THE CHINA AFFAIR

                              by Ernest Walton


         We must respect the past, remembering that once it was all
                         that was humanly possible.
                             — George Santayana


                                  CONTENTS

    Prologue — Afternoon Tea In Africa
    Chapter I — An Idea Is Born
    Chapter II — Bad News From London
    Chapter III — Professor Zupitza's Idea
    Chapter IV — The Army Says "No"!
    Chapter V — The China Affair
    Chapter VI — Kapitänleutnant Bockholt
    Chapter VII — A Question Of Judgment
    Chapter VIII — A Close Call
    Chapter IX — Ordeal Over Turkey
    Chapter X — Eavesdropper Ewing And His Crew
    Chapter XI — "China" At Last
    Chapter XII — Retreat
    Chapter XIII — The End Of "L 59"
    Chapter XIV — Epilogue
    Appendix — How A Zeppelin Flies (not included)




                                  Prologue

                          AFTERNOON TEA IN AFRICA

     In the afternoon of November 20, 1917, Commander Max Looff of the
Imperial German Navy sat down to tea with the Chief of Staff of General
O'Grady's forces.

     Commander Looff was surprised by the invitation. After fighting the
British in German East Africa for three years, and having just been forced
to surrender, he did not expect an invitation to tea from one of His
Majesties generals. However, archaic notions of courtesy and sportsmanship
had survived in Africa. Commander Looff was, after all, the senior officer
among the German troops who had just surrendered to the British forces.
Scattered among a number of small camps and hospitals in the Lukuledi valley
in the southeast corner of the German colony, a large number of sick,
wounded and war weary soldiers had given up the struggle after three years
of war.

     At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Looff had commanded the
light cruiser "Königsberg" just as she was visiting Dar-es-Salaam, the
capital and main port of German East Africa. He had evaded the British
squadron blockading the harbor and had taken the "Königsberg" into the
Indian Ocean. He had cruised along the African coast, looking for prizes,
and had surprised the disabled British cruiser "Pegasus" in the Zanzibar
roadstead and sunk her. Soon after, British ships had driven him into the
Rufiji river and bottled him up there. Looff had resisted vigorously but in
1915, two monitors penetrated into the mangrove jungle of the Rufiji delta
and destroyed his cruiser. The men of the "Königsberg" had removed the 10.5
cm guns from the ship, mounted them on improvised gun carriages - one of
them can still be seen outside Fort Jesus in Mombasa - shouldered their
rifles and joined the German forces defending the colony under the
leadership of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

     It had occured to the old sea captain that the invitation to take tea
with his captors might serve for something besides social amenities. No
doubt, there would be some subtle interrogation. Indeed there was. One
question, however, caught Cmdr. Looff off guard. "I know that you expect a
zeppelin to come to German East Africa. Where is it supposed to land?"

     An airship? Here in Africa, below the Equator! Fly 8,000 kilometers
from Germany, almost all of it over enemy territory, across a continent
where no airship had flown before? What was this Englishman talking about?
Then Looff understood. One of his fellow prisoners evidently had played an
outlandish joke on the British. Looff decided to confuse the British even
further.

     Feigning reticence and inner struggle, Looff told his host: " I also
heard something like that, but it is two airships. One is to land at Livale
and the other at Masasi".

     The English officer did not seem to be taken in by this story and
changed the subject.

     A few days later, on the 25th, Looff was driven past a flight of BE2
biplanes, squatting on the airstrip at Mtua. They were old, clumsy machines,
but their machineguns were loaded and bombs hung in their wingracks. Looff
recognized these planes of No. 26 Squadron. They had pestered the Germans
since early 1917 when British had opened their latest campaign against the
Germans at the end of the rainy season. Unrelentingly, the squadron had
searched for the German troops, directed artillery fire upon them and bombed
and strafed them. The British officer escorting Looff pointed to the planes
and said something about a "reception committee" but Looff did not
understand what he meant. His mind was on the prisoner of war camp that
awaited him.

     What lay behind the mad teaparty Looff had attended a few days before,
however, was every bit as fantastic as Looff had thought the question about
zeppelins in Africa to be. It was a story of courage and bravery, of success
and frustration - a singular adventure which will now be unfolded here.




                                 Chapter I

                              AN IDEA IS BORN

     The zeppelins about which Commander Looff had been questioned were the
invention of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. We was born on July 8, 1838 in
Constance, a pleasant, small town on the lake of the same name in Southern
Germany. His family was of old Wurttemberg nobility, comfortably situated
and well-connected.

     The count's career began in the manner traditional to the sons of
German nobility: service with the armed forces. He entered the military
academy and was commissioned a lieutenant in the Wurttemberg army when he
was 20. He quickly tired of the dull garrison duties assigned to junior
officers in peacetime and obtained leave to study engineering at the
University of Tubingen. Graduating in 1859, he chose to join the Corps of
Engineers. It was an unusual move. Nobility traditionally chose the fighting
services; cavalry and infantry were preferred. The technical branches were
for the others. Apparently Count Zeppelin had no second thoughts about his
self-imposed social demotion.

     In 1863 the Wurttemberg army published new regulations for the training
of junior officers. To Zeppelin, they promised more of the boring routine
that was the lot of junior officers on peacetime garrison duty. To escape,
he seized upon the idea of visiting the United States. A great civil war was
raging there and Zeppelin proposed to observe the Union army in the Field to
see what the American experience could contribute to the debate then current
in Germany whether militia-type armies, of the type deployed by the
Americans, could replace the standing, Prussian-type armies to which Europe
was accustomed. He had another object in mind. "The Americans are especially
inventive in exploiting technology for military purposes", he wrote. Perhaps
something could be learned there, too.

     Family connections secured the necessary leave. On May 7, 1863, Count
Zeppelin reached New York on the Cunard Liner "Australasian".[1] The
Shipping News Reporter on the "New York Herald" did the best he could with
the complexities of the Count's name. He reported the arrival of the "Comte
de Zepplen".

     In Washington, the Prussian Ambassador arranged for an introduction to
the President. On the morning of May 22, 1863, in morning coat and top hat,
Zeppelin presented himself to President Lincoln at the White House. For a
man who had absorbed court protocol with his mother's milk, Zeppelin was
unprepared for the informality with which the President of the United States
and his Secretary Reed (in another place Zeppelin said it was Seward)
received him. He was later to describe the scene in great detail for his
German readers, including the moccasin clad feet of Reed swinging
rhythmically back and forth as he sat on the President's desk. He rounded
out his impressions of the President in an interview with an American
newspaper correspondent in 1915 in which he said: "The President made the
impression on me that the Kaiser always makes on me when I see him." If
Zeppelin was referring to Emperor Wilhelm II, one might take that statement
with a grain of salt. There was little love lost between the two men
regardless of their "correct" behavior in public. However, considering that
Zeppelin was then speaking to a still neutral America and no doubt meant to
stress the ties that existed between the two countries, one can accept this
statement as a suitable expression of high respect for President Lincoln.

     The President seemed to have liked the young man and granted him a pass
to accompany the Union armies in the field. There is no official record of
the President receiving Zeppelin. Lincoln undoubtedly had more pressing
problems on his mind; the siege of Vicksburg, the threatening rebel moves
opposite Joe Hooker's army and the politicians descending on Washington to
demonstrate against published reports "reflecting upon the Eleventh Corps of
General Hooker's army which is hurtful to the whole loyal German population
of the country".[2] Even before Zeppelin had met the President, he had taken
the precaution of obtaining a letter of introduction to General Robert E.
Lee from his niece in Philadelphia. He carried it with him, sewn into the
flaps of his field coat, to make things easier if he were captured by
Confederate troops.

     With Lincoln's pass in his pocket, Zeppelin left Washington for the
battlefield. A steamer took him down the Potomac to Aquia Creek. From there
a narrow gauge railroad carried him to General Hooker's headquarters near
Falmouth. He rode on an open flat car, his legs dangling over the side, and
thought this odd, but great fun, as were so many of his other experiences in
this curious country. When he arrived on May 28, 1863, Zeppelin had to delay
presenting his letter of introduction to General Hooker. The General was in
Washington, perhaps to repair some of the damage which the recently lost
battle of Chancellorsville had inflicted on his reputation. zeppelin made
himself at home in the camp.

     At the time, Zeppelin was a slight, trim young man. He sported a small
mustache which, in later life took on walrus proportions in keeping with the
more patrician girth which he had by then acquired. He possessed a pleasant,
clear voice. The Hanseatic ambassador in Washington thought that fora
cavalry officer, Zeppelin had an unusually inquisitive mind. Zeppelin wore
his blue Wurttemberg uniform and his silver lieutenant's insignia resembled
those of a lieutenant general of the Union Army. Zeppelin seldom took pains
to clear up any confusion arising out of the resemblance. He got on well
with the Union army officers. He was impressed by the West Pointers but
disliked the military ignorance and pomposity of his fellow countryman, Carl
Schurz.

     After joining the Army of the Potomac, Zeppelin witnessed some minor
engagements along the Rappahannock and later participated in the fighting
between J.E.B. Stuart and General Pleasonton around Aldie, further north, in
the early stages of the Gettysburg campaign. He indulged himself in the
thrill of riding in one of the Union cavalry charges against Stuart's
troopers without, however, drawing his sabre since this would have
jeopardized his status as a neutral observer. Zeppelin later admitted that
this legal nicety might not have protected him against rough treatment at
the hands of the Confederates, had they captured an officer in a foreign
uniform fighting on the Union side. In fact, it was a fate he only narrowly
escaped on that occasion. His interest in observing the war soon flagged and
he left the Army of the Potomac about June 22. His father had opposed his
trip to America, apparently questioning his son's seriousness of purpose. He
may have been right.

     Since Zeppelin did not join the Army of the Potomac until May 28, it
seems likely that he missed a sight that would have appealed to his curious,
technically trained mind, that is, the use of balloons over the battle field
for observation purposes. The U.S. Balloon Corps had last used one of its
hydrogen filled balloons in the Battle of Chancellorsville which had ended
on May 6th. If nevertheless Zeppelin did see one of the chance ascents made
by its balloons after the Corps had become inactive and before it was
finally dissolved on August 1st, he never mentioned it in his journal.

     The U.S. Balloon Corps, which sent its gossamer observation platforms
aloft in the Battle of Chancellorsville, as well as in a number of other
engagements in the Civil War, was the child of a man with the unlikely name
of Thaddeus Sobieski Coulaincourt Lowe.

     By profession, Lowe was a travelling science lecturer. His handsome
French wife supported him by staging puppet shows. Whenever there was enough
money on hand, Lowe returned to his real passion, the building and piloting
of balloons. He believed that the upper air flowed in a steady current From
west to east and he saw in this the means of using balloons to rapidly send
mail and newspapers to Europe. To test this notion, he contracted for a very
large balloon, "City of New York", to be built. He was persuaded by friends
to first try his idea over land with a smaller balloon. It was good advice
because it was not until August 1978 that a technically far more refined
balloon, the "Double Eagle II", managed the hazardous journey across the
Atlantic.

     Lowe selected Cincinnati as the starting point for his test flight.
When the wind was right, he made his departure. Lowe's eastern wind theory
proved to be correct and within a Few hours he found himself on the ground
in South Carolina. Unfortunately, he had, like many others, paid little
attention to the news from Charleston where Southern guns had forced the
Union garrison to evacuate Fort Sumter, and he now found himself looking
into the muzzle of guns brandished by suspicious and angry rebel farmers.
Fortunately, Lowe had with him copies of a Cincinnati newspaper, which had
been printed while Lowe's balloon was being inflated, ana which announced
the impending departure of the intrepid aeronaut. These papers helped to
persuade local officials that Lowe's unlikely story was true and that he was
not a Union spy. He was permitted to pass through the Rebel lines into
Northern territory whereupon he promptly presented himself to Union
authorities to try to interest them in the military use of balloons. He
staged a successful balloon ascent from the White House lawn which persuaded
President Lincoln that the army should avail itself of Lowe's services.

     As a civilian contractor, with the grand title of Chief Astronaut of
the Army of the Potomac, Lowe established the U.S. Balloon Corps on October
1, 1861. It consisted of five balloons and fifty men. Mobile gas
generators,which Lowe had designed, made the use of balloons on the
battlefield possible. The Morse telegraph and a simple code was used to send
intelligence to the ground. The Balloon Corps proved itself very effective
in scouting, observing enemy dispositions and directing Union artillery
fire. The Confederacy was to pay Lowe the compliment of hasty imitation. It
is said that a number of patriotic ladies in Petersburg sacrificed their
silken finery to the manufacture of a balloon, but despite such well bred
origins, it came to an undistinguished end. As it was being brought to the
front on board a Confederate tug, the ship went aground in the James River
where the Federals captured both the water-borne and the airborne ships.

     The view which a civil war balloon observer enjoyed has been preserved
for us by G. M. Osborne, a correspondent, in a dispatch which he sent to the
"New York Herald" on May 20, 1863. He may well have participated in one of
the last ascents made by the Balloon Corps and it was more likely set in
motion by Mr. Osborne's energetic quest for interesting news than military
necessity.

     "Finding nothing on earth to write about, your correspondent determined
to quit the sublunar sphere and take observation from a point in heaven. How
to plan it so as to leave this planet was only the work of a few minutes. He
asked and received, and at a later hour yesterday afternoon took advantage
of, the courteous permission of Captain E. S. Allen, the aeronaut in charge
of the balloon Washington, to accompany him in one of his aerial flights.
The ascension was made from the ground in front of Major General Newton's
quarters, and the view to be obtained at an altitude of one thousand feet,
embracing the major portions of two mighty armies, was beautiful as well as
grand. Suspended at this height, we leisurely surveyed the camps beneath us,
the rivers winding toward each other on either side, and the broad expanse
of territory within a diameter of thirty miles. We could plainly see in the
rear of Fredericksburg and along the Rappahannock the rebel camps which are
hidden from earthly vision ov the long range of hills.

     Opposite our extreme left Lee seems to have congregated a larger force
than he had prior to the last movement, and it is estimated that in the
vicinity of the 'Fitzhugh House' not less than twenty-five thousand rebels
are now encamped. At intervals of two or three miles, as far as the eye
could reach, the smoke of their campfire curled upwards, but only in
isolated spots was there anything to be seen of their dingy shelter tents.
In this regard, the rebel army fares much worse than our own. The rebels
were bivouacked as best they could, while the canvass houses of the Union
soldiers glittered in the evening sun for miles around us...."

     "The broad acres of fallow ground which the troops have stripped for
fuel, the deserted brown mud chimneys, the patches of forests, the green
oases here and there, the hard clay trails worn white with the constant
journeying of wagon trains, the scattered camps, the little squares of men
in regiments and brigades at drill, and the curious gazing at our little
car, made up the figures of this mammoth pattern, and constituted a scene of
mingled grandeur and minuteness. North of us were the waters of Aquia Creek
and the Potomac River, glistening like silver in a sheen of the setting sun,
and in the opposite direction the widening Rappahannock flowed silently down
to meet them. Fredericksburg lay almost beneath us, dark and gloomy in the
shadow of the forbidding hills beyond."

     Soon after the battle of Chancellorsville, on May 8th, Lowe resigned
from the Balloon Corps. The army persisted in refusing the Chief Astronaut
an officer's commission and Lowe was tired of the petty jealousies and the
bickering among his balloonists, some of who felt that the command of oe
should have been theirs. With Lowe's resignation and the failure of the
higher echelons of command to recognize the usefulness of the Balloon Corps,
it quickly fell apart and was disbanded on August l, 1863.

     It has often been said that after joining the Union army, Zeppelin
became an observation officer on one of the balloons of the Union army and
that in the course of these duties he conceived the idea of building an
airship. Typical is the account of one of the most respected encyclopedias:
"(The) designer (of the rigid airship) was Count von Zeppelin, who, while
serving as a balloon observer with the Union Forces in the American Civil
War, conceived the idea of placing a number of balloons in line with a
streamlined structure which could be propelled and steered".

     As appealing as the story may be to some, it is probably false, though,
as will be seen, his trip to the United States was indeed the source of his
aeronautical inspirations. Zeppelin specifically disclaimed that he had
served as a balloon observer with the Union Army: "I made my first balloon
ascension at St. Paul and not on the Civil War firing line as has been
stated". Nonetheless, like old generals, some stories never die, they don't
even fade away.

     After leaving the Army of the Potomac, Zeppelin began to travel about
the United States. He was a welcome guest in military messes, he tried
American beer which he found too strong, flirted with the ladies, and joined
an amateurish expedition to discover the sources of the Mississippi.

     On August 17, 1863, Zeppelin checked into the "International Hotel" in
St. Paul, Minnesota, a large five story brick structure at 7th and Jackson
Streets. Across the street, a travelling balloonist was preparing to provide
balloon rides to such of the public as were more daringly inclined. It was
"Professor" John H. Steiner, professor being an honorific title freely used
then, particularly by balloonists. Steiner was a German who had served as a
balloonist in Lowe's Corps. He had seen action along the Potomac, at Cairo,
Illinois and on Island Number 10 on the Mississippi. Steiner had left the
Corps in December, 1862. The reason was probably the constant lateness of
pay which was one of the chronic difficulties afflicting the Corps.

     Ascensions were made on August 19 and on the morning of the 20th. Among
those who availed themselves of this unusual opportunity was the rotund
Governor Alexander Ramsey. But owing to his "specific gravity", the balloon
would rise no higher than the housetops and he soon was forced to descend.
His place was taken by his anxious looking, ten-year old daughter Marion. "I
have no reason whatever to doubt that Count Zeppelin was a passenger on one
of the ascensions made that day," she said many years later, "Yet I cannot
now seem able to remember anything about the other passengers". She had
found the trip "not altogether pleasant" and what had impressed her much
more vividly was "how horrified (her) mother was on learning that (her)
father had permitted her to go up in the balloon".

     Zeppelin took to the idea of a balloon flight with great enthusiasm.
However, he desired something more exciting than the tethered flights which
Steiner was offering the public. He made his arrangements with the balloon
captain and bought 36,000 cubic feet of gas from the St. Paul Gas Works for
an extended, free flight in the balloon. As it was, the gas Zeppelin
purchased was of such poor quality that he had to settle for a less
ambitious tethered flight.

