ACHTUNG ZEPPELIN XII: Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines Lying in Pieces on the Ground

Last time, on Achtung Zeppelin, leader of airships and all-around airship fanatic Peter Strasser met his untimely end on August 8th, 1918. While he was in many ways an excellent, even a visionary commander, and a key figure in the operation of German airships in the first World War, he had a few failings: namely his willingness to substitute wishful thinking when the facts were against him. Without him, and with roughly three months left in the Great War, this tale is nearly done. In this final Achtung Zeppelin, I'm going to tell you what happened during the remainder of the first World War, and what happened to the men and their improbable skyships after Germany's defeat.

    Speaking of defeat, the death of Peter Strasser and another airship loss two days later was the end of the Naval Airship Division as a fighting force.  On August 10th 1918, a flotilla of four light cruisers and thirteen destroyers left Harwich to see what trouble they could find on the German side of the North Sea. Around dawn L 53, on the routine patrol, spotted the little strike force and began to follow them. L 53 then climbed to a safe altitude of 19,000 ft. One of these destroyers, the Redoubt, was towing a lighter, on which was a single Sopwith Camel. Upon spotting L 53, Redoubt steamed into the wind at flank speed, and the Camel was able to take off with the small runway the lighter afforded. After a half hour, the Camel and her pilot Lt. C.D. Culley had climbed to 18,000 ft, only to discover L 53 was a thousand feet higher. With another half hour of effort, Cully had climbed to 300 ft of the Zeppelin. It's not clear if Cully had been spotted or not, but at any rate, he was not fired upon. Directly beneath the airship, Cully yanked the Camel's nose as high as it would go while firing his machine guns. An entire drum of explosive ammo went into the Zeppelin's belly, and soon the airship was a flaming grid-work plunging into the sea, shedding motors and fuel tanks as she went.

    The Hydrogen Zeppelin as a weapon, even if Strasser had lived to the armistice, was in decline. In 1919, airships were going to be replaced in their primary role: naval scouting. The Zeppelin company had designed a new all metal monoplane (the Dornier Ds.III) and these were to take over standard patrol duties from the Zeppelin airships. L 70's sister ships, the L 71 and L 72 had been delivered by this time, and these were to be fitted with six engines to increase their speed. There was also an ambitious plan to refit all the surviving height climber airships with extra engines and displacement to bring their performance close to the newest airships. Had the war continued into 1919, the Naval Airship division would have had about a dozen airships in total, a very small number of giant dirigibles to do things with. They were to be used as very long range scouts, occasional bombers, and would undertake other missions (like the one to Africa) as circumstances warranted. The German command wanted the Zeppelins still around, but with a minimal additional outlay of resources. As for the airship bases,  most of these were to be turned over to conventional German Naval Aviation, with only the main bases at Nordholz and Ahlhorn operated as full-time airship aerodromes. And the airship construction program was canceled, save two more of the L 70 type: the L 73 and L 74.

The Mad-looking Dornier Ds.III. It had been developed on the shores of Lake Constance, where the first Zeppelins took flight.

These plans were somewhat tentative, as the military situation for the Central powers went from dire to untenable. Bulgaria became the first Central power nation to sign an armistice with the Allies. In Germany, a million soldiers were sick with the flu. Italy destroyed the army of the the Austrian-Hungarian empire, and the empire spent October 1918 disintegrating. Finally signing an armistice with the west, the nation of Austria found two of her former provinces signing separate armistices along with them. Then, at the end of October, events on the ground reached up and grabbed the skyship men.

    Adm. Hipper, now in charge of the North Sea fleet, had decided that the best thing the German Navy could do in this desperate situation was to sally fourth and see how many British battleships could be sunk in a climactic battle that almost certainly would have been the end of the German Surface Fleet. The hope was that such a sacrifice would improve Germany's bargaining position. Fortunately, it never came off: the German Navy mutinied when they heard rumors of this plan. Fanned by socialist revolutionaries, the revolt started on a few surface ships on October 28th, and quickly spread to the sailors of Wilhelmshaven and then, Kiel. It was the last straw for Kaiser. Moderate democratic reformers joined forces with the revolutionary socialists to force the Kaiser from his throne, and he fled to the Netherlands. United under the slogan 'bread and peace' the sailors revolt quickly spread throughout Germany. The men of the naval airship Division remained loyal to the Kaiser – they were an elite within the navy after all – and soon the sailors seized the airship bases and arrested all the officers. (These officers were released unharmed a few days later and sent home.) All Zeppelins were deflated and hung up in their sheds.

    A few days later, on November 11th, 1918, the armistice was signed, and all was quiet on the western front.

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    The Sailors Soviets had wanted bread and peace, and the fledgling German Democracy hoped for peace with honor. The armistice and resulting peace treaty would deliver neither. 

    For one, Britain – quite illegally – kept up the naval blockade until the treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1919. The blockade had already starved to death a half million Germans, and it would starve another 100,000 before ending. So not much in the way of bread. Of peace, there was even less: soldiers marching home from the front found their skills needed on German soil. Dozens of socialist republics that sprang up like so many revolutionary mushrooms with the Kaiser abdicated, and soldiers quickly found themselves drafted in the new fight against the socialist revolutionaries.  As for peace with honor, the Great War had been an enormous trauma to the nations involved, and it soon became clear that Great Britain and France intended to vent their frustrations and fears on their now-helpless foe. America was dismayed; she had entered the war hoping for peace in Europe and for the implementation of President Woodrow Wilson's 14 points; but clearly her former allies couldn't care less what America thought, now that the battle was over. Clemenceau, the French President, went so far as to describe the future Versailles treaty as “a twenty-year armistice”, a prediction that would prove to be eerily accurate.

    The airship fleet was the subject of keen interest on the part of all the victors; after all, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy all had substantial navies, and Zeppelins had proven themselves as naval scouts. While only the Treaty of Versailles could divvy up the fleet as 'war reparations', that didn't stop the British from doing a through inspection tour a month after the armistice. A team lead by the awesomely named E.A.D. Masterman, a British airship pioneer, toured Nordholz and Ahlhorn, and closely examined the ships there. The British were already a leg up compared to their allies on the latest intelligence: the L 70 had fell in shallow water, and shortly after she was shot down, a dredging expedition was organized. The aluminum struts, the engines, and the control cars were recovered. Also recovered was a notebook of von Lossnitzer, her captain, which allowed British naval intelligence to deduce L 70's capabilities and dimensions.

Great Britain and France had plans for the German airship industry as well: it was to be destroyed.  Great Britain wanted to see the airship industry to become a British monopoly: both for commercial reasons, and to build long-distance airliners to connect her far-flung empire. France wanted the industry destroyed simply out of spite.

    The winter of 1918 turned into the spring of 1919. The misnamed Spanish Flu, actually starting in America and then spreading overseas, had become a global pandemic. Most dangerous to the healthy and the fit, the flu would kill more people in two years than all of World War 1 did; experts today estimate that anywhere from 3-7% of the world's population died from this virus. Meanwhile the core of German Officers and NCOs in the Naval Airship division looked on as the Naval Airbases were quickly looted of anything valuable – gasoline, spare engines, and tools. Otherwise, guarding the Zeppelins in the now-looted hangers was about all they had to do: Germany's submarines had been surrendered as a condition of the armistice, and her surface fleet was idle and later anchored in the Scapa flow. The impounded fleet was manned by skeleton crews of German sailors, and guarded by the British Grand Fleet. This was by all accounts a misery for the Germans involved: prisoners on their ships, German sailors took to catching fish and gulls to supplement the terrible food they had, and all orders given had to be countersigned by the sailor's revolutionary committees. The surface fleet of Germany had unexpectedly become a thorny political problem to the British, as well.  Defeated but essentially undamaged, the Kaiser's war fleet was a powerful naval force, one that still legally belonged to the Germans. That could be fixed by the peace treaty the Allied nations were going to force on the Germans; the far greater problem to Britain was what her former allies wanted to do with this fleet.

