Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/390

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Interior of the commander's cabin, L-49. This was the directing head, and navigating center of the big craft

ssbility. It is this air pressure which is relied upon to control the craft when the gas expands at great height and is dissipated, or when it shrinks in volume in a cold layer of the atmosphere, or when tons of weight are added by dew, rain, snow or sleet. Moreover, descending or ascending currents of air force the ship up or down, and these currents must be counteracted by flying the ship airplane-style.

All this means that much is expected of the engines. The ship must be driven through the air at high speed if the most is to be made of the airplane effect. Since so much depends on mere motive power, the L-49 had been reduced to a huge cylinder of gas, a few cars for the crew, an enormous load of bombs, and the most powerful engines that air can support.

Wireless Signals from Germany Guide the Zeppelins

The passenger-carrying Zeppelins that plied over the Rhine before the war, had luxurious cabins. Fully three times as bulky as these ante-bellum vessels, the L-49 was nevertheless as bare of comforts as a racing automobile. She had been stripped of everything not absolutely necessary. For instance, she had only two machine guns; hence she was practically defenseless.

To the necessity of greatly reducing the amount of fuel so that an enormous quantity of bombs might be dropped on England, may be attributed the capture of the L-49 on French soil. Just how she lost her way, it is needless to explain here; the subject is discussed in the April issue of the. It may be stated in passing, however, that Zeppelins are guided by wireless signals sent from German stations. The capture of the L-49 may be attributed either to those unexplained vagaries of wireless with which every amateur operator is familiar, or to ingenious radio deception on the part of the English or French. Of a fog-bound raiding squadron of a dozen or more ships, two returned safely on their regular course; six lost their way, drifted temporarily over France, luckily for them unobserved, and succeeded in stemming a frigid, violent northeasterly gale that had sprung up enough to regain German territory. The rest succumbed to attack and came to the end of their supplies in a gale which they had had to buffet with a limited amount of fuel. Rising to an altitude of 16,000 feet to escape shells and pursuing airplanes, they encountered an upper wind so violent that they drifted

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This is the triangular keel (part of it at least) from the ridge of which fuel tanks are hung like clothes from a wardrobe pole