9, 1891 in Kohren-Sahlis, a small town in Germany's Saxony region. He was married in 1914 and was the father of two daughters. As an adolescent, Knorr studied ballooning under an aeronaut named Spiegel in nearby Leipzig, making his first solo balloon flight in 1906 at age 15, for which he skipped two days of school. He sought out Count von Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen in 1908, and by 1912 he was a rigger onboard the DELAG passenger airship, Sachsen.

In World War I, Knorr served aboard Army Zeppelins Z-12, LZ-90, LZ-98 and LZ-120, flying on raids over England, as well as a flight over Africa. After the war, Knorr once again joined the DELAG passenger service for its brief postwar existence, and later served as Chief Rigger aboard the "reparations ship" the LZ-126, and was among the delivery crew when Dr. Hugo Eckener flew the ship to the United States to turn it over to the US Navy at Lakehurst in 1924.

In 1928 the Zeppelin Company built a new airship, the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin on which Ludwig Knorr once again served as Chief Rigger. On the Graf Zeppelin's first flight to the United States in October of 1928, Knorr was instrumental in saving the ship when a mid-Atlantic storm tore the fabric covering the lower portion of the portside fin. The loose fabric was flapping in the wind, and threatened to foul the elevator along the aft edge of the fin. Dr Eckener, in command of the ship, asked for volunteers to climb out onto the fin to repair the damage. Knorr stepped forward along with Eckener's son Knut, who was one of the ship's helmsmen, navigator Hans Ladewig, and elevatorman Albert Sammt.

Together, the four of them climbed out across rain-slicked girders to the outboard side of the damaged fin. They were lashed together with rope like mountain climbers, with an angry sea 1500 feet directly below them. Using knives and shears, they cut away the loose fabric before it could jam the elevator, and secured the remaining covering to the surrounding framework using rope and blankets.

A rare snapshot of the in-flight repair to the Graf Zeppelin's fin over the North Atlantic. The view is from the hull of the ship looking out into the interior of the fin. Ludwig Knorr is either one of the two men to left or else the man in the center (as the taller man to the right is almost certainly Knut Eckener.)
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Meanwhile, Dr. Eckener had ordered the ship's engines to be throttled down to prevent the slipstream from dragging the men off of the fin. As the ship picked up rain in the storm, with no forward motion to dynamically lift it, it began to slowly sink toward the ocean. Eckener waited for word from the stern, but when none was forthcoming, he was forced to make the difficult decision to bring the engines back up to speed before the ship crashed.

Minutes later, a message was passed forward: "Work detail safe. Withdrew inside hull when speed increased. Will resume repairs when motors throttled back again." For several hours, this continued, with Knorr and the others climbing out to work on the fin when the ship gained enough altitude for the engines to be idled, and clambering back inside again when the engines were brought back up to speed so the ship could regain altitude once more. Four and a half hours later, the men finished repairs and climbed back inside at last. The Graf Zeppelin flew on to Lakehurst minus about 80% of the lower covering on its port fin, but still airworthy.

Subsequent to this, Knorr flew on every flight of the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, including the round-the-world flight in 1929. He stayed with the Graf Zeppelin until March of 1936, when he transferred to the new ship, the LZ-129 Hindenburg. As on the Graf Zeppelin, Knorr was in charge of the riggers on board the Hindenburg. Overall, he reported to Captain Albert Sammt (with whom he had helped to repair the Graf Zeppelin's fin eight years before), and on the Hindenburg's first North American flight of the 1937 season, which began in Frankfurt on May 3rd, Knorr's sailmaking crew consisted of Hans Freund and Erich Spehl. According to Freund, there were no major problems or repairs that Knorr and his riggers had to deal with during the flight, the gas cells and outer cover were all in order, and everything was as routine as could be expected.

On the afternoon of May 6th, the final day of the flight, Captain Sammt was making a final inspection of the ship shortly before going on watch at 4:00 PM. He encountered Knorr at Ring 47 just ahead of the lower tail fin. Knorr, who was at this time on standby watch, was filling the aft water ballast hoses on either side of the keel, and Sammt was puzzled that so much water was being pumped that far aft. Sammt asked about this, and Knorr replied that the command to shift water aft had come from the control car. Sammt immediately countermanded that order, and told Knorr to pump several tons of water forward to the ballast hoses at Ring 62, and furthermore to pump enough water forward to fill the ballast hoses at Ring 281 near the bow of the ship. Sammt later said in his autobiography, "The Chief Rigger was a very reliable man, and I am confident that he carried out my order."