          The United States, Italy, and France wanted to divide this modern surface fleet among themselves. Britain in contrast wanted the entire fleet destroyed, as they feared anything that would lessen the Royal Navy's advantage in numbers. By the time the Treaty of Versailles was to be signed in June 1919, the matter of the surface fleet had not been settled, and the British resolved to seize the ships themselves, and figure out a better solution later. As it turned out, the German Navy was for one last time to have victory. Acting on rumors that the British intended to do what they were planning, the fleet acted first. Defiantly raising the German Naval ensign one last time, on June 21st the crews scuttled their ships, and the Kaiser's mighty war fleet was sent to the bottom in the home port of their most hated enemy.

    The loyal, discontented men of the Naval Airship division had been planning the same thing, though their motivations were slightly different. They had forgotten about their old enemies entirely; instead, they hoped to keep their magnificent skyships out of the hands of the socialists in Berlin. When the news reached Germany of the surface fleet's final action, it was taken as a sign to act by the conspirators. On the June the 23rd, the conspirators stole into the hangers where the empty airships were hung. There, they pulled away the supports the airships were resting on, and then loosened the cables hanging the Zeppelins. The ships slammed into the concrete, all 40 tons of their dead weight snapping  keels and wrecking intricate aluminum frameworks. At Nordholz, L 14, L 41, L 42, L 63 and L 65 were wrecked; at Wittmundhaven L 52 and L 56 were smashed. At Ahlhorn the plot was betrayed, and the Zeppelins L 64 and L 71 survived.

This act of sabotage enraged the Allied control commission, who demanded the surrender of all remaining airships immediately. The modern survivors were L 61, L 64, and L 71. As most of the Zeppelins the Allied nations had wanted were now smashed, the commission felt justified in seizing any other airships it could find as well, and demanded the L 72, just completed by the Zeppelin company. Speaking of the Zeppelin company, Count Zeppelin had died in 1917, and its new head was Dr. Hugo Eckener, a crony of Zeppelin since the early days on Lake Constance. An advocate of the rigid airship, the doctor had resurrected DELAG, the first airline, and had completed two airships as civilian airliners, the Bodensee and the Nordstern. France and Great Britain took this opportunity to press their personal agendas: they claimed the two civilian airships as 'war reparations' and ordered the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen destroyed.

    Things had reached an all-time low for the Zeppelinauts. But believe it or not, this story has a happy end, and it was thanks to that act of defiant sabotage by the Naval Airship men.

In 1920, men who had served on the airships were given this special medal. Of the 50 or so flight crews trained during World War 1, 40% died in combat.

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 America by this time was thoroughly disgusted with Europe, and actually refused to sign the treaty of Versailles, making a separate peace with Germany instead. A mood that little had been gained by America's intervention in the European war quickly developed into a stance of isolationism, which would not be broken until Pearl Harbor and Nazi's Germany's deceleration of war twenty-two years later. In truth, America could be described as the only real winner of World War 1 – Allied nations now owed the United States a vast sum of money – but in the mean time she was mostly cut out of the reparations gravy train. When it came time to divide up the remaining airships, the United States didn't get any.  France got first pick and took L 72, L 113 and the Nordsterm. Britain got L 71 and L 64. Italy got L 61, LZ 120, and Bodensee. Belgium was given the L 30 (which had survived her combat career to end the war as a training Zeppelin), but had to have her disassembled, as there was no place to keep her. Japan was given L 37, who choose to receive her by mail. SL 22 was the last Schutte-Lanz airship, and bits of her were sent to all the allied powers. The allies even claimed the sheds the Germans had built, rebuilding them in their own countries. Most of these airships were never to fly again after they were delivered: with literally no crews trained to fly them, they were usually scrapped.

    It will not surprise you to learn that the nation with the best Helium supply - the United States -  had the most postwar success with rigid airships, despite missing out on the skyship giveaway. The attempt to transfer airship technology to allied countries aside from the U.S. was in a large part, a failure. To understand why, I'd like to briefly cover the other two nations that experimented with captured Zeppelin technology: France and Great Britain. This failure was also partially thanks to the Germans themselves, who gave up what the Allies commanded them to, but refused to give the taking nations any further help. And  even knowing the dangerous nature of hydrogen, France and Great Britain gave no thought to the vast body of experience Germany had constructing and operating hydrogen airships, and made little attempt to learn what the Germans knew. Painful lessons lay ahead. One other thing notable about all the post war Zeppelin experimenters: all of them focused on long distance flying, and in fact all set records flying long distances with airships.

    France took L 72 to the south of, ah, France, where she was renamed Dixmude (a town in Belgium.) When her lifting cells were re-inflated in 1921, they were found to be full of holes. Instead of buying new cells from the Zeppelin company, it was decided that French made lifting cells would be better. It was not until 1923 that the technology was (sort of) mastered. Dixmude then made several long distance flights, at one point setting a new record for staying aloft over French North Africa. On this 118 hour flight, she covered over 7000 km. Unfortunately, it was only six months before a sharp lesson had to be learned. On December 21st, 1923, off the coast of Sicily, Dixmude fell to that old foe of the hydrogen airship: the thunderstorm. Burning with the loss of all hands, she crashed into the sea, when presumably a sudden low pressure system opened her safety valves.

    Strangely, despite her wealth of intelligence on Zeppelins and her vaunting ambitions for a post-war airship fleet, Great Britain was only a little more successful than France. By the time of the armistice in 1918, the Royal Navy had constructed several rigid airships, most of which had been disappointing. In 1917 for example, the R 23 class took to the sky, it being a second-rate copy of the P class Zeppelin which the Germans had been flying in 1915.  In the middle of 1918, another airship, the R. 31, had been constructed. She had a good top speed and a useful lift capacity like the P class – and had been built of untreated wood, which made the frame dangerously fatigued during her initial flight testing. The wood then warped when stored in a leaky hanger, rendering R. 31 useless. The one real advance made by the British during this time was the docking tower, which allowed a docked airship to rotate with the wind, allowing a dirigible to withstand storms on the ground. This advance was soon adopted by all nations, and is still in use today.

        After the armistice, the British airship program retained its vaunting ambition, but faced a new foe European readers today will be familiar with: austerity. Britain ended the war owing a vast debt to America, and Great Britain, birthplace of economic orthodoxy, imposed a draconian series of measures to balance the budget. Brutally deflating the currency and returning to the gold standard, the predictable result was economic damage orders of magnitude greater than anything the Zeppelin raiders ever accomplished. Worse, this austerity shrank the tax base, so there was very little money for new skyship experiments, and even those projects started often had to meet unrealistic timetables. Impatience: just what you want when dealing with giant amounts of hydrogen.

The R 34. If you forget her markings, you could mistake her for a later R-type Zeppelin.

The British did have one notable success with rigid airships: in 1919, just a few weeks after Alcock and Brown became the first people to cross Atlantic in a Vickers Vimy bomber, R 34 became the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic and return. To a large extent a reverse engineered L 33, R 34 was the second of two airships the British built with the displacement and the rough capabilities of the initial R class. Only taking to the sky in 1919, both airships were seen by this time as testbeds for further rigid airship development. R 34 became operational in early March 1919, and by the summer, had accomplished several impressive endurance flights. On her crossing of the Atlantic, hammocks were hung in the gangway for the crew, and hot food was provided by welding a hot plate to one of the exhaust pipes. The flight took 108 hours thanks to stiff headwinds. In fact, the R 34 had been aiming to fly to New York, but these headwinds meant the ship was flying on vapors by the time the east coast was achieved, and the airship landed on Long Island instead. This flight broke the previous endurance record held by LZ 120 (the Baltic flier who patrolled the Baltic Sea for nearly four days). 

        While the R 33-34 were still under construction, the Royal navy in 1918 once again tried to commission a small fleet of six airships for patrol of the North Sea. The performance was to be close of the later-era height climbers, with a displacement of 2.7 million cubic feet. When the war ended, the construction of all these airships was canceled, save one which had already been started, named R 38. Now with access to the latest Zeppelins, details recovered from the  height climber Zeppelins closely influenced the design. The British engineers improved on the design as well; it was found that L 71 and L 64 had poor maneuverability in flight tests, which the British engineers improved in the R 38. What the engineers didn't know was that this low maneuverability was a safety feature on the part of the Zeppelin builders: later height climbers were so lightly built that low altitude maneuvers at full speed could warp the fuselage. Trouble was brewing.

