WRECKED ZEPPELIN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 12, 15 January 1932, Page 11

WRECKED ZEPPELIN

FATAL THIRTEENTH RAID SOUVENIR-HUNTER’S FIND LONDON, Jan. 6. i How a souvenir-hunter withheld j from the British authorities a book of immensely valuable secrets, obtained by him when a German Zeppelin was brought down near London during the war, is revealed after 16 years. It was the unlucky 13th. voyage of I the airship L 32 that saw its destruction in flames. The book shows it, but the ' commander who staggered, dying, from 1 tho burning wreckage knew it, too. ; In September, .1916, L 32 and L 33 ’ were brought down during a concen- ‘ trated raid carried out by all the naval [ Zeppelins, in which 38 people were i killed and 125 were injured. s Tho original finder of the book is I now dead, and it was obtained from t his widow, who desires to remain anonymous. h It appears that when the man saw the Zeppelin falling in flames at Billericay, Essex, he hurried to the scene, and was one of the first to reach the I blazing wreckage. He saw a man staggering out of the holocaust with his clothes on fire and his face blackened £ by smoke, and clasping a large book. Suddenly he pitched forward on his £ face and shouted three times in a clear shrill voice, “Dreizehn” (thirteen). He was commander Petersen, the only man of the crew to escape immediate death. Apparently as he jumped ’ clear he remembered the superstition - attaching to the number .13, and it was uppermost in his mind as he dropped dead. . i The book is the airship’s ballast book. It shows be distribution of the ] weights and the amount of gas, fuel, ( ‘water, ballast ..nd bombs carried on f tho 12 voyages, the record for the 13th r