Walter Banholzer

Crew member

Age: 28

Hometown: Rottweil, Germany

Occupation: Engine mechanic

Location at time of fire: Bow, stairs leading up to mooring shelf.

Died in hospital

Walter Banholzer was one of the Hindenburg's engine mechanics. Born on born on June 18th, 1908 in the town of Rottweil, Banholzer apprenticed as a machinist. He sought work as an engineer candidate at various shipping companies before finding work with Daimler-Benz. On August 2nd, 1935, Banholzer was hired by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, where he worked as a technician in the testing department as the Hindenburg entered the final stages of construction. As of January 1st, 1936, Banholzer was hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei as an engine mechanic, and he subsequently flew on the Hindenburg beginning with her first test flight on March 4th, 1936, and served aboard her throughout the 1936 flight season.

Walter Banholzer and an unidentified friend at Lakehurst, NJ in 1936.

Walter Banholzer standing watch in Engine Car #4 during a flight in 1936.

In between flights, Banholzer still found time to be active in the Rottweil Chess Society, and as of early 1937 he was engaged to a young lady from Rottweil, whom he planned to marry later that year.

Walter Banholzer (arrow) with the Schachverein Rottweil (Rottweil Chess Society) in 1937.

On the Hindenburg's first North American flight of 1937, Banholzer was assigned to engine gondola #1, starboard aft, along with fellow mechanics Josef Schreibmüller and Rudi Bialas. He was off-watch when the ship came into Lakehurst to land at the end of the flight on May 6th, and was sitting in the crew's mess with several other shipmates. When an order came through from the control car for six men to go forward to help trim the tail-heavy ship, Banholzer and five others (fellow engine mechanic Alfred Stöckle, electrician Josef Leibrecht, cooks Alfred Grözinger and Richard Müller, and assistant cook Fritz Flackus) made their way toward the bow. Banholzer took a spot somewhere along the stairway leading up the keel to the mooring shelf.

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

When the Hindenburg caught fire a few minutes later, the fire blasted forward through the center of the ship and poured out of the bow. All but two of the men stationed there (Grözinger and Bauer, who were further aft and standing above large air vents) were engulfed in flame, and most of them leaped to the ground while the ship was still relatively high in the air.

It is unknown whether Banholzer jumped, or whether he somehow managed to hold on and ride the ship to the ground. Either way, he survived the initial crash and slowly made his way out of the wreckage.

U.S. Navy ground crewman Max Coleman saw Banholzer trying to free himself from the wreckage, and ran to help. Almost 70 years later, he would recall the experience for a British television program on the disaster.

"When it got on the ground we turned around and went back toward the ship. The place that I got my man out, I wouldn't have gone in there at all! I mean, he come walking out of a wall of flame! It's so remarkable that he could live just enough to get away from the ship. And he was having trouble getting over this girder that was about knee-high, and I just took ahold of his hand, and I said "Step up," and he stepped up and over the girder."

"And I took him away from the ship. I just stopped and took his clothes off of him, see, flicking the fire off of him. Well, I put my fingers in that belt, it just fell apart, just like it was ashes. And my hands smelled for a month. Smelled just like that burning flesh."

(Excerpt from Max Coleman's interview from the docu-drama "Hindenburg: Titanic of the Skies", Pioneer Productions, 2007.)

U.S. Navy ground crewman Max Coleman (extreme left) assists Walter Banholzer as he finishes removing his burning clothing.

A gravely burned Walter Banholzer is led away for medical assistance by Max Coleman (left) and an unidentified DZR official.

As Coleman and the DZR official lead Banholzer to safety, a dazed Captain Ernst Lehmann can be seen in the background.

With his smoldering clothing stripped completely off of him, Walter Banholzer was taken to the Lakehurst Naval Air Station's infirmary for first aid. Though severely burned over most of the upper half of his body, he was still lucid enough to have somebody send a telegram home to his family to let them know that he was alive. Banholzer was then taken to nearby Paul Kimball Hospital in Lakewood, where watch officer Walter Ziegler stayed by his side throughout the night.