        Even R 38 was not going to be completed, except that the United States, denied actual World War 1 airships, wanted to buy it. After initial flight-testing was done, about a ton of extra weight was added to the bows so R 38 could use docking masts, and another ton was relocated to the tail, to counterbalance these improvements. This made the likely inevitable. Nearing the time when she would be transferred to the United States, American sailors had come over for training on the R 38, and the registration number on her hull had been replaced with a ZR 2. On the 23rd of August 1921, while on maneuvers over Hull, the overstressed frame snapped, and drooping by the bow and stern, R 38 caught fire and exploded. Once again, windows broke in Hull because of a rigid airship. The disaster killed more people than the Hindenberg calamity did; that day the crew had been supplemented by 17 U.S. Navy sailors. 49 men set out that day and only 5 survived.

    This catastrophe ended British military interest in rigid airships. Any remaining rigid airships were rolled into the civilian airship program, which despite all difficulties was still pushing forward. The British would eventually launch a new program of gigantic civilian airliners – the R 100 and the R 101 - but these massive airships would not take to the sky until 1930.

R 33 testing parasite aircraft in 1928. The Germans had done similar experiments during the first- what, who's laughing back there? What's so funny? YES, YES, CLASS, SETTLE DOWN

 Meanwhile, this latest turn of events left the Americans fit to be tied. Not only had they been denied German airships from the source, but now their replacement was lost! The United States Navy decided to do 2 things: one, using the plans made from the captured L 46, it started construction on its first rigid airship. This was to become the USS Shenandoah, (ZR 1.) Taking to the sky in September 1923, the Shenandoah (who’s name is a native American name meaning ``Daughter of the Stars`) displaced some 2 million cubic feet, was 680 feet long and 70 feet wide, an American interpretation of a L 70 type Zeppelin.  Powered by Packard engines, she had a top speed of 58 knots, and a useful lift of 48 tons. In keeping with her ship-like flight profile, she had a regular crew of 40. The most important innovation was that the USS Shenandoah took the sky with helium instead of hydrogen. Originally she was to be a hydrogen airship, but the ZR 2 disaster convinced the U.S. Navy to use Helium instead. Since Helium was both rare and expensive, this prompted some basic changes to how American Zeppelins flew. If you remember from way back, Zeppelins vented hydrogen as part of normal operation; the Americans began experimenting how to fly without venting. At any rate, for a first time aeronautical experiment, the USS Shenandoah was remarkably successful, flying in all weathers for two years.*

    In the meantime, somebody in the U.S. Navy finally proposed the obvious: if we want an example of a German airship, why not just have the Germans themselves build a Zeppelin for the U.S.A? This move was to save the German airship industry. Already it had been given a stay of execution from France's spite-based economic scheme by Britain. (The British were in a recession of their own making, and they suddenly realized Germany had been a major trading partner of theirs, and destroying Germany's economy would hurt Britain's as well.) The Americans wanting a new airship built at Friedrichshafen, and this gave the capital injection the Zeppelin company needed to consider other projects. It also preserved the skills of it's unique workforce, the most experienced airship builders in the world. The project laid down by the Zeppelin company was given the traditional hull name, in this case, LZ 126. As completed, she was shorter than the Shenandoh, (650 vs 680 ft) but displaced  more (2.5 million cubic feet vs 2 million). Her engines were 5 Maybach V12s that made 400 hp each, giving her 2000 hp total, which gave her a cruising speed of 57 mph, and a top speed of 80 mph! Her control Gondola was now attached to the hull directly, instead of standing off with struts, a design feature of all future rigid airships.

    To deliver LZ 126 to America, she had to be flown there, and  Dr. Eckener made sure the delivery made international headlines. On October 12th, 1924, with Dr. Eckener himself at the helm, LZ 126 flew directly from Friedichhaven Germany, to the naval air station at Lakehurst, New Jersey.  There, LZ 126 was rechristened the USS Los Angeles, (ZL 3), and Dr. Eckener and his crew were met with jubilation from the American populace. Given a ticker-tape parade through New York city,  the good doctor and his crew also got to go to the White House and meet President Coolidge. The Los Angeles, meanwhile, was to become the most successful of America's rigid airships, the only one to be retired and scrapped rather than destroyed in an accident. The U.S. Navy was to experiment further with rigid airships (building the almost-the-largest-aircraft-ever-to-fly USS Macon and Akron in the 1930s) but got the best results with helium blimps, using them to great effectiveness in world war 2 as anti-submarine aircraft.

    As for the Germans, the record-breaking flight (in fact, the last successful flight across the Atlantic until Charles Limbergh's famous flight in 1927) returned the Zeppelin to where it had started: as a enormously long-range flier the German people were very proud of. The Zeppelin company with DELAG would go on to build the world's first intercontinental airline, with their first Zeppelin airliner, the appropriately named Graf Zeppelin. Recruiting crew from the former Naval Airship Division, Graf Zeppelin would repeat Los Angles's first flight, fly over the North Pole and eventually, provide the first regular passenger flights across the Atlantic Ocean.

Some men repair storm damage to Graf Zeppelin while flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

 The End

*The USS Shenandoah did, ah, break apart and crash over Ohio, the victim of either her height climber heritage, or *sigh*, an accident with her venting valves. Originally built as a hydrogen airship as mentioned, all her lifting cells had the “safety” valves, even though she floated with helium. Helium, even to the U.S. Navy, was so expensive that the Shenandoah  was deflated and hung up temporarily so her helium could be used to fill the newly arrived Los Angeles. After a refit, many of these valved were removed as a economy measure. This also meant that if ZL-1 was to rise faster than 400 ft a minute, her lifting cells might rupture or expand into the airship's framework, tearing it apart. So when Shenandoah met a storm over Ohio, she broke apart, killing 14 of her crew.

Images
 

The ZR-2/R-38. Like the R 34, almost a doppelganger for a German Zeppelin.

The USS Shenandoah.

Peter Strasser and the sky-captains, 1917. If you know World War 2 Naval History, you may have noticed how many of the German commanders had ships named after them in the second World War. (Tirpitz, Scheer, Hipper, etc.) Stasser nearly had a similar honor bestowed. The first German aircraft carrier in World War two was confusingly Graf Zeppelin. The second was supposed to have been named Peter Strasser.

Another shot of the Shenandoah, showing her thin, tapered fuselage.

The USS Los Angeles.

USS Shenandoah under construction.

Graf Zeppelin over Rio.

USS Los Angeles over New York.

A Navy Blimp patrolling over a convoy during World War 2.

Achtung Zeppelin XI: You Must Be the Anvil or the Hammer

If you've been reading these posts, you probably know the story of the final year of World War 2 for Germany. On January 1st, 1918, the situation for Germany was the similar in some ways, but in other quite different from Germany in 1944 and '45. By 1918, Industrial output was off by 53% compared to prewar Germany, and various shortages were pinching the German economy everywhere. Unlike World War 2, this was caused not by bombing, but the blockade Britain imposed at the start of the Great War. Another difference from World War 2 was that hunger was widespread in Germany. (1) Defeatism had begun to spread through German society, inflamed by socialists and other political revolutionaries. The German high command believed the war could still be won – somehow – but Germany's chances at this point rested entirely on defeating France before America could get the vast army she was training over to the western front.  The collapse when it finally came started that summer, when the gains of the rather innovative spring offensives were lost. And unlike World War 2, this crisis was a morale, not a material failure.

The L 64, a good example of the late war R-class.

