SUPER-ZEPPELIN SECRETS

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 238, 29 December 1916, Page 8 (Supplement)

SUPER-ZEPPELIN SECRETS

EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNT

ESSENTIAL PARTS OF L 33 INTACT'. MURDER MECHANISM. By H. W. WILSON. All the secrets of the mysterious super-Zeppelin are now known to tho British air services, including the secret of bringing these huge and delicate gas-bags down. So much I can say after a close inspection yesterday of the super-Zep-pelin L 33, which on September 23 was forced by our fire, to (alight in Eastern Essex, and which has supplied our designers with all the drawings and patterns that they reuire. The externals of the airship, her outer fabrics and gas-bags, were destroyed by fire. But all the essentials remain, all the elaborate contrivances of murder, all the gear for operating the engines, all the tackle for manoeuvring tfe ship. The skeleton of the monster is not visible until you draw very close to it It is a strange, spidery affair of deli cate trellis work in silvery metal with no sbeen and no tinkle but a sepulchral rustle. The girders are of almost inconceivable lightness. What looks a prodigiously bulky portion of the framework can be lifted with one hand. Instead of weighing a hundredweight it scales a few pounds. The whole structure seems like a device from another world and another ag'e. Standing by the wreck we can reconstruct the scene aloft as the vessel (she is 680 ft. long and 72ft. in diameter, ar rather larger in bulk than the Lusitania) whirled through the air to attack our British women and children at a speel of some <JS miles an hour — for nights were usually chosen when no wind was blowing, and* her engines will propel her at that speed in a calm. The work of navigation is carried out from the forward gondola, which was of large size, 30ft. or so long. This gondola was made of stout aluminium and in appearance closely resembled a oovared-hi boat, though from the weight of the machinery inside it would not have floated.

THE MURDER KEYBOARD. It was divided into three compartments, In the first was the captain, right in the bows of the ship, looking through nonflammable celluloid windows, which were pierced through the cotton fabric that closed the gondola in ait'Ove. Conveniently placed for him were two wheels to operate the elevating and horizontal steering rudders, and ether wheels controlling the water ballast an dthe petrol tanks. Before him was a little keyboard with which murder was done. It showed sixty small buttons, like the pushes of an electric boll, each of which operated one bomb-dopping hook and released a bomb. Another lever withdrew a shutter which had to be withdrawn before the bomb could fall. Astern of the captain's cabin in the same gondola was a little room 6ft. by 4ft., used by the wireless operator and containing the wireless instruments, which were supplied with current from six dynamos, one attached. 1 to each engine, as will presently be seen, thus leaving nothing to chance. Astern of the wireless room, ngain, still in the same gondola and isolated 1 from the wireless room by an air-space of about lan inch, were one of the six engines and a dynamo, also two machine guns of ordinary German calibre, on tripod mountings of amazing lightness. The engine is still in good working older. It is a Maybach (Mercedes) typo and develops 240-h.p. One of the groat surprises of this airship is mat immediately behind the forward gondola and driven by its engine is a propeller amidships, underneath the ship. There was nothing of the kind in the Zeppelins brought down in France and a: Salonka. It is one of the distinctive features of the super-Zeppelin.

•CAT-WALK" INSIDE To pass from this gondotai down the ship one had to climb through a kind of trap-door framed in aluminium into the "cat-walk," a perilously narrow gangway only 9in. wide that runs the whole length of the keel. On the aluminium girder framings the thinnest of planking was laid. Some part of it has survived the fire and could be very plainly seen. Passing down this "catwalk" inside the walls of thin cotton fabric, greyish .white, one reached the compartment containing bombs. Here hung the missiles on sixty hooks, and below them was the sliding shutter. In the "cat-walk" was another interesting find, a lavartory with fittings of fairy lighness. Near the centre of the ship, progressing from bow to stern, were suspended two other gondolas. These hung side by side, spaced out a. little on either beam. They are of much smaller size, only 18ft. long and each contains one Maybach 240 h.p. engine, one dynamo, and one machine gun. The engines are fitted with ingenious starting gear, which, we were told, works exceedingly well. Each engine drives a propeller which is stayed out at the side of the ship with aluminium alloy struts. These arc circular, but to diminish the wind resistance the Hun has carefully covered them with thin three-ply wood in a stream-line casing of astounding lightness ad efficiency. In the amidships gondolas were neat little aluminium cupboards, which at the time of the capture contained Hun comestibles. They were of good design and took little space. The last and fourth gondola was placed astern in the centre, line and was of large size, rfbout 30ft. long. It contained two machine guns and three engines, all of Maybach type and 240-h.p., each driving one dynamo and propeller. Two of these propellers were stayed out on either baam of the airship; the third was: at the stern, about 30ft. in from iho end o ftlie ship. A similar propeller was observed in the Zeppelin bought down by (the French at Rovigny