Approximately two hours later, Knorr relieved Erich Spehl and took his final two-hour watch of the flight from 6:00 PM onward.

Over the years there has been some anecdotal suggestion that there might have been a last-minute problem with one of the gas cells, and that Knorr was aware of this problem. The story goes that Chief Steward Heinrich Kubis encountered Knorr at about 7:00 PM on May 6, about half an hour before the fire, and Knorr mentioned something to him about a problem with gas cell #4 in the stern of the ship. Knorr was unclear as to exactly what the problem was, but apparently he made a remark to Kubis that they'd have to make some sort of repair before sailing for Germany later that night.

Kubis allegedly told this story to author A.A. Hoehling in 1961 when Hoehling was conducting research and interviews for his book "Who Destroyed The Hindenburg?" In the absence of additional corroborating evidence, however, it is impossible to tell how much of this may have been embellished to support Hoehling's sabotage theory. The implication made in Hoehling's book is that a saboteur somehow damaged the fabric of gas cell #4 while placing an incendiary device.

While it is conceivable that Knorr might have noticed something amiss with cell 4 during his watch inspection of the gas cells, it is highly unlikely that he would have noticed a problem serious enough for him to have bothered to mention it to the Chief Steward (even in passing) and then not reported that problem to the control car. And he certainly would have stayed near the damaged gas cell until the ship was safely on the ground to make sure that the damage didn't worsen. However, he did not do this.

Just after 7:00 PM, the signal for landing stations sounded, and Knorr took his position which, according to Captain Walter Ziegler, was up along the axial catwalk that tunneled through the center of the gas cells, walking along and monitoring the gas valves during the landing maneuver. The official crew locations diagram later assembled for the Board of Inquiry indicates that when the ship caught fire a short while later, Knorr was on the lower keel at Ring 233, near the bow of the ship. It is unknown, however, whether this is where he was standing or whether it was simply where his body was found in the wreckage.

Ludwig Knorr's reported location at the time of the fire.
(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

Ludwig Knorr didn't make it out of the ship after the crash, and his body was recovered the next day.

Special thanks to Kay Saupe, whose outstanding web page on Ludwig Knorr was instrumental to me in filling in some of the details of Knorr's early life. Kay's Knorr page (which is in German) is well worth seeking out and can be found HERE.

(Kay is also an excellent amateur astronomer, and some of his photos can be found HERE.)

Theodor Ritter

Crew Member

Age: 23

Hometown: Schwäbisch-Hall, Germany

Occupation: Engine mechanic (trainee)

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

Survived

Theodor Ritter was one of the Hindenburg's engine mechanics. Born on December 23, 1913 in Schwäbisch-Hall, Ritter had previously worked on the Hindenburg's engines at the Daimler-Benz factory in Untertürkheim near Stuttgart. He ran tests on them for three years before they were installed on the ship, and had been hired by the Zeppelin Company as an in-flight engine mechanic in late April of 1937.

Ritter was aboard the Hindenburg on its first North American flight of 1937, assigned to engine gondola #4, portside forward. He had already made two shorter flights within Germany, but this was his first regular transatlantic flight. Technically he was considered a trainee, but he stood a regular watch under the observation of the ship's chief mechanics as well as Chief Sauter and his trio of flight engineers.

As this was his first real voyage on the ship, many of the experiences that had become commonplace for his comrades were quite new to him. He would later write down his impressions of the trip and of his first time standing watch on a flight that lasted more than a few hours. Ritter had the first watch of the flight which, since it was evening, was a three-hour watch as opposed to the engine mechanics' standard two-hour daytime watch. After the ship took off from Frankfurt at approximately 8:15 on the evening of May 3rd, Ritter was on his own in his engine gondola until 11:00. His first surprise of the trip was that, since the ship's clocks would be periodically set back as they flew west, an extra hour would be added to his watch.