The German air force was gifted with superior technology, another World War 2 similarity, but the status of German airmen could not have been more different. Far from being a spent force, German airman’s casualties de in 1918  Zeppelins were a technology that the Germans practically had a monopoly on: other skyship-curious nations were literally just copying German designs, and no nation save Germany hadclined and their skills increased. The Fokker D.VII would be introduced in May, arguably the best fighter of the Great War, and it would only increase the proficiency of German fliers. ( Zeppelins fit well into this larger narrative, as the wealth of practical experience the German naval airship division had.) Zeppelins in the last year of the war retained their extremely long range scouting abilities, and had also morphed into competent high altitude fliers. Britain was in particular jealous, and both coveted the technology and desired to defeat the airships, once and for all.

    That said, Zeppelins were clearly not the threat they used to be. The reduction in airship production and the losses of the Silent Raid in 1917 had made Strasser risk-averse. As far as raiding Britain went, Stasser face the difficult choice of either raiding on clear nights (and risk casualties now that could not be replaced) or attacking on overcast nights, which was safe, but also very unlikely to accomplish anything. Strasser choose the latter, and so raids that actually managed to do something worth mentioning are few. Still clinging to his faith that Airships could bomb Britain to defeat, it is safe to say  Strasser was alone in this conviction by 1918.

A Bad Day at Ahlhorn

1918 came in like a lion on the North Sea, with a full gale keeping the Zeppelins in their sheds. The bad weather stuck around, and January 5th dawned grey and drear; there would be no flights today. At the Ahlhorn naval air station, the captains and crews busied themselves with routine maintenance. L 58 captain Arnold Schutze consulted with his XO and his machinist about preparation for the next raiding period, which was soon to start. Later, around 5 PM, Schutze stopped by the administration building to talk to Strasser. They both happened to be looking out the windows of Strasser's office when the disaster happened.

    The Ahlhorn aerodrome had four double sheds, which housed five airships. Shed I house L 47 and L 51; Nearby shed II housed L 58. Sheds III and IV a half-mile away contained two more airships, SL 20 and L 46. As Strasser and Schutze looked out, a bright orange flame suddenly shot out of the shed I, and before the men could even react, a second jet of flame shot out of a second hanger. As they were (presumably) running outside, two enormous, earthshaking explosions rocked the aerodrome. Outside, the two men expected enemy planes, but the low overcast sky was empty.

    Total chaos greeted them. Shed I was a raging inferno, and the Zeppelin inside Shed II had exploded. Worse, Sheds III and IV were reduced to fiery ruins, having destroyed themselves in violent explosions. Strasser ordered the base sealed to keep potential saboteurs from escaping, and then attempted to help the wounded. While the men near Sheds I and II had time to flee, the collapse of Sheds III and IV had buried several people alive. By the time the winter dusk had turned to darkness, 10 men were dead, 30 badly injured, and scores more had minor injuries. Among the severely injured was Kptlt. Hollander, who's leg was shattered by falling derbies. He spent the rest of the war in a hospital.

Ahlhorn base post-explosion. Barely visible at the top of the photo is the administration building.

I bet you need good boots to walk through that stuff without cutting yourself

Like a lot of other hydrogen airship accidents, no firm causes were ever established, and the Ahlhorn disaster remains something of a mystery to this day. All accounts agree the fire started in the hanger containing L 47 and L 51. That shed had lost its roof thanks to an explosion from L 47, but the walls and doors were relatively undamaged. Shed II had taken similar damage. Shed III had only a single wall standing after the Zeppelin inside it exploded, and Shed IV had been completely obliterated. Maintenance men had been working on L 51 when the fire started, and managed to flee the hanger before the fire became catastrophic. In the aft gondola at the time, the men heard an explosion like the sound of a car backfiring. The fire seems to have started below L 51; the original cause of the disaster was likely spilled gasoline that somehow was set alight.

    That explains the first fire: but what about the others?  Strasser knew that L 47 exploded thanks to being next to the burning L 51: the heat expanded her lifting cells, and (in their millionth appearance in horrible hydrogen accidents) the pressure relief valves vented hydrogen. When the flames reached the oxygen-hydrogen mixture, the result was an explosion. Then in his report to HQ, Strasser had to fall back on speculation and theory that would make for a good episode of Mythbusters. Strasser then speculated that the explosion's shock wave tore the lifting cells of L 63 in shed II -releasing much more hydrogen- which then detonated. (The official inquiry later speculated bits of shed roof might have fallen through the airship, striking sparks.) This created a larger shock wave, which added to the process in shed III, and when shed III exploded, this added even further to the process in shed IV, which resulted in the final, most violent explosion.

    Sabotage is also possible, though there's no good evidence of any. A petty officer confessed to the doing sabotage many years later, saying he had been paid 100,000 pounds to do so, but the airship men interviewed for my primary source dismissed him as a drunken liar. If the British accomplished this astonishingly successful feat of sabotage, they are still mum about it. My personal view is that even if it was sabotage, (after all, the accident started in the one shed with two Zeppelins inside) the saboteur was aiming for just the airships in that shed; after that, the fickle nature of several million cubic feet of hydrogen did the rest.

No Crying over Spilled Gasoline

    The Ahlhorn disaster combined with the silent raid took a huge toll on Zeppelin numbers. Ten airships lost from October to January was comparable to the grim time in 1916, (if we are just counting airship hulls, and ignoring that most of these losses fortunately didn't kill crewmen). But with the curtailed reinforcements, this all but guaranteed the marginalization of the Zeppelin's usefulness. Understandably, airship activity was low until March. March 1918 saw the launch of a last desperate series of offensives on the Western Front, now collectively know as the 'spring offensive.' The name aside, this newest offensive was fairly original. New elite troops known as 'storm troopers', the best of Germany's infantry, infiltrated allied trench networks and bypassed strongly defended areas. Meanwhile, these strong points were isolated, and could be defeated in detail by heavier forces following behind. It was the most dynamic thing to happen on the western front since 1914, and the offensive initially gained a lot of territory. It also got near enough to Paris that the legendary Big Bertha cannon could rain shells down on the city.

    Possibly in support of this new offensive, on March 12th, a raid on the midlands was organized. Five airships took off, and all returned, but the thick overcast kept any useful bombing from happening. L 53 had some trouble landing. On her first approach, she came in much too fast, despite her engines being throttled back. On a collision course with the revolving shed, L 53 had to pull up so sharply that she struck her rear gondola on the ground, shattering her propeller. After going around and missing again thanks to the wind shifting 180 degrees, she managed to land, where then somebody noticed the rear gondola was not answering her telegraph. With her shattered propeller now spinning uselessly, the rear gondola was opened. Inside the four machinist mates were sprawled. Two were revived with liquid air, but two were dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.

    Another raid was organized the next day. Three Zeppelins took off but were recalled over the North Sea. Two airships turned around; the L 42 did not. Captained by Kptlt. Dietrich, the weather in his area was fine and England was in sight, and so he ignored Strasser's order. Determined to make a good showing (now that he would be run out of the service otherwise) Dietrich stood off the British coast until complete darkness fell. The British had been foxed by the recall notice, and towns were lit up as in peacetime. Dietrich found a town (West Hartepool), dove to a modest 15,000 ft, dropped his bombs, and then climbed back to a safe altitude. L 42's aim was true, with all of her bombs hitting the town, destroying many buildings and killing eight. His attack bounce over, Dietrich headed out to sea.

    Landing the next morning, Dietrich was warned by Von Lossnitzer, Strasser's adjutant, that the commander had hit the roof, and he should expect at a minimum to be confined to quarters for a few days. “It was worth it to be able to make an attack on England” the Duke Dietrich replied, before heading off for some sleep. The next day during Dietrich's debriefing, Strasser was initially stone faced, but by the end, the commander was smiling, and dubbed Dietrich “the count of Hartepool”. Even the Kaiser was pleased, writing “very gratifying!” in the margins on Dietrich's report.