     With Steiner as his pilot, Zeppelin rose to six or seven hundred feet.
The prospect spread before him led Zeppelin to an immediate appreciation of
the military potential of balloons. Parallel to the Mississippi River, to
the west, he saw a range of hills. They provided an excellent, natural
defensive position to any troops intending to halt the advance of any enemy
marching up the valley. There were no natural elevations, no towers or
anything that would have permitted the attacker to observe the dispositions
of defending troops, waiting behind the crests of those hills. From as
balloon, however, they could have been easily seen and effective artillery
fire directed upon then. "No method is better suited to viewing quickly the
terrain of an unknown, enemy occupied region."

     Zeppelin and Steiner talked about the military use of balloons. Steiner
had some ideas of his own. At Edward's Ferry in Maryland, he said, he had
taken a balloon on a free flight across the enemy lines before landing again
safely behind the Union lines. Such flights, however, were dependent on the
caprices of the wind. Steiner said that he had designed a balloon that could
better deal with the risks of free flight. He envisaged a balloon of a very
long, thin shape, equipped with a "strong rudder".

     Later, in the 1915 newspaper interview already referred to, Zeppelin
said "While I was above St. Paul I had my first idea of aerial navigation
strongly impressed upon me and it was there and then that the first idea of
my zeppelin came to me." This seems inconsistent with what he wrote earlier
in a biographical sketch for the 1911 edition of the German "Who is Who".
There he stated that it was the speech of the German Postmaster General in
1873, in which he suggested the construction of dirigible balloons for
speedier international mail service, which had inspired him to make his
first plans for the construction of a rigid airship. Perhaps the statements
are not inconsistent. The inspiration may have come over St. Paul, the
impetus for action later. Too much can be read into such fragmentary
statements. There is no doubt, however, that the flight over St. Paul made a
lasting impression on Zeppelin. In this same "Who is Who" sketch, as he
enumerated the many occurrences of a long and eventful life, he took pains
to mention that "... near St. Paul,"[3] he made his first ascent in a
captive balloon. Zeppelin left New York on November 19, 1863 on the
steamship "China". The ship's name could have no particular meaning for
Zeppelin. When he returned to Wurttemberg, he sent a report of his
observations to the king. It dealt mostly with the use of militia armies
which he felt were unsuitable for European conditions. Balloons were not
mentioned. He made some derogatory remarks about the lack of improvement in
tactics of both armies during the war. In this view he was not alone. Count
Helmuth v. Moltke, the Chief of Staff of the Prussian army, dismissed the
war as "two armed mobs chasing each other round the country, from which
nothing could be learned". Other observers of the war did not share this
view. Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate about the extent to which
the Kaiser's disdainful views of the American "mob" could be traced back to
such reports.

     In 1866, Prussia went to war with Austria, a war engineered by Bismarck
to free the Germany he was building from Austrian domination. Wurttemberg
sided with the Austrians and for his wartime services, Zeppelin was promoted
to captain and Adjutant to the King of Wurttemberg. In 1870, he took the
field again, this time on the side of the Prussians in their war against the
French, the war which was to lead to the founding of the German Empire.
Zeppelin led a reconnaissance in force deep into French territory. While his
troops rested in a farmhouse, Zeppelin put out only one sentry and French
cavalry was able to take the detachment by surprise. Zeppelin alone escaped
and made his way back to the German lines. The exploit made Zeppelin of a
national hero. Later, he was stationed at Villiers, near Paris, while the
Germans besieged that city. There he must have seen many of the balloons
which the encircled Parisians sent across the German lines with mail and
important passengers. The operation was quite successful; 63 balloons rose
of which only two were lost and five captured. Though no doubt the sight
reminded Zeppelin of his St. Paul adventure, his diary was silent on this
point but then, Zeppelin was never a satisfactory diarist or correspondent.

     Yet during his military service, thoughts of aviation did not leave him
entirely. On April 25, 1874, he wrote down some details as to what he
required of a "balloon vehicle". To provide safe conveyance, he wanted a
number of separate gas cells so that a flight could be continued safely even
if one or more cells were punctured. Zeppelin specified 18 cells which were
to be housed within a rigid, covered framework. Combining a number of
lifting cells in this way was an important innovation as up to that time
designers had thought only in terms of single cell balloons and this put
practical limitations on the size of the aerial vehicle. The ship was to
carry twenty passengers, freight and mail and this necessarily meant a large
ship, about 700,000 cubic feet, Zeppelin calculated. Steering would have to
be dynamic and the space for freight, engines and passengers would be
arranged under the lifting body. The form of the hull would be that of the
body of a bird. Except for the bird shape of the body, it was an accurate
forecast of the shape the rigid airship was to take. At first, his army
service did not encourage Zeppelin to give his aeronautical ideas practical
shape. Then in 1890, the situation changed. After the unification of Germany
in 1871, the Wurttemberg army was integrated into the Prussian army. This
meant that the welfare and promotion of Wurttemberg officers was in the
hands of Prussian generals. To Zeppelin this was unfair and he finally sent
a memorandum to Berlin to protest this arrangement.

     The German Emperor considered Zeppelin's memo to be a provincialism
which could not be tolerated. Probably as a consequence of the displeasure
his memorandum had provoked in Berlin, Zeppelin was informed shortly after
he had been given the command of a cavalry division, that he could expect no
further promotion. Zeppelin resigned from the army and in the 52nd year of
his life began a new career, the development of the airship. Fate had
intervened. Zeppelin was not to be another retired general; he was to become
a hero to millions and a household word around the world.

     The time was ripe for the dirigible[4] airship. The military potential
of the balloon had been recognized immediately after the Montgolfier
brothers had first flown their hot air balloon in 1783. Benjamin Franklin
observed that balloons might be used for "elevating an engineer to take view
of the enemy's army and for conveying intelligence into a besieged town".
The Revolutionary French army successfully operated a hydrogen balloon in
its campaign of 1794 but they gave little satisfaction to the Prussian and
Austrian armies and when the French army used them again in Italy in 1859.
The Austrian used balloons in 1849 to drop bombs into besieged Venice, but
stopped using them when it became apparent that the vagaries of the wind
were as likely to carry their explosive loads over the Austrian siege lines
as over their intended targets.

     With the successful use of balloons in the American Civil War, interest
in the military use of balloons quickened. In 1870, the English army started
to experiment with the use of balloons and aerial photography and by 1878
had established an Army Balloon School at Woolwich. The work of two French
army captains, Charles Renard and Arthur Kreps, however, brought the
development of the balloon to a decisive point. In 1884, they had built a
balloon of elongated, teardrop shape and suspended from it a long gondola on
which the ship's rudder and a 8 h.p. electric motor and its propeller was
mounted. It was christened "La France".

     The ship differed in one important respect from what Zeppelin had
sketched out in 1874. Zeppelin's ship had its several independent gas cells
housed within a rigid, fabric covered frame, eventually made out of
duraluminum. This not only gave the airship its fixed outer shape but also
formed the skeleton to which the ship's control surfaces, gondolas and
engines were attached. It was the hull structure which caused airships built
on Zeppelin's principles to be called rigid airships. The body of "La
France", on the other hand, was formed by a single large gas cell which
relied on the gas pressure within to maintain its outer shape. It was the
ancestor of the so-called "non rigid" airship, the blimp.[5] On August 9,
"La France" made its first flight at Chalais in which its inventors
demonstrated that their balloon could be steered to a target and back to its
starting point. Several more flights followed in which "La France" indeed
proved itself dirigible and if the flights, because of the inadequate power
plant, had to be made in practically windstill weather, the idea of a
dirigible airship had been proved feasible. The lesson was not lost upon the
Germans. They at once established an experimental airship detachment.

     Meanwhile technology was laying the necessary foundation for further
aeronautical developments. Steam and electricity were not suitable power
sources for aerial vehicles but in 1876, the German firm of Otto and Langen
started the production of the first modern gasoline engines. In 1886, a
practical method for producing aluminum had been invented. When Zeppelin
took his leave from military service in 1890, interest in aviation was
active and the necessary technical foundation was being established.

     Zeppelin now seriously set out to develop and promote his airship. In
1892, he hired a young engineer, Theodor Kober, to develop detailed plans.
Zeppelin, however, found that his ideas. were still too grand to be readily
accepted. He sent a memorandum on mililtary airships to the King of
Wurttemberg, who took no action on it. The Prussian army was equally cool to
the idea. A commission which the German Emperor appointed in 1894 to examine
Zeppelin's design found the design "very notable" but impossible to execute.
The German public turned a deaf ear to Zeppelin's appeals.

     The door was opened a crack in 1895 when the German Engineering Society
issued a favorable report on Zeppelin's plans. He was now able to form a
corporation and raise enough funds to launch a floating hangar on Lake
Constance. In it, he built his first airship, "LZ 1". The "L" in the
designation stands for "Luftschiff" (airship); the "Z" needs no explanation.

     The ship had a rolling pin shape with parabaloid shaped ends. Two open
gondolas hung under the hull. They were connected by a narrow cat walk which
was suspended from the hull by wires. The crude ship had the hallmarks of
all Zeppelin designs - a rigid hull formed by aluminum girders containing a
number of separate gas cells; engines rigidly attached to the hull and a
system of steering the ship in three dimensions which did not rely on the
wind, the dropping of ballast or the discharge of gas as did aonveneionad
balloons. Displacing 388,400 cubic feet, "LZ 1" was almost six times larger
than the "La France". It was no less than 420 feet long.

     It was a venture into many unexplored fields. Nothing was known about
the proper shape For the propellors and the four Finally mounted resembled
ships' screws. They were too small and ineffective. The design of the
control surfaces was equally problematic. The rudders were small and mounted
at the side of the hull. No elevators were provided and the altitude of the
ship was controlled by shifting a weight back and forth under the ship. The
engines zeppelin was able to obtain were feeble. Each of the two engines
which he installed in "LZ 1" rated only 14 h.p. and the ship's best speed
was just short of 20 m.p.h.

     On July 2, 1900, the ship rose from the lake with five persons aboard
and made an eighteen minute flight. After two more flights, the available
funds were exhausted and the ship was broken up.

     Zeppelin was determined to see his idea fully developed but the German
Engineering Society refused further help and another public appeal also
proved fruitless. Zeppelin finally prevailed upon the King of Wurttemberg to
authorize a public lottery for his benefit. With the proceeds and much of
his own fortune, Zeppelin constructed "LZ 2". It was damaged beyond repair
after only two flights.

     Although the German army had bought "LZ 3"[6], it was only the success
of the fourth ship which awakened any serious military interest. The army
now laid down specifications for a military airship. While Zeppelin was
attempting to demonstrate that his "LZ 4" could meet these specifications,
the ship was forced to land at Echterdingen for euereremnny repairs. A
squall drove the ship into a high tension line and it was totally destroyed
by fire. This calamity and Zeppelin's bulldoggish persistence in the face of
insufficient funds, inadequate technology and the caprice of fate, caught
the imagination of the German people. A great, voluntary outpouring brought
zeppelin 6,000,000 Marks with which he established the Deutsche
Luftschiffahrts Aktiengesellschaft, (German Airship Transportation
Corporation), or DELAG for short. Through this corporation zeppelin
continued his efforts.

     Zeppelin's trials were not over. More crashes, more frustrations
followed. But Zeppelin would not be daunted. "LZ 5" landed at Göppingen and,
through an error in handling, smashed its bow into a pear tree. Hops
trellises were gathered from nearby farms, nailed together to form an
improvised bow and the ship was flown back to its base. Impressed by the 38
hour flight "LZ 5" had made, the German army bought the repaired ship, only
to see it strand within the year. Two more ships, each named "Deutschland",
came to quick and embarrassing ends.

     Bankruptcy now stared Zeppelin in the face again but the next ship, the
"Schwaben" (Swabia) was his lucky ship. It successfully completed 234
flights. The DELAG built three more ships which were used for pleasure
cruises and for training army and navy airship crews. By the time the First
World War broke out, the DELAG shins had completed 1588 trips, carried
10,197 passengers and flown 107,231 miles without injury or fatality.

     The war which broke out in Europe in August 1914 was the bloodiest ever
fought. It was to basically change the life and institutions of Europe and
leave few countries in the world unaffected. Germany, Austria, Turkey and
later Bulgaria formed the "Central Powers". Britain, France, Russia, Serbia
Belgium which, through the German invasion was given little choice in the
matter and a relatively inactive Japan rallied as the Allies, later to be
joined by Italy, Romania, Portugal, the United States and others.

     When Germany mobilized, the DELAG ships and their crews were taken into
military service. The "Hansa" went to the army as a training ship, the
"Victoria Louise" trained naval crews and the "Sachsen" was used first as an
army training ship and later was turned over to the navy. The army already
had six "frontline" ships in service; the navy had only "L 3".[7] The war
pushed Zeppelin out of the leadership of the Zeppelin Company. Neither the
army nor the navy had been satisfied with the performance of their
zeppelins. The old man, however, strongly resisted all suggestions for the
improvement of his ships when they conflicted with his ideas of what
constituted sound design. In a number of respects, the zeppelin airships
were technically less advanced than those created by his rival in the rigid
airship field, Dr. eng. Johann Schütte. Fortunately from Zeppelin's point of
view, the Schütte-Lanz ships (Lanz provided the bulk of the financing)
suffered two disadvantages. Their geodetic frames were built of wood. The
wood soaked up moisture and the glue available could not adequately
withstand the influence of the sea air. Schütte stuck' to his ideas with
even greater stubbornness than Zeppelin and it was only towards the end of
the war that the first Schütte-Lanz with a metal skeleton was built. The
second drawback which the rival airshios suffered was the personality of
their constructor. Dr. Schütte antagonized everyone with whom he worked
including Admiral Tripitz, the chief of the German navy.

     Zeppelin's relations with the navy were not happy either. Tirpitz
thought little of airships, particularly of their ability to operate in foul
weather. The conflict came to a head with the crash of the navy's second
airship, "L 2". The first navy zeppelin had gone down in the North Sea in a
storm a few weeks earlier. Fourteen men of her crew had been drowned, the
first loss of life suffered through a zeppelin. "L 2" had been built just as
the navy wanted it, under the direction of its best naval architect, Felix
Pietzker. He incorporated into "L 2" a number of his ideas on how the
performance of a zeppelin could be improved. The engineers of the Zeppelin
Company, and zeppelin himself, were skeptical of some of these innovations,
including the idea of equipping the gondolas with windshields which extended
up the hull. Airship captains should always have the feel of the wind in
their faces, the count felt. Nevertheless, he felt obliged to congratulate
the navy on constructing a handsome ship. On October 17, 1913, "L 2" took
off for acceptance tests. About two hundred meters above the ground, a long
spurt of flame shot out of its forward engine car. There was an explosion,
the gas cells, one after another, caught fire and the ship crashed, tearing
itself apart in another explosion. None survived. The fire was attributed to
the design of the gondola windshields which Zeppelin had disliked. The
partial vacuum, which had formed behind them in flight, had sucked hydrogen
into the engine gondola where it exploded.

     At the public funeral, the old count encountered Grand Admiral Tirpitz
and in public bitterly reproached him for the deaths.

     Once the war had started, the navy could dictate to zeppelin what he
had to do. The airship construction facilities were greatly enlarged and
many men, most of them new faces to Zeppelin, were now building airships.
Zeppelin disliked this new order of things and began to withdraw from the
active management of the company and began to pursue a new interest - the
construction of long range bombers.


    ----------------------------------------
    [1] Later, when recounting some of his adventures, Zeppelin
        wrote that he departed for America on the Cunard liner
        "Asia" on April 30, 1863. Zeppelin evidently had not
        consulted his diary and his recollection deceived him both
        as to date and name.
    [2] Carl Schurz' "German" division was part of the Eleventh
        Corps which had broken and fled in disorder under Lee's
        attack in the battle of Chancellorsville.
    [3] There is a story extant that Zeppelin made his first balloon
        ascent at Ft. Snelling, Minn. Careful research has found no
        support for this account but this, probably carelessly used
        word is likely to be sufficient to keep the story alive.
    [4] An aeronatical term meaning may be steered. As a noun,
        refers to any balloon that may be steered. From the Latin
        dirigereto direct.
    [5] There is a third variant, the so-called "semi-rigid".
        Basically, it is a non-rigid airshiv to which a long, rigid
        built-up keel is attached which helos the gas cell to
        maintain its shape and gives the shin greater strendath.
    [6] Tt was used as a training shiv. In 1913 it was considered
        obsolete and was dismantled.
    [7] The German navy assigned the prefix "L" to all airships
        built by the Zeppelin Company and numbered them in sequence
        as they were commissioned. The shins built by Zeppelin's
        competitor, the Schütte-Lanz Company received the prefix
        "SL" and the non-rigid airships built by Parseval carried
        the prefix "PL".




                                 Chapter II

                            BAD NEWS FROM LONDON

     Since the great war had broken out in August 1914, the officials of the
German Colonial Office had led a mixed life of pride, frustration and secret
embarassment. The source of their pride was the resistance which the German
colonial troops in East Africa were continuing to offer to a vastly superior
enemy and their frustration stemmed from their increasing inability to help
these soldiers in their struggles or even to communicate with them. The very
success which this small colonial army was achieving was also a source of
the embarassment of the Colonial Office. In 1913, it had turned down the
commander of the African troops, Colonel Lettow - Vorbeck, as unfit for that
post.

     The Colonial Office was located in the government center of Berlin at
Wilhelmstrasse 62. The Wilhelmstrasse was the address of a seat of world
power, as were No. 10 Downing Street or the Quai d'Orsay. The street bespoke
opulence, power and rank. The west side of the Wilhelmstrasse, where the
buildings enjoyed an unobstructed view over the spacious "Tiergarten" park,
was occupied by such senior institutions as the Ministry of the Royal House
of Prussia, the Foreign Office and the Chancellory. The Colonial Office, as
a more junior ministry, shared the less fashionable side of the street with
the Ministry of Justice and the Emperor's Civil Cabinet.

     In 1917, however, the Colonial Office was a ministry without anything
to administer. In the first days of the war, Germany's overseas possessions
had quickly fallen into enemy hands. The exception was German East Africa
where Colonel Lettow-Vorbeck's troops were still holding out.

     The Colonial Office was especially proud of the accomplishments of
these troops. They were, after all, its particular responsibility, its own
private army. The "Schutztruppe" (Protectorate Troops) answered only to the
Colonial Office, not to the army or navy.

