Josef Leibrecht

Crew Member

Age: 33

Hometown: Lindau, Germany

Occupation: Electrician

Location at time of fire: lower keel, base of stairs leading up to bow.

Survived


Josef Leibrecht was one of three electricians who flew on the Hindenburg's final flight, the other two being Ernst Schlapp and Chief Electrician Philipp Lenz. Leibrecht had served as an electrician on every one of the Hindenburg's flights, going all the way back to the ship's maiden flight on March 4th, 1936. On one occasion while in the United States in 1936, on the way back to the ship from enjoying a rather late evening in New York with some friends from Lakehurst, Leibrecht was involved in an automobile accident. As the Hindenburg was preparing to sail at dawn, a police cruiser pulled up, and two New Jersey state troopers escorted Leibrecht to the ship, fresh from the hospital and covered in cuts and bruises.

 

Josef Leibrecht, wearing his work coverall, poses next to the access ladder in engine car #1, starboard aft. 

As the Hindenburg approached the mooring circle at Lakehurst at the end of its first North American flight of the 1937 season on May 6th, Leibrecht was off watch in the crew's mess when he was ordered forward to the bow, along with 5 other crewmen (engine mechanics Walter Banholzer and Alfred Stöckle, cooks Alfred Grözinger and Richard Müller, and assistant cook Fritz Flackus), to help to trim the tail-heavy ship for landing. Leibrecht took a spot on a small platform alongside the keel walkway right at Ring 233, at the base of the stairs leading up to the mooring station at the tip of the bow.

Josef Leibrecht's location at the time of the fire.
(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

Suddenly, Leibrecht became aware of a "swishing" noise, and the stern of the ship dropped. He held onto an overhead girder for dear life and kept his eyes shut tightly as the ship seemed to stand on its tail and fire raced overhead towards the bow. For the rest of his life, Leibrecht would remember the awful screams of the men on the stairs ahead of him as they dropped from the ship one by one and fell to their deaths. "It seemed forever," in Leibrecht's mind, before the ship finally leveled out and touched the ground so that Leibrecht could finally let go of his handhold and stumble through the framework to safety.

Of the dozen men who were in the nose of the ship at the time of the fire, only Leibrecht and two others standing twenty feet or so behind him (Alfred Grözinger and elevatorman Kurt Bauer) survived. Leibrecht was burnt badly enough that he remained in Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City for well over a month after the crash, and was still not well enough to testify to the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry when investigators visited the hospital on May 28th to interview other survivors.

Josef Leibrecht being transferred via ambulance from Paul Kimball Hospital in Lakewood, NJ to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, the day after the disaster.

Josef Leibrecht (at left) and Franz Herzog (right) visit with a friend following their release from Lenox Hill Hospital in the summer of 1937.

Leibrecht, along with fellow crew survivor Franz Herzog, was released from Lenox Hill in July or August of 1937 and  returned home to Germany on the steamship Bremen. Leibrecht’s hands, badly burned in the fire, were still bandaged during his voyage home, and continued to be a problem for him for quite some time afterward. In fact, his injuries seem to have prevented Leibrecht from joining his crewmates aboard the Hindenburg’s sister ship, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin, when it began to make flights in September of 1938, almost a year and a half after the Hindenburg disaster. According to a letter written by Franz Herzog to one of his American friends in late 1938, “Leibrecht’s hands are so bad that he cannot work anymore. He has bought a little house near the Bodensee in Lindau and is living there.”

Josef Leibrecht did, however, eventually regain enough dexterity to work again as an electrician, although hands and forearms would remain badly scarred for the rest of his life. He lived out the rest of his days in his home town of Lindau, and passed away on December 18, 1994. He is buried in Lindau's Friedhof Aeschach.

Josef Leibrecht in his later years.

Thanks to John Tabert for the portrait photo of Joseph Leibrecht as well as the photo of Leibrecht and Herzog. John's father was a patient at Lenox Hill Hospital at the same time that Leibrecht and Herzog were there, and they struck up a friendship and continued to keep in touch even after they had left the hospital. The 1938 letter from Herzog in which he mentions Leibrecht's ongoing problems with his injured hands was written to John's father.

