Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/393

 UPPtR. NAVI6ATIN6

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��trebled in size the weight could not be disproportionately increased.

"A Gigantic Piece of Lacework," said the French

The framework of the huge hull in which the gas bags are confined has been multiplied in parts and reduced in ma- terial to a veritable cloud of riveted lattice-work made of channeled strips of the thinnest aluminum sheeting. In- deed, the frame of the L-49 has been described by the French as a "gigantic piece of lace- work."

This frame serves exactly the same pur- pose as the pole in your wardrobe, from

which you suspend coats on hangers. As a whole, the frame could resist the fiercest gale, and yet it could not support a single man's weight on one of its coirponent parts! If ever there was a scientifically designed structure, it is this framework of the L-49. It is applied science with a

���Rear view of car containin related mechanism. Note

��vengeance! From a long row of correctly placed hooks, hang all the aluminum fuel tanks, the water ballast tanks and lastly, all the bombs — just as the clothes in your closet are suspended from the pole on their hangers. The fuel tanks are dropped through trap doors on guides like ballast. The bombs fall similarly; but they are electrically released, since the one-hun- dredth part of a second is vital in hitting a

target and hu- man agency is too slow.

The Gloomy Boardwalk

Within the framework is a long passage- way for the crew — a mere boardwalk, nine inches wide, com- posed of wooden slats separated one from the other by several inches. Along this passageway hangs a series of hammocks or cots. The crew almost "sleeps on a clothes line." Real comfort was merely a subject for pleas- ant dreams, for life in that passageway must have resembled that of a tight-

��© Kadei and Herbert

g the Zeppelin engines and streamline form of the body

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