    With that start, modest but good, the airships returned on the next raiding period. On April 12th, five Zeppelins set out, and all five made landfall. Three of the ships, finding overcast over Britain, tried to bomb targets using only the radio signal for navigation, and surprise, surprise, missed. The two other airships had a more interesting time of it. L 62 was to spend 6 hours over Britain, searching the spring murk for targets. Trying to find Birmingham, L 62 managed to drop her entire bomb load on nothing of importance, despite the fact that Coventry and Birmingham were both nearby (and blacked out.) After dropping her bombs, L 62 was intercepted by RFC fliers in a F.E.2b. After a half hour chase, the RFC plane was close enough to open fire. The mechanics in the rear gondola responded with their machine gun, and manage to wound the pilot in the head. The RFC plane was forced to break off and land. This is the only time in World War 1 where a defensive machine gun on a Zeppelin claimed a victory over an airplane.
   
    L 61, the other interesting raider, came even closer to scoring a major victory and only by chance failed to do so. L 61 was determined to bomb a midlands city – hopefully Sheffield. Through miscues in navigation, L 61 found herself on the outskirts of another city – Liverpool. Often ordered as a target by Strasser, Liverpool had been a goal often missed by the Zeppelins. L 61, right on the cusp of finally bombing the docks and warehouses of Liverpool, turned north at Liverpool's edge to bomb a lit iron smelter. The bombs did damage, but on the nearby town of Wigan, and not the smelters themselves.

    April was also the time of a short burst of activity from the Kaiser's war fleet. Adm. Scheer decided to raid the Scandinavian convoy. Running from the Shetlands to Bergen in Norway, it was escorted by British battlecrusiers, so Scheer deployed nothing less then his entire fleet to attack it. Once more, the Imperial Navy sallied forth to sit astride the convoy's route, with Adm. Hipper controlling the advance fleet of battlecrusiers. Arriving in Norwegian waters, the fleet braced itself for battle... and then, nothing. Embarrassingly, the convoy was not scheduled to sail that day. This lapse of intelligence was taken to be a result of the lack of Zeppelin scouting missions. Scheer's operational security was much better than it had been, though, and the Royal Navy knew nothing of the Imperial sortie until a German Battlecrusier suffered a breakdown and had to radio for a tow.

    This was of a piece with the Spring offensives. By the end of April, the real danger of collapse to Allied lines had past. Germany had two options on the western front: either drive the British Expeditionary Force into the sea (which would cause France to surrender) or drive France to surrender directly. Both goals had been pursued off-and-on despite the fact that they were for several reasons mutually exclusive. Making matters worse, the Storm Troopers had been the cream of the German infantry divisions, and while effective, had of course suffered disproportionally high casualties, being in the leading edge of the attack. Lacking tanks and cavalry, the Germans lacked the mobility to really cause chaos during the breakout, and when their momentum waned, they were left holding a new salient, surrounded on three sides by enemy strongholds. And just to add to the pile of problems, a new virulent strain of the flu was taking a heavy toll on German soldiers. Malnourished compared to their allied brethren, German soldiers were proving especially vulnerable to the new outbreak.

    Airship scouting till the end of April had been very light, but now regular flights resumed. With the most dangerous airspace nearest to Great Yarmouth being patrolled by flying boats, the naval airships resumed patrols elsewhere, though they still flew high to protect themselves from interception. With the regular flights came renewed British interest in blowing up naval airships.

The HMS Furious

The HMS Furious. If that flight deck looks goofy now, consider that this is the *revised* plan; the first version just had the foreword part as a flight deck.The first man to make a successful landing on a carrier deck three attempts later became the first person to die while trying to land on a carrier.

The lighter forces of the Royal Navy patrolled the north sea, keeping an eye on mine-layers and on the now vast minefields. The previous year, the RN scored a success by mounting Sopwith Pups on catapults mounted on the turrets of their cruisers. One of these Pups had shot down L 23, who had incautiously approached the scouting fleet assuming that (just off of Denmark) there was no danger from aircraft. This success lead to more experimentation: by May 1918 Cruisers sometimes towed lighters behind them, each with one large flying boat. The HMS Furious had also joined the fleet. She started life as a light battlecruiser, but had been modified while being built so that she could launch and recover aircraft: the world's first aircraft carrier. At first only her forward deck was a flight deck, but after this proved tricky to land on (aircraft having to swerve around Furious' stack and superstructure) her rear deck was converted to another flight deck. (History nerds take note: at the time Japan was allied with Britain, and had officers on exchange with the Royal Navy. British experiments with carriers were viewed with great interest by these officers, who would continue them in Japan after the war.)

    So the now familiar game of Zeppelins scouting the North Sea and the British trying to figure out ways to blow then up started again. Though when dealing with hydrogen-filled airships, sometimes nature does the blowing-up for you.  On May 10th, L 56 and L 62 took off for a routine scouting mission. A half-hour later, L 62 was seen by a German patrol boat as she flew into a towering cumulonimbus cloud. Shortly after there was an explosion, and the flaming remnants of L 62 fell into the sea. Like lots of other similar disasters, it's unknown what caused L 62's destruction, but a strong bet would be a sudden pressure change caused her to vent hydrogen. L 56 was intercepted by a flying boat, but now wary of aircraft, she dropped ballast and climbed away from the lumbering aircraft before she was in any danger.

    This missed interception once again showed that flying boats couldn't shoot down a wary Zeppelin. Somebody at the Royal Navy decided a new tactic was needed. Having already tried (and failed) many times to lure airships into traps and then shoot them down, it was decided to use HMS Furious to attack the Zeppelins while still in their sheds. The world's first carrier strike was in motion, though it would be July before it actually occurred.

    Meanwhile, a new Zeppelin had arrived at Nordholz.

L 70 was the final evolution of the R-class: she was a height climber with six of the new altitude engines and extra displacement amidships, essentially what Strasser had wanted to do with the L 59. Nearly 700 ft long, altitude trials showed that should carry 8,000 lbs of bombs to 20,000 ft with just static lift, or to 23,000 ft dynamically. She could also reach 81 mph, which isn't too shabby for something 700 ft long, 80 ft wide, and with a crew of 25! First flying at the start of July, L 70 was soon in service, and instead of being assigned to one of the veteran airship commanders, she was given to Kptlt. von Lossnitzer. Lossnitzer, Strasser's new right hand man, had gotten the position by being just as passionate in his belief of the offensive capabilities of Zeppelins as Strasser himself. While eager to prove himself, his experience, however, was limited: most of his war flight experience had been in the Baltic.

    Strasser, of course, thought the L 70 model was the answer to all of his problems. Exhibiting those now familiar traits of wishful thinking and chronic underestimation of the enemy, Strasser assumed that the L 70 was all but invincible from enemy fighters, and that this was the final type of Zeppelin needed. The Navy evidently disagreed, and over Strasser's objections laid plans for a new type of airship. Called the L 100, it was to displace 2.6 million cubic feet and be 750 ft long. The goal was to get a high a ceiling as possible; the design goal was 27,000 ft. Like some late World War 2 aviation projects, very little physical work was ever done on L 100.

        July also saw the German Army pushed back to where they had started the spring offensives. Now the crisis began: the Kaiser and the heads of the German military now saw the war as unwinnable, and began to seek ways for peace. The common soldier, exhausted after many years of war was demoralized, as their foe was being reinforced with fresh troops from America. They (understandably) saw the war as lost, and began to surrender in massive numbers for the first time. Both their hopelessness and their flu had begun to spread back home to Germany. The Allies at the same time launched the "100 days offensive", an offensive against the now demoralized Germans that would last until the armistice.

On July 19th, the Furious and her small wing of Sopwith Camels were finally ready to strike. Equipped with two 50 lb bombs, seven Camels took off to attack the Zeppelin base at Torden, the world's first carrier strike. Approaching at 1000 ft, the base was easy to find: the giant sheds were unmistakable even from a large distance. The primary target was the 'toska' shed, where L 54 and L 60 were berthed. RN intellegence had also no doubt discovered that the base's defense airplanes, old Fokker D.IIIs, had been withdrawn some months ago. The first three Camels bombed the Toska shed, and set both L 54 and L 60 alight. Then the next three Camels arrived and attacked the other large shed at Torden, which held just the local captive balloon. While two more airships were wrecked, the Toska shed itself was undamaged, save only some holes in the roof. The return proved more difficult for the camels. Two ditched in the sea after being unable to land on Furious' awkward landing deck, four landed in neutral Denmark, and one Camel crashed in the sea, killing its pilot.