     In public the Colonial Office joined in the Hosannahs to Lettow - it is
hard to quarrel with success. Within the walls of 62 Wilhelmstrasse,
however, his success was something of an embarassment. In 1913, the Colonial
Office had turned him down as unfit to command the East African troops. The
rejection must have surprised many. The man had excellent credentials. He
was the son of a Pommeranian family which for generations had supplied the
Prussian army with officers. In 1881, when Lettow was eleven, his father,
also an officer, enrolled him in the select Corps of Cadets at Potsdam. He
graduated with academic honors and was commissioned a lieutenant in the foot
guards. Training at the elite War Academy followed. He volunteered for
service with an expeditionary corps sent to quell the Boxer Rebellion in
China in 1900 and again for service with the force sent to German Southwest
Africa (now Namibia) to suppress the Hottentot and Herero revolts in 1904
and 1905. A field command there gave him practical experience in bush
warfare although a rock fragment kicked up by a bullet cost him the sight of
an eye. In 1909, the army, which furnished the personnel for the German
Marine Corps, appointed him commander of the 2nd Marine Battalion. The next
step in the regular ladder of promotion would have been Commandant of the
garrison of the Tsingtao colony in China. This promotion was not
forthcoming. The reasons for this are not clear. There were stories that
Lettow fell into disfavor by refusing to marry the daughter of a prominent
officer. Lettow denied this. There may have been an affair with a married
woman, Perhaps he simply had irritated the wrong person, possibly the
Commander of the Wilhelmshaven garrison where the 2nd Marines were
stationed. The Commander had invited the station's officers to a reception,
asking also the wives of the senior officers but not those of the junior
grades. Lettow openly protested this discrimination although he himself was
a bachelor.

     Denied the promotion he considered his due, Lettow applied to the
Colonial Office for the post of commander of the East African troops. The
colonial troops tended to attract the restless and ambitious. Chances for
advancement were better than in the regular army and the pay was higher. The
Colonial Office rejected Lettow's application. In a strange turn about,
Emperor Wilhelm II, not otherwise known as a keen judge of good officers,
overruled the Colonial Office and appointed him to the position.

     With characteristic energy, Lettow at once started to study Swahili,
the lingua franca of East Africa. He arrived in Dar-es-Salaam in January
1914. A company of "Askaris", native soldiers, was drawn up to greet him.
Accompanied by his new adjutant, Lt. Carl Ernst Göring, he inspected the
troops and with a hearty shout of "Jambo Askari" (Greetings, soldiers), he
assumed command.

     German East Africa had become a German protectorate, the current
euphemism for colony, in 1891. It consisted mainly of Tanganyika (before it
merged with Zanzibar to become Tanzania) and the present Republics of
Ruwanda and Burundi. It was the most promising of Germany's late acquired
and somewhat ramshackle colonial empire. The Berlin Convention of 1884 had
made the Congo'Basin neutral soil and German East Africa was considered to
be part of that basin. The colonial powers did not anticipate that Africa
would become an important theatre of war. Maintenance of internal security,
rather than offensive warfare was the policy which Berlin had laid down for
German East Africa in case of war. England had organized her African forces
along the same lines. As a result, cel Einar side was prepared to wage war
in Africa in 1914 when hostilities began in Europe. The German troops
consisted of about 200 white commissioned and non-commissioned officers and
2,400 Askaris. The troops were thoroughly trained and disciplined and well
supplied with machine guns which had been found to be effective in
suppressing native uprisings. They had no artillery, however, nor did they
have up-to-date rifles. Although the German smokeless Mauser rifle had
proved itself the queen of the battlefield in the Boer War of 1899 - 1902,
the Askaris were still equipped with obsolete, black powder rifles which
produced a cloud of smoke when fired and gave away the position of the
rifleman. A militarized police force and whatever reservists could be drawn
from the 4,000 white settlers backed the Schutztruppe. The German regular
forces slightly outnumbered the neighboring British troops which, were
widely scattered over Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland and Zanzibar. Neither side
had local facilities for producing arms, ammunition or any other
accoutrements of war.

     The purely defensive policies laid down by Berlin, and the insistence
of the Governor of German East Africa that Lettow follow them, were not to
his liking. Lettow was an aggressive man, middle sized, compactly built with
piercing blue eyes and a hardbitten mouth. He was physically tough, leading
his men in every weather and terrain. He set a rapid marching pace and in
addition, was in the habit of personally coursing up and down his columns to
keep them closed up. As Lettow was fond of telling, he once elicited the
anguished outcry from one of his men: "That guy must have descended from a
long line of rural mailcarriers!" He loved a good fight. He had volunteered
for duty on the two occasions during peacetime when opportunities for combat
offered themselves — the Boxer and the Hottentot rebellions, though only in
the latter was he able to get away from staff duty. But Lettow's
combativeness manifested itself in many ways; one has the feeling that for
him, almost any fight would do. He did not speak to his father for many
years for reasons that he never disclosed. After his arrival in Africa, he
told his superior, Governor Schnee, that he had no intention of obeying any
order to declare Dar-es-Salaam an open city. This is what Schnee had planned
to do in case of war, consistent with with Berlin's policy, and Lettow's
insubordination engendered a lifelong, bitter enmity between the two men.
When he returned to Germany after the war, he ordered his troops to fire on
strikers and, though most of the German generals had advised against it,
Lettow took part in the 1919 Kapp Putsch, a right wing - military plot
against the infant Weimar Republic, engineered by Ludendorff. Lettow was
forced to resign from the army for participating in this abortive venture.
He quarreled with the Nazis over slights he received at the hands of a local
satrap,but took pains in his autobiography to mention how many good friends
he had among the Nazis biography, a boast of questionable taste in 1957.

     So it was that when war broke out in 1914, Lettow, with cocky
selfassurance, took the offensive and carried the war into Kenya. He raided
the Uganda railroad and mounted an ambitious, but unsuccessful attempt to
capture Mombasa, Kenya's main port. In November, he repulsed a lackadaisical
attempt of a much larger British-Indian army corps to land at Tanga. A swarm
of wild bees rallied to the German side in this battle when a British
company blundered into their nests, giving rise to the report of a new,
perfidious secret weapon - trained bees!

     After the defeat at Tanga, the task of clearing the Germans out of East
Africa was assumed by the South African army. It was immediately diverted
from its goal by a domestic rebellion. Some 12,000 Boers rose in armed
protest against the Treaty of Vereeninging which, at the end of the Boer War
in 1902, had ended Boer independence and had merged the Boer states into the
Union of South Africa. By February 1915, the Boer rebels were subdued. The
South African army then moved against neighboring German Southwest Africa
lest the Germans there instigate further Boer unrest or other military
diversions. In July, the Germans surrendered.

     The Germans in East Africa made good use of the breathing space which
the Boer uprising provided them to build up their army. Three thousand
whites and eleven thousand black soldiers were brought under arms. There
were parades; officers still brandished sabers, saber tassels and polished
leather leggings. Pride and hope were still bright in East Africa.

     When the rainy season ended in February 1916, the South African
campaign against the Germans began in earnest. An operation around the
flanks of Mount Kilimanjaro broke the German hold on the northern part of
the colony. The South Africans continued their advance south but marched
through the interior highlands of the Protectorate to avoid the fevers
rampant in the hot, humid coastal areas. This forced them to move through
covered, broken terrain which was supplied by few roads. It greatly hampered
their campaign. Tse-tse flies, deadly to animals not native to the area,
made the use of draft or pack animals impossible and it was difficult to
keep motor transport moving over the dusty, rockstrewn paths which passed
for roads. Even though the interior was healthier than the coastal area,
malaria still took a serious toll among the white South Africans. By the end
of 1916, their ranks had been so thinned by the disease that they had to be
withdrawn and replaced by African troops.

     The Germans exploited the situation well. The slow retreat into which
they had been forced permitted them to select the positions from which they
chose to meet the enemy. The broken ground over which they were fighting
favored the defenders and made concealment easy. When the British soldiers
met the Germans, they deployed and laboriously began to outflank the Germans
but before they could complete their maneuver, the Schutztruppe had
disappeared into the bush again to fight somewhere else. The German
formations were small enough to rely on native bearers to carry their
supplies which gave them far greater mobility than the British could attain
until they, too, began to use native supply bearers. Time and again, the
Germans were able to escape the British attempts to encircle them.
Nevertheless, casualties, disease and lack of supplies took a steady toll
among the Germans and forced them to withdraw deeper and deeper into the
colony. This did not matter to Lettow-Vorbeck,. His paramount aim was to tie
down as many of the enemy troops as he could and to keep them away from the
decisive European struggles. Battlefield victories and territory were of no
account. Continuous diversion of enemy forces was. To that aim, all other
considerations —- military, political, human and personal ~ were
subordinated. Lettow fully succeeded. In 1917, the Colonial Office estimated
that a force of 1,400 white soldiers, "besides colored" as the Colonial
Office chose to refer to the cutting edge of the Schutztruppe, still held
46,000 square miles of territory and engaged the attention of 100,00 to
120,000 enemy troops.

     The assesment was quite accurate. After the war, the Allies counted the
troops engaged in Africa on their side at 130,000 men and the cost of the
campaign at £72,000,000.

     Ironically, the Colonial Office in the Wilhelmstrasse had little first
hand knowledge of it successes in Africa. The most reliable way of
communicating with places overseas in those days was the submarine telegraph
cable. However, the Germans had not laid such cables to their colonies. They
would have had to be run through the English Channel, where they would be
vulnerable to the English and French navies in the event of war. Indeed,
within a day after England entered the war against Germany, midnight on
August 4, 1914, all the German overseas telegraph cables had been pulled up
from the Channel floor and cut. In peacetime, news was sent to German East
Africa through the British cable running to South Africa. At Zanzibar, a
branch cable took the messages to the capital of the German protectorate,
Dar-es-Salaam. The Dar-es-Salaam line had gone dead even before war was
formally declared.

     Rather than laying submarine cables to get messages to their colonies,
the Germans had begun to build a network of radio stations. Germany was a
leader in the infant art of radio telegraphy and had given particular
attention to the development of long range radios. In 1905, it began work on
an overseas radio network with the construction of a powerful long distance
station at Nauen, near Berlin. The second link in the chain was a station at
Kamina in Germanland. In turn, it could reach stations in Dar-es-Salaam, at
Duala in the Cameroons and at Windhoek in German Southwest Africa. The
network, however, was slow in developing. Kamina was not completed until
1914 and the equipment for a new radio station, to be erected at Tabora in
German East Africa, was still on the high seas when war broke out.

     The English plan of operations against the German colonies aimed firsat
at the destruction of these radio stations. On August 8th, two English
cruisers appeared before Dar-es-Salaam and threatened to bombard the radio
station there. To avoid useless bloodshed, Governor Schnee declared Dar-es-
Salaam an open city, ignoring Lettow's opposition. The radio station was
then dismantled. On the west coast of Africa, the Gold Coast Regiment began
an energetic push into Togoland and the Germans blew up Kamina just before
they surrendered on August 25th. Duala suffered the same fate on September
27th. The now isolated and useless Windhoek station was spared until May
1915. A few local stations remained in German East Africa. Under favorable
weather conditions they could hear Nauen but they were far too weak to send
messages to Germany. Berlin was now cut off from all regular communications
with its colonies.

     To keep itself informed the Colonial Office had to seek information
about Africa in newspapers collected in neutral countries, in an occasional
intelligence report and by listening to foreign radio broadcasts. The best
source of news about Africa were the war communiques which Radio London
broadcast at 11 o'clock every night. They were, of course, biased and often
premature. A year earlier, headlines in London had already read: "The end of
East Africa is near!" But whatever faults the English reports had, there was
an inexorable logic and consistency about them. Place names appeared in the
news, they became the focal point of fighting, they were reported captured
and disappeared from the news again, to be replaced by new names further
south on the map. Occasionally, reports of heavy British losses or the
prolonged lack of forward moves by the enemy hinted at German tactical
successes. There were suggestions of detachments which had escaped
encirclement or of miscalculations by the Allies, but, generally, since the
end of the rainy season of 1917, the officials of the Colonial Office had
had only bad news from Radio London.




                                Chapter III

                          PROFESSOR ZUPITZA'S IDEA

     Late in 1916, Professor Maximillian Zupitza, a retired major in the
colonial medical service, presented himself at the Colonial Office in
Berlin. He had been taken a prisoner of war by the British when they
occupied German Togoland in 1914. The British had turned him over to the
French who had permitted him to return to Germany in 1916 on his word of
honor that he would not again engage in hostilities against the Allies
during the war.

     Zupitza had had a long and distinguished career in Africa. He had
served his tour of duty as an army physician and in 1897 had joined the
German colonial forces. Most of his initial service had been in East Africa
and had involved mainly the investigation of the bubonic plague. From 1905
on, he had worked on the eradication of the sleeping sickness in the
Cameroons and in Togoland until he had been taken prisoner of war. He had
received a number of decorations for his work.

     The Colonial Office made it a practice to talk to those returning from
Africa to fill in the gaps in the information it had about conditions there.
Zupitza did not have much to add; he had been a prisoner too long. He in
turn was curious about what had happened in the colonies while he had been
imprisoned. The officers of the itd tary Department were glad to fill him
in.

     At the moment everything was quiet. The rainy season would begin any
day now and neither army would be able to move in the fields of mud into
which the torrential rains would turn the African soil. The Germans were
holding an area which was bordered on the north by the Rufiji river and its
tributary, the Kilombero and the tributary of the latter, the Ruhudje. In
the west, German control stopped at a line roughly 80 miles east of Lake
Nyasa and in the south it ended at the Rovuma river, the border between
German East Africa and Portugese Mozambique. Germany had declared war on
Portugal in 1916, but the Rovuma border had remained quiet. The Indian Ocean
shore in the east, on the other hand, was now under the control of the
British navy and the main ports, including the southern ports of Lindi and
Kilwa, had been occupied by the enemy.

     There was little doubt, however, that the war would be resumed when the
rainy season ended next April. So far the German troops had been able to
keep the field. Although cut off from Germany by the British blockade, they
met many of their needs by making some of the supplies locally and two
blockade runners had succeeded in reaching Bast Africa while stretches of
the coast were still in German hands. A 1,600 ton freighter, the "Rubens"
had arrived in Manza Bay in 1915. Before she could unload her cargo, she was
discovered by a British gunboat which shelled her until she was in flames.
Thinking its mission accomplished and troubled by pesky machine gun fire
from shore, the British gun boat had left. The Germans, however, had set to
work at once and had been able to salvage most of the "Rubens'" cargo.

     Early in 1916, a visitor of neutral nationality, coming from German
East Africa, had stopped off in the Colonial office in Berlin. He had been
able to leave the beleaguered colony through Mozambique which then was still
neutral. While he had been in German East Africa, Governor Schnee had given
him some warehouse inventories and had asked him to deliver them to the
Colonial Office when he got to Berlin. The inventories were an ingenious
deception. The supplies listed on the "inventories" were entirely imaginary
but the numbers purportedly showing how much of each category was on hand
represented code words of a German signal code and spelled out the supplies
the African troops needed - rifles, medicine, four small mountain guns and
artillery ammunition. Fortunately, the Allies had not bothered the innocent
traveller about the inventories. The "Marie" sailed soon afterwards and
successfully landed the supplies which Schnee had requested in Sudi Bay.

     Now that the coast of the colony was in British hands, however, it was
no longer snmmetinies tx send more supply ships there but, as Berlin saw it,
the German troops were probably adequately provided with military equipment.
Weapons and ammunition were regularly captured on the battlefield, keeping
the troops supplied in a makeshift way. This was not the case with medical
supplies. There was a shortage of medicines of every kind, particularly
quinine. Interviews with Germans who had been taken prisoner in Africa and
later sent back to Germany confirmed this.

     Nobody had to tell Zupitza how important quinine was to the Europeans
in Africa. It was the proven antidote for malaria, the disease which had
already decimated the South African army. Without regular use of quinine,
the white soldiers would quickly succumb and without their leadership, the
colonial troops would fall apart. The native soldiers by themselves had
neither the incentive nor the ability to continue the fight. They knew
little about Germany; that was an abstract concept to them. Their loyalty
was to the person of their commander. None of the askaris had been trained
as officers. They had not even been taught how to handle a machine gun. If
collapse of the war effort in East Africa was to be avoided, the directing
and cohesive force of the white officers and non-commissioned officers was
essential.

     Since ships could no longer get through, why wen we not fly medical
supplies there with zeppelins, Zupitza asked.

     Zupitza had not been the first to suggest this, but for its day, the
idea seemed almost unreal. Few could see aircraft as anything more than an
adjunct of ground and naval forces. The air was but a vertical extension of
the surface below. If planes and airships crossed the frontlines for raids
into enemy territory, they were nevertheless obliged to return to their base
behind the lines as if some invisible umbilical cord bound them to that
patch of ground.

     What Zupitza had perceived was that the air was an element independent
of land and sea. It was, in fact, a bridge across these elements. What he
envisioned was warfare in three dimensions - the use of airborne vehicles to
effect distant military intervention across terrestial obstacles that might
be interposed between the attacker and his target. His idea was in a sense a
precursor of the Israeli rescue Operation at Entebbe in 1976.

     But what equipment was available to carry out this idea? Airplanes were
out of the question. Even the "Riesenflugzeuge (Giant Airplanes), the
"Gotha" bombers, were completely inadequate to the task. Under the most
favorable conditions, they could carry a bombload of 1,300 pounds for 520
miles. The airline distance to German East Africa was about 3,600 miles and
to make the flight worthwhile, much more than the 1,300 pounds the "Gotha"
was capable of carrying would be needed.

     The airship experts of the "Reichsmarineamt", the Ministry of the Navy,
thought that zeppelins could not do the job either. What little was known
about meteorological conditions in Africa suggested that they were very
unfavorable for airship travel. Baron Max von Gemmingen, an associate of
Count Zeppelin, had stated the problem in 1914. "Too little is known of the
meterological conditions in the [German colonies in Africa] to permit a
reasonably accurate estimate of the factors relevant to aerial travel there
at this time. The high temperatures reduce the lift of the airship and
strong sunlight leads to considerable loss of gas; that is to say, in just
those regions which require the highest performance of the airships, they
lag behind their performance in our latitudes... [Airship travel to the
colonies] requires detailed preparations for several years or more,
particularly meteorological observations. Fortunately, the Colonial Office
has made the only possible start for airship travel to the colonies by
initiating such observations. Any attempt to send airships to the
protectorates before the completion of such preliminary work must be
considered premature". The war had brought the weather studies of the
Colonial Office to a quick end and little more was known about the weather
conditions in Africa and how they would affect the airship than was known
when Baron von Gemmingen wrote his assessment of airship travel to the
colonies.