Ernst Schlapp

Crew Member

Age: 37

Hometown: Sprendlingen, Germany

Occupation: Electrician

Location at time of fire: Electrical center - switch room

Died in wreck


Ernst Schlapp, born in Sprendlingen on May 4th, 1900, was one of three electricians who flew on the Hindenburg, the others being Josef Leibrecht and Chief Electrician Philipp Lenz. Schlapp had originally been hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei on October 2nd, 1935, and was assigned to serve as one of the electricians aboard the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. When the LZ 129 Hindenburg went into service in March of 1936, Schlapp transferred over to the new ship, and flew on virtually every flight throughout 1936.

Schlapp was also aboard the Hindenburg on its first 1937 flight to the United States, which began on May 3rd. On the second day of the flight (Tuesday, May 4th), he celebrated his 37th birthday.

Ernst Schlapp was on standby watch at the time of the fire, and as such he was with Chief Lenz in the switch room in the amidships power station, just aft of the generator room. Schlapp and Chief Lenz had inspected everything in the room, all was in order, and they were free to watch the landing operations from the windows in the floor of the room. Suddenly, they heard a dull explosion and saw the reflection of fire on the ground outside the windows. As the ship began tilting down by the stern, Schlapp immediately ran out the door of the switch room to the keel walkway. This likely cost him his life, as the power station was located in the portion of the ship's frame which telescoped in upon itself as the bow pointed skyward. While Chief Lenz, who remained behind in the switch room, was protected by the insulating properties of the sealed power station, Schlapp was most likely trapped among the collapsing girders, wires, and fuel tanks which lined the keel walkway.

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

Ernst Schlapp died, either on the field or in the infirmary shortly after the fire. His body was returned to Germany and buried at the Frankfurter Hauptfriedhof cemetery in a common grave along with six other Frankfurt-area crew members who were killed at Lakehurst. His name, along with those of the others, is inscribed on a monument over the grave site.

Ernst Schlapp's name inscribed on crew memorial in Frankfurter Hauptfriedhof cemetery.

Thanks also 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 Schlapp's career, and to Dr. Cheryl Ganz for providing me with a copy of the article.

Philipp Lenz

Crew Member

Age: 46

Hometown: Friedrichshafen, Germany

Occupation: Chief Electrician

Location at time of fire: Electrical center, amidships

Survived

Philipp Lenz was born in the town of Klein Linden (now a district of Gießen) on May 26, 1891, the son of Johannes and Marie Elisabeth Lenz. In 1906, both of Lenz's parents died of tuberculosis within four months of one another, leaving the 15 year-old Philipp to look after the rest of his six brothers and sisters until various relatives could take them in. Lenz took work as a lathe operator, and then at age 21 he left Klein Linden and moved to Schwenningen, 200 miles away. Here he found work at the municipal electric company where he worked for a few years before taking a job with the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen in 1915. Lenz worked in the factory's maintenance department until he was called to serve in the military during the first World War.

After the war, Lenz studied electrical engineering at a technical school in Köln, and later got his Master's certificate. He then returned to the Luftschiffbau where he helped to install the electrical systems in a pair of small passenger airships then being built – LZ-120 Bodensee and LZ-121 Nordstern. After these ships were taken over by the Allies as war reparations, Lenz worked on electrical installations for the LZ-126, a Zeppelin being built for the United States Navy, and later for the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, which made its first trial flights in 1928.

Lenz also married, and though he and his wife Josefine had no children of their own, they raised Josefine's two children from her first marriage, Elsa and Walter.

The electrical systems on the Zeppelins and their maintenance requirements had become increasingly complex, and therefore Lenz was asked to serve as a member of the Graf Zeppelin's flight crew. He flew regularly with the Graf Zeppelin thereafter as Chief Electrician, and participated in high-profile flights such as the round-the-world flight in August of 1929, the Arctic flight in 1931, and the 1933 "Triangle Flight" from Germany to Rio de Janeiro to North America and back to Germany. Lenz's nephew, Hanfried Lenz, would recall many years later how in the mid 1930s, when Hanfried was a small boy, one of the Zeppelins flew very low over Klein Linden and one of the crew leaned out a window waving a towel. "That was my uncle, Philipp Lenz."

