Aerial Battleships.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 21 August 1914, Page 8

Aerial Battleships.

GERMANY'S INTEREST IN ZEP-

PELIN'S IDEAS

The tragic wreck of the German naval airship Zeppelin LI calls attention to the remarkable development of this type of airship since Count. Zeppelin, thirteen years ago, made his first successful flights in a rigid dirigible of his own design. The LI was a veritable monster of the air. Pier length was 525 ft., three and a half times the height of the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square, and her diameter 50ft. But, in spite of her huge size, she could travel faster than an express train. Propelled by three engines, each of 170h.p., the LI could attain a speed of fifty-two miles an hour, rise to a height of one mile, and"could actually carry a weight of seven tons over and above her engines, cars, and fittings.

In addition to a crew of twenty men, the LI carried . four machine guns, and was also fitted with a wireless telegraphy installation capable of sending1 messages 350 miles. Over £10,000 was spent in the construction of this airship. The life of an airship, however, is assumed by the German authorities to be only four years, so that normally every four years new airships have to be sub.mit.ted for the old. This is the first occasion that life has been lost in connection with a Zeppelin airship, although eleven others have either been wrecked or badly damagecl. NATIONAL SUBSCRIPTION OF £300,000. Count Zeppelin has triumphed in the face of difficulties and opposition which would have daunted 99 men out of a hundred. The army authorities were strongly opposed to his ideas of a rigid dirigible, although the Kaiser supported the Count in his experiments, and when in 1905 the Count constructed an enormous airship, 420 ft. long and 40ft. in diameter, experiments with which ended in comparative failure, the army authorities were inclined to ridicule his ideas. The following year, however, Zeppelin built another dirigible, in which he made a /flight of 225 miles and attained a spied of thirty-five miles an hour. This achievement excited the wildest enthusiasm in Germany, where people had been made somewhat uneasy by the success which had attended the use of dirigibles in Franco. and ultimately a national subscription was organised and a sum of 300,000 raised to enable the, Count to continue his experiments. OLD-TIME INVENTIONS. The dirigible balloon, however, is by no means a modern invention, as many people seem to think. As a matter of fact, as long ago as 1781 General Meusnier proposed the construction of an elongated balloon which might be propelled through the air. Experiments were made with it by two brothers named Robert, who made several ascents and attained a speed of three miles an hour, though the method of propulsion was only aerial oars worked by hand. Nothing farther was attempted until 1852, when Henri GifTard built dirigibles which, by means of a light steam engine, he propelled at nearly seven miles an hour, and since then various experiments have been made which ultimately ended in the wonderful triumph of Zeppelin. It Whs not until 1907 that the British War Office attempted to use dirigible balloons, although it had many years before employed ordinary balloons on active service.— "Tit Bits."