To war in airborne ships

Press, 28 August 1982, Page 16

To war in airborne ships

A Falcon for the Hawks. By Clive Egleton. Hodder and Stoughton. 197 pp. $21.50. (Reviewed by A. J. Petre) Fascinating and impressive as Zeppelins were, they were no fun to be in when anti-aircraft shells were ripping the sky, and enemy fighters were about. Egleton gives a vivid impression of what it was like, in this entertaining and straightforward tale of one Zeppelin and its crew, and one small Home Defence Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. The Zeppelins could get higher than the overworked old BE2s of the Home Defence Squadrons, and they were often faster, as well. In spite of this, they were underpowered for their size, and were easily blown off course. Their sheer size — twice the length of a modern 747 airliner — made them excellent targets, and their vast loads of highly-inflammable

hydrogen made the result of hits spectacular and disastrous. Zeppelins could stay, airborne for nearly 36 hours, and they could cut their five or six huge Maybach engines, and drift silently down upon their targets to escape detection by the British listening-posts. This story is set in 1917, when the increasing sophistication of conventional bombers meant that the end of the German Naval Air Division and its huge ships of the air was not far away. The story of the huge airship L 72, and the small squadron led by Major Matthew Farr, R.F.C., is ably and convincingly told. Inevitable as the outcome is, Egleton succeeds in building plenty of tension into his tale. Even that long-distant “Great War” can still produce stories worth the telling, and Egleton tells this one with impressive immediacy.