Since he was intimately familiar with the Hindenburg's engines from having worked on them at Daimler-Benz, he could quickly tell that his engine was running smoothly, and so most of his first watch was spent watching the sights from the vantage point of his engine gondola. The ship's powerful searchlight illuminated the ground below, and at one point as they flew low over a village, Ritter was fairly sure he saw a couple on a secluded park bench whose evening was rudely interrupted when the searchlight suddenly lit them up, bright as day.

Shortly after this, the Hindenburg approached the city of Cologne. The engine telegraph sounded and Ritter saw that the indicator had changed to "slow ahead". He sent an acknowledgment signal back to the control car, then throttled his engine down to the lowest speed. Looking down toward the ground, Ritter saw the ship's searchlight illuminate a parachute with a mail sack attached. It was mail that was scheduled to have been delivered, complete with a special Hindenburg post mark, during a short propaganda flight the previous Saturday, May 1st. The flight had been canceled due to bad weather, however, and so the mail sack had to be dropped on this flight instead. Once the passengers had been given time to watch the mail bag parachuting to the ground, the order came over the engine telegraph to set the motor back to "full ahead" and the ship continued on.

Ritter's first watch ended at 11:00 PM, shortly after the Hindenburg had reached the English Channel. The #4 engine car's chief mechanic, Eugen Bentele, arrived to relieve Ritter, who then climbed back into the ship, and headed to the crew's mess for dinner. Afterward, as he made his way aft to the crew's quarters, he stopped to chat with a few of his comrades along the way before proceeding to his bunk. He was met by the loud snores of his bunkmate, mechanic Alfred Stöckle. But neither this nor the constant drone of the ship's engines kept Ritter awake. He knew he was back on watch again at 5:00 in the morning and needed to get as much sleep as possible.

And so it went for the rest of the flight. "Work, eat, sleep, work," as Ritter would later write. However, the engine gondolas offered just about the best view on the entire ship, and Ritter quickly discovered how many fascinating things there were to see out over the North Atlantic. Once the weather cleared after the first day out, Ritter marveled at sights like freighters rolling on the waves below, the Northern Lights filling the entire sky, and, as the ship approached the coast of Newfoundland, a massive iceberg surrounded by several smaller ones. The watch officer ordered the engines stopped so that the passengers could get a good look at the icebergs, and Ritter estimated the largest one to be rising about 80 meters over the water.

Finally, on the morning of May 6th, the Hindenburg reached the United States, flying over New York City in the early afternoon when Ritter was on standby watch. Once more, he was astounded at what he saw below. The ocean of skyscrapers and houses easily dwarfed anything he had ever seen in Germany, and the Empire State Building rose almost to the same altitude at which the Hindenburg was flying.

After circling over New York for approximately half an hour, again to give the passengers a chance to enjoy the view, the Hindenburg flew south to its landing field at Lakehurst, NJ. Ritter started his final two-hour watch of the flight at 4:00, as the ship flew over the airfield. However, there was a thunderstorm approaching, and the ship's commander decided to delay the landing until the weather had cleared. Ritter and everyone else aboard were treated to a bird's-eye view of the Jersey shore as the Hindenburg cruised up and down the coastline.

Ritter went off watch at 6:00 that evening, but stayed in the crew's mess rather than going back to his bunk, because he would be called to his landing station in his engine gondola once the weather improved and the ship was able to approach the airfield. He sat in the mess, drinking coffee and talking with fellow mechanic Richard Kollmer, who was also assigned to engine car #4, and who had the watch right before Ritter's.

Finally, shortly after 7:00, the signal for landing stations was sounded. Kollmer headed aft to his landing station in the lower fin, and Ritter took his position in the forward portside engine car along with Bentele and flight engineer Raphael Schädler. Ritter kept an eye on the engine telegraph, and relayed orders from the control car to Bentele, who was operating the engine's throttle. Over the next several minutes, orders came from the command crew to shift the engine to "idle ahead", then "full astern" in order to bring the ship to a halt just beyond the mooring circle, and then finally "idle ahead" again.

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

Ritter had just "blocked back" the "idle ahead" message to the control car, so as to confirm that the order had been received and carried out. As he carefully eyed the telegraph, waiting for the next order to come through, he suddenly glanced aft and saw the upper hull of the ship erupt in flames as a heavy shock ran through the ship, shaking the whole engine gondola. The fire raced forward, reaching the forward engine gondolas almost immediately. Most of the aft hydrogen cells already having burned, the ship's tail began to drop to the ground, and the forward part of the ship rose up to practically a 45-degree angle.

