May I assume from your last name that your uncle was Otto Reichhold, and that perhaps your father was Henry (Helmuth) Reichhold?

It is a pleasure to have you visit the blog.

I’ve got a number of the US Naval observer reports from 1936 (though I don’t think I necessarily have them all) and they’re just fascinating in the amount of detail they go into in terms of the layout and operation of the ship. So many of the little details that I’d have loved to have had the chance to ask the crewmen themselves turn up in some form in those reports.

One thing that has given me a lot of food for thought is a section in one of the Naval observer reports (I’m thinking it may have been Zimmerman’s, but I’ll have to look back through my notes) that lays out the standard command crew procedure for landings.

Contrary to what Captain Sammt spoke of as the customary watch officer arrangement in his Board of Inquiry testimony (Ship’s Commander giving the orders for horizontal movement – engine speed, helm, etc. – and the on-duty Watch Officer giving orders for vertical movement – elevators, ballast, gas valving, etc.) the 1936 Naval observer report I refer to has the on-duty Watch Officer handling the horizontal plane, the standby-watch Watch Officer handling the vertical plane, and the Ship’s Commander overseeing the whole operation.

I find this to be of interest, because assuming the Naval observer report was accurate (and it would seem to be, as having the Commander watching the “big picture” with two of his watch officers handling the movement of the ship is certainly the most logical way of doing it, given the number of personnel available in a three-watch system) then this would tend to indicate that something changed for that last landing approach, in which the Ship’s Commander was handling the duties normally associated with the First Officer.

My suspicion, and it is completely unsupported by anything but this circumstantial evidence I’ve mentioned, is that for who knows what reason, Lehmann took some sort of “senior officer’s privilege” and took over command of the ship during the landing approach on May 6th, 1937 – thus bumping Pruss down to the First Officer’s landing position overseeing the helm and engines, and bumping Sammt down from the on-duty Watch Officer’s landing position to the standby-watch position handling the elevator, ballast, and gas valving.

I have no idea IF this was actually done, and if so then WHY it was done, but the discrepancy between the standard landing duties of the Captains and the actual landing duties of Pruss and Sammt on that last flight certainly have me wondering.

Thank you for your comments; since there are few people who have researched the passengers and crew of the final voyage more thoroughly than Patrick, I have made the changes he suggested.

I was not aware that all watch officers were necessarily rated as captain, but German watch officers did have a lot more responsibility than their American counterparts, so it would not be surprising. (The July 23, 1936 memo to the Navy prepared by Lt. Cdr. Sachse, Lt. Reppy, and Lt. Weintraub about their observations aboard Hindenburg discusses the extremely high level of authority and responsibility delegated to Zeppelin watch officers.)

Thank you again for you help, Patrick.

Good to see you compiling all the passengers and crew from that last Hindenburg flight. The site is really growing nicely.

A quick note: Walter Ziegler was also a qualified Captain, and was in the watch rotation with Sammt and Bauer. This is an omission that goes clear back to Hoehling. For some reason, when he wrote up the crew list at the front of his book he listed all of the senior officers (Lehmann, Pruss, Wittemann, Sammt, and Bauer) as Captains except for Ziegler, who was simply listed as “watch officer.”

Ziegler is, however, referred to in the Board of Inquiry testimony transcripts as Captain, and beyond that the Zeppelin Company (to my knowledge) didn’t assign anyone as a watch officer unless they were rated as a Captain.