THE ZEPPELIN

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 75, 20 December 1924, Page 18

THE ZEPPELIN

The flight of the German-built Zeppelin airship ZR3 over English soil on its wav to America recalls many vivid memories of the late war (states the “Morning Post’s” military correspondent). Until 1914 the rigid airship, had, even in Germany, been regarded as a military weapon for use with field troops. As an integral part of a fleet it was only beginning to be considered seriously before the outbreak of war. No sooner were hostilities undertaken than the threat of airship raids against England began to be assiduously nourished bv German propaganda in neutral countries. It was, at that time, a very palpable bogey; still, it was an effective bogey; one. too, that served its purpose. A very faltering attempt to bomb English soil was at length made on January 17, 1915, by the three existing naval airships. One ship lost its way; the remaining pair managed to drop a few ineffective bombs over Great Yarmouth and the Norfolk coast. Belonging to the navy, these ships started from near Hamburg and Bremen. The undertaking and the distance was too great for the crews.. So it fell to the despised military airship, service, now working from Brussels, to achieve the first bombing of London. After three tentative efforts, which reached Southend anU fßamsgatks the airship LZ3B, commanded bv Hauptmann Linarz, found London and dropped a hundred man-killing grenades, together with a quantity of incendiary bombs down Kingsland Road. Entirely unmolested, he then vanished. As an act of war the attack was as contemptible as it yvas noteworthy, if considered as a virgin effort of military aviation. The 1915 Type. But the constructional genius inspired the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen, on the Lake of Constance, was of a high order, and by the autumn of 1915 an improved type of airship was designed and produced, by them for long distance flights. This shin proved as superior to pre-war product as the present ZR3 stands ahead of its predecessor of nine years ago The skill of the airship crews was also growing. So the Naval Air Service set to work; the first bombing of I.ondon was carried out by the most remarkable airship pilot that Germany had yet produced. This was Heinrich Matliy in his new ship Ll 3. The influence of this man over his crew was immense The navigational skill displayed by him in his. first flight from King’s Lynn to London at 80 miles an hour was astounding, while his nerve proved equal to his . technical worth. Laughing at the ineffectual anti-aircraft defences of London, he drifted across tho city itself. Jins raid proved the most damaging effort of its kind, for a fir.e that Mathy occasioned in Wood Street cost half *a million pounds. On October 13 Mathy with two less skilful but equally resolute colleagues, Breithaupt in Ll 5, who damaged the “Morning Post” office, and Bocker in LIL Mathy and Booker near? collided m the air over Woolwich, an unique incident which led to a “court of honour”-being held in Germany on their return. Heinrich Mathy’s End. " The German Naval Air Service has thus no right to claim that it was the first to satisfy popular clamour for an attack on London. But the existing breach between the naval and military, air services in Germany was to grow, thus leading to difficulties if not to actual loss of efficiency. In the end the Naval- Service carried all before it, avi eventually military airships ceased to exist. A still further enlarged airship was turned out at Friedrichs-

HISTORY OF THE SPECIES

hafen in 1916, and in the autumn of that year the navy essayed a fresh, set of raids on London with these new machines. The effort met with a rude surprise, for the British aeroplane, firing a new incendiary bullet, proved the master of the airship. After one magnificent flight across London, in which he sailed from Croydon over Westminster to Barnet, Mathy, one week later, was brought down in flames at Potters Bar. Eondo i was hence forth to be severely left alone. Butthe brains at work at Freidrichshafen were not idle. • New airships appeared, larger, more powerful, and, above all, far lighter. From a maximum of 12,000. feet in 1916, the greatest altitude of flight in 1917, rose at one bound to over 23,000 . feet. But the machine in the, end, just as it could rise above the aeroplane, was to defeat the pilot and his crew. On October 19, 1917, a great airship squadron, attempting to find Sheffield and Brmingham, ran into an icy Northerly gale raging at 20,000 feet unkonwn to those below. Frozen, helpless. gasping for breath, the crews were blown southwards as, one by one, their motors broke down. So five airships came down in France. One, L 45. drifted over London and dropped a memorable bomb into Piccadilly Circus oil its way. Finally it came down in the South’of France in full sight of that very crew that had dropped, the first bomb of the war into London. For the same men who had flown with Linarz in LZ3B were they who were shot down, jc/t one year later, at Salonika bv H.M.S. Agamemnon. So side by side the first and last airship raiders of London were interned at Sisteron in Provence. Poetic Justice. Finality in construction was now virtually reached. New airships were still evolved at Friedrichshafen. _ Improved they were and beautifully built. Yet the crews became almost afraid of the tremendous capability of these latest machines. The very last and newest of these wonderful airships, carrying the commander of the Naval Airship Service, the director of all the raids of the war, came down in flames off the Norfolk coast within sight of the spot where the first German airship had dropped the first enemy bomb on English soil. This happened not so many hours before British troops were io go crashing tlirough the Hindenburg Line in France. Coincidence it may be, but sentiment may lead to a belief in poetic justice. So now ZR3, the pure product of war and an almost perfect machine of its kind, has been converted to more •peaceful punxises. The incredible lifting power ofThis bombing airship has been exchanged for the capacity ~of carrying numerous passengers in a luxurious saloon. Those who travel in her should reflect that they owe their comfort, their speed of travel, no less than the relative safety of their craft, to the bitter struggle that was maintained for three years between he brains and constructional of Friedrichshafen, on the one hand, and the ill-rewarded perseverance of the aerial defenders of, London, combined ' with the daring of young British airmen, on the other. Still regarded as one’ of the most wonderful of the technical achievements of the war, the superb factory at Friedrichshafen is now to be dismantled in accordance with the Treaty of Peace. The ZR3 will thus be the last of that remarkable series of airships that made their mark in the Great War. even though in many ways they proved a costly failure, for thev were unquestionably set to an impossible and, in the end, an unproductive task.