    This attack gave the airship men one more thing to fear, as only the Ahlhorn base (now somewhat rebuilt) was far enough away to avoid the danger of carrier strikes. Fortunately for them, the British did not repeat the maneuver. The Furious was used for the rest of the war for carrying kite-balloons only.

    On July 31st, three Zeppelins covered a sortie by the high seas fleet, which left port to protect its North Sea mine-sweeping operations. By coincidence, Harwich Force had chosen to sortie the same day. The Zeppelins had been assigned patrol routes forward and on the flanks of the imperial navy force. Despite her 15,000 ft altitude, L 56 spotted Harwich force at 8 AM, but was unable to make much out, thanks to towering Cumulonimbus clouds obscuring the view. (The same force had been spotted two hours earlier – by a German Seaplane scouting further west.) L 70, north of L 56, turned south to see if she could get a better view. At 8:50 AM Lossnitzer spotted a kite-balloon at 2000 ft, but couldn't spot the ship that was towing it. A few minutes later, L 70 came under anti-aircraft fire from some destroyers, and boldly turned to attack, dropping a few bombs on Harwich force. Since Lossnitzer was bombing from some 15,000 ft, no damage was done.

The Last Raid of the Giants

          A few further patrols followed (and once again the British tried intercepting Zeppelins over the North Sea, and failed.) Then, on August 4th, the new raiding period had begun, and for the last time, Zeppelins took off to raid Britain. Strasser would be going along in his baby, the L 70, with von Lossnitzer in command. With her was L 53 and L 65, and also participating was the L 56 and the L 63. Oh, Strasser! Even at the end you still held onto hope of a Zeppelin-inspired victory!

    It was an unusually warm day at 16,000 ft, which made it difficult for the airships to climb with their load of bombs. Light winds at that level meant that the three ships not only stayed together, they spotted the British coast unusually early, in full light at 6:30 pm. Though they were still 60 miles from the coast, the three skyships were easy to see to any observer.  L 56 and L 63 were approaching land 30 miles south of the first three ships, and even at that distance could make out her three raiding companions in the summer evening.

    Such a bold approach could hardly be missed, and within half an hour the news was flashing up and down the east coast defense network. The Great Yarmouth air station soon had 13 planes in the sky: 10 moving to a land interception position, while three moved to intercept over the sea.  The three planes moving out to sea were light bombers, a surprisingly sensible airplane for Zeppelin interception. With larger wings and engines than period fighters, they were much more adept at high altitude flying. The lead plane was a DH4, with twin machine guns and a ceiling of 22,000 ft, and was piloted by Maj. Egbert Cadbury, who had assisted in the end of L 21. His observer was Canadian Capt. Robert Leckie, who also had bagged himself a skyship. The other two planes were older DH9s. As the three interceptors slowly climbed through the clouds, they could soon make out a Zeppelin above them, just visible as an outline in the dusk. Soon, to the pilot's amazement, two more airships in a line-abreast formation could be made out. It seems navigation had once again failed the German airships. They had been meaning to raid the midlands that night, but a wind had pushed them south, to near the Great Yarmouth naval air station, possibly the only aerodrome in the entire world that were specialist-airship killers.

The DH4 choose to attack L 70. From Cadbury's report:

  At proximately 21:45, the Zeppelins, which were flying in a V formation, altered course north. At 22:10 Zeppelin abeam 2000 ft above us, at 17,000 ft. At 22:20 we had climbed to 16,400 ft and I attacked the Zeppelin head on, slightly to port as to clear any obstruction that might be suspended from airship. My observer trained his gun on the bow of the airship and the fire was seen to concentrate on a spot under the Zeppelin ¾ way aft.

    The (explosive bullet) was seen to blow a great hole in the fabric and a fire started which quickly ran along the entire length of the Zeppelin. The Zeppelin raised her bows as if in an effort to escape, then plunged seaward a blazing mass. A large petrol tank was seen to become detached from the framework and fall blazing into a heavy layer of clouds at about 7000 ft below.

One of the DH9's pilots also observed the L 70's end:

  Fascinated by the spectacle of the burning ship we sat watching the progress of the fire. Very gradually our quarry began to sink by the tail, and we could see the flames spreading upwards and forwards towards the bow. A vertical draught, fanned by the falling stern, was fanning the blaze along the whole length of the airship's hull. A few seconds more and the airship's doom was sealed. She had become a roaring furnace from end to end. Her stern sank lower, and the blazing ship assumed a perpendicular position before starting off on her plunge to earth. After swinging my machine off its course, to avoid falling derbies, we sat enthralled at the appalling spectacle.

    At the beginning of her dive the now derelict airship broke in two, and her after parts came hurtling down beside us; several portions broke away and continued their headlong career with additional velocity. The forepart of the ship fell more slowly, and as it passed us we could see the burning skeleton of the mangled framework glowing with a terrific heat.

As the blazing mass fell through the upper cloud layers, six thousand feet below us, they threw back immense fans of light, making everything about us as bright as day. Slowly the reflected brilliance faded, until only a pin-point of light, far down in the cloud mass, was left to indicate the course of the falling wreckage.

The two airships with L 70 turned and fled when Strasser's flagship was shot down. Major Cadbury pursued L 65 into the darkness for five minutes, and managed to put a few bullets into her before she vanished. More bullets were put into her by the third airplane – one cell ran empty and several more were only half-full – but the third plane vanished with her crew of 2. The rest of the attacking ships aimed their bombs by radio bearings, and scored several hits on the North Sea.

    Thus ended the life of Peter Strasser, leader of airships, in the last Zeppelin bombing raid of World War 1. The combination of a aggressive captain looking to make a name for himself combined with Strasser's belief that the L 70 was invulnerable to aircraft proved a unhealthy combination. If Heinrich Mathy had been the heart of the airship division, Strasser had been the brain and its guiding intelligence, so it won't surprise you to learn that with Strasser's end this tale of airships and heroism is nearly done. The men of the naval airship division had lost the leader who they had idolized, and would try to continue on for the two remaining months of the war.

God help me, Endnotes

(1)One of the initial goals the Nazis had upon coming to power was to make Germany self-sufficient in food production, both to get the rural vote, and to prevent the widespread hunger of 1918-1919 in a possible future war. This was possibly the only policy the Nazis had that was both good and successful: even during the great collapse of 1944-'47, the food situation was nowhere near as bad as at the end of World War 1.

Images

A DH4.

An Engine Gondola of L 70 before it is 'skinned' with canvas. You can see the access ladder that leads up into the hull

More shots of L 70. The second shot is her last photo; it was taken as she was departing on her final raid.

ACHTUNG ZEPPELIN X: Out of Africa

 Though it was mostly forgotten by the end of 1917, one of the reasons Germany had entered into World War 1 was to get a bigger slice of the colonial pie. France held large chunks of Africa, Vietnam, and Tahiti; the Dutch held what is now Indonesia; the British Empire (and its syndicated offshoots) were proverbially vast; and even tiny Belgium had the Congo (the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo) as a slave-state. Germany, latecomer to the colonial game, held the very darkest parts of Africa, half of what is now Paupa New Guinea, and a scattering of South Pacific islands. By 1917, these  undefended colonies had surrendered to invading forces, save one: German East Africa. (Nowadays we know this area as Burundi, Tanzania, and the garden spot of Rwanda.)

    That Germany had one colony left was thanks to the extraordinary efforts of one German Colonel: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.  Lettow-Vorbeck was the German T.E. Lawrence: a brilliant and unorthodox general who waged a guerrilla war against a enemy who vastly outnumbered him. At the outbreak of war, Lettow-Vorbeck found himself in east Africa, and decided on his own that it was his duty as a officer of the Kaiser to tie up as many enemy troops as possible, to keep them out of the main fight. Tanga, the colony's seaport was soon attacked by British forces crossing over from Kenya, and despite the British outnumbering German forces 8 to 1, the result was described later by British as 'one of the worst defeats in British military history.' Not only were the British routed, they left all of their equipment behind, providing Lettow-Vorbeck with sorely needed ammunition and machine guns. The British at the time blamed this astonishing reversal on Lettow-Vorbeck's dastardly use of weaponized bees.

