The repair of the damaged fin from the squall line on October 13 was a very harrowing moment. Dr. Eckener wrote this in his book “My Zeppelins” (Im Zeppelin über Länder und Meere) – “The men who had volunteered to climb around in the framework of the stabilizing fin, heaving violently up and down, and blasted by the stormy slipstream, deserved the highest praise . . . I must admit that I felt some parental pride that my son had been one of these volunteers, and not the last one either.”

However, along with this parental pride there was also great angst and personal anguish for Dr. Eckener. To repair the damage to the fin, the ship’s engines were brought back and the ship slowed. Without the aerodynamic lift of her forward motion the Graf Zeppelin began to steadily loose altitude. At some point power would have to be applied to get the ship back up and with that the resulting slipstream would sweep away the repair team. What Eckener had to do was to weigh the lives all on board vs. the lives of the four member repair team including his own son, Knut. Eckener had already lost a daughter, Hanneliese to a boating accident on the Bodensee. He now faced the situation that saving the ship and those on board would mean losing his son. He ordered a man to go aft to tell the repair team to get back in, but realized that power would have to be added before the man got there. In what had to be the most difficult decision that a commander has to make as well as a formidable test of leadership, Eckener ordered the engines powered back up. Fortunately the repair team had gotten back inside on their own before this decision, but Eckener had no way of knowing that. Once a safe altitude was reached, the repairs were resumed.