Ritter and his comrades clung to anything they could to keep from falling into the propeller, which continued to turn slowly just behind them. As Ritter would later write,

"The ground is coming up at us damned fast, and one of my comrades says something like "Bail out!" But the gondola crashes into the ground and I think to myself, "I'm dead. This is it." Fire swirls around my eyes, and the impact causes me to lose my footing. I fly in an arc over the engine and out into the propeller, which hits me on the head."

Ritter was dazed by the blow to the head, and probably also from being doused with hot water from the engine, and afterward he was unable to recall what happened next. By the time he came back to his senses, he was running full speed, already quite a distance from the ship. He turned around to see the forward part of the ship, now completely ablaze, collapse to the ground amid a chorus of screams from nearby spectators, as well as from those still trapped in the wreck.


Theodor Ritter (arrow) runs from the back of engine car #4 (laying on the ground just to the left of Ritter.)


He suddenly realized that he had blood streaming down his face from the cut on his head where the propeller had hit him. As Ritter wiped his eyes clear, he saw that he was covered in blood clear down to his trousers. His skull didn't feel like it had been fractured, though, so he assumed that his scalp wound probably wasn't as bad as it looked. Somebody then led him to a car, along with chief helmsman Kurt Schönherr, who had injured his chest and was moaning loudly. The injured men were driven to the air station's infirmary, where they were met by a large crowd of people. From the amazed stares the crowd was giving them, Ritter figured that he and Schönherr must have been among the first survivors to arrive at the dispensary.

Once inside, Ritter was given first aid dressing for his head. Parched from the fire and smoke, he drank a couple pitchers of water, then borrowed a cigarette and walks off to see which of his comrades had also made it to the infirmary. He was glad to find fellow mechanics Adolf Fisher, bleeding from a cut under his eye, and Willi Steeb, who didn't seem injured at all.

Just then, Eugen Bentele brought in Raphael Schädler, who seemed to have suffered some internal injuries. Ritter helped to remove Schädler's shoes and socks as Bentele helped the injured flight engineer out of his overalls. Then they laid Schädler down on a nearby bed.

As Ritter stood back up again, he began seeing stars and realized he was on the verge of blacking out. His entire body felt hot, his arm had gone numb, and his back burned terribly. A nurse came up and gave him a shot of morphine, which helped. She then cut off Ritter's shirt and got a good look at Ritter's injuries. Since it had been a warm day, Ritter had just been wearing trousers and a short-sleeve shirt, instead of his heavy mechanic's overall, which would have given him some protection from the flames. His back was burned, as were his arms clear up to the elbows, and he was already beginning to blister. This was in addition to the cut on his head, which continued to bleed profusely.

Nurses covered his burns in salve and bandaged him, and he was taken to Paul Kimball Hospital in nearby Lakewood. By now, Ritter had begun to worry about his family. If word of the disaster hadn't already reached them, it soon would. Unfortunately, Ritter spoke very little English. From his bed he tried to get somebody to send a telegram to his fiancée, Gertrud Moser, who lived in his hometown of Schwäbisch-Hall. However, in the first chaotic hours after the disaster, with so many German-speaking patients and precious few people onhand who spoke the language and could translate, the nurses weren't able to understand much of what Ritter was saying other than "Gertrud." Eventually a translator was found and Ritter was finally able to send a telegram to his parents: "Slightly injured. Don't worry. Everything will be all right. Please notify Gertrud."

Eventually, a doctor stitched up Ritter's scalp, and he was given another shot and put to bed, where he slept until late the following morning. He remained at Paul Kimball until Saturday, when he was transferred to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Lenox Hill not only had better facilities than Paul Kimball, but it had also been known, until about 20 years before, as German Hospital and the majority of its doctors and nurses still spoke German.

When first notified that he was to be transferred, Ritter was rather concerned, as several badly injured survivors had already been transferred to New York, and some had already died. As he was being carried outside to the ambulance, his stretcher was surrounded by news photographers, reporters, and onlookers. The same thing occurred when he arrived in New York and was being taken into Lenox Hill Hospital. He later recalled that as he was being brought upstairs, one group of onlookers (mostly women, Ritter noticed) actually got into the elevator with them.


