Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/388

 Baring the Super-Zeppelin's Secrets

What the French found when they examined the L-49 which fell into their hands after an air raid on England

Bv Carl Dienstbacli

��IT was the oddest sort of an accident that preserved the L-49 intact for French in- spection. She was one of a fleet of super-Zeppelins which had successfully eluded the air- planes and anti-aircraft guns of Great Britain, only to come to grief on French soil. She lost her way. Her gasoline supply exhausted, she was compelled to descend in the heart of France. True to his duty, her captain attempted to destroy her. He leveled the pistol which was to fire into her great hydrogen- filled envelope a flaming pellet, when he heard a shout:

"Hands up!"

He looked around and found himself gazing into the muzzle of a shotgun in the hands of Jules Boiteux, who had been out hunting. The crew had retired to a safe distance because of the conflagration that would follow the ignition of the gas. There was nothing left for it but to yield. And so a man with a shotgun captured one of Germany's latest super- Zeppelins and placed in the hands of the French Govern- ment military information al- most priceless.

How Fuel Was Sacrificed to Carry Bombs

Why was the L-49 forced to land? A super-Zeppelin has a radius of action and a bomb carrying capacity far exceeding that of any other type of air- craft. The experiences of the war have demon- strated that the drojj- ping of a mere bomb or two is a futile proceed- ing. Literally tons of explosives must rain down from the sky to justify the risks of a

���Horrzoi\tal wit«Jow for

��Wheel cor\trollii\g. elevatofs

��i^ Kadel & Herbert

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One of the control cars at- tached to a super-Zeppehn. Its functions are evident

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��bombing expedition. When airplanes set out to raid German towns they travel in scores — a fashion inaugurated by the French. Only thus is it possible to deliver a telling blow. Because of its enormous carrying capacity, a super- Zeppelin is in many respects a better bombing apparatus than a flock of air- planes. But the L-49 could not carry tons of explosives from Oldenburg to Lon- don without sacrificing some of her fuel- carrying capacity. Her fuel load had to be reduced to an unsafe mini- mum.

This juggling of loads also has its effect on the maneu- vering power of a Zeppelin. It has been pointed out more than once in the pages of the Popular Science Monthly that a huge dirigible flies not only as an airship but also as an airplane. In other words, it is buoyed up not only by its gas, but also by the upward pres- sure of the air against its enor- mous surface. Indeed, were it not for the pressure of the air against its thousands of square feet of exposed area a pres- sure comparable in every re- spect with that which keeps an th his airplane aloft the giant rigid

tgun dirigible would be an impos-

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