ZEPPELINS IN WAR

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 113, 5 January 1932, Page 7

ZEPPELINS IN WAR

GERMAN'S GRAPHIC STORY OF AXRSHIP RAIDS. STORMS AND BULLETS. A vivid account of the difficulty and danger of handling airships in war is given by Freiherr Treusch von Bnttlar Brandenfels, in his hook "Zeppelins over England," recently published in London. The baron commanded various Zeppelins throughout the war, and he took part in repeated raids over England. One of his most unpleasant experiences was in a violent thunderstorm. The Zeppelin he was in dropped heavily, and then shot up to over 6000 feet. He says: . "The flashes of lightning were growing ever more violent and more frequent. A huge hall of fire fell to the ! earth close beside us, and in the control car it was light as day. The whole ship was lit up, and the sky was a silvery green . . . Through a speaking tube from the platform (on top of the airship) the message came down: 'The machine-gun sights are burning.' It was St. Elmo's fire. . . . There were sheets of lightning before us, followed by flash after fiash every second. And we were expected to go through that!" The baron escaped disaster, but he states that the Zeppelin L10 was destroyed by lightning in a similar storm. ! He writes. "Suddenly we saw a cloud glowing red as fire. What on earth could it be? Then a torch of gigantic length emerged from the cloud and fell like a stone to earth. . . . That small clond had heen

charged with enough electricity to ignite the hydrogen escaped from the ship. Ship and crew perished." Incendiary Bullets. The Zeppelins were defeated when the British airmen were at last supplied with incendiary bullets. The baron thus describes the encounter between L48 and Seeond-Lieutenant L. P. Watkins: "The Zeppelin's machine-guns opened fire. Then oue of the Englishmen fired his first short salvo, and in an ! instant a regular cone of- bullets could he seen flying through the blackness, looking like innumerable green lines and remiriding one of a steam engine at night shooting sparks out of its funnel. . . In a second the hydrogen began to burn, and the whole ship was enveloped in flames." In the great raid of October, 1917, when 13 Zeppelins — an unlucky number — were ordered to attack England, "there had not been. a word of warning in the observations sent out" that a terrific gale was blowing from the north in the upper air. Into it rose Zeppelin after Zeppelin, to be whisked *away to the south. Most of the eommanders had not the smallest idea where they were. L45 "thought she was over Sheffield, but when she came into action she discovered that she had drifted sq far south as to be over London." Seven of the raiders were driven south over the French front, and six of these were dstroyed. It was a great disaster.