    Promoted to General, with 3000 German soldiers and about 11,000 well trained native troops, Lettow-Vorbeck began waging a guerrilla war on the British, striking at railways, forts, and supply dumps, then melting into the rainforest before the numerically superior British forces could respond. Speaking fluent Swahili, Lettow-Vorbeck gained the respect of his African troops, promoting them to officers and often saying to them 'we are all Africans here.' The British  tried to use superior numbers to bring Lettow-Vorbeck to combat, but each time, the German forces were the victor.

    Of course, you can't find everything you need for your army in the African rainforest. By mid-1917, the supply situation was bleak. In particular, Lettow-Vorbeck's forces needed more bullets, and most critically, modern medical supplies. A Dr. Zupita, former chief medical officer to the East Africa garrison, wrote to the Colonial office, asking if it was possible to send these supplies via airship.

General Lettow-Vorbeck.

Considerably less than a Hundred Men

    If not the very first time supplies were to be brought in by air, it was the largest and most ambitious attempt to date. The Zeppelin company ran the numbers, and,with some extra displacement added to a R-class airship, it seemed quite possible. Strasser supported the idea, both as a practical endeavor and as a way to raise the all-important naval prestige. The endurance flight in July of LZ 120 proved that such a long distance flight was technically feasible. The Army, in a position to run interference, signed off on the new airship without a word of complaint. And with everybody for once in agreement, the Kaiser had no problem adding his (giant, Gothic) stamp of approval to the whole plan.

    The plan as sketched out by the Naval staff was that a airship currently under construction (the L 57) would be lengthened, and then flown to the nearest spot in allied territory, this being Jambol in Bulgaria (then part of the failing Austo-Hungarian Empire). From there, the L 57 would fly the 4,300 miles from Jambol, across the Mediterranean Sea, over enemy-held Libya and Egypt, and down the Nile, to German East Africa, a journey of four and a half days. With her would be 16 tons of bullets and medical supplies. It was supposed that this would be a one way trip, so the crew would be absorbed into Lettow-Vorbeck's forces. (This had actually had precedent in East Africa: the German Cruiser Koeingsburg in 1915 scuttled herself in the Rufiji river, and  Lettow-Vorbeck had not only used the crew, but also taken her guns and used them as artillery.) As the trip was intended to be one way, somebody had the bright idea of making the outer cover of L 57 out of cotton, so it could be recycled into uniforms in East Africa. The gas cells too, were made of repurposeable material. The engines were to be used as electrical generators, and even the framework was envisioned as light building material. It was decided that Kpltl. Bockholt, the captain who'd captured a surface ship, was both daring and expendable enough to lead the mission.

The L 57.

 L 57 as completed was the largest airship yet. 743 ft. long and displacing some 2,400,000 cubic ft., she rivaled the size of the post-war rigid airships. Fuel shortages meant that trial flights had been limited to only two, but two was enough to show that with 5 engines, she was now notably underpowered. Meanwhile, the situation for the mk. 1 Afrika Corps was grim. They held some flat treeless highland territory in which the airship could land, but were being pressed by a British force that outnumbered them five to one. On October 7th, L 57 was flown to Juterbog, where the precious cargo was loaded. In the early evening, a storm was brewing, but Bockholt decided that there was enough time to take L 57 up for a top speed test, which had not been done yet. By the time all 750 ft of L 57 was walked out of the shed, the wind was rising and the barometer was dropping. The ground crew tried to walk L 57 back into the hanger, but now a nasty crosswind had developed, making this a very risky maneuver.

    The wind continued to rise, and Bockholt got 300 nearby army troops to supplement the ground crew of 400, who having an increasingly hard time keeping the Africa ship on the ground. Deciding it would be better to just fly to Bulgaria rather than risk damage with the storm, Bockholt resolved to take off, but first wanted the food and heavy weather clothing loaded. While this was being done, the weather, having progressed from stormy to storm, took L 57, lifted her, and then slammed her against the ground. This broke all the struts on the control car and severed most of L 57's control cables. Now unable to fly, Bockholt tried to get L 57 back into the hanger during a lull, and this too went badly. The wind smashed L 57's nose into the side of the hanger, and then began to blow her away across the field. Bockholt in desperation began valving gas and ordered the troops to shoot holes in the lifting cells, but it was too late. The giant airship dug in with her starboard midships engine pod, and pivoted broadside to the wind. Now a 750 foot sail, she dragged the 700 odd ground-crew across the field, and hit a fence. Metal sparked against metal, and L 57 burned like – well – a hydrogen airship filled with ammunition.  Though no one was killed, L 57 and her carefully hoarded medical supplies where lost.

    Within 48 hours, a meeting had been convened by the top brass. The consensus was once again favorable in seeing the mission through, and it was decided the under construction L 59 would be lengthened like the L 57. Strasser declined to court-martial Bockholt, but requested that somebody else command the Africa-ship. Curiously HQ declined to do this, and Bockholt found himself in command of the replacement of the ship he burned down. Amazingly, L 59 was modified and completed in just 16 days. On November 3rd, 1917, Bockholt was given his official ordered to fly to Bulgaria and onto Africa. Once south of Lake Victoria, L 59 was to radio German forces to find out where exactly they were supposed to land. Naval Command noted a 'recent deterioration of the situation' based on 'recent reports' would make the location of  Lettow-Vorbeck somewhat, er, variable.

The L 59 in Bulgaria.

With those somewhat vague directions, L 59 set off. Making the flight from Germany to Bulgaria in 28 hours, Bockholt made two attempts to fly to Africa that were aborted before he reached the Mediterranean. The problem was ballast. L 59 was flying in a very different environment than the North Sea, and in addition to crossing mountain ranges, L 59 had to fly through much warmer temperatures. This made keeping the airship in trim devilishly tricky, as a perfectly trimmed airship might suddenly find itself out of trim depending on temperature and humidity. It was on the morning of November 21st that L 59 and her crew of 21 started the long trip to the African highlands. In her hold was 30,000 pounds of cargo: sixteen tons of bullets; machine guns, ammo and parts; medicines; bandages; and mail. Also on-board was some 15,000 lbs of water ballast. Taking off at 8:30, by 10 she was over Germany's ally, the Ottoman Empire. She followed the shimmering ribbon of the Turkish railway find Turkey's south coast.

    By evening L 59 left Asia Minor and flew south over the Mediterranean. By 10 PM that night, L 59 was off of the eastern tip of Crete, where she encountered thunderstorms. Winding in her radio antenna, lightning flashed, and St. Elmo's fire burned on L 59's rigging, but this was a familiar sight to L 59's veteran aircrew. Soon, the storm was past, and the faint glow of the Africa beckoned the aviators on. The crew slept in hammocks in the keel, (which was not ideal, as the outer cover flapped sometimes) keeping a watch of four hours on and four off. Engines were stopped one hour in every eight for maintenance; in this way, L 59 had at least four engines at all times.

    At six that next morning, L 59 made landfall exactly where she wanted to, near Mersa Matruh. Now the Zeppelin really was in alien territory. The crew looked down from a few thousand feet at the Libyan desert, an endless ocean of sandy waves. Fortunately, Zeppelins had lots of experience navigating trackless oceans, and at noon hit their next navigation point, the green island of the Farafrah Oasis, without problem. L 59 nearly always had a clear horizon, and thus Bockholt and his crew was able to navigate by sextant. Also, the airship's shadow was cast on the burning sands, and by consulting a simple table, the crew could use the airship's shadow to calculate drift and ground speed. As a result, L 59's navigation was always spot-on.