Unfortunately, Banholzer had spent several minutes or more trapped in the burning wreckage of the Hindenburg before he was able to free himself, and was too badly injured to survive. He died at 3:20 in the morning on Friday, May 7th, 1937. Captain Ziegler was with him when he died, and closed the young mechanic's eyes after he passed. His body was returned to Germany via steamship the following week for burial.

With the money she received from the German government upon her son's death, Walter Banholzer's mother built a house, which the people of Rottweil referred to as "Hindenburgbau."


Special thanks to Herr Jens Buengel for providing personal information about Walter Banholzer.

Special thanks also to Michael Pavlovic for providing the portrait photo of Walter Banholzer, but moreover for helping me to positively identify Banholzer in the photos taken of him after the fire, and to finally correct an error that has persisted since 1937.

The U.S. Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry into the Hindenburg disaster assembled a diagram (similar to the diagram shown above) showing the approximate locations of each of the crew members at the time of the fire. Walter Banholzer was erroneously shown on this diagram as having been stationed in the aft starboard engine gondola, and as such every subsequent mention of him in connection with the Hindenburg disaster has placed him in the wrong part of the ship. Michael Pavlovic provided me with some key pieces of information that helped me to work out Banholzer's actual landing station, and so Walter Banholzer's story is told here with some degree of accuracy for the first time.

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

Rudi Bialas

Crew Member

Age: 23

Hometown: Pforzheim, Germany

Occupation: Engine mechanic

Location at time of fire: Engine gondola #1, starboard aft.

Died, either in wreck or in infirmary

Rudi Bialas was born in Pforzheim on January 14, 1914. Trained as a mechanic, Bialas was hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei in October of 1936 to serve as an engine mechanic aboard the LZ 129 Hindenburg. He was aboard the Hindenburg's first North American flight of the 1937 season, and was assigned to engine gondola #1, starboard aft, with Walter Banholzer and Josef Schreibmüller.

Rudi Bialas' location at the time of the fire.

As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst at the end of the flight on the evening of May 6th, Bialas was on watch in engine car #1, as was Schreibmüller. When the ship caught fire a short while later and the stern fell to the ground, the engine car was buried under the surrounding framework, and both mechanics were trapped. Rudi Bialas died either in the fire or in the air station infirmary shortly afterward.


Note: The landing station of Rudi Bialas has been erroneously given as having been in the bow section of the ship since several days after the disaster when the U.S. Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry assembled a diagram of crew locations at the time of the fire. This mistake has been repeated in every book written since that time about the Hindenburg disaster in which Bialas' name has been mentioned.

With the assistance of Herr Michael Pavlovic, I was able to determine the proper location of Walter Banholzer, Bialas' fellow engine mechanic from engine car #1. Banholzer, who had been listed as having been stationed in engine car #1 with Josef Schreibmüller at the time of landing, was in fact off watch in the crew's mess, and was one of the six men sent forward to the bow to help trim the ship.

This, of course, places Rudi Bialas in engine car #1 at the time of the fire, and I have edited his biographic profile to reflect that.

Josef Schreibmüller

Crew Member

Age: 35

Hometown: Elmenau, Germany

Occupation: Chief mechanic

Location at time of fire: Engine gondola #1 - starboard aft

Died, either in wreck or in infirmary



Josef Schreibmüller was one of the Hindenburg's chief mechanics, along with German Zettel and Eugen Bentele. Born in Elmenau (just east of Friedrichshafen) on July 15th, 1902, Schreibmüller had been a Zeppelin mechanic since July of 1929, when he was hired by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin to serve as an engine mechanic on the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. The following month, Schreibmüller was aboard for the Graf Zeppelin's record-breaking flight around the globe. Subsequently, he made virtually every Graf Zeppelin flight until March, 1936. At that time, he transferred to the new ship, the LZ 129 Hindenburg, where he served as a chief mechanic.