     There were other problems - lack of ground support and vague and
inaccurate maps. Equally important was that nobody knew whether an airship
crew could withstand the rigors of such a long flight and whether the
engines would hold up that long. No airship had ever been aloft continuously
for four days and this is how long it would take to reach East Africa. The
typical German airship operation involved a twenty to twenty four hour
reconaissance or bombing flight. Moreover, the airship would be a total
loss. It was unlikely that the ship, in addition to the cargo it was to
deliver, could also carry enough fuel to return to its starting point and
there was no way it could be refuelled in Africa. Even if there was enough
gasoline left in the small area still held by the Germans to refuel the
ship, it could never be gotten to the zeppelin's landing place before it was
discovered by the British. Nor was there any way of replacing the hydrogen
gas the dirigible would lose during the long journey there, The ship would
have to be sacrificed. The judgment of the Ministry of the Navy that an
airship could not successfully carry out the proposed flight to Africa
lacked daring but it was consistent with what was known at the time.

     Yet, the idea of making a flight to Africa with an airship had a
tremendous appeal to those with a more vivid imagination. Dirigibles were
now available which were almost equal to the challenge. On May 28, 1916, a
young lieutenant with the mouthfilling name of Horst Freiherr (Baron)
Treusch von Buttlar-Brandenfels had ferried airship "L 30" from its
construction yard at Friedrichshafen to its operational base at Nordholz. It
was the first of the new "Super zeppelins", and was almost two and one half
times larger and over thirty percent faster than the class of zeppelins with
which the navy had started the war. Count Zeppelin had been on board; it had
been the last flight which fate would allow him. A photo taken of the old
count shows him in military uniform, his walrus mustache turned white,
seated at a window of the command car of the 1,949,600 cubic foot giant,
chatting animatedly with an aide. Closed gondolas had been anathema to
Zeppelin. An airship commander should always have the feel of the wind in
his face, he had insisted. Closed cabin or not, Zeppelin must have been
impressed by this newest version of his idea. In the plains of the Main
river, between Darmstadt and Frankfurt, where the great international Rhein-
Main airport is now located, Lieutenant Buttlar took "L 30" down to 100 feet
altitude and staged an impromptu race with a northbound express train. With
a maximum speed of 74 m.p.h., Buttlar won easily. The theoretical range of
the new super-zeppelins was 4,600 miles, enough to reach Africa without a
cargo.

     Intercontinental airship flight had been talked about for some time
already. At the time the war broke out, Zeppelin had been at work on a plan
to fly across the Atlantic. Major von Parseval, the leading German designer
of non-rigid airships, had also considered the possible use of airships in
future transatlantic travel and had concluded "[{The] present performance of
the [airship] is not too far removed from the task and it seems possible
from the technical point of view".

     Zupitza became aware of the practical potential of airships in the
summer of 1917 when he was visiting the eastern front as a consultant on
hygiene. Glancing through the "Wilnaer Zeitung", a paper published for the
German armed forces on the eastern front, his eye was caught by a small item
in the June 20th issue entitled "How Long Does A Flight Across The Atlantic
Take?" It was a summary of an article published in a science magazine,
"Prometheus", which had described the possibilities of reaching the world
beyond the Atlantic by air. To fly the distance of 3,700 miles at 37 m.p.h.
would take about four days. To carry sufficient fuel for such a flight
together with a payload of 22,000 pounds would require a ship of 1,765,500
displacement "Since for some time already, the larger zeppelins have
attained half this size or more, the technical possibilities of an America
airship may be taken for granted", the article concluded. Zupitza thought of
his suggestion to use a zeppelin to fly medicine to Africa. If it was now
possible to build zeppelins which could fly to America, why could one not be
built to fly to Africa? Zupitza clipped the item out of the paper and sent
it to the Staff of the Protectorate Troops of the Colonial Office together
with a short letter requesting that it be examined to determine whether this
means could not be used to supply the Schutztruppe with rifles, ammunition,
medical and other vital supplies. He suggested that the ship start in the
Balkans or in Syria. If the ship took advantage of northern trade winds, he
added optimistically, enough gasoline could be saved to make a number of
flights against the enemy in Africa. He probably did not know about "L 30"
and the ships that had followed it which were already larger than the
airship the newspaper article had postulated.

     Concerned with the fate of the colonial forces in East Africa, the
Colonial Office once more started to look for military sponsorship of its
aerial relief plans. On July 24, it sent Zupitza's letter together with his
newspaper clipping to the Army's Inspector of Airship Troops of the Army
Airforce and asked for his comments.




                                 Chapter IV

                            THE ARMY SAYS "NO"!

     At the end of July 1917, the Colonial Office submitted its Africa plan
to the Army Air Force and with this nearlv aborted its cherished project.
The army like the navy operated its own, separate air force which also
included an airship division. The Colonial Office chose to approach the Army
Airforce just as it was dismantling its airship service. The army's decision
to give up the airship was widely known but perhaps the officers of the
Colonial Office were so far in the military back waters of the times that
they had not heard of it. It may be that they turned to the army because the
Ministry of the Navy had previously reacted negatively to its suggestion;
perhaps it thought that the army now could spare an airship for the Africa
venture. Whatever the reason was, the Colonial Office ignored not only the
awkwardness of its timing but also the hostility which many Army Airforce
officers had developed towards the airship and which had led them to abandon
their airship service.

     For the army to get rid of its zeppelins seemed almost unpatriotic.
These grey giants were uniquely German weapons. No other nation had built
them successfully. England's "R 1", unofficially but, in view of its life
span, appropriately called the "Mayfly", had broken apart as it had been
brought out of its hangar for its first flight. France's "Spiess" was made
obsolete by German progress in the construction of rigid airships before the
French could complete their ship. The French had a unique opportunity to
update their airship technology when the German army ship "Z IV" made a
forced landing at Lunéville in 1913 and French engineers carefully examined
it while its crew was being entertained at dinner. However, the unplanned
zeppelin visit did not engender any further interest in rigid airships among
the French military authorities and they stuck with their small, nonrigid
airships.

     The Germans believed that in the rigid airship they possessed a
decisive super-weapon. Its gigantic size, its great bomb carrying capacity
and its range, compared to the existing, flimsy heavier-than-air machines,
appeared to give substance to this belief. They took great pride in their
airships and Count Zeppelin was a great hero to them.

     Giving voice to the prevailing expectations, German children sang a
ditty to the tune of an old nursery rhyme:

        "Zeppelin flieg.
        Hilf uns im Krieg.
        Fliege nach England,
        England wird abgebrannt.
        Zeppelin flieg."

        (Zeppelin fly.
        Our side you must stand by.
        To England you are bound.
        Burn England to the ground.
        Zeppelin fly.)*

     To the parents of these children, the dirigibles had a more substantial
meaning. The newspaper editorials explained it all very clearly: Let all
airships be massed over London and let the British be summoned to surrender
on pain of seeing their city wiped from the face of the earth if they
refuse! If such a notion now seems absurd, it was quite in line with the
sensational phantasies conjured up by H.G. Wells in his "War in the Air" and
by others not too long before So powerful was the hold which the zeppelin
had on the German imagination that in 1917, when the airship had long
defaulted in producing those decisive victories everyone had expected of it,
a German doctor still warned an English acquaintance: "I hope you have no
friends within the flying radius of our Zeppelins for the time has come when
we are going to punish England, as Sodom and Gomorrah were punished with a
hail of fire from heaven, for this war of starvation she is waging against
our women and children".[8]

     When war came in 1914, the army had seven "frontline" airships. They
were untried weapons; nobody knew what they could do or how to operate them
under wartime conditions. The army sent airship "Z IX"[9] on a raid on which
it was to attack Antwerp, Zeebrugge, Dunkerque, Calais and Lille in turn.
For this purpose it carried ten eight inch shells instead of bombs which
were not yet available. The shells were dropped without the aid of a
bombsight on targets of which all but one were fortified. That an attack
which dispersed so few "bombs" among so many targets could accomplish
nothing seems not to have occured to anyone. The belief evidently was that
the aerial leviathan could by terror accomplish what was otherwise beyond
its technical capacity. Zeppelin crews crossed the enemy lines in broad
daylight and at low altitude since airships were not yet able to climb very
high, disdainfully ignoring the heavy rifle that met them from the ground.
The disdain did not last long. Crude as the early anti-aircraft defenses
were, four airships were shot down in the first month of the war. "Z IX",
less than three months old, met its doom soon afterwards at its base at
Düsseldorf when an enterprising English naval aviator destroyed it in a
divebombing attack. By fall, the proud German airship fleet in the west was
reduced to one zeppelin.

     The performance of the zeppelins in 1914 should have led to a
reconsideration of their use for military purposes but the rush of events in
that year probably did not permit such a sober reappraisal. The airplane was
not yet a suitable vehicle for most purposes and certainly, the airship
battallions were not readily going give up their part in the great fight
that was under way. So with the momentum that events tend to acquire by
themselves, the continued need for airships was taken for granted. It was
just a question of building better ones. Larger and faster ships were built
and production facilities were enlarged. By 1917 a zeppelin was produced
every two weeks.

     Although the army and navy airships had fared poorly during the summer
of 1914, a new task was assigned to them in October, the bombardment of
England.

     The rules promulgated by the Hague Convention were no obstacle to
bombing attacks on England. The convention merely prohibited the bombardment
of open town and villages. England was full of military targets, some truly
military, many others not so. Originally, the Hague Convention of 1907 had
decided to ban the launching of projectiles from balloons entirely. The
saner judgment of the American delegation finally prevailed. The airship was
yet untried; might it not soon become a weapon which by its terrible
effectiveness could well serve to shorten a war? That was always a desirable
goal. Until more experience with this new weapon and its potential for
curtailing a war was available, the question whether balloons should be
taken out of the armory of lawful arms should be deferred. In 1914, the
belligerents were therefore legally free to attack military targets from the
air. When aerial weapons finally demonstrated what destruction they could
wreak, it was too late to enact laws and conventions to ban them.

     When the proposal to bomb English targets was put before Emperor
Wilhelm II, he was reluctant to give his consent. He did not wish to visit
personal injury upon his mngrian cousins or damage their palaces or museums.
Ultimately, he was persuaded that precision bombing could avoid such damage
and he authorized the attacks. Buttlar - Brandenfels laughed: "As if, at
attack altitude, I could make out whether a museum or a palace belonged to
the English king!" In January 1915 the first zeppelin appeared over England.
Soon London became a target and the attacks multiplied. Sir Alfred Ewing, a
resident of London, left us a description of one of. these early airship
raids. As a zeppelin cruised over London one evening in September 1915, he
left his office to join the throng in the streets and parks of the
government quarters along Whitehall Street. Ewing had not expected that the
German raids would have much effect. He had already confided to his diary:
"I have no faith in a serious zeppelin raid, though they may do a bit of
scaring that way". Fear of German airships and particularly heavy bombers
was to grow later, but that night the crowd was in a jolly mood. It was
grand entertainment! There was a faint, deep throated hum. Search lights
stabbed into the night and at last caught the zeppelin. Anti-aircraft guns
began to blast away, shrapnel exploded in the sky while the enemy continued
his stately progress through the sky undisturbed. "The spectacle was
stirring and rather beautiful", Ewing said. London got off easy that night.
Two of the three zeppelins that had started for England did no reached it at
all; the third was taken under fire the moment it broke through the cloud
cover over the city. A shell pierced two of its gas cells and it was forced
to jettison its bombs and ballast to get away. There were were no
casualties.

     Four weeks later the zeppelins raided London again. Lt. Commander
Breithaupt, commanding one of the German ships, carried away somewhat the
same impression that Ewing» reported - a grand, beautiful adventure,
divorced from death and suffering: "London lay darkly under us, only a few
lights showing. Suddenly, from all sides searchlights leaped out towards us,
and as we flew over Tottenham a wild cannonade from aiet~a ewe stations
began... The picture was indescribably beautiful - shrapnel bursting around
(though rather uncomfortably near us), our bombs bursting, and the flashes
of the anti-aircraft batteries below... And over us the starlit sky!"

     Ewing saw Breithaupt as he was coming over the city at about 10:30 p.m.
and watched the anti-aircraft guns drive nim off. The raid seems to have
impressed him less than the September attacks, it rates little space in his
diary. Nevertheless, seventeen persons were killed that night.

     The anti-aircraft defenses of 1914 and 1915 were highly improvised
affairs. Alfred Krupp, with a fine nose for new business opportunities, had
already built a "balloon gun" in 1871 to thwart the French balloons which
were escaping the German siege lines around Paris but the armies which took
the field in the hot summer of 1914 possessed no organized anti-aircraft
units. The infantry, of course, used their rifles and the huge ship passing
slowly by presented a target which the rawest recruit was bound to hit.
Don't worry about leading the target, the soldier was told, just aim for the
nose. By the time your bullet reaches the zeppelin's altitude, there is
still plenty of it coming by to be hit. Machine gunners were aodle to join
as soon as they found the means of raising the muzzles of their wean high
een « The artillery dug special gunpits for their light pieces or placed
them on ramps to point their barrels skywards and the redoubtable French 75
mm. gun was placed on all sorts of fixed and mobile mounts to become the
first modern antiaircraft gun.

     At the time of Breithaupt's attack on London, there were only 26 anti-
aircraft guns in the entire London area and those stationed at Woolwich
Arsenal lacked the range to join in the defense of the city proper. This
changed rapidly. Anti-aircraft guns and searchlights multiplied and were
soon supported by a web of observation posts and audio and radio direction
finders. Anti-aircraft gun became more effective. Special shells and
gunsights were designed for them. On one raid, Buttlar's ship was hit at
16,000 feet, a great altitude for its day. As his ship became unbalanced and
threatened to break apart, Buttlar's Executive Officer tried to relieve the
tension by inquiring whether the captain preferred to take charge of the bow
or stern section in case the worst happened but it took Buttlar a while to
recover his sense of humor. At the same time, Allied fighter planes steadily
improved in performance and increased in numbers. The airplane of 1914 was
no threat to the airship. It carried no armament and if a few of the more
aggressive aviators tried to shoot their colleagues on the other side with
pistols and carbines, these weapons could not have downed a zeppelin even if
the limited speed and climbing ability of their machines had permitted them
to intercept the German sky cruisers. But even as the combattants began to
arm their aircraft, Count Zeppelin confidently predicted in 1915 that in
aerial combat, the airship would have the upper hand as it was a more stable
gun platform than the airplane. He chose to overlook the obvious - that the
airship was also the bigger target.

     Even then, it was not a simple matter for an airplane to shoot down a
zeppelin. The airplane could carry only a limited amount of machine gun
ammunition. The small holes which these made in the cover and gas cells of
the airship let the gas escape only slowly and subdividing the ship into
numerous seperate gas cells limited the leakage to the cells actually hit.
In fact, the first airship destroyed in aerial combat was dispatched by six
20 pound bombs dropped on it from above by a plane of the Royal Navy.

     However, in 1916, when the British perfected the explosive and
incendiary machinegun bullet, the balance irretrievably tipped in favor of
the Allied aviators. Both types of ammunition were used in combination, the
explosive bullet tore open the airship's gascells and the incendiaries
ignited the escaping hydrogen gas. Hydrogen gas is highly inflammable and
the resulting blaze was likely to transform the ship into a roaring furnace
in a matter of seconds. Every airplane carrying the new ammunition became a
deadly enemy of the airship. The Allied aviators also had learned to operate
their planes at night and darkness no longer offered the airship portection.
The army took various counter-measures to improve the operational
capabilities of its ships. Their performance was constantly improved.
Defensive armament was strengthened until, at the end, some ships mounted
ten machineguns.[10] An attempt was made to permit airships to operate
hidden in the clouds by equipping them with a teardrop shaped, fin
stabilized "Spähkorb", an observation gondola which the ship lowered beneath
the cloud cover. From there, an officer telephoned navigation and bombing
instructions to the commander. It is said that service in the Spahkorb was
popular because it was the only place on a zeppelin where smoking was
permitted. The observer on "LZ 107", however, may have changgondola when the
winch from which it was suspended jammed, leaving him dangling 900 feet
beneath the ship for seven hours.

     The turning point in the airwar came in September 1916. The month began
with the spectacular destruction of the army's "SL 11" over London during
the night of September 2nd. The victim of fighter planes, the ship plunged
nose first into the ground in a huge mass of flame, a lightening bolt of
awesome dimensions. With the ship died its commander, Captain Wilhelm
Schramm, who had been born in London and who had come back to destroy it.
Six more army and navy ships were destroyed in September, to be followed by
what must have been to Strasser the most painful loss of all, the death in
combat of Lt. Commander Mathy, a close friend of Strasser and the navy's
most successful airship captain. In August, Strasser had thought that the
new "L 30" type "Super zeppelins" would lead to the defeat of England. By
the beginning of October, four of them hd been shot down. Attacks on London
had to be abandoned altogether and while the navy continued to attacks on
central England, they had to confine to nights when the weather was
particularly favorable.

     By 1917, the gap between the airplane and the airship had widened even
further. Allied fighter planes had twice the speed of the latest German
airships and while they could not climb to high altitudes as fast as the
dirigibles, the increase in the operating ceiling of the airplane forced the
German airships to fly higher and higher with the consequent loss of
operating efficiency.

     None of the defensive measures which the army had adopted helped. By
the Germans own count, only 188 of a total of 288 army bombing and
reconnaissance missions flown were successful and on bombing raids, the
accuracy of the aim generally was poor. The cost of this, by 1917, was 20
out of 30 army combat zeppelins destroyed by enemy action or operational
accident.[11] Moreover, by 1917, the reconnaissance and bombing missions
allotted to the army airships could be carried out more eheaaly and
efficiently by new types of airplanes which the Germans had built. By a
curious twist of fate, it was Count Zeppelin who was in a large measure
responsible for the construction of these new planes. In 1914, the Count's
restless mind had turned to the development of large airplanes.