14-10-HOKSE POWER. Thus the ship has six propellers in all and engines of 1,440-h.p., as against four propellers n.nd engines of 540 h p. in the first naval Zeppelin. The. propellers vie connected with the engines by aluminium shafting, which seemed to be of great strength. But a large piece of one shaft broke away from the ship and ftII at a distance of three miles. AVhether it was through damage from gun-fire is not certain, but the airship showed marks of hits and seemed to have been struck on her petrol tanks. No observation oar for lowering was found, but it n possible that if she carried one it was thrown overboard shortlv lie Pore she landed, as she made an effort to proceed to sea a.nd did go ••nmo little distance out before returning and making a landing. The reason she came down was presumably that the breaking of this shaft and loss of

petrol made it impossible for her to cross tho North Sea. She threw out many objects, including most of her guns.

The interior of the airship, as it now is, in a somewhat dismantled state, has been compared with that of the Crystal Palace. The comparison is not satisfactory; there is an eerie fairylike effect in ,tlie great framework, which has visibly sagged down amidships and has now in places been cut away for closer axamination. An extraordinary tangle o-r wires stretches from girder to girder and makes it appear as though gigantic spiders had been at work. These wires, which arc exquisitely attached to the framework, were used to keep it taut, and can bo lightened by a central cable which runs from the bow to the stern and has an arangement for tightening of the simplest and most efficient character. Possibly the work of making the ship taut can be carried out when she is still in the air.

The gas was contained in 24 ballonets, each connected by a valve with n central gas-supply pipe. The ballonets were burnt, but enough of the fabric remains to show that it was of a thin silk or cotton, water and gas-proofed. They were separated, not, as some have supposed, by sheet aluminium bulkheads, but by'spider-we.bs of wire, ;• web between each pair of ballonets. The g.is capacity was 2 million cubic feet, nearly thrice that of the hrst naval Zeppelin, and the total weight in the air 50 tons, of which 9 tons was aluminium framing. Of this the weight of bombs would probably be 1} to' 2 tons; the petrol tanks could contain 2,000 gallons. A mark on one of them gaVe the date of the ship. It read in red paint:

H 14 7 16. So that she was apparently completed on July 14, 1916. For defence against attack from above the super-Zeppelin wias well equipped. Forward were two gun platforms near the nose of the ship, in eaoh of which was mounted 1 a .5-in. (kalf-an-inch) quickfiring gun. A similar platform was plnced astern, so that in all three .sin. guns were mounted en the top of the ship. They w.-m kept well away from the ventilators which carried off escaping gas. The tales that between the ballonets and the outer cover is a chamber warmed by gas from the engine exhaust do not seem to be true, though the exhaust from the engines is led up through he airship and thus kept its interior tolerably warm. The fabric used for the outer cover at a little distance looks like newspaper printed with microscopic type. It is exceedingly tough, and though thin can scarcely be torn and is difficult to cut. It resembles a very strong twill. The crew were not —as some might have expected—chosen for their lightness. They were a mixed assortment light and lieavy men, and numbered 22 /in all.

There was an object which seems to have been a smoke-producing apparatus, to enable the airship to maka her own clouds. Many of the pnrts have now been removed for use bv our constructors, for whom also the aluminium alloy (Worth £4OO a ton) will l>e smelted clown.