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 



ipd Cibin 



One of the control cars at- 

 tached to a super-Zeppehn. 

 Its functions are evident 



He did it wi 

 little she 



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- 



372 