     Others had already started along this path. In 1914, a young Russian by
the name of Igor Sikorsky, who later. became one of the great American
airplane builders, had constructed a four engine transport, the "Ilya
Muromets" which on one of its early flights carried 16 passengers for five
hours, reaching an altitude of 6,500 feet. In Italy, Caproni was working on
heavy bombers. Zeppelin organized a division within his company which was to
design and build large land and seaplanes. He encouraged his long time
engineering aide, Theodor Kober, to undertake the design of large planes and
took a financial interest in an airplane factory which was being established
in Gotha to build "Riesenflugzeuge", giant airplanes. In April 1915,
Zeppelin watched the first "Gotha", a twin engined biplane, struggle into
the air. It was a great new weapon, superior to any Allied bomber then in
existence. However, the German army was slow to put these planes into
operation. IOt was not until June 13, 1917, "Gotha" bomber planes attacked
London for the first time but then they killed more Londoners than had lost
their lives in all the airship raids on that city up to that time. The
"Gothas" were soon joined by the "Friedrichshafen G III" and the even
larger, four engined "Zeppelin R Iv", carrying twice the bomb load of the
"Gothas".

     Because of their vulnerability to Anglo-French airdefense on the
western front, the commander of the Army Airforces, gaunt old General Ernst
von Hoeppner, had already halved the army zeppelin strength in 1916 and had
sent the remaining ships to the southern and eastern fronts. In the Spring
of 1917, Hoeppner ordered the army zeppelin service disbanded altogether.
Dismantling of the airship bases was begun, five ships were transferred to
the navy and the rest were broken up.

     Hoeppner's chief, General Ludendorff, if had not in fact originated the
idea of disbanding the army airship division, heartily approved of it and in
1917, what General Ludendorff wanted was law in the army and most of
Germany.

     In the summer of 1917, General Erich Ludendorff had by virtue of his
position as First Quartermaster General of the army, his prestige and the
force of his personality become the dominant figure in Germany. His powers
were second only to those of the Emperor when the monarch, who was gradully
tiring of the war, chose to exercise them.

     The son of a bankrupt East Prussian landowner who had been reduced to
selling insurance, the army was for Ludendorff the road back to the
respectability and status of which his family faa on deprived. Though he
lacked those qualifications which counted for so much in the army, noble
blood and family name, he had by 1908, through sheer ability and energy,
become the head of Department II of the General Staff. Its responsibilities
included planning the deployment of the German army in case of war, a vital
assignment which tagged Ludendorff as the Chief of Operations once
hostilities broke out. Yet Ludendorff's aggressiveness in pushing his views
on military policy and his meddling in the complicated politics of the army
had at one point threatened to cut short his career. In 1913 he was
transferred to the 39th Infantry Regiment in Düsseldorf, not a step upwards
for a department head of the General Staff. The fortunes of war presented
him with a second chance in 1914. When the commander of the 14th Infantry
Brigade was killed in Belgium, Ludendorff assumed command of the unit and
led it in a surpise attack past the forts guarding Liege. Inside the town,
he imperiously pounded on the gate of the old citadel and demanded the
surrender of the astonished and frightened Belgians within. Liege was a
major fortification astride the German route of advance inte France and the
capture of this key point gave new impetus to Ludendorff's career.

     During this time, the eastern boundary of Germany was only lightly
defended in keeping with the overall plan drawn up before the war. The
western front was to be the point of endeavor. A gigantic sweep through
Belgium and northern France, around Paris, into the rear of the French
armies facing Germany was to destroy the enemy in one vast aaetee dag
bacele. The seater front could be deair with afterwards. However, as the
Russians began to advance into Fast Prussia, German resolve to follow this
plan faltered. An army to relieve Fast Prussia was organized and to command
it, General Paul von Hindenburg was called out of retirement and Ludendorff
was appointed his Chief of Staff. The disasterous defeat which they soon
inflicted on the Russians elevated both into the pantheon of German wargods.

     August 1916 brought Ludendorff to the apogee of his career. The Germans
had commenced the Battle of Verdun to break the stalemate which had
prevailed in the west after their advance into France in 1914 had been
halted at the the Imperial German constitution. The Chancellor, Bethmann-
Hollweg, deferred to the army on military matters and in July 1917,
Ludendorff arranged to have him replaced by an even more pliable man. The
Minister of War was always a general and by tradition did everything the
army wanted. The army had always seen to it that outstanding officers did
not go into the Ministry of War, thus keeping it weak and ineffective. The
Ministry had the unpleasant task of battling Parliament over appropriations
but it was allowed to do little else. The Emperor's Military Cabinet, which
had been intended to control the officer corps, had never regained its
original stature after that regrettable incident in 1908 when its chief,
General Count Hülsen-Haeseler, had danced for the Kaiser and some fellow
officers in a pink ballerina's tutu - danced "divinely" as everyone agreed
—- and had fallen dead of a heart attack at the conclusion of his
performance. It was a great embarrassment to all concerned.

     Thus largely unencumbered by any restraints upon his will, Ludendorff
sat down in the Spring of 1917 to draw up plans for a grand campaign which
was finally to bring victory to Germany. To this task he brought his
customary energy and single minded devotion to duty. They were indeed
needed. Time was pressing. Morale in the armed forces and at home was
beginning to deteriorate. The British naval blockade of Germany was
seriously hampering the German war effort. Shortages of critical raw
materials and food were mounting. The United Marne. The unprecedented
carnage of Verdun had brought no decision; the frontline remained unchanged
and both the German and French armies had suffered tremendous losses. At the
same time, the Austrian army in Galicia collapsed and Romania entered the
war on the side of the Allies. In the this crisis, the Kaiser decided to
give the army a new commander. On August 26, 1916, Hindenburg was apvpointed
Chief of Staff of the German army. Ludendorff was offered the position of
Second Chief of Staff. He declined the title - there are no second chiefs he
said - and created the new title of First Quartermaster General.[12] As
First Quartermaster General, Ludendorff held sway over the army. The
position made him deputy of the commander of the army, Fieldmarshall won
Hindenburg. The Field maxenal iy physically imposing but aging and
unimaginative, recognized Ludendorff's gifts and was content to rely on him
in most matters. He signed nearly everything that Ludendorff's aides placed
before him and rarely interferred. Ludendorff's prestige was such that the.
threat that he and Hindenburg would resign was sufficient to overcome any
opposition, at least until the end of the war. The structure of the German
government left it ill equipped to stand up to a resolute military leader.
The notion that the civil branches of the government should control the
armed forces was unknown to States had declared war on Germany on April 6,
1917 and victory had to be won before America could bring its powerful
industrial machine and great manpower potential to bear upon the European
battlefield.

     If it was to be victorious, Germany would have to mobilize all of its
remaining resources, concentrating them on the goal of final victory. There
had to be "Totaler Krieg" — total war. Whatever did not serve this purpose
had to be diverted to something that served the cause of victory more
decisively. In the Spring of 1917, the German army still operated about
fifteen airships. They represented more than 300 tons of scarce aluminum,
cotton, rubber, high performance engines and other valuable materials.
Zeppelins required a handling crew of from 300 to 400 men to maneuver the
cumbersome craft on the ground before take off and after landing, a host of
radio and communications technicians, meteorologists, men to run the
hydrogen generating plants, mechanics, armorers, antiaircraft crews to
defend the airfields, guards and all the supporting personnel from cooks to
doctors which such an establishment requires.

     Ludendorff decided that the raw material and sl Lic manpower which the
airships required could be used more effectively in the airforce which he
was striving to enlarge. Grandiose though they were and however much they
kindled patriotic pride, airships had no place in Ludendorff's scheme of
things; they had to go.

     Consistent with the conclusions he had drawn about the usefulness of
the army airshins, Ludendorff saw no further reason why the navy should
continue its costly zeppelin fleet. On July 27th, Ludendorff wrote a letter
to the Naval Command and suggested that it also abandon its Airship
Division.

     It was in this setting that the Colonial Office's proposal to send an
airship to Africa came across the desk of General Hoeppner's Chief of Staff,
Lt. Colonel Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen. The colonel was a bald, pudgy
faced man with a smudge of a mustache. His uniform jacket strained a little
around his middle. Despite his unmilitary appearence, Thomsen was the
driving force behind General Hoeppner and the true organizer of the German
Army Airforce. His accomplishments were to be recognized with a "Pour le
Mérite" and, in 1919, in a more covert form, by his appointment to chief of
the Central Aviation Department of the Defense Ministry. This department was
charged with the secret rebuilding of the German airforces in violation of
the Treaty of Versailles which had just been signed.

     Colonel Thomsen gave short shrift to the Colonial Office's mad cap
scheme. This was no time to encourage further zeppelin adventures. Besides,
it was clear to him that the undertaking was unlikely to succeed. He turned
down the plan. The Colonial Office and its Africa plan had made a powerful
enemy.


    ----------------------------------------
    [8] With apologies to the German children of the day, who surely
        had nothing to do with creating these lines which do not
        scan, the original verse, probably stemming from the Thirty
        Years War, was equally blood thirsty:"Junebug fly. Your
        father is in the wars. Your mother is in Pommerania.
        Pommerania will be burned down. Junebug fly". The reader
        may. also recall from his own childhood the rhyme "Ladybug,
        ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your
        children will burn".
    [9] The German army assigned the prefix "Z" to all ships
        constructed by the Zeppelin Company and numbered them
        serially with Roman numbers. After January 1915, the army
        used the Zeppelin Company's serial numbers and in June, to
        confuse Allied intelligence, began to add the number thirty
        to the Zeppelin Company serial number to form the army
        designation.
    [10] ed his mind about the advantages of manning the observation
        * In 1918, the navy experimented with a 2 cm. cannon to he
    [11] The army also operated a small number of Schütte-Lanz
        ships. Including these in the above casualty figures would
        not substantially change the loss ratio, 649
    [12] In the German army, a Quartermaster was the head of a
        department of the General Staff; the title did not
        necessarily describe a logistical officer as it does in the
        American and British armies.




                                 Chapter V

                              THE CHINA AFFAIR

     Repulsed by the army, the Colonial Office once more turned to the
Ministry of the Navy (Reichsmarineamt). It was now the end of July. The
Colonial Office's plan arrived at the Ministry at a fortunate conjunction of
events - an idea presented just as the proof of its feasibility was being
delivered and at a time when interest in it had revived.

     Ensign Ernst A. Lehmann was at that moment aloft in "LZ 120" on an
experimental flight intended to test the ability of airships to make flights
of long duration.

     The 24 year old Lehmann had been captain of the civilian airship
"Sachsen" which the German government had requisitioned when war began. An
ensign in the naval reserves, Lehmann put on his blue uniform and began to
train army airship crews on the "Sachsen". Before long, he was put in
command of army airship "Z XII" and assigned to the eastern front. His
reconnaissance work was highly esteemed, so much so that the headquarters
staff in Poland was at times treated to the unusual spectacle of a young
naval ensign bending over operational maps in earnest conference with the
forbidding Chief of Staff of the German troops in the east, General
Ludendorff himself. Lehmann then commanded two other ships on the western
front and in 1917, received the command of the army's newest and last
airship, "LZ 120", a six engined mammoth armed with ten machine guns.

     Soon after, when the army began to break up its airship service, "LZ
120" was transferred to the navy and stationed at the Baltic airship base at
Seerappen, near Königsberg. The assignment offered Lehmann little challenge.
The Baltic front was quiet. The disasterous course which the war had taken
for Russia had stirred up bloody strikes in St. Petersburg and in March
these had mushroomed into the overthrow of the Tsar. Russia's military
resistance was collapsing and patrolling the Baltic became a bore. "Nothing
suspicious in sight" was the recurrent entry in the log of "LZ 120". In
October, the naval airships were withdrawn from the Baltic altogether.

     A fortuitous conversation in the officers' mess one evening steered
Lehmann in a new direction. Could airships be used more efficiently by
sending them aloft on long-extended patrol flights, say a hundred hours,
rather than several shorter flights of equal duration? Could snip and crew
withstand the strain?

     Lehmann decided to put these questions to the test. He carefully
organized a flight. Extra fuel tanks were installed in "LZ 120" and 37,265
pounds of gasoline and oil were put on board. Lehmann calculated that this
would be enough for a 100 hour cruise. The crew of 29 men included six
officers so that two officers could be on duty during each of the three
watches. Special care was taken to ensure the comfort of the crew. Three
double boilers, heated by the exhaust gases of one of the engines, were
installed to provide them with a hot noon meal. There was plenty of drinking
water and the officers even enjoyed the luxury of a shower bath, an
improvised tipping bucket arrangement rigged up in the nose of the hull.
July 26, 1917 was a clear night. At 11:00 p.m., "LZ 120" took off. It
offered the farmers living on the hills surrounding the base the unique
spectacle of an airship fly past, rather than over their houses. The ship
was fully laden and Lehmann was loath to sacrifice any of his water ballast,
intended to last him for a four day triv, to lighten the ship at take off.
Instead, he had counted on the ship's dynamic lift to get it off the
ground.[13] Although all six engines were racing at top speed, "LZ 120" was
slow to develop dynamic lift and the thundering giant stormed over the hills
only a few yards above the ground. Gradually it rose and once clear, Lehmann
took it over the Baltic. The night brought numerous thunderstorms and as the
temperature dropped towards morning, the crew became acutely uncomfortable.
Once the storm subsided, however, the trip became uneventful. The ship zig-
zagged over the Baltic, generally operating on three engines. These gave
little trouble except No. 2 engine which, despite mid-air repairs, ran
irregularly. There was occasional bombing practice in which floating logs
served as targets; the ship had taken along 2,650 pounds of bombs. There
also was time for some unaccustomed midair sunbathing. The best place for
this was the rear machine gun position, cut into the hull behind the upper
airship rudder. It was sheltered from the ship's airflow and far away from
the droning engines. Food turned out to be the only troublesome part of the
trip. Bad sausages and stale bread caused widespread indigestion.

     When the weather began to worsen, Lehmann decided to return. At 4:40 in
the morning of the 31st, "LZ 120" came down at Seerappen again. It had been
aloft for almost 102 hours and covered a distance of about 2,000 miles. It
still had enough gasoline in its tanks to fly another 33 hours. The men were
in excellent condition and judged able to continue the flight another 100
hours. "LZ 120" had been in the air about as long as it had been calculated
it would take an airship to reach East Africa.

     There also was a more receptive mood which at the Ministry of the Navy
now. The morale of the sailors was low and something had to be done to boost
it. The fleet had been idle since the battle of Jutland and the sailors
weren restless. During May there had been mutinies on four battleships. The
ground crew at the Ahlhorn airship base had come close to rebellion and only
resolute action by their commander, Lt. Commander Mangelsdorff, had
prevented an open outbreak. Even the elite airship crews were dejected. They
had suffered heavy losses in men and ships. Of the sixty airships which had
been built for the navy until then, 37 had been lost, 26 through enemy
action. Losses were accelerating; twenty ships had gone down in the last
year alone. Doubts began to gnaw at the souls of the men, doubts that the
military results they were achieving justified the constant danger which
they faced. The flight to Africa, if it were possible, would provide a much
needed boost to morale. It would bestow new laurels upon the navy and raise
the prestige of Germany.

     The initial evaluation of the ministry was cautious but not negative.
At first blush, the attempt appeared "fantastic and unreal", the Chief of
the Airship Branch of the Department for Aeronautics wrote. Then he crossed
out the word "unreal" and wrote over it "adventurous", fearing that perhaps
that he might be guilty of unprofessional exaggeration. Possibly there were
things which might make the flight feasible. He adopted two of Zupitza's
suggestions: an interim stop in Syria and taking advantage of nortnowinds
which tended to predominate during the winter months. Tradewindlike currents
at higher altitudes might help during the second part of the trip (To be
checked!" he added), To caution his readers against rejecting out of hand
the notion of flying to Bast Africa, he reminded how the seamen of medieval
times had been warned against undertaking their great voyages of discovery
because they would become hopelessly entangled in the weeds of the Sargasso
Sea and would never be able to climb back to the northern hemisphere once
they had descended to the equator and had dropped below it into the southern
hemisphere. He recommended that the Colonial Office be allowed two hours to
make a presentation of the project to the Ministry of the Navy. "If there is
ais some possibility of success, perhaps the attempt is worth it", the
memorandum concluded.

     The Colonial Office made its presentation and with the favorable
attitude which the Chief of the Airship Branch had displayed, it was not
surprising that the Colonial Office was able to carry the day.

     Working out a concrete plan for the flight presented a number of
serious problems. It was clear that the Africa flight represented a quantum
jump beyond the "LZ 120" experiment. The starting point for the expedition
would have to be Yambol. It was the southernmost German airship base and was
located in the central part of Bulgaria, an ally of Germany since October
1915. The distance from Yambol to that part of German Fast Africa where the
Schutztruppe was now fighting, allowing for detours and a margin of safety,
was roughly 4375 miles. Assuming an average cruising speed of 40.6 m.p.h.,
the trip would take 108 hours. "LZ 120" had demonstrated that a zeppelin and
its crew could endure this long a flight but that flight had been made under
much more favorable circumstances particularly in regard of meteorological
conditions and weather reporting. There were other serious problems such as
finding Lettow - vorbeck's troops in the vastness of Africa and the danger
of interception by the enemy. There was the question of how much cargo could
be carried and whether these supplies, the boost to the morale of the
African troops and the propaganda impact which this flight would no doubt
create would be enough to justify the sacrifice of the airship. The
immediate problem was the cargo. The Ministry had initially thought of a
cargo of two to three tons (the figure three had been crossed out in the
first evaluation) but this figure would have to be increased. Even three
tons would not give the colonial troops adequate assistance, Three tons of
medicine alone would be needed.

     Above all, it was necessary to carry out the project quickly. Since the
rainy season had come to a close at the end of May, the British had been
pressing the Germans relentlessly all around their perimeter, at Tunduru in
the southwest, at Iringa in the northwest corner and from Kilwa and Lindi on
the Indian Ocean. The Schutztruppe was resisting stubbornly but the enemy
was greatly superior in numbers and equipment. The German troops had been
forced to abandon their defense lines along the Rufiji river, north of
Kilwa, and were giving ground along all of the fighting fronts. How dire
their straits, how short their supplies were, nobody in Berlin could say for
certain but obviously time was not on its side.