Theodor Ritter smiles as he's transferred from Paul Kimball Hospital to Lenox Hill Hospital the day after the disaster.


That evening, a couple of doctors and a group of nurses came to Ritter's bedside with a cart laden with instruments and medication. "Here we go…" Ritter gamely thought to himself. A nurse sat him up and held him as the doctors debrided his burns, removing the burned tissue so that he would heal properly. "Wherever I was burned, the doctors skinned me alive in the truest sense of the word. Not exactly a pleasant sensation", Ritter would later say. As the doctors worked on him, however, Ritter joked with them to keep his spirits up. The doctors and the nurses were rather taken aback, because while they expected Ritter to yell and scream during the procedure, what they got was a young man saying things like, "Hey Doc, could you at least save the skin for me so I can make myself a pair of suspenders or some gloves out of it?" But as Ritter later pointed out, humor makes everything easier and yelling and making a fuss wouldn't have changed anything anyway.

Once Ritter's wounds had been cleaned, the doctors sprayed him down with tannic acid, gave him another morphine shot, and put him to bed. The next day he was moved to a private room on a higher floor, where he spent the next few weeks recovering. In addition to his injuries, Ritter was also fighting a fever, and it was some days before the doctors considered him to be out of the woods. He had many visitors, most of whom he didn't know, but some of whom were crewmates of his who had not been injured seriously enough to be hospitalized. He also got mail from friends and family back home, including a long letter from his fiancée Gertrud, which he later said helped him through many difficult hours.

Eventually, however, Ritter was well enough to walk around on his own and visit his comrades Franz Herzog and Josef Leibrecht, who were recovering from their injuries on another floor. Ritter also gave testimony to the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry into the Hindenburg disaster. Since it was impossible for him to make the trip to Lakehurst to testify before the investigation commission, a group of them came to Lenox Hill on May 28th to interview him and several other injured survivors in their hospital rooms.

People began taking Ritter on day trips as he got stronger. A friend named Hugo Scheere took Ritter for a Sunday afternoon at Long Beach on Long Island, and then to Café Hindenburg on 86th Street. Another person took Ritter and an injured passenger who was also at Lenox Hill, Luftwaffe Major Hans-Hugo Witt, to visit West Point. On another day a man named Mr. Peters and his wife invited Ritter to accompany them to the cinema, where they saw a German film called "Drei Mädels um Schubert", of which Ritter later said, "That was a little piece of home."

Finally, on June 13th, Ritter was ready to return to Germany. He and radio operator Herbert Dowe, who had spent the past month at Fitkin Memorial Hospital in Neptune, NJ recovering from his burns, boarded the steamship Hansa (formerly the Albert Ballin, on which a number of the Hindenburg's newer crew members had previously served) for the ten-day sea voyage home. Prior to boarding, Ritter and Dowe had agreed between themselves to make every effort to remain anonymous for as much of the trip as possible. Each had already had to tell and retell the stories of their escape from the Hindenburg wreck so many times to so many people while they were in the hospital, and they didn't want to spend the next ten days doing the same for everyone on the Hansa.

It worked for about three days. The third day out, they had a shipboard passport inspection in the ship's lounge. Dowe was off seeing a doctor, but Ritter was standing in the lounge with other passengers, leisurely having a cigarette, when the door burst open and in strode the Hansa's Captain, followed by the First Officer, the ship's physician, the Chief Steward, and the Chief Engineer. The Captain loudly and none too subtly walked up to Ritter and greeted him in front of everyone, announcing Ritter's identity to one and all. His cover now blown, the peace and quiet of the previous few days now a thing of the past, Ritter gamely began once again to endlessly retell his story to anyone who asked.

Ritter and Dowe were now shipboard celebrities, and as such they were kept in free beer and other gifts from fellow passengers for the remainder of the trip. In addition to having to tell his story over and over, Ritter would also later remember the seemingly endless stream of festivities.

