The Hindenburg, 800 feet long (more than three times the length of a Boeing 747) and 135 feet in diameter, had its maiden voyage on March 4, 1936, and made 62 safe flights before its destruction. Mr. Franz had made four round-trip crossings on it, to both North and South America. As he recalled his experience of the crash in a book published in Germany a year later, he had been clearing dishes in the officer’s mess when the Hindenburg began to burn.

Image Werner Franz Credit... John Provan/dpa, via Associated Press

“Franz heard a thud, and he felt the ship shake and point sharply upward as the burning tail crashed to the ground,” Mr. Grossman wrote on his website, airships.net, summarizing the German account. “Hydrogen flames roared above and behind him as the ship tilted more steeply, and then a ballast tank ruptured, dousing Franz with water.”

The inadvertent soaking was Mr. Franz’s good fortune, offering a buffer against the mounting heat and flame. He kicked open a hatch used to bring supplies onto the ship, and when the ground loomed close enough, he leapt to safety, running from the wreckage before it could entrap him. He suffered no injuries.

Mr. Franz was born in Frankfurt on May 22, 1922. He returned to Germany after the disaster, serving as a radio operator and instructor in the Luftwaffe during World War II, according to Mr. Grossman’s website. Afterward he worked for the German postal service and was also a skating coach. He is survived by his wife, Annerose, and several children and grandchildren.

Mr. Grossman wrote that the day after the crash, Mr. Franz returned to the site to look for his pocket watch, given to him by his grandfather, and that he found it. A brief article in The New York Times five days after the crash said that Mr. Franz was also at the site the previous day, on May 10, and that he was discovered by an official investigative party led by a naval officer, Cmdr. Charles E. Rosendahl.