Popular Science Monthly 



375 



farther and farther into France in spite of 

 all their fuel-wasting efforts. One vessel 

 had been ignited in the air by an anti- 

 aircraft battery into the range of which it 

 had blundered. One 

 senselessly kept on flee- 

 ing until it was liter- 

 ally swallowed up by 

 the Mediterranean. 

 Two wisely landed and 

 surrendered. One of 

 them was the L-49 

 which was so oddly 

 prevented from hiding 

 its secret by self-de- 

 struction; the other 

 was reduced to a mere 

 mass of wreckage by 

 its commander. A 



fifth, of uncertain iden- 

 dity, is supposed to 

 have gained Switzer- 

 land (possibly Fried- 

 richshafen) in a dam- 

 aged condition. 



An Immense, Naked 

 Hull of Perfect Form 



The marvelous prog- 

 ress in design revealed 

 by the L-49 is apparent 

 to anyone who is at all 

 familiar with the evolu- 

 tion of the Zeppelin. 

 Her perfection lay in 



Machine-gun of the commander's 

 cabin of the super-ZeppeUn L-49 



her simplicity. 

 Speed is the life and soul of a Zeppelin — 

 a speed that is never less than sixty miles 

 an hour and may be as much as one hun- 



A pile of Zeppelin fuel tanks. The airships must carry 

 much fuel because of long trips and exigencies met with 



dred. Speed saves the Zeppelin from 

 destruction in a gale. And speed hag 

 been obtained by trebling the size and by 

 applying the lessons learned in developing 

 the one-hundred-and- 

 thirty-mile-an-hour 

 fighting airplane. 



In an airplane, it will 

 be remembered, wires 

 and struts are elimin- 

 ated wherever possible; 

 they offer too much 

 resistance to the wind. 

 The aviator is seated 

 in a beautifully mod- 

 eled boat-like body 

 which parts the air 

 with little disturbance, 

 thanks to its stream- 

 line form. The rud- 

 ders are as simple as 

 possible. All the les- 

 sons which the war has 

 taught the airplane de- 

 signer have borne fruit 

 in the L-49. There is 

 the same inclosing of 

 mechanical and struc- 

 tural parts, the same 

 streamlining every- 

 where, the same sim- 

 plification of rudders, 

 the same reduction of 

 surface and friction, 

 the same disregard of mere bulk, provided 

 it is correctly designed. As the drawing 

 shows, the L-49 is but a naked, immense 

 fish-shaped envelope of perfect stream-line 

 form, with single monoplane 

 fins and rudders, and with 

 absolutely no appendages 

 save four cars, each entii'ely 

 enclosed and each torpedo- 

 shaped. Only a rigid hull 

 permits such ultra-refinement 

 of form. Here we have an- 

 other parallel with the de- 

 velopment of the airplane. 

 As the number and rigidity of 

 the ribs in an airplane was 

 increased, so all types of 

 dirigibles have ceded their 

 place to the Zeppelin despite 

 opposition — all for perfectly 

 good and practical reasons. 

 The smooth, clean sweep of 

 the craft was broken on the 