Every day there was something new to do. It was all wonderfully varied. First movies, then a dance, a bock beer fest, and just before the end of the ten-day voyage, a lavish costume party. The two of us had decided to donate a bowl of pineapple punch in return for the many glasses of beer. Shortly after the prizes were awarded, the steward brought out a huge bowl of punch, which we started in on immediately. This quickly ratcheted up the mood of the party, because the stuff went down damned smoothly and really got things going.

The band was missing a drummer, and after being invited by the bandleader I sat in with the band, pounding away on the kettle drum. That was a lot of fun, and and I got a huge round of applause that was obviously more for the jolly young airshipman than it was for my drumming skills. After every number, a glass of champagne was set near me, since the empty punchbowl had been quickly refilled with this kingly libation. I gradually developed Herculean strength and thundered away like a savage. I was drunk for the first time in quite awhile, because apparently the champagne just kept flowing. But then we started getting crazy. Those who were still there got what was coming to them, as once the racket got too appalling, the chief steward gingerly broke things up. But he only sent us from the dining salon into the bar, which we nearly trashed while he led each one of us gently to our door and bid us good night. It was "only" 5:00 in the morning. It goes without saying that the inevitable "tomcat" (hangover) followed the next day, and the pickled herring tasted superb!!

Finally, on June 23rd, the Hansa docked at Cuxhaven and Ritter was met by his friend and comrade Jonny Dörflein, who had been in the Hindenburg's starboard forward engine gondola at the time of the fire and who had escaped almost completely uninjured. Dörflein was from Hamburg, not far from Cuxhaven, and he and Ritter took a train to Hamburg where Dörflein's father hosted them for the evening. The two shipmates then took a sleeper train down to Frankfurt, where they, like the rest of the Hindenburg's crew, had apartments near the Rhein-Main airfield. There they were met by a group of fellow airshipmen, including flight engineer Raphael Schädler, who had recovered from his injuries and returned to Germany shortly before Ritter had.

Ritter's landlords greeted him with tears of joy when he returned to his apartment, but he stayed only long enough to pack a few things. He had a flight to catch down to Böblingen, where his family and his fiancée were waiting for him. He was given a lift to the airfield, but even that wasn't without incident. "On the way, we collided with another car. I can't get a break from accidents, apparently."

But Ritter made his flight and was soon reunited with his family.

I will never forget this moment as I stepped into the hangar. My Trudele comes flying up to me and we are immediately in each other's arms, jubilant, blissful, everything in the past, troubles forgotten. I am back. Then comes my dear, sweet Mom, my beaming father, sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews. How brave they are all acting. The only thing they can't hide is their moist, shimmering eyes.

Two cars are waiting outside to bring the entire happy company to Esslingen and soon we are all sitting together having a leisurely lunch. Two days later I am home, really home, in my beloved Hall, recuperating with my girl and my parents, who need it just as much as I do.

With the Hindenburg gone and the future of Zeppelin travel uncertain, Ritter returned to work at the Daimler-Benz factory in Untertürkheim. He soon took a position at the Porsche factory in nearby Zuffenhausen, which he held until the end of World War II. After the war, Ritter worked for a time as a lumberjack, and then took a job as the foreman at the Hahn auto repair shop in Fellbach, just up the road from his old Daimler job in Untertürkheim, and about 35 miles from his hometown of Schwäbisch-Hall. He worked for the next 31 years at Hahn, and retired in Fellbach.

Throughout the years, Theo Ritter kept in touch with his old Zeppelin comrades, and every year on May 6th he would meet with them either in Frankfurt or in Friedrichshafen to commemorate the loss of the Hindenburg, and to remember their comrades who lost their lives in the disaster. In 1993 while being interviewed for an article in the Waiblinger Kreiszeitung to mark his 80th birthday, Ritter remarked upon the fact that he could now count his remaining Hindenburg comrades on the fingers of one hand, then smiled and said, "I'm 80 years old, and still the rookie among them."

(Many thanks to Helge Juch, who interviewed Theo Ritter for an article for the Waiblinger Kreiszeitung in 1993. Helge was kind enough to provide me not only with a copy of his article, but also with a copy of a nine-page memoir that Ritter wrote about his Hindenburg experience after he returned to Germany. Between the article and Ritter's memoir, I was able to write a far more extensive and informative article on Ritter than had previously been possible.)