    Around four PM, the forward engine ate its gearbox. While emergency repairs were done, it was not used again, and L 59 lost the ability to send radio messages. At nine PM, L 59 picked up the Nile River at Wadi Halfa, and from a discrete distance, followed it south into the rocky pinnacles of Sudan. The air was both extremely warm and humid at flight altitude that night; that meant trouble, as warm air decreases lift. And then shortly after midnight, anticlimax.

    L 59 finally received the message that Germany had tried to send her the previous evening: that the protectorate forces had radioed that they no longer held the highlands, and thus there was no place for the L 59 to land. Had L 57 not been destroyed, the air-lifted supplies would have arrived in the nick of time. Off of Crete the previous evening, L 59 had retracted her antenna because of lightning, and subsequently missed the recall message.  With a load of disappointed airship men, L 59 reluctantly turned north at 2:30 AM. At three am while flying over a mountain, a sudden cold snap contracted the cells, and L 59 stalled. Only by dumping 6500 pounds of water did L 59 avoid crashing into the mountain. She also lost her main radio antenna.

    The rest of the flight was uneventful, save that over Turkey L 59 nearly crashed again due to not dropping enough ballast for evening cooling. Back in Bulgaria, she landed at Jambol on the morning of Nov. 25th. Staying aloft for 95 hours, nearly 4 days, L 59 had an amazing journey, despite the failure of the mission. She flew 4200 miles, and still had 22,750 pounds of fuel aboard, enough for another 64 hours of flight time.

  Meanwhile, back in Africa,  Lettow-Vorbeck was still without supplies. Fighting the battle of Mahiwa in October, Lettow-Vorbeck's forces once again were victorious against a numerically superior British attack. This attack also completely used up his supply of bullets; Lettow-Vorbeck had to revert to black power rifles for a time. Fortunately,  Lettow-Vorbeck had thought resupply by airship was a long shot, and had come up with an alternate plan. It was very simple: while still being pressed by British troops with their fancy rifle cartridges,  Lettow-Vorbeck fell back, and invaded Mozambique, then a Portuguese colony. He then took by storm the Portuguese fortress there, and secured all the ammo and medical supplies his forces needed. His supply problems permanently solved, for the rest of the war  Lettow-Vorbeck's guerrillas had as many bullets as they could carry, and in the armistice in November of 1918,  Lettow-Vorbeck and his army marched into captivity, the only German army undefeated in the field.

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    Once L 59 returned, the Germans had the unforeseen problem of what was next for her. Immediately, everyone in the loop of the Africa mission began drawing circles on maps to see what the L 59 could do. The Kaiser was all for another resupply mission, this time to Yemen: L 59 could fly gold and ammunition to a besieged Ottoman garrison there. The Navy seemed to favor using L 59 for mine-sweeping off of Istanbul. Strasser was not impressed with any of these plans, arguing that the first long distance resupply mission was unique in that the loss of an airship was acceptable, while more regular missions carried a high risk of ship loss. Also, Jambol was too far away from the Hydrogen plants; regular missions like everyone was thinking of would be impossible thanks to supply difficulties. Strasser, of course, had his own plan: he wanted the ship to return to his stable in the North Sea, being rebuilt with seven engines as a high-speed scout.

    Bockholt managed to derail Strasser's idea with one of his own. Sending a letter bypassing Strasser straight to the top brass, Bockholt proposed that L 59 be rebuilt as a bomb carrier, and then be sent out on missions of several days duration over the Mediterranean. Being able to bomb Italy, Egypt, and even as far afield as Baghdad, Bockholt foresaw all sorts of bombing missions leading to economic chaos to Britain and Italy. Strasser, after getting a copy of this letter for himself, respond with an polite letter both to Bockholt and HQ. Taking Bockholt's letter point by point, Strasser politely explained how all of Bockholt's plans would run afoul of operational difficulties almost immediately, (viz. Hydrogen supply) and thus, were dumb as shit. He also pointed out that his own plan was the only one that avoided these problems.

    Bockholt still got his way, having someone no less than the Kaiser himself approve of the plan. Refitted at the factory,  L 59 returned to Bulgaria on February 21st, 1918. Bockholt then immediately ran into the problems that Strasser had predicted. L 59 needed about a million cubic-feet of hydrogen after every raid, and getting that from the tight supplies in Germany and Belgium proved exceedingly difficult. On the night of March 10th, L 59 managed to bomb Naples from a altitude of 10,000 ft. Dropping some 14,000 lbs of bombs on Italian industry, this was the only post-Africa success L 59 had. He also twice attempted to bomb the British Naval base at Port Said in Egypt, but turned back both times thanks to weather. After an engine overhaul in April, Bockholt's next ambitious target was the naval base the British had at Malta. Taking off on April 7th, L 59 was last seen that evening by UB 53, a U-boat operating in the Mediterranean.

    The Captain of UB-53 at first thought the airship approaching from the rear was Italian, but presently saw the German markings of L 59. Flying overhead at 700 ft, L 59 flew on into the dusk. An hour and a half later, a flash was seen in the darkness, and then, a burning flame that lit the whole horizon. Nobody later claimed to have shot down L 59, so it seems that her loss might have been an accident. Possibly due to her rushed construction, fuel leaks had always been a problem, and it is quite possible one of these leaks caused a hydrogen fire.

Like certain World War 2 projects that never quite made it, L 59's Africa flight was a pioneering effort, even if it failed in its goal. In addition to being the first major resupply mission by air, it also blazed the trail for post war long distance flying in the 1920s.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

    The Silent raid, as discussed last time, was a near success that turned into a disaster for the Naval Airship Division. If this result depressed Strasser, then he was not depressed for long. Soon after the raid, the L 58 arrived at Ahlorn with the new 'altitude motors.' The engines the height-climber airships had been using up until that point had been using the Maybach HSLu engines, which made 240 hp at a cruising altitude of 5000 ft. Designed in 1914, they lost a great deal of power at 20,000 ft: airships capable of 62 m.p.h. found themselves reduced to 45 m.p.h. The new engine, the Maybach MB IVa, had a similar output of 245 hp, but thanks to oversize cylinders and a higher compression ratio, it could make nearly all of this power regardless of altitude. L 58 could get 67 mph at sea level, and still get 60 mph at 20,000 ft.

    Strasser ordered that all new ships should have the motor even if it meant a delay in completion, and also wanted to retrofit older height-climbers with them. This was done, though the engines were essentially handmade, and also used by some German reconnaissance planes.

    The Silent raid also finally caused the Germans to revise their radio Navigation aid. The new system was much simpler, and was invulnerable to the DDOS-style logjams when many airships were aloft. Two new radio towers were built in Tondern and Cleve. The radio towers had 32 directional antennas, pointing to all points of the compass. Every 32 seconds, the station would broadcast on the 'north' antenna, and then cycle through all the points. On every Zeppelin, there was a stopwatch with a compass rose painted on its face. The stopwatch also took 32 seconds to make one complete revolution around the compass. An airship in the sky would listen for the special 'north' tone, and then start the stopwatch, stopping it when it heard the secondary tone. This was done five times, and then averaged. (Possibly somebody who understands this stuff can comment on if this would actually work better or not; certainly it was much simpler.)

    And on November 17th, the last surface fleet action was fought. Choosing a overcast, foggy day to foil airship observation, the Royal Navy, with a Battlecruiser and two regular cruisers, attempted to jump German mine-sweeping operations. Unfortunately for the British, the Imperial Navy had taken to heavily escorting the mine-sweepers, especially in bad Zeppelin weather. German light Cruisers got in between the Royal Navy and the mine-sweepers, and bought enough time for the two escorting Dreadnoughts to wallow on over to the fight. When these two German battleships were jointed by two battlecruisers, the British broke off the assault. The German Navy handled itself well, and the actions on both sides demonstrate how much was thought of Zeppelins as aerial scouts.

    So while 1917 ended gloomily for Germany, the Navy, and especially the Airship service, had some genuine successes to be proud of. In addition, the army's attempt to 'destroy England by fire' with airplanes had failed: casualties had grown so high the whole enterprise had been called off. Airships, seemingly, had out-lasted the airplane as a viable long-range bomber.