Between Graf Zeppelin flights, Philipp Lenz helped to install the electrical systems in Luftschiffbau Zeppelin's new ship, the LZ-129 Hindenburg. He transferred to the Hindenburg when she was put into service in March of 1936, serving once again as the ship's Chief Electrician.

The Hindenburg's first North American flight of 1937 was relatively uneventful for Lenz and his two assistants, electricians Ernst Schlapp and Josef Leibrecht. No fuses had blown during the flight, and other than the fact that Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter had had to replace a fuel pump on the diesel generator, there were no real problems with the ship's electrical system at all.

As the ship came in to land at Lakehurst, Lenz and Schlapp were at their landing station in the switch room, just forward of the generator room amidships. As the two of them watched the landing through the windows in the floor of the switch room, Lenz suddenly felt a light shock run through the ship and heard a dull explosion or a crashing sound, though he couldn't be sure it was an explosion, because the noise from the generator engine was such that it drowned out a lot of external sound. Initially, Lenz thought it might be a landing rope breaking, but when he heard the accompanying sound of breaking metal and saw a reddish reflection on the ground outside the window he knew the ship was on fire.

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

He called out to his assistant, "The ship is burning!"and Schlapp immediately ran out the air-lock to the keel walkway. A moment later the ship settled heavily by the stern, twisting the doorway and trapping Lenz in the switch room. He thought to himself that at least Schlapp had managed to save himself. It occurred to Lenz that he ought to shut down the generators and throw out the electrical switches, but there simply wasn't time. As the tail of the ship crashed to the ground, the portion of the hull around the generator room telescoped into the ground, collapsing in upon itself. Lenz was trapped in the switch room, but was fortunate that, to prevent stray hydrogen from coming in contact with the electrical equipment, the entire power station was pressurized and insulated from the rest of the ship by layers of sheet metal. At first, the room held tight against the fire, likely buying Lenz some time.

Electrical center switch room where Philipp Lenz was at the time of the fire. View looking aft, with generator room visible through door. Note bullet-shaped gyrocompass hood at left, which Lenz used to shield his head during the fire. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Finally, flames began licking through the ceiling of the switch room, and the air became incredibly hot and was growing even hotter. Lenz grabbed the large metal hood for the ship's gyrocompass and stuck his head inside it to shield his face. The air around him grew hotter still, to the point where he could barely breathe, and he thought to himself, "This is the end,"

Lenz would later recall:

"Since the electrical center was built of aluminum, I survived the impact without injury. But then the fire from the burning fuel oil began to burn through the ceiling of my dungeon, threatening to bake me like a clay pipe. Apparently I had just enough time to keep the flames away from my head using the cover from the gyrocompass, but my clothes were already burning and as the fire consumed the oxygen I was in danger of suffocating. Only a miracle was going to save me now."

That miracle, fortunately, was not long in coming. Lenz suddenly turned around and saw a familiar face peering into the ship from the outside, just past the mass of wreckage that lay beyond what was left of the switch room's window. It was Emil Hoff, a representative from Esso Oil who had been onhand to deliver the ship's supply of lubricating oil for the return flight.

"With my last energy, I climbed through the window of my prison, then looked for and found a path through the ever growing sea of fire. Halfway out, I was caught in a tangle of wires and girders, but I was able to free myself again and burst outside into the arms of my friend."

Hoff grabbed hold of Lenz and, aided by Harry Thomas, a naval electrician who was part of the ground crew, pulled the injured German electrician to safety.

Philipp Lenz survived the Hindenburg disaster, whereas his assistant, Ernst Schlapp, was trapped in the falling wreckage and never made it out alive. Lenz suffered a broken leg and serious burns, and spent the next six weeks in hospital at Fitkin Memorial in Asbury Park, NJ. He eventually returned to Germany, where he resumed his duties as Chief Electrician onboard the Hindenburg’s sister ship, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin, when it made its first flight in September of 1938.

After the war, Lenz continued on as an electrician with Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin into the 1970s, long after the manufacturing firm had stopped building airships and retooled to build other industrial items.

Philipp Lenz passed away in 1975 at the age of 84.