In the Air

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 55, 8 June 1916, Page 5

In the Air

Two hundred and fifty yards, the length which Swiss spectators of their flights over Lake Constance gave to the latest Zeppelins, is considerably more than any are yet known to have measured. But it cannot be set down as an impossible length. It was calculated from the remains of Zeppelin airship 77, which was brought down by the French at Revigny on February 21, that its length must have been 525 feet. And the airship L2O, vhich was wrecked off the Norwegian coast early last month, is said to have been as much as 650 feet long; this airship may or may not have been a Zeppelin. M. Gorges Prade, a well-known French aerial expert, writing in “The Times” the other day, gave a table of the measurements of the successive types 'of Germany’s airships, and the following are his figures as to their lengths:— Type. Length in Feet. 1912 459 1913 507 1914 513 1915 520 Assuming M. Prade’s figures to be correct—and indeed under any circumstances—L2o, is she was really of the length cabled, must have been a far more recent type than her numbering would imply. But there are reasons • for making that likely enough. And ;if her length be added to M. Prade’s table it * will show a rate of progress in development which would make eve n the length recetly mentioned not out of the way. The fact was mentioned only the other day that Count von Zeppelin’s associate engineer, Herr C. Dornier, had not long ago contributed a paper to the proceedings of a German body which would correspond more or less to the British Institute

of Naval Architects, in which he calculated that the limit of length to an airship would be 985 feet. The length mentioned above is well within this theoretical maximum.