     The Navy Ministry set to work. It submitted a plan of a supply flight
to Africa to Commander Peter Strasser, the "Führer der Luftschiffe" - the
Chief of Naval Airships. A saturnine, brooding man, with heavy, dark
eyebrows, a mustache and a goatee, Strasser had led the naval airship
service since it was established in 1913. Then it had consisted of only a
few crews in training and had no airships of its own. At its zenith, in
1917, the Airship Division numbered 19 ships and had attained an unrivaled
competence in handling them. On August 24th, Strasser decided that the
chances of the Africa project were "not unfavorable". That was enough for
the navy. Though it still had not given final approval to the operation, the
weather problem in particular needed further study, it decided that the
preparation of an airship for the trip should begin immediately so as not to
lose precious time once a decision was made. Lt. Commanders Sommerfeldt and
Buttlar were sent to the zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen to discuss the
technical details with the factory. Sommerfeldt was the commander of airship
"L 35" which was used to conduct technical experiments. Strasser relied on
his technical expertise. Buttlar was the most experienced combat commander.
After a detailed discussion of the technical and practical problems which
could be foreseen, Sommerfeldt prepared a lengthy memorandum for the
Ministry of the Navy. An airship larger than the existing types was needed
to a carry sufficient cargo. There was no time to design and construct a new
ship and it was decided that an airship of the type then in use be enlarged
by cutting it apart and inserting an additional section, 98 feet long,
housing two extra gas cells. This technique had already been successfully
used on other zeppelins. If the ship were rigorously stripped of everything
that was not absolutely essential to the flight, say 4,200 pounds, the total
lifting capacity of the airship could be increased to 114,660 pounds, double
the useful lift of the zeppelins then being built. After deducting the
weight of the gasoline, oil, ballast, crew and whatever else was needed to
operate the ship, the engineers estimated that a cargo of about 34,000
pounds could be allowed. In addition many useful items could be salvaged
from the ship itself once it landed. The waterproof outer covering could be
used to make sleeping bags, ponchos or tenting, the gas cells could be used
for cotton shirts after the lining which made them gas tight had been washed
off, the generator for the radio could be used again for the same purpose
and the Zeppelin Company, which was asked to prepare a complete list of all
salvageable items, could probably think of other things which the colonial
troops could use.

     Finding Lettow - Vorbeck's troops, Sommerfeldt felt, would be
difficult. Berlin had only a rough idea where they were located. It thought
that their headquarters were at Mahenge, a small town in the northeast
corner of the German held territory. The Africa ship would have to make
radio contact with the troops to coordinate its landing with them. They
would have to act as a ground crew to help it land and unload it quickly.

     Risk of loss by enemy action could be reduced in various ways. The
Mediterranean was the most dangerous leg of the trip. It could crossed at
night during a period of a new moon when the visibility of the dirigible
would be reduced to a minimum. This was the standard operating procedure for
German airships when opposition by enemy anti-aircraft guns or aviation was
expected. In October, the moonless period would occur between the 12th and
the 20th. Areas, such as Crete, where enemy aviation might be expected,
could be avoided or crossed at high altitudes. The ship could fly across the
desert west of the Nile to avoid its many enemy installations. East Africa
did not seem like a hazardous area. It could be crossed at 12,000 feet which
would make interception by the British practically impossible. Ground troops
would not have incendiary ammunition or anti-aircraft guns available. There
was the possibility of machine gun fire from the ground or from an airplane,
which, if intense enough, could lead to such gas losses that the undertaking
might fail. The same thing could happen if the zeppelin were hit by small
airplane bombs even if they did not explode. What would happen if they did
explode, Sommerfeldt did not think necessary to discuss nor did he waste
words over the possibility of an encounter with an enemy aircraft carrying
incendiary ammunition. His comment was simply: "Result: loss of ship".

     On September 11th, the Ministry of the Navy sent Strasser the
Sommerfeldt's report together with its own memorandum about the feasibility
of the flight. The memorandum of the Ministry was more optimistic than
Sommerfeldt's dry analysis. Where, for example, Sommerfeldt had noted the
uncertainties in making contact with the troops in Africa, the Ministry saw
no particular difficulties. It had learned from the Naval Command and the
Colonial Office that several small radio stations still existed in Africa
and it assumed that the ship would be able to establish contact with them
with its own radio. Thus, the Ministry reported to Strasser "One of the main
difficulties, 'meeting' in the large colonial areas, is therefore almost
completely eliminated". Strasser, showing better sense, returned the
memorandum with with a large question mark in the margin. The Ministry's
memorandum concluded that a meteorological study, still to come, would
decide whether the flight could be made; if no extraordinary weather
conditions were encountered, the undertaking was possible. The completed
weather study was to be forwarded in the next three or four days. In the
meantime, would Strasser please furnish the Ministry as immediately with an
opinion concerning the chances of success of the enterprise. Strasser was
asked to refer to the operation by its code name "China Sache" ~ "Operation
China" or the "China Affair".

     The weather study which Professor Kohlschütter soon laid before the
Ministry presented a mixed picture. During the first part of the trip, while
the ship crossed the Mediterranean, storms could be expected in October but
this was also the time of the year which was most likely to bring helping
tail winds. Knowledge of weather conditions over the North African desert
and further south was fragmentary. Almost nothing was known about conditions
at high altitudes. Some of the information was out of date. Nevertheless,
Kohlschütter expressed the opinion that conditions in Africa were
sufficiently stable so that the old data could be used to form a judgement
of the average weather conditions there. While he could not say how the
airship would react to the broiling sun and the cold nights which it would
encounter over the desert, he felt that no serious difficulties result. He
said little about what might be expected in the regions beyond the desert
except that on the last leg of the trip across East Africa "the variations
in the rainfall from year to year were so great that a little bit of luck
would be needed".

     Forecasting the actual day to day conditions would be more difficult.
The weather stations in Bulgaria and Asia Minor worked with only incomplete
information; they lacked data from the areas to the east and the south.
These were in enemy hands and the radio stations there, under war time
censorship, did not broadcast much weather information. Without this, no
complete weather map could be constructed for the Mediterraenean area and
the North African coast. On the other hand, the German military weather
service in Asia Minor could assist the ship while it was over the
Mediterranean and a submarine stationed to the west of Crete could warn of
storms which might approach from that direction. These weather reports would
have to take the form of a report from one land weather station to another
so that those radio messages would not lead anyone to suspect the presence
of an airship. However, once the zeppelin was across the Mediterranean it
could expect no further meteorological assistance.

     Promptly on the 16th, Commander Strasser sent the Ministry his
memorandum supporting the operation. With this he threw his great personal
prestige behind the project. He had just been awarded Germany's highest
military decoration, the "Ordre pour le Mérite". Strasser stressed the
morale factor: "Completion of the operation will not only provide immediate
assistance to the brave Protectorate troops but will be an event which will
once more arouse the enthusiasm of the German people and admiration
throughout the world". There was, of course, the danger of interception by
enemy aircraft, he added, but he thought that the probility of this occuring
was low as were the risks from bad weather. "With a little luck the trip
should succeed" he concluded.

     The next step which the Navy Ministry had to take was to obtain the
concurrence of the Naval Command (Admiralstab). It had the operational
control of the fleet. It was an institution equal to and independent of the
Ministry of the Navy and had direct access to the throne. The Ministry of
the Navy was confined to administrative and budgetary matters affecting the
navy. A third, independent instutition was the Navy Cabinet. It handled the
appointment, promotion and welfare of the naval officers. This unwieldy
command structure was the result of Wilhelm II's endeavor to keep personal
command of the navy by keeping it divided against itself. While the army was
structured in a similar manner, the divisions within that part of the armed
forces was bridged by the domination which the General Staff Corps exercised
over all three branches of the army. The navy had no equivalent to this. The
war had brought no unity to the splintered naval command structure nor had
it brought a unified command to the German armed forces as a whole. The only
tie between them was the person of the "Supreme Warlord", the Emperor
himself.

     While approval of the plan by the Naval Command was the necessary next
step in carrying it out, the Ministry of the Navy did not wait for it. On
September 17th, it went ahead and ordered the Zeppelin Works to rebuild "L
57", then under construction at Friedrichshafen. It felt justified in taking
this procedural shortcut because the ship could always be used as a fast,
seven engined reconnaissance craft over the North Sea, an idea with which
Strasser completely disagreed when he learned of it.

     On September 19th, the Minister of the Navy sent its proposal,
classified "Streng Geheim" - Top Secret - to the Naval Command. Since the
relief of the African troops admitted of no delay, it requested an answer by
the 27th. It underlined the urgency of the matter with a follow-up
memorandum in which the Minister pointed out that the approval of the
Emperor was still required and that this should not be unnecessarily
delayed.

     When the Minister of the Navy forwarded the "China" plan to the Naval
Command, he mentioned that he had not informed the army of the proposal. The
anti-airship attitude of Messrs. Ludendorff and Thomsen was only too well
known and there was no need to stir up trouble prematurely. The Colonial
Office, however, immediately let the cat out of the bag. It had been
searching for an "Ortskundiger", a man who knew Fast Africa and who could
accompany the zeppelin to help it find its landing spot or act as an
interpreter in case of a crash landing there. There were few men with a
suitable background available to Berlin. The Colonial Office considered two:
Professor Zupitza and army captain Richard von Bentivegni. Professor Zupitza
could be available at once. As for Bentivegni, it was thought advisable to
await the Emperor's approval of the operation before asking the army for
him.

     Then the Colonial Office changed its mind and asked the army to make
the captain available without waiting for the imperial approval. Bentivegni,
like Lettow-—Vorbeck and Buttlar-Brandenfels, came from one of those
families which had for generations supplied officers to the German army,
whose stock in trade was war. The German branch of the Bentivegni family
differed a little from typical military families. It descended from a
distinguished Italian family of church administrators, judges and notaries.
In the 1760's, Giralomo Bentivegni had crossed the Alps and enrolled as an
officer candidate in the Life Guards of Frederick the Great of Prussia. He
had apparently been an able soldier, retiring from the army as a major. His
male descendants largely became officers and the females married officers.
There were a few exceptions, a merchant in China, for example, and Romeo, a
petty officer who met with accidental death aboard a sailing ship in the
Pacific in 1868, but on the whole the Bentivegnis were military men. Since
1746 there had been three colonels, four lieutenant colonels, a major and
eight company grade officers, not counting two who died as cadets, one only
nine years old. What was unusual about the Bentivegnis as suppliers of
military personnel was that the female descendants of Girolomo outnumbered
the males 40 to 27. Fredericus, whom Girolomo had named after his liege
lord, undoubtedly introduced a statistical distortion into the picture. He
had nine daughters and no sons, a fate which must have been well neigh
insufferable for a Prussian officer of his day.[14] Richard von Bentivegni
had been commissioned a lieutenant in a grenadier regiment in 1906. Five
years later, Bentivegni was sent to the Oriental Institute in Berlin.
Arabic, Swahili and practical courses in colonial administration were taught
there. After graduation, Bentivegni was assigned to the troops in German
East Africa. Bentivegni, however, apparently did it hit off well there since
in 1914, he was back in Germany with the 153rd Infantry, still a lieutenant.
Bentivegni's exposure to Africa had been short but it probably was
sufficient for the limited purpose for which he was being considered. On the
other hand, it was likely that he was unfit for service in Africa. He had
been wounded twice, once lightly in 1914 but more severely in 1915 when he
suffered a fracture of the lower left leg and foot. This injury hospitalized
him for three months. It would probably have made it difficult for him to
participate in the long and rapid marches that characterized Lettow-
Vorbeck's tactics in 1917. When the Colonial Office asked the army on the
20th, only one day after the Ministry had sent its plan to the Naval
Command, to make Bentivegni available for the "China Affair", the Fat was in
the fire again.

     In July, Ludendorff had written to the Naval Command and asked it to
abandon its airship service as the army had done. The commander of the High
Seas Fleet, Admiral Scheer, however, rejected the suggestion. The affairs of
the navy were none of Ludendorff's business. The navy reported to the Kaiser
and not to Ludendorff. It was indeed one of the German instutitions over
which Ludendorff held no sway.

     Scheer was not just squabbling over jurisdiction. He was convinced that
he needed the airship. Because of the far greater strength of the British
navy, zeppelins were needed for scouting over the North Sea and protecting
the German navy against surprise attack. With their great range of
observation in clear weather, airships were well suited for this. Every day,
weather permitting, three airships were far out at sea, flying a protective
cordon which stretched from the Dutch coast north beyond the Dogger Bank to
the Grand Fisher Bank and east to Norway. Airplanes still lacked the
necessary range and endurance for such an assignment. The argument between
Ludendorff and the navy which ensued boiled on well into August until the
Kaiser struck a compromise between the quarreling services. The naval
airship service would be continued, but at substantially reduced strength.
This compromise was not to the liking of either party. The quarrel was still
fresh in Colonel Thomsen's mind when he received the Colonial Office's
request for Bentivegni.

     Thomsen at once telegraphed the Colonial Office that the captain could
not be made available as he was on special duty with the airforce.
Bentivegni was in fact more valuable in his present position than he could
be on the Africa flight. After he had recovered from his wounds in 1915, he
had been trained as an aircraft observer and for the last year had commanded
a heavy bombing squadron. Thomsen added to his telegram that he had already
reported to Ludendorff that the proposed mission had little chance of
success. The Supreme Command therefore requested to be present when the
matter was presented to the Emperor for approval.

     Worried that Col. Thomsen's opposition might abort the project,
officers of the Colonial Office and the Ministry of the Navy went to see ene
cnet of Staff of the Naval Command for advice. Commander von Knorr did not
share their concern. He was sure that the Emperor would go along with the
plan if it was militarily justified. As for Thomsen's telegram, he suggested
that the Colonial Office write to him, after a suitable delay, and tell him
that the Naval Command had been advised of Army's position and that it would
be taken into consideration.

     The Naval Command was favorably inclined towards the project but it was
not convinced, despite Strasser's backing, that it was technically feasible.
It suggested that an expert commission examine the idea again. Fifteen men
convened in Berlin on the 27th of September. The officer who had been
designated to command the "China" ship had been asked to participate but had
telegraphed from Friedrichshafen: "Impossible to get there now. Conference
possible next week after transfer [of "L 57" to glterbog]". "L 57" was in
the last stages of completion and he apparently felt that he was needed at
the Zeppelin works more urgently than at a conference. The committee had
already postponed its meeting for one day to permit Strasser to attend but
it did not wait for the captain of "L 57". When the committee met, Knorr of
the Naval Command at once raised the question which must have been on the
minds of many. How reliable were airship engines? Malfunctioning of zeppelin
engines on long flights was a recurring problem. Knorr had heard that they
could not withstand the more than hundred hours of operation required to get
to Africa. Strasser answered that the expected mode of operation would be on
four engines with one in reserve and that most of the defects which might be
expected could be repaired during flight. One by one the worrisome points
were taken up - rainfall in Africa, sufficiency of the weather data, maps
and navigation, enemy planes and so on. Many of the men had already worked
on the Africa plan and remained optimistic about it. Despite his support of
the operation at the conference, Strasser was less enthusiastic than he had
been when he had first endorsed the operation. On September 19th, the
Colonial Office had sent him a copy of a despatch in the "London Times" of
the 10th which reported an attack on German troops at Mponda by six
airplanes of the British East African Expeditionary Force. The news had a
strong impact on Strasser. The success of the whole undertaking now seemed
in question; enemy airstrength in Africa appeared to be greater than he had
expected. Strasser, said little about this at the conference, however.

     The discussion soon turned to more practical things. The agreed upon
starting point for the flight was Yambol but this army base was in the
process of being dismantled now that the army's zeppelin service was
disbanding. How quickly could Yambol be made operational again. There was
nervousness about the Commanding General of the Army 'Airforces. Was it
necessary to ask him for permission to use the base? Was not the Ministry of
War responsible for such approval? Would it be better to obtain the Imperial
approval first so as to foreclose any opposition to the to use the base by
the navy. What about security? Of course, the troops in Africa would have to
be told that the airship was coming. That seemed safe. The radio code used
for traffic with the colonies was believed to be secure and not known to the
enemy, but Strasser stressed the importance of secrecy. The Naval Attaches,
who acted as liaison officers on naval matters to the governments allied
with Germany, were to be told only of the presence of a German airship in
the Balkans but not of its intended use. The Turks were to be told nothing
nor were the Senussi tribes in Tripolitania who had aligned themselves with
Turkey and Germany. A cover story was agreed on: the ship would be used for
mine searches in the Black Sea and for attacks on Odessa.

     The Naval Command approved the "China Affair" immediately after the
committee concluded its deliberations. Telegrams went out to the Naval
Attaches in Vienna and Sofia that an airship operation would start at the
Yambol airbase after October 7th. The Naval Attache in Sofia was further
instructed to obtain a ground crew of 500 men from the Bulgarian army for a
period of two weeks.

     On the same day, "L 57" made its first flight. The all important
approval of the Emperor still had to be obtained. The presentation to His
Majesty, however, could not be scheduled earlier than October 4th. That
would be only eight days before the moon would turn dark, permitting "L 57"
to carry out mission. On the day of the audience with the Emperor, Knorr
took Thomsen aside and talked to him about the project. To be sure, the
"Africa Affair" was strictly a navy operation but Knorr knew Thomsen's
attitude and it could be troubleseome when Knorr presented the plan to the
Kaiser. Besides, he would need the army's cooperation in running the Yambol
base. Thomsen's reaction was a pleasant surprise. The colonel was "very
correct", promised to keep Yambol available until the 20th and wished Knorr
good luck.

     Had Thomsen reconsidered and seen the possibility of a real German
propaganda coup or was he giving the navy enough rope to hang itself, so
that this airship business could finally be finished up? Whatever his
reasons, Thomsen kept his word and raised no objections.

     Commander von Knorr made his presentation. He stressed the factors
which seemed to insure the safety of this unprecedented flight. "Success can
be assured", he stated, "and there are no military dangers which require
that this otherwise necessary undertaking not take place".

     Whoever had prepared Knorr's presentation had gotten some of the facts
wrong. He stated that an extra engine had been added to the ship to boost
its speed by another 6.7 m.p-h.; in fact, "L 57" had the usual five engines
and was slightly slower that the standard "v" type. It did not matter. For
once, everyone was in agreement and the Kaiser gave his approval.

