Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/394

 378

��Popular Science Monthly

���The padded wall which sealed off the noise of the engine room from the wireless cabin — another refinement

��rope walker who dines and sleeps in pre- tended comfort on his lofty perch. Air- ships can roll and pitch like any steamer on the bounding deep, and so a hand- railing in the shape of a wire cable is provided on one side of this board- walk. If a man stumbles he is caught by a wide netting of rope cord, "the thick- ness of a pencil" as the French said — a netting placed, not to save his neck, but to stiffen the cloth covering of the hull against the gale. It is doubtful if that thin netting would save him from the abyss below. I traveled in the passenger Zeppelin "Viktoria Luise" before the war. I understand now why I was warned that "passengers are not permitted outside the cabin," by an officer who saw me peeping through the door that led into the pas- sageway. At night a man is guided along this perilous board- walk not by elec- tric lights (they would betray the presence of the ship to an anti-aircraft batt ery below), but by ghostly patches of lumin- ous paint. Even in daytime the place must be weird and gloomy, because the ship's whole belly is painted coal black to make it invisi-

���lliL :^.ipci Zeppelin's wireless; the very brains of the aerial monster. Note its size

��ble at night. The upper surface of the hull is painted white and gray to blend with the clouds as seen from an airplane.

Other details of the L-49, the dimensions, the power, the number of engines and propellers and their ar- rangement only corroborate what has been quite cor- rectly described in previous articles on Zeppelins, pub- lished in the Popular Sci- ence Monthly. The only important progress made consists in torpedo-shaping and stream-lining all the cars.

Although life on a super- Zeppelin is not exactly luxurious, some comforts at least are provided. The pro- tection against the biting wind is perfect. The powerful dynamos which supply the radio apparatus also furnish current for electric heating.

The material of the gas bags is cotton- lined goldbeaters' skin. To me the chief advantage of such a fabric lies in the fact that it remains gas-tight in the flabby, even crumpled condition that the gas bags so often must assume when they return to a low altitude after they have been in- ordinately expanded by a flight at 10,000 feet and more.

This, then, is briefly the kind of machine a Zeppelin is. Germany's well-guarded secret is in the hands of the Allies at last, and they will no doubt make good use of it. They already have a good number of air-craft of their own, but pointers are always wel- come, even from the enemy. If there is anything new or advanta- geous about this enemy machine the Allied engi- neers may be de- pended upon to utilize it to its full value, for Germany has not a monop- oly of all the brains and ingenuity.

�� �