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

Schreibmüller was aboard the Hindenburg's first North American flight of 1937, and stood watch in engine gondola #3, starboard side aft, rotating watches with mechanics Walter Banholzer and Rudi Bialas. As the ship came in to land at Lakehurst on May 6th, Schreibmüller and Banholzer were at their landing stations in engine car #1 when the fire broke out. Unfortunately, with the engine gondola #1 slung low under the ship's hull as it was, the whole thing ended up with a large section of the hull collapsing over it when the ship's stern hit the ground.

Josef Schreibmüller was trapped in the engine car and was fatally burned. He either died in the wreck, or in the air station's infirmary shortly thereafter.

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

Captain Walter Ziegler

Crew Member

Age: 29

Hometown: Hamburg, Germany

Occupation: Watch Officer

Location at time of fire: Control car

Survived




Captain Walter Ziegler was a watch officer on the Hindenburg's final flight. A former merchant marine, Ziegler had served aboard the Hamburg-America Line steamers Resolute and New York, rising to the rank of third officer before being hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei on May 1st, 1935. With the DZR looking to train watch officers to command the fleet of airships which was expected to be built over the next several years, Ziegler quickly progressed from his initial station on the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin as one of Chief Knorr's riggers, to stand watch as a helmsman, then as an elevatorman and finally, by the time the Hindenburg made her maiden flight on March 4, 1936, a navigator. By the beginning of the Hindenburg's 1937 season, Walter Ziegler had reached the rank of watch officer, and as such was one of the ship's second officers.

Ziegler was also, according to Klaus Pruss (the son of the Hindenburg's commander Captain Max Pruss) one of three ranking members of the Nazi Party among the Hindenburg's crew, the others being Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter and rudderman Helmut Lau. According to Pruss, Ziegler and the others were, however, dedicated airshipmen first and foremost.

Walter Ziegler (prior to promotion to navigator, given the lack of insignia stripes on his sleeve) gives a tour of the navigation room in the Hindenburg's control car.

A disciplined man, Ziegler was apparently more than a bit concerned by the comparatively lax security in the Zeppelin hangar at Rhein-Main Flughafen in Frankfurt, as visitors were allowed inside the hangar to look at the Hindenburg in the days before it's first 1937 flight to America, which was scheduled to begin on May 3rd. Ziegler, who was the officer in charge of moving the Hindenburg into and out of her hangar, later recalled that diagrams of the interior of the ship were posted on the walls of the hangar, which could conceivably have made a much easier job of it for a potential stowaway or other troublemaker.

The first North American flight of the season progressed without incident, and Captain Ziegler's last four-hour watch of the flight ended at 4:00 on the afternoon of May 6th, shortly before the Hindenburg passed over the Lakehurst air station for the first time before heading for the New Jersey coast to await better landing conditions. Ziegler returned to the control car at approximately 7:00, just before navigator Eduard Boetius sounded the signal for landing stations. The ship was approaching the Lakehurst air station from the southwest, and the giant airship hangar came into view shortly thereafter.

Captain Ziegler took the off-watch position at the gas board at the rear of the command deck in the front section of the control car. At approximately 7:10 PM, as the ship made a wide circle to the north and west of the landing field, Ziegler cranked the wheel on the gas board, valving gas simultaneously for 15 seconds from gas cells 3 through 11, and cells 13 and 14 on orders from Captain Albert Sammt, the watch officer in charge of the ship's altitude during the landing maneuver. When it was noticed a couple minutes later that the ship was tail-heavy, Sammt ordered Ziegler to pull the individual valving mechanisms for cells 11 through 16 (which filled the forward half of the ship) in an effort to bring the ship into trim. Ziegler valved these six forward cells three times over the next five minutes or so, for 15 seconds at 7:13, an additional 15 seconds at 7:16, and for 5 seconds at 7:19 when the ship was hovering almost stationary just beyond the outer edge ot the mooring circle, preparing to drop its yaw lines.

