ZEPPELIN'S NEW DEVICE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1554, 23 May 1916, Page 4

ZEPPELIN'S NEW DEVICE.

DESIGNED TO BLOW UP THE WHOLE BRITISH NAVY. (By William 0. Shepherd, American United Press Correspondent.) Paris, March 22. Equipped wit If a new, horribly destructive device, a licet of Zeppelins will accompany tin 1 German navy when it dashes out to meet the British, according to stories told by Swiss boatmen on Lake Constance. They obtained their information, they say, from residents of Eriedrichshafen, on (he lake, where (he great Zeppelin works arm Furthermore, they have watched the German sky cruisers experiment with (he new missile, designed to blow England’s Dreadnoughts into atoms. •Suspended from the gondola of the Zeppelin is a wire more than two miles long. At the end of the wire dangles a cluster of bombs Idled with high explosives.

Each Zeppelin accompanying the grand fleet will be lilted out to fish for enemy warships. Scouting ahead of the fleet, at a great height, the Zeppelin, the boatmen say, will drop its explosive bait to the water and drag it at high rale of speed in the direction of the approaching Britishers. When the bomb cluster strikes the side of an enemy warship the Zeppelin commander, two miles above the water, will touch an electric button, setting oft the charge. The bomb dragging feat has been practised several times in the past fortnight on Lake Constance, according to reports reaching Lucerne bv a new Zeppelin that apparently maintained a speed of 100 miles an hour. Genuan military representatives in Switzerland made haste to deny the-rumour that the Germans were planning to drop poison gas bombs on French and English cities.