     On October 6th, over the wires strung from the tall radio towers at
Nauen, flowed a coded message for the Governor of German East Africa: "
Beginning middle October you may expect the arrival of a naval airship,
intended landing place Livale, which will carry weapons, munitions and
medical supplies. Airship will try to make early contact by radio wavelength
600 meters...Airship is equipped with your signal code, will use code key
number 376. Please make all possible preparations. Advise airship as early
as possible by radio or optical signal of suitable landing place". Added
were the code call sign of the airship and the signal by which the airship
would call the local radio station.

     There was a curious omission from the message. It did not tell Governor
Schnee how large a cargo the airship would bring. In fact, the planned cargo
would require about 560 bearers and their usual number of camp followers to
transport. Tt was not a force that could be assembled at a moment's notice.
How were Schnee and Lettow —- Vorbeck to prepare for unloading the ship if
they did not know the size of the cargo to be carried away?


    ----------------------------------------
    [13] When an airship is flown with its nose a few degrees above
        the horizontal, its hull acts like an airplane wing. A
        partial vacuum builds up on top of the hull and the normal
        air pressure below the hull, acting against the reduced
        pressure above it, pushes the ship up with a force of
        several thousand pounds, the exact amount depending on
        various factors including the forward speed and the angle of
        the hull.
    [14] The Bentivegni family was not a particularly large supplier
        of officers. The socalled Younger Line of the Buttlar
        family, during approximately the same time, furnished three
        generals, field grade officers and company grade officers. 2




                                 Chapter VI

                          KAPITÄNLEUTNANT BOCKHOLT

     Commander Strasser found the choice of a captain for the "China" ship
more difficult than he expected. The Ministry of the Navy was pressing him
to make the appointment as quickly as possible so that the prospective
commander could go to the Zeppelin works and become acquainted with the
unusual features of his ship as it was being built. For Strasser the
selection of the commander was a very personal task. He knew every officer
of his command and took a close interest in their personal welfare. He was
intensely loyal to his service friends, particularly to the old-timers, and
this perhaps biased his judgment at times.

     On the top of Strasser's list of possible commanders stood one of his
inner circle, the slender, carefree, 29 year old Baron Horst Treusch von
Buttlar-Brandenfels. Buttlar had entered the navy as cadet in 1907. In 1913,
as the 16th ranking officer on the heavy cruiser "Moltke", he had grown
restless in the anthill anonimity of service on board a capital ship and had
applied for a transfer to a submarine. The navy had done him one better. It
had offered him the post of airship commander in the newly formed Airship
Division with a promotion to Lieutenant.

     Buttlar had been delighted. Gone was the faceless crowd of the
"Moltke". The new Airship Division was a small, select unit. There were only
six airship captains, twelve officers altogether counting the engineers and
the paymaster. None of the men selected for the unit had any flying
experience and so its new commander, Strasser, together with his adjutant,
Lt. Hirsch (later killed when his ship exploded in a thunderstorm) and the
airship captains to be underwent flying training together.

     Eckener had been in charge of the training; Lehmann had commanded the
training ship, Count Zeppelin's "Sachsen". The shared adventure of flying
training and the experience of starting a new branch of the service
together, no doubt, had forged a strong, personal bond between Strasser and
his officers.

     It is said that Buttlar had been on board of "L 2" before it started on
its ill fated acceptance trials but had been ordered off the ship at the
last minute when it was found to be overloaded. Fate thus had held its
protective hand over Buttlar as it was to do again on a number of occasions,
permitting him to die at the age of 74 while on vacations in Berchtesgaden.

     When "L 3" was completed, Buttlar had been appointed its Executive
Officer and on November 6, 1914, he had received his Own command, the newly
finished "L 6". Since then, he had distinguished himself on numerous airship
operations which later would earn nim the coveted silver and blue "Ordre
pour le Mérite". He had worked on the Africa problem with Sommerfeldt.
Surely the honor of leading the Africa flight belonged to Buttlar.

     When Buttlar learned of the prospective appointment, he was overjoyed.
His place in history seemed assured.

     However, Strasser reconsidered. Sending Buttlar to Africa meant losing
his experience and abilities for the rest of the war. It might also mean
sending the man to his death. During the past year, Strasser had lost some
of his best airship leaders. He was not eager to loose another one. Buttlar
was now the "old man", the last flying officer of the Airship Division of
1914.

     Buttlar's family circumstances also spoke against the choice. His
father, a lieutenant colonel of artillery, had been killed during the first
few weeks of the war. Buttlar's young wife was pregnant with their second
child. His duties were hazardous enough without deliberately assigning him
to a flight as dangerous as this one, at the end of which waited guerilla
war, privation and disease.

     Strasser consoled Buttlar with the promise of an even larger ship,
3,531,000 cubic feet then being planned for regular service to Africa.
Displacing 3,531,000, it was to to be bigger than the famous post war "Graf
Zeppelin". In the final stages of the war, there was, in fact, a ten engined
ship of that size on the drawing boards, the "L 100". The order for the ship
was not actually placed by Strasser but by his successor. The idea for such
a ship probably originated with Strasser,however. He consistently agitating
for ships which could fly faster and could climb higher.

     Lehmann also asked for the command of the Africa ship and his flight on
"LZ 120" gave him a good claim to it. He, too, was too valuable to risk
losing on a perilous adventure. He was supervising the construction of "L
57" at Friedrichshafen.

     As "L 57" was being completed, another ship, "L 54" was being outfitted
at the Tondern base. Its captain was Lieutenant Commander (Kapitänleutnant)
Ludwig Bockholt. He was born on March 1, 1885 in Heerdt in the Rhineland.
Heerdt was then a small village; now it is a bustling industrial suburb of
neighboring Düsseldorf. His parents were catholic and he was baptized Johann
Louis. Some time before his 18th year, for reasons best known to himself, he
dropped the Johann and translated the French name Louis, unusual in Germany
at that time, into its German equivalent Ludwig. Bockholt's birth
certificate lists his father's occupation as "Landwirt" (farmer) but he must
have been prosperous enough to be able to send his son to the "Gymnasium",
roughly the equivalent of high school, for which tuition had to be paid.
Graduation from the Gymnasium enabled Bockholt to apply for a midshipman's
berth in the navy at 18.

     It was a good time to apply for a navy commission. The navy enjoyed the
enthusiastic support of Emperor William II. It was his favorite service, his
personal plaything. The Navy Law of 1898 had laid down the first plans for a
large navy; in 1900 the Reichstag voted substantial funds for it and in the
process, the naval strength projected in 1898 was doubled to 34 battleships
and 70 cruisers, to be still further enlarged later. The demand for officers
was great. At least in part by design, the navy was not solely the domain of
Prussian nobility as were all but the lowest ranks of the army. Even though
the top posts in the. navy were mostly occupied by those whose names
contained the prefix "von", a man without that predicate of nobility had at
least had a chance to advance if he was so inclined and had something within
him to back his ambitions. The creator of the German navy, Grand Admiral von
Tirpitz, had himself been born a commoner. He was elevated to the nobility
when he was appointed Secretary of State for the Navy after serving in that
service for 21 years with distinction. The navy was the place for a young
man like Bockholt who enjoyed none of the advantages assured by social
status and family.

     The new midshipman was a tall, round faced man. Life had not yet marked
his face, he was too young for that, and character also had made only a
slight imprint so far. He had a broad, thin mouth, almost tightlipped, that
said nothing to the observer. The formal portrait for which he sat at the
Naval School, shows his eyes, set together slightly more closely than ideal
proportion might call for, unfocussed as if he did not wish to look at the
photographer and had chosen no other point upon which to fix his gaze. His
hat was placed straight upon his head, in part hiding his face and
increasing the anonimity of his features. To be sure, the occasion was not
one which encouraged spontaneity or expression of individuality in a young
midshipman but the resulting picture is one of a man feeling slightly out of
place, who had retreated behind a wall of blankness.

     His naval career began with the customary year at sea on a cadet
training ship. Then followed Two years as a midshipman at the Naval School
at Mürwick, near the great naval base at Kiel. After he passed his final
examinations, he was commissioned an Ensign in 1907. Promotion to Lieutenant
came somewhat more quickly than usual. During the next five years he spent
two years on board a cruiser and a torpedo boat and the rest of the time he
served as a company officer on shore at the naval base at Wilhelmshaven and
in the German colony at Tsingtao in China. This was rather more shore duty
than than was customary for a junior officer but in 1914 he went back to sea
in the new, 24,000 ton battleship "Prinzregent Luitpold". She caried a crew
of 1073 men and Bockholt was one of a staff of thirty officers. The
"Prinzregent" was not a happy ship. She had been put into service on August
19, 1913, with a patchwork crew that not yet been welded into a team. Her
officers, like Bockholt, lacked big ship experience. Discipline was
"mangelhaft" - inadequate. After the Spring exercises of 1914, she was rated
not fully ready for combat because of the inadequacies of her crew.

     The "Prinzregent" remained an unhappy ship. A later commander of the
ship wrote that her captain was the "absolute master of his ship. The men
were afraid of him, very much afraid. That is no bond that lasts". When war
was declared, life on board became an endless progression of drills, cruises
that went nowhere and stand-by alerts that did not lead to action. During
airship raids on England, the battleships were always put on stand-by in
case it might be necessary to sally forth to assist a damaged airship. It
must have been humiliating for the crews to see their iron battleships wait
in harbor while the gasbags smote England. Finally, in 1916, came the battle
of Jutland - the great collision of the battlefleets so long in building.
The "Prinzgregent Luitpold" claimed to have sunk two English destroyers but
in the engagements with the heavier enemy units, she dealt no blows and
rereceived none. After the battle, however, the "Prinzregent Luitpold", like
the rest of the German battleships, again spent most of her time in harbor.
Bored, Bockholt volunteered for the airship service. Shortly after Bockholt
left the ship, her crew mutinied.

     In the summer of 1916, there were twenty four Executive Officers,
mostly with the rank of lieutenant, on flying duty with the Airship
Division. The German navy, however, was chary with promotions and firm about
the prerogatives of rank. Bockholt's rank of Lieutenant Commander, which he
had in the meantime attained, entitled him to the command of an airship and
so it came about that he, rather than one of the Executive Officers already
on flying duty, was sent to be trained as an airship captain. In October, he
was assigned to "L 11" which had been pressed into service after the ane
lost both of its training airships by fire on September 16th. The normal
training course for an airship commander and his crew - they were trained
together - was six months but the pressures of war and the new shortage of
training ships shortened Bockholt's training time. After completing the
course, he was, on January 30, 1917, given command of airship "L 23".

     The Bockholt of 1917 looked little different from the young midshipman
who had entered the navy in 1903. The face was Still unremarkable but small
diagonal folds had now formed at the corners of his mouth. They suggested
firmness and determination. By now Bockholt had been habituated to the
exercise of military authority.

     Göbel, a meteorologist who later served with Bockholt, described him as
a "Faust Natur" - a man like the Dr. Faust of Goethe's drama who sold his
soul to the devil to obtain satisfaction of his earthly quests. Göbel added
that Bockholt was a "very determined soldier who could not be moved from a
decision once he made it; his eagerness to make decisions
("Entschlussfreudigkeit") was to lead him to his misfortune". This
description calls to mind the scene in which Faust, searching for an apt
translation of the first sentence of the Gospel of St. John, "In the
beginning was the word", decides that the words "In the beginning was the
deed" is the true German translation of the original. Bockholt's new ship,
"L 23", was next to the last of the 1,264,000 cubic foot type "q" ships
which had been built for the navy in 1915 and 1916. Its ceiling of only
11,500 feet and its maximum Speed of 57 m.p.h. made it semi-obsolete by
1917. "L 23" normally patrolled the eastern sector of the zeppelin screen
which the German navy maintained over the North Sea every day when the
weather allowed it. It cruised along the Danish coast and over the
Skagerrak, reconnoitered, flew protective cover for minesweepers, kept an
eye on neutral shipping and fishing vessels and watched for any sign of the
British fleet. Bockholt never saw it. Once again, he faced a humdrum
routine.

     Less than three months after Bockholt assumed command of "L
23",however, he made himself a hero to the Airship Division while at the
same time earning a stiff reprimand from the Chief of the Naval Airships.
April 23, 1917 had been a day off for the crew of "L 23". A report that
submarine "UC 30" was missing in the North Sea sent "L 23" belatedly aloft
at 9:36 a.m. with orders to search for the vessel along the Danish coast as
far as Norway. At 10:30 a.m., "L 23" received a radio message, that "UC 30"
had reported in, a report that turned out to be mistaken. Bockholt was
ordered to reconnoiter over the Grand Fisher Bank instead.

     At about two o'clock, Bockholt sighted to starboard a medium-sized,
flush decked bark - a vessel Square rigged on the fore and main mast and
fore and after rigged on the rear, mizzen mast. The ship was the 36 year
old, 664 ton "Royal", flying the Norwegian flag. She was at a point about 90
miles south of Andeles Light, leaving the Skagerrak and heading into the
North Sea. Bockholt would not have given this worn, graceless ship a second
look except that she was sailing on a westerly course in the direction of
England with a. deck cargo of mining pit props. This cargo was contraband.

     Bockholt approached the bark warily. A single incendiary bullet
flashing into one of the airship's hydrogen cells would transform it into a
blazing inferno instantly. He had to be sure that this harmless looking ship
was not a British trap. A few months earlier, Buttlar had mistaken the
English armed trawler "Ramexo" for a fishing vessel and flown over her at
low altitude. "Ramexo" had opened fire and forced Buttlar to beat an
ignominious retreat. Only by hitting "the panic button" (the Germans called
it the "Sammelknopf" or Instantaneous Release Button), which sent "L 30's"
bombload plummeting into the ocean and dropping most of his ballast besides,
had Buttlar been able to get away. ship's crew lowered two lifeboats and
rowed away from the ship. Bockholt's maneuvers had alarmed the captain of
the "Royal", Lorentz Eriksen. He knew that the Germans were now waging
unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters surrounding England and France
as well as in the Mediterranean. Disregarding previously accepted rules of
warfare, U boats were sinking all ships intercepted, whether Allied or
neutral, without warning and without regard for the safety of the crew. The
number of ships torpedoed had grown rapidly, reaching a climax on the 19th
of April when eleven merchantmen and eight fishing vessels went to their
ocean graves. After that the new convoy system adopted by the Allies
provided gradually greater protection. Captain Eriksen knew that "Royal" was
carrying contraband cargo. Loaded on deck, it was in plain sight. With open
season on all those trading with England, what would this "Zeppeliner" do?
The prudent thing was to get away from the ship, clear of any bombs the
German might drop.

     The abandoned ship lay gently rolling in the calm sea. It was a
temptation which Bockholt could not resist. Winterweather and frequent
engine trouble had permitted him to make only eleven patrol flights during
the eighty three days he had been on "L 23" and nothing worthy of note had
occured on any of the flights. The future promised no greater opportunities
for distinction or excitement. Now he saw his chance - never before had an
airship had ever captured a ship on the high seas!

     "L 23" landed on the water near the Norwegian lifeboats, a delicate and
difficult maneuver. First Mate Fegert and two petty officers, armed with
pistols, boarded one of the boats. At gun point, they forced the hapless
Norwegian crew to return to the "Royal" and set sail for Hamburg. "L 23"
followed the ship for an hour and to make sure that all went well and then
resumed its patrol. For some reason Bocknolt delayed reporting the capture
until 5:33 p.m. "L 23" returned to its base at 9:52. Instead of the expected
praise, Commander Strasser handed Bockholt a "big cigar", as the Germans
referred to a reprimand. Open water landings were too risky and the threat
of hidden guns too great. A ship like the "Royal" and her cargo were not
worth the risk to which Bockholt had put "L 23", Strasser knew that the
British were going to great lengths to hunt down German zeppelins. That very
morning, he had instructed Lt. Bödecker in "L 30", searching for "UC 30" on
a course to the west of "L 23", to check on some suspicious English fishing
vessels that had appeared on the Dogger Bank lately but he had ordered
Bödecker to "check with great caution. Do not approach to closely!" Having
given these orders to Bödecker, Strasser must have been livid over
Bockholt's disregard of what he considered common sense prudence. Strasser's
fury could hardly have been dampened by the the knowledge that Lt. Bödecker
had sighted a Dutch three masted sailing vessel, the "Sirra", at about the
same time Bockholt had found the "Royal". She had been northbound with a
deck cargo Bödecker had been unable to make out and he had let her go.

     The story of the "Royal" quickly made the rounds among the airship
crews. It was a tonic for their low spirits. They could still confound the
world with their courage and daring. With each retelling the deed gained in
elan and valor. A bomb had been dropped to stop the unresponsive Norwegians,
the machine guns had fired several bursts into the water to intimidate the
crew, the prize crew had cowed the Norwegians by telling them they would
blow the old scow sky high if they did not obey and similar braggadocio. By
dint of repetition these tales later became "historical facts", faithfully
reported by all manner of writers and historians.

     Upon the safe arrival of the "Royal" in Hamburg, the German newspapers
reported the "extraordinary accomplishment", adding that Fegert had "so
highly distinguished himself" that he had been promoted to warrant officer
on the spot. By grim blunder - or was it Strasser's way of discouraging
Similar foolhardy quests for glory - the newspapers gave credit for the
capture of the "Royal" to Lt. Commander Koch who had been killed several
days earlier. Bockholt was not mentioned at all.

     Despite the reprimand Bockholt had received, he made another
waterlanding on May 23rd. He came down near some Danish fishing vessels to
pick up two German airmen the Danes had rescued after they had crashed.
Strasser said nothing about the matter, at least not officially. The rescue
of two fellow soldiers is hard to criticize, although Bockholt could have
relayed the Danish signal to some German ship in Heligoland Bay instead.

     On June 14, Bockholt and his crew were reassigned to the newly
completed "L 54", a much larger ship. Assignment to new ships went strictly
by length of flying service but the heavy toll among airship crews brought
Bockholt to the top of the list after only six months of flying duty.

     To Strasser, Bockholt seemed to be the right man for the "China" ship.
The assignment to "L 54" had given Bockholt and his crew a chance to
acquaint themselves with the type of ship which was being used to build "L
57". Bockholt had proven his courage and as a junior officer he could be
more readily spared than others. He would leave no wife or children behind;
he was, like Maas, a bachelor.

     Once he had selected Bockholt, Strasser backed him to the hilt. He gave
him a free hand in getting the "China" ship ready and urged the Ministry of
the Navy that it do so also, describing Bockholt as an "excellent, tested
airship commander whom I judge, because of his personality, to be
particularly Suitable for the undertaking". Strasser's clerk, however, was
not yet familiar with the name of this airship commander, mispelling it
every time as he wrote to the letter to the Ministry.