Sammt then remarked that the ship seemed to be in trim, and Ziegler proceeded to watch the ground crew below. He saw the ship's two yaw lines drop from the bow at 7:21, and watched the ground crew attach the port line to the corresponding mooring car. The wind suddenly changed slightly, and Ziegler saw the portside yaw line tighten as the ship moved to starboard.

Captain Ziegler's location in the control car at the time of the fire.

The ship suddenly gave a shake, and Ziegler heard a dull thud. He looked aft, and saw a yellowish-red glare coming from the area near the stern of the ship, then he held on as the ship itself took a sudden steep inclination aft. Gradually, the front of the ship began to descend at what Ziegler later described as "a moderate speed, and "settled relatively smoothly." As the ship neared the ground, Captain Ernst Lehmann, former Hindenburg commander who was aboard as an observer, ordered everybody out of the car. Ziegler made his way to a window on the starboard side and prepared to jump. The ship touched down on the hydraulic landing wheel beneath the control car, and Ziegler held back as the ship rebounded about 15 or 20 feet back into the air, leaping out the window as the ship settled to earth for the second and final time.

Ziegler's natural escape route at that point was to run towards the starboard side of the ship, but he quickly stopped and thought better of it when he saw the ship's starboard structure collapsing in front of him. He turned around and made his way back toward the control car and, having heard stories of wartime Zeppelin crew members having survived fiery crashes by lying down on the floor of their gondolas until the fire had subsided, Ziegler climbed back into the remains of the control car and lay face-down on the floor of the navigation room.

One of the Hindenburg's watch officers, either Walter Ziegler or Anton Wittemann, (arrow) pauses and begins to backpedal as the ship's hull collapses atop several other members of the command crew in front of him.

Captain Ziegler stayed in the control car for a few seconds, and then quickly realized that it was simply too hot for him to remain there. He briefly hunted around the navigation room for the ship's log book but, unable to locate it, he climbed back out the starboard window of the navigation room and made his way around the front of the control car. He noticed that the fire was less intense to port, and after a few moments the rest of the outer cover had burned away and he saw a clear path to safety there. Chief Sauter was already out there, and when he saw Ziegler emerging from the wreck, he helped him to get clear.

After making a rather slow escape from the wreck, Ziegler somehow walked out virtually unscathed, and then joined with other crew members in climbing up into the portside passenger decks to look for survivors. Once they assisted the last five passengers out of the ruins of the dining salon, Ziegler and a number of others including steward Fritz Deeg, navigators Eduard Boetius and Christian Nielsen, and an Esso Oil official named Emil Hoff began trying to determine who had escaped the fire and who had not. Ziegler stayed on the field doing what he could for the next couple of hours, and finally went over to the DZR office in the heavier-than-air hangar where crew survivors had been gathering, and then proceeded over to the infirmary to see how many survivors had passed through there.

Ziegler remained in the United States for about 3 weeks after the disaster. He stayed by the bedside of engine mechanic Walter Banholzer, critically burned and dying at nearby Paul Kimball Hospital, until Banholzer passed away early in the morning on May 7th, the day after the fire. Ziegler was also required to assist several other surviving crewmen in the sad task of identifying the bodies of the victims, lined up on the floor in a makeshift morgue in one of the side rooms of Hangar #1. One of those identified by Ziegler was Emilie Imhoff, the Hindenburg's first stewardess, who had been hired by the Zeppelin Company the previous September.

As one of the Hindenburg's most senior officers not confined to the hospital (the other two being Captain Heinrich Bauer and Captain Anton Wittemann) Ziegler took an active role in the investigation into the disaster, particularly in the hours and days immediately following the accident. He was onhand as police and federal agents combed through the Hindenburg's wreckage, and at one point was approached by an FBI agent who was holding what he claimed to be part of a bomb he'd discovered in the stern portion of the ship. What at first appeared to be a watch spring, Ziegler told the man, was in fact merely part of one of the tensiometers used to measure the tautness of the bracing wires radiating out like bicycle spokes from the ship's axial girder.

