LATEST GERMAN AIRSHIPS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2951, 5 January 1912, Page 5

LATEST GERMAN AIRSHIPS.

Several writers contribute to aE article in the September "Windsor Magazine" on the possible development of airships in the near future for purposes of war, In the course of it it is said : "Count Zeppelin announced some time ago that he could easily build an airship with a displacement ol 30,000 cubic metres. It has also bceD announced that the ships now building at Germany's aerial shipyards in Friedrichshafen are considerably larger than those now afloat. And it is more than probable that the new craft will approach a 30,000 metre displacement. An airship of that size would be 510 feet long.

"Now, an aerial ship 510 feet long and 51 feet wide could carry a dozen men a mile high in the air over a radius of five hundred miles and back—that is, it could reach every principal capital of Europe from the borders of German territory, and return. It could, in addition, devote at least five tons of cargo weight to arms and ammunition. This could include ten machine rifles, each equipped with ammunition enough for a full -hour's work, and two machine guns of the type built for the Zeppelins, with two hundred shells for eacb weapon. Two and a half tons of dynamite torpedoes could be substituted for half the machine guns and their ammunition, if it were desired to attack fortifications or cities. Forty craft of this kind could be built and armed at the cost of one Dreadnought battleship. And such a fleet, without opposition from other airships, could conquer Western Europe. The moment it is launched, the standing armies of Europe become an anachronism."