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.