Ziegler, along with Bauer and several others, also conferred with the US Navy's Board of Inquiry before it was shut down due to a jurisdictional conflict the Monday following the disaster. Since the Hindenburg was a civilian aircraft, the investigation fell to the US Department of Commerce, even though the disaster had taken place on a Navy base. Once the Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry convened, Ziegler and the others conferred with the Board members as needed, though they were not actually part of the Board itself.

A week after the disaster, Ziegler was onhand for the Board testimony of 14 year-old cabin boy Werner Franz, the youngest crew member by at least several years. There was some question as to whether Franz should be sworn in or not since, as Ziegler pointed out to the Board, it was customary in Germany that minors not be made to swear oaths. In the end, it was decided that the boy should be allowed to testify without being sworn in.

Captain Walter Ziegler (right) and cabin boy Werner Franz (left) on the day of Franz's testimony to the Board of Inquiry.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Ziegler himself testified before the Board of Inquiry on May 20, and then joined a group of his fellow crewmembers two days later as they returned to Germany onboard the steamship Bremen, which then arrived in Bremerhaven on May 28th. Ziegler later reportedly told of having been met at the ship's port in Germany by a Gestapo agent, literally as he walked down the ship's gangplank to disembark. He was taken to Berlin, where he was interrogated for several hours by a ranking Gestapo officer, who was apparently investigating the possibility that the Hindenburg had been sabotaged. Since this account comes from A.A Hoehling's book, however, and there is as yet no second source upon which to triangulate and attempt to glean some sort of context for the story, it must be taken with a grain of salt.

Walter Ziegler survived the war, and settled down in Hamburg, where he worked for a British petroleum company.

Crew of LZ 129 Hindenburg - May 3-6, 1937

The following is a list of the 61 crew members of the Hindenburg on its last flight, with links to the biographic articles for each.

Those who died as a result of the crash are listed in italics.


COMMANDING OFFICER





Captain Max Pruss







WATCH OFFICERS




Captain Albert Sammt








Captain Heinrich Bauer








Captain Walter Ziegler






OBSERVERS




Captain Ernst Lehmann
 









Captain Anton Wittemann







NAVIGATORS





    Max Zabel

 
Franz Herzog


 





Eduard Boetius









Christian Nielsen






ELEVATORMEN





Ernst Huchel — (Senior Elevatorman)








Kurt Bauer









Ludwig Felber







HELMSMEN





Kurt Schönherr — (Senior Helmsman)








Alfred Bernhardt









Helmut Lau





RADIO OPERATORS





Willy Speck — (Chief Radio Operator)









Franz Eichelmann









Egon Schweikard







Herbert Dowe






ENGINEERS





Rudolf Sauter — (Chief Engineer)









Eugen Schäuble








Wilhelm Dimmler









Raphael Schädler







ENGINE MECHANICS
-Engine #1 (starboard aft)-






Walter Banholzer








Rudi Bialas









Josef Schreibmüller






-Engine #2 (port aft)-





August Deutschle








Adolf Fischer








Alfred Stöckle






-Engine #3 (starboard forward)-





German Zettel — (Chief Mechanic)








Jonny Dörflein









Willi Scheef

Wilhelm Steeb






-Engine #3 (port forward)-






Eugen Bentele — (Chief Mechanic)









Richard Kollmer








Theodor Ritter





-Trim Watch-





Albert Holderried









Robert Moser









Alois Reisacher





ELECTRICIANS





Philipp Lenz — (Chief Electrician)

Josef Leibrecht









Ernst Schlapp






RIGGERS





Ludwig Knorr — (Chief Rigger)








Hans Freund








Erich Spehl






STEWARDS





Heinrich Kubis — (Chief Steward)
 









Wilhelm Balla
 

Fritz Deeg

 









Max Henneberg
 









Severin Klein

Eugen Nunnenmacher

 









Max Schulze





STEWARDESS 





   Emilie Imhof




SHIP'S DOCTOR




Dr. Kurt Rüdiger






COOKS





Xaver Maier (Head Chef)








Fritz Flackus








Alfred Grözinger








Richard Müller








Albert Stöffler






CABIN BOY





Werner Franz