A FALLING ZEPPELIN

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2916, 31 October 1916, Page 6

A FALLING ZEPPELIN

1 VIVID STORY OF LONDON'S RECENT SENSATION ■ ON FIRE IN THE SKY I (Harold Ashton in the "Daily Mail.") j I.was standing in a small Held on . the outskirts ot Cufflcy Wood, con- • versing with one of our airmen. We wore standing by the smoking, evil- - smelling ruins of the smashed and ob- > literated "Zeppelin" —a strange, nigbt- , mare sight in such pastoral and subi- limely peaceful surroundings. Dead ) men, burnt and battered beyond human ; semblance, lay around in woird atti- ; tudos. They were German dead, but > the picture of them aslliey lay there i among the unsp_eakable wreckage, I swathed and bronzed like mummies i ravished from some ancient tomb, was i sufficiently'poignant to strike a note of pity in the heart—pity, though they ■ were Germans. Up tho hill, down the hill, and ; across the fields tho people were still streaming. The narrow lane running ' alongside the field wa_s chock-a-block ' with motor-cars. motor-omnibuses, traps, donkey-carts, farm wagons— every conceivable kind of vehicle. How they got thore and where they came from entirely beggars description, for the smoking wreck of tho great airship lay miles from any main railway— and this, remember, was a Sunday morning. The whole scene resembled a Gargantuan Derby Day. All were strangely silent; ajid the picture as I saw it on this rojsty early morning, in a nook of England v s prettiest woodland, I shall never forget. What the Fight Was Llks. But to the fight. Most of the inhabitants of the Home Counties saw it and marvelled. Following a sullen day of drenching rain, there came a night of airless calm, and everything was wrapped in » bewildering mantle of mist. Earthward, it was unusually heavy and but. there was a glimmer- of stars high overhead, dimmed now and then by drifting clouds. Shortly atfer two o'clock, and- flying at a tremendous height, throe Zeppelins appoared. A questing searchlight picked out ono over, the northern hoights at about ton minutes past two. Then came tho roar of guns, which wakened everybody; and following that, the hornet-hum of our attacking aeroplanes. It was a perilous night for these birds to rise, for the groundmist was almost blinding, and so thick as to bafflo any sense of direction. But our airmen, ready and thrilling for the pounce, paid no heed to' the fog. With a couple of "trays" of ammunition and a sling of bombs, they rose, some of them just as a neighbouring searchlight picked out the envelono ot tho raider. There sho swung, engines silent, at a height of about 12,000 feet. Tho eword of the searchlight flickered around her for a moment or two, and thou hold her in a gleaming vice. She wrigglod to escape it, and aimed for a cloud as the shrapnel began to burst around her in steel-blue llashee, and the guns hammered from below. She looked very much like a redhot cigar at this period of her adventure. She wriggled and wriggled, and then 6ho caino down for a fow hundred feet. Tho gunner of the raider, a groat, hefty Gernian, wrapped in a "Polarbear" : costume (I saw his body thiee hours afterwards, and that is how I know), replied with his ono machine gun. On Fire. Entranced, the crowds wore watching the "fireworks." Tho monotony of bursting shrapnel, the swish and tho flicker of roving searchlights, was suddenly varied by tho flash of lights. The red-hot cigar, as the raider seemed to bo, marvellously and splendidly burst into flames, changing from a glow of gold into a deep and magnificent crimson. That was tho end. Down from the stars came tho "Zeppelin," not in a tumult of flame, but gracefully—almost with dignity. For a milo or two apparently sho -(travelled on, her blazing envelopo still maintaining the horizontal. Then , she visibly shivered, tipped, and nosedived to catastrophe and death in a •magnificent blaze of ruby flame. It was a> .picture the immortal painter* of "The Falling Rocket" would have gloried in..

-,_ Oouutloss thousands saw it 'from roof-top and from highway—east, west, north, and south. And at twenty minutes past two upon this amazing Sunday morning a great unison of cheering heralded the end. of the conflict. After its fall came the rush and tho scramble to locate tho shattered raider's tomb. All tho world and his wife wore up and out long beforo the tardy coming of the sun. The northern roads were glimmering with the hoded headlights of hundreds of cars. Streams of bicycles followed in their wake. I arrived very early, but a car-load of enthusiasts from Brighton were already on tho ground when 1 got thoro!

As dawn broke, tlie spectacle became more and more extraordinary. The airship was hit and was already on fire four" miles from whore slio finally fell. I have this on the authority of a farmer who showed ,me a charred scrap of spar, or stay, which fell in his front garden. From that spot to the last ditch of tho shattered ship is exactly four miles as tho crow flies, and as the farmer walked this morning. ,So in a blazing tomb the doomed crow sailed for four—and perhaps .five — miles 1

"I was on the road, close by this fi6ld, when she foil," said the .man. who was first, on tho spot. . "Sho camo dam. in a wild hurricane of flame, and I thought at first that the end of the world had come! She hit the ground with a tremendous crash? liko tho smashing of a million platoglass windows. ' At the moment of her striking earth there were two deafening explosions liko thunderclaps I suppose they were the bombs she hadn't released. '.There was a remarkable quantity of wood and very little aluminium in tho structure, and that accounts for its fierce burning. The fields wore lit up ai! around. Tho whole of tho ship fell in one tangled, red-hot mass, with tho exception of the propeller, which flew off and fell about a couple of hundred yards away from tho main wreckage, just missing tho little chapel you sco thero on the edge of the field. 1 saw bodies of men writhing in tho flames. Of course, they were dead, but tho effect was awful. They looked just as if they were alivo and writhing in hell. ... AA'hen I arrived on .tho sceno the remains of ,the vessel wero still burning. Heaps of red-hot cinders gave- out clouds of steam and whiffs of evil odour as the little local fire engine, pumping valorously from the nearest ditch, played upon them. I saw bodies lying; amid tho smash. Tho huge Gorman I have already mentioned lay smashed, by tho side of his machine-gun —a black-painted weapon fixed to a light wooden framework. Another and a smallor gun lay across the wreck of tho former. It was a small "tracer" gun. There wore two engines lying under the tangle of wires and fiercely hot corrugated iron Tho propeller bore a mark identifying the vessel as one of the smaller Gorman' airships. Several more or less complete bodies were taken from the ruins in tbo early morning. More wero still lying, unapproachable, under the hot nshos.