Lieutenant Claus Hinkelbein

Passenger

Age: 27

Residence: Schwäbisch Hall, Germany

Occupation: First Lieutenant, German Luftwaffe

Location at time of fire: Passenger decks, starboard lounge

Survived


Claus Hinkelbein was born December 28th, 1909 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Hinkelbein was a First Lieutenant in the German Luftwaffe as of May of 1937 when he and two other Luftwaffe officers, Colonel Fritz Erdmann and Major Hans-Hugo Witt, were assigned to fly as military observers aboard the Hindenburg's first North American flight of the 1937 season. The three men were primarily aboard to observe the techniques developed by the Hindenburg's command crew for long-range navigation and weather-forecasting.

There has long been a baseless story circulating in which it is claimed that Lt. Hinkelbein, Col. Erdmann, and Maj. Witt were actually ordered to make the flight as security officers charged with the task of uncovering and stopping a potential sabotage attempt. No credible evidence of this has ever been discovered, and it appears that the sole source for this story was Michael M. Mooney's heavily-fictionalized book "The Hindenburg," published in 1972. Mooney offered no proof whatsoever to support his claims such as this one, and no corroborating evidence has ever surfaced. The Hindenburg, in fact, carried military observers (German, American, and often both) on virtually every flight it made in 1936, and there is no reason whatsoever to assume that there was anything different about the trio of military observers aboard the ship's final flight.

Lt. Claus Hinkelbein (right, facing camera) aboard the Hindenburg during its last flight. Fellow passengers Ernst Rudolf Anders (lower center, with binoculars) and Moritz Feibusch (left, silhouetted against upright post) are sightseeing through the ship's observation windows. (Image taken from home movies shot during the Hindenburg's last flight by fellow passenger Joseph Spah.)

Hinkelbein, along with Erdmann and Witt, was given free access throughout the ship during the flight, and the three of them went forward to the control car several times a day in order to observe the navigators in their duties.

As the Hindenburg approached its mooring mast at Lakehurst, NJ at the end of the flight, on the evening of May 6th, 1937, Lt. Hinkelbein was in the starboard passenger lounge watching the ground crew out of one of the observation windows along with Major Witt, Colonel Erdmann, and fellow passenger George Hirschfeld. Hinkelbein watched felt the ship come to a standstill and saw the bow lines drop.

Lieutenant Hinkelbein's location in the starboard lounge at the time of the fire.

A few minutes later, he felt a sudden jerk run through the ship and, looking out of the window, saw the reflection of fire aft. Almost immediately he felt the bow begin to rise and held on to keep his footing. As the ship came down again, Hinkelbein ran forward to the nearest open window and jumped through it.

Once on the ground, Hinkelbein was able to thread his way through the wreckage without serious injury. He went back to the wreckage and found Major Witt caught in a burning wire, which had tangled around Witt's neck. Together with another rescuer, Hinkelbein freed Witt and helped him to safety.

Lt. Claus Hinkelbein gave testimony to the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry on May 15th, 1937, nine days after the disaster. He sailed back to Germany on the steamship Europa the following day.

Hinkelbein remained in the Luftwaffe throughout World War II, taking part in the invasions of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. Hinkelbein was placed in command of the Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 "Immelmann" (a JU-87 Stuka group) as a Major from September 10, 1939 through October 29, 1939. This was followed by command of Kampfgeschwader 30 "Adler" (a JU-88 group) from December of 1939 through June of 1940. It was during his command of KG 30 that Hinkelbein was awarded the Knight's Cross, on June 19th, 1940. Following this, Hinkelbein commanded Ergänzungskampfgruppe 5 from September 20th, 1940 through October 8th, 1940. After this, he seems to have been promoted to Lt. Colonel and made Chief of General Staff for Feldluftgaukommandos XIV, where he remained through the remainder of the war.

Following the war, Hinkelbein served with the West German air force, and was commander of the air force base at Aurich from 1966-1967.

Major General Claus Hinkelbein passed away in Bad Salzuflen on April 28th, 1967, at age 57.

Special thanks to Herr Gerhard Bronisch at the Stadtarchiv Ludwigsburg for kindly providing the photo of Claus Hinkelbein used in this article. The photo is the property of Stadtarchiv Ludwigsburg.