     On September 20, with orders to lead "Operation China" in his pocket,
Bockholt turned "L 54" over to his successor. It was the disappointed
Buttlar. Then he hurried off to the Zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen and
his new command, "L 57". He was expected the next day.




                                Chapter VII

                           A QUESTION OF JUDGMENT

     On September 26th, Bockholt assumed command of "L 57" at the Zeppelin
Works in Friedrichshafen.

     It was the largest airship that had been built until that time,
measuring 743 feet in length and 78.4 feet in diameter. Stood on end beside
the Washington Monument, "L 57" would have reached 188 feet beyond the top
of that obelisk. Only three of the transatlantic oceanliners of the day, the
"Mauretania" and the two outsized sisterships, the "Vaterland" and the
"Bismarck", were longer than this latest progeny of Zeppelin's.

     Because of the two sections which had been inserted into its hull, the
ship looked more like a long,slender cigar than the elegant teardrop shapes
of the latest German airships. Nevertheless, "L 57's" ancestry was patent.
Its nose was a pleasing paraboloid, its tail slenderly pointed. Near the
nose of the hull hung the control car. Unlike, the post-war airships, in
which the control car was generally joined directly to the hull, it was
suspended some distance below the hull by six struts to give the propellor
mounted at the rear of the car sufficient clearance from the hull. The
control car housed the rudder and elevator controls, which permitted the
ship to turn and rise or descend, as well as the navigation and radio
equipment. One of the ship's engines was installed in its rear. On "L 57",
the control car was smaller and more streamlined than the standard design
because the separate, sound proof radio cabin normally installed between the
steering compartment in the nose of the car and the engine compartment in
the rear had been left out to save weight. A series of flat windows was
wrapped around the front of the control car, reaching back about one third
of the car's length. Near the front of the car, a streamlined bumper bulged
out from its floor. Its function was to absorb the shock of any contact the
ship might make with the ground during take-off and landing maneuvers. A
similar bumper was installed underneath the rear engine car. An unprotected
ladder permitted the crew to climb from the car into the hull. About a third
of the ship's length behind its nose, hung two streamlined engine gondolas,
one on each side of the hull and mounted high enough so that their
propellors could turn freely while the ship was on the ground. Each of the
gondolas contained one of the ship's five watercooled, six cylinder 260 h.p.
Maybach gasoline engines.

     The engine gondolas were large enough to permit two men to service and
repair the engine in flight. Still further back hung a large engine car
which housed two engines which were coupled in tandem to drive a single,
large propellor. It was, like the other propellors, single bladed and made
of wood. The rear engine car also carried an emergency steering post from
which the ship could be controlled if the main controls in the control car
failed. A ladder connected each engine car to the hull above it. The total
engine power was 1,300 h.p. but this was to prove insufficient, leaving the
ship sluggish. The "Los Angeles", which the Germans built for the United
States Navy in 1924, was powered by 2,000 h.p. though it was not much larger
than "L 57". On the hull, close to the tail, were mounted, cruciform, the
horizontal and vertical tail fins which carried, hinged to their rear edges,
the two rudders and elevators. The vert ical stabilizer mounted on the top
of the hull was somewhat larger than the one on bottom. Tne forward edges of
the stabilizers were curved, the rear straight.

     The covering of the hull was made of cotton cloth to which several
layers of airplane "dope", a varnishlike substance had been applied. This
waterproofed the cover and reduced the resistance to the air flowing past it
in flight. Particular care had been taken in waterproofing the hull of "L
57". It was feared that heavy rainfall in Africa might waterlog the ship and
make it difficult to fly and land. The silver-gray color that the ship's
cover had been given reflected sun light and thus would help to keep down
the temperature of the gas cells on bright days. The color was a compromise
between the standard black camouflage color of the navy airships, which
absorbed too much heat, and a sunreflecting white which would have made the
ship too visible in the air and on the ground.

     The only touches of color appearing on the outside of the gray giant
were black teutonic Iron Crosses painted on each side of the hull near the
nose and the tail and the naval ensigns painted behind each of the Iron
Crosses in the rear.

     The internal structure was made of duraluminum, a light alloy which is
stronger and harder than regular aluminum. The main vertical structural
members of the hull were strong round girders, placed 49 feet apart.[15]
Between each of the round girders were placed two rings which did not carry
any structural load but helped to give the hull its shape. These vertical
members were connected by twenty five longitudenal girders which, except for
the more lightly constructed nose and tail — ran the length of the ship.
Along the bottom of the framework formed by the ring and longitudenal
girders, ran a keel which was formed by girders shaped like an inverted V.
The bottom of the V rested on the bottom of the vertical round girders. The
point of the V was connected with the point of the V structure of the next
ring for most of the length of the ship. Lateral braces, which ran from the
apex of the V to the girder on which the V was mounted, gave additional
stiffness to the structure. This keel gave the ship great resistance to
bending stresses and served as a storage space for cargo, gasoline and oil
drums while at ther same time providing space for those of the crew of were
not on duty. A catwalk, or more properly, a series of step plates, one foot
wide and a pace apart, ran through the length of the keel.

     Wrapped around the hull was a wide meshed net which kept the gas cells
from pressing against the outer cover. An intricate system of guy wires
completed the structure of the hull. Without its skin, bbe completed hull
presented an amazing sight, a delicate, filigreed structure sweeping
upwards, defining space with elfin, yet authoritative lines - a cathedral of
aluminum tubing and fine wire.

     The lift for the ship was provided by sixteen gas cells which were
suspended inside the hull. These were filled with hydrogen gas. It is the
most effective lifting gas available but, unlike helium to which the Germans
had no access, it is highly inflammable. If mixed with air, it also becomes
highly explosive. In this highly volatile nature of the gas lay the greatest
weakness of the German airships, a weakness which the Germans were never
able to correct.

     The gas cells were made of cotton cloth over which several layers of of
socalled "Goldbeater's Skin" had been glued. This light and pliable material
was made from the linings of cattle intestines and served to prevent leakage
of gas from the cells. The intestinal linings of 30,000 cattle were needed
to fabricate the cells of a large dirigible. Count Zeppelin had originally
made his cells of rubber but switched to silk bags covered with Goldbeater's
Skin when he discovered that rubber cells rubbing against each other
produced large sparks of static electricity which might ignite hydrogen gas
leaking from the cells. In 1917, wartime shortages forced the Germans to
switch from silk to cotton bags. They, however, leaked more easily.

     At the top of each cell was installed a socalled" maneuvering valve"
which could be manually operated from the control car. These valves were
used for releasing gas to make the ship descend or keeping it at a steady
altitude when the ship became lighter through the conssumption of gasoline,
the dropping of bombs or for other reasons. At the bottom of each cell was
located an automatic valve through which excess pressure was blown off when
the gas pressure in the cell became to high.

     Scattered throughout the hull at strategic spots were "pants", water
ballast bags which somewhat resembled the pants of an excessively obese
person. Quick release valves, actuated from the command car, permitted their
contents to be dumped quickly in an emergency maneuver.

     The craft had a top speed of 64 m.p.h. and was theoretically able to
climb to 27,000 feet. Actually, "L 57" would not have been able to fly
higher than 13,000 to 15,000 feet since it carried no oxygen equipment. This
would have been essential to sustain life at higher altitudes. So
ingeniously was "L 57" constructed that it was able to carry a payload of
114,700 pounds though it weighed only 60,600 pounds itself.

     Once "L 57" was completed, little time was wasted. Only four test
flights were made. They were satisfactory - 530 miles were covered at an
average speed of 54 m.p.h. However, the performance trials which the navy
required before it could formally accept the ship were not completed. The
Ministry of the Navy complained about this but there was not enough gasoline
available in the rear echelons to make all the Flights needed. On October
6th, "L 57" was flown to Jüterbog, an airship base south of Berlin. This
spot had been chosen for the loading process as security there was thought
to be particularly good. The cargo was ready to be put on board, except for
5 tons of ammunition which had been sent ahead to Yambol and was to be
loaded there. Loading was completed by noon on Sunday, October 7th. It was
no small feat to complete the ship, load it and have it ready to leave for
Bulgaria by the 7th. It looked as "L 57" would be able to take cff for
Africa during the period of the new moon during October, just as the
Ministry of the Navy had planned. Sommerfeldt had thought this to be
impossible.

     At Jlterbog the weather was calm. The morning weather map had shown a
low pressure area over the English Channel. Normally, this foretold a storm
later in the day. However, Bockholt judged that he would have time to make a
short flight that afternoon and complete the acceptance tests of "L 57".
During the last few afternoons the wind had always died down and two hours
was all that Bockholt needed to conduct the tests and get the ship back into
its hangar before the storm reached Jüterbog. The afternoon weathermap would
not be available until 6:30 and Bockholt decided not to wait for it. He
ordered the ship brought out. It was not until 5:10, however, that "L 57"
began to move out of its hangar.

     Bringing the ship out was always one of the critical phases in the
operation of a zeppelin, particularly when there was a crosswind blowing.
The difference in the air pressure acting on the ship, in part exposed to
the force of the wind and in part still sheltered in the hall, together with
the eddies of air which might build up at the mouth of the hangar made
handling the ship difficult. A number of ships had already been damaged or
destroyed that way. If the wind exceeded 18 m.p.h., the zeppelin could not
leave the hall at all. Ideally, an airship should be housed in a rotating
hall which can be pointed in the direction of the wind when the ship is
brought out of the hangar. There were two such hangars at Nordholz but they
were expensive and took two years to build. Everyone had expected that the
war would be over before additional rotating hangars could be completed.

     To help maneuver the ship on the ground, its bow and stern were
tethered to small trolleys which ran on rails extending the length of the
hall and out into the field for two hundred yards. "L 57" had been secured
to these trolleys but when it was two-thirds of the way out of the hall, a
strong gust of wind struck it. The ground crew tried to loosen the shackles
tying the tail to the trolley, but inadvertantly released them completely.
With the stern exposed to the wind, requiring every ounce strength of the
crew could muster to hold it still, "L 57" had to be run out of the hall
quickly before another gust slammed it into the hangar door. Buffeted by the
wind, Bockholt took off as quickly as he could.

     The gust heralded the storm that was travelling eastward across
Germany. By 6:30, the wind blew SSW, a direction in which the ship could no
longer be safely brought back into its hangar. Bockholt decided to continue
circling the field and see whether the wind would die down. The wind
direction, however, became even more unfavorable and at 7:00 o'clock,
Bockholt decided to bring the ship down.

     The landing was made without incident. Weighted down by heavy rain, the
ship lay steady but Bockholt was told that the weather would turn worse.
Since the regular ground crew would have trouble holding "L 57" on the field
in a storm, Bockholt asked for two hundred army troops to help them. He was
told that it would take an hour to get them to the field. Bockholt decided
that he could not wait that long and that he had to take off again. He would
ride out the storm in the air or, riding ahead of it, fly to the airship
bases at Kovno or Yambol. Since it was to have been only a short test
flight, Bockholt had taken no food or foul weather gear with him nor did he
have the necessary? Maps on board. Kovno was 500 miles away. At normal
cruising speeds,this meant a flight of eleven hours. Yambol was 900 miles or
20 hours in the air. Bockholt ordered warm clothing, food and maps to be
loaded.

     The delay proved fatal. Shortly before take off a gust slammed the ship
into the ground. Most of the struts attaching the control car to the hull
broke and the ship became inoperable. Vital controls, the signalling system
connecting the control car with the engine gondolas, ballast controls and
the elevator and rudder controls would no longer work. Fifty minutes later,
at 12:40 a.m., the wind finally dropped a little and the ground crew began
to march the damaged ship back to the hall. As it approached the hangar, the
ship began to turn sideways into the wind. Bockholt jumped out of the
control car, the crew having already disembarked. Just at that moment the
rain stopped. Rid of the burden of the rain, the ship became light, tore out
of the hands of the crew, floated up, hit the entrance and crushed its nose.
Bockholt shouted for the men to shoot into the top of the gas cells to speed
up the release of the now unwanted gas. Loose and at the mercy of the wind,
the ship blew some 600 feet across the field while some of the men doggedly
hung on to the handling lines. As the wounded giant became heavy again with
the loss of gas, the crew managed to hold it, but to little avail. Ina 32.4
m.p.h. wind, the rear engine car was smashed heavily into the ground again
and again. At last the car collapsed. Pivoting on the starboard engine car,
the tortured ship turned into the wind and broke apart. It tore out of the
hands of the ground crew, blew across the field and came to rest against a
boundary fence. Sparks flickered along the hull, a red flame shot out of the
top and at 2:00 a.m. a great explosion of gas, ammuntion and fuel set the
whole ship aflame. It burned for five hours. One man was killed, four
seriously injured. The cargo was a total loss, a particularly painful loss
as quinine was in such short supply.

     An inquiry into the loss began the same day. Lieutenant Commander
Sommerfeldt presided. He must have done so with mixed emotions. Bockholt had
reduced the plan on which Sommerfeldt had worked to shambles; the China"
ship was a heap of burned out aluminum girders. Yet, in another sense he
could sympathize. Sommerfeldt, too, had lost a zeppelin in a hard landing a
few weeks before. Bockholt, his Executive Officer, Ensign Maas, Warrant
Officer Grussendorf, Machinist Busch and First Mate Wald of the "L 57" crew
testified. The inquiry delved at length into the details of the destruction
of the'ship, dealt lightly with the propriety of Bockholt's decision to make
the flight in spite of doubtful weather information and did not go into
Bockholt's actions after the landing at all.

     Bockholt stated: "I blame myself for not having properly taken into
account the threatening signs on the morning weather map before I started
the trip". Having made this concesssion, he immediately criticised the lack
of up-to-date weather reports at rear echelon airship ports. The testimony
was put in writing and Bockholt put his bold, unshaken signature at the foot
of his deposition. Maas' signature lacked Bockholt's selfassurance. The
first three letters of his name were carefully penned as if it were a
copybook exercise but the final "s" was tacked on as if the writer did not
quite know what to do with it. It was an awkward and immature signature.
Busch and Wald added short statements supporting the testimony of their
chief as did Grussendorf who had joined the crew only the day before. What
shifted the balance of the report in Bockholt's favor somewhat was the
deposition of "Volunteer Airship Captain" Dr. Hugo Eckener, Count Zeppelin's
old associate. He was in Jtiterbog to join the flight to Yambol on "L 57" in
order to study the performance of the new long-range ship. In the navy, he
was known as the "Pope of Airships", a reflection of the high respect which
he enjoyed because of his extensive experience with airships. Eckener
testified that a low pressure area moving in from the Channel coast could be
expected to cause bad weather, but there had been no nothing to indicate
that the storm would grow as powerful as it did. To the contrary, one should
have expected it to die down before it reached Jtiterbog. There were some
important questions which were left unanswered. Was there any justification
for risking this specially built ship and its valuable cargo on a trial
flight under the particular circumstances at all? Did Bockholt make his
decision to leave Jlterbog promptly enough. Did he play for time too long?
These questions were a matter of judgment and difficult to answer at best.
Since they were not the main focus of the inquiry, little evidence was
produced by which they could be evaluated.

     The Ministry of the Navy telephoned the Zeppelin Company on the same
day and ordered it to convert "L 59", an airship nearing completion, into a
"China" ship. The Zeppelin Company thought that this could be done by the
25th. The Kaiser was advised of the accident and that the attempt would be
repeated in November. Such was the momentum of events that no thought seems
to have been given to whether the attempt should be made in view of the
delay and other setbacks that had just occured. A few days earlier, the
Allies had claimed that they had reached a point 35 miles from Mahenge, the
landing area proposed for the Africa ship. The prevailing spirit was: "Jetzt
erst recht!" - no more than ever. Ludendorff, however, lost no time in rend
nates the Colonial Office that he had predicted the project would fail and
to complain that his objections had not been reported to the Emperor as he
had requested. He ignored the fact that one of his own men, Lt. Col.
Thomsen, had been present when the Kaiser approved the "China Operation".
What seemed to rankle was that the Ministry of the Navy had not informed
Ludendorff of the outcome of the conference.

     Lt. Col. Thomsen gave his chief's pique more concrete form. He refused
to let the Yambol crew remain at the airship base until November. " The new
formations need every man", he wired the Naval Command. He did, however,
permit the 50 men manning the hydrogen gas generating plant to remain. The
navy was surprised by this outburst of ill will. Knorr speculated that
dissatisfaction with the aluminum ration which had just been allocated to
the army had caused it.

     Strasser now faced a dilemna. He was highly displeased by the loss of
"L 57" and the way Bockholt had handled it. A certain tension between the
two men seems to have preceded the disaster. The Colonial Office had sent
Strasser a clipping from the "London Times" of September 10th which reported
attacks on German troops at Maponda by six British airplanes belonging to
the East Africa Expeditionary Force. He had passed a copy of the report to
Bockholt with a memorandum:

        "For your information. According
        to this, danger from airplanes is
        considerable. Request comment.
        Strasser"

     Bockholt wrote his cryptic answer into the left margin of the
memorandum and returned it to Strasser.

        "Undertaking deemed feasible anyway.

     The terseness of the correspondence was mocked by the flowery aye of
address used by Strasser's secretary which even in protocol conscious
Germany had by then become oldfashioned. The letter was addressed to: "The
Imperial Lieutenant Commander Mr. Bockholt, Hochwohlgeboren[16]".

     Although the brusque wording of the exchange between the two officers
was within acceptable limits in military correspondence, its utter lack of
any personal touch, particularly in Bockholt's answer which disdained a
single word of explanation (though one was given later), suggests certain
coldness between the two men. What was involved in the destruction of "L
57", however, was bad judgment, not the breach of any regulation or palpable
lack of skill. There was no concrete evidence of wrong doing. It was a
question of how good Bockholt's judgment had been. Nothing destroys
initiative and aggressiveness in subordinate officers more quickly than
being condemned for a disappointing result by a superior who was not obliged
to make the decision and who judges it with the benefit of hindsight.
Decisions must often be made when the avalable information is incomplete,
when the likely outcome can be measured only by the roughest probablities,
and when time and circumstances permit no postponement of the decision. Yet,
even an error of judgment can be so egregious as to become intolerable. The
exact point at which an error of judgment ceases to be only that if often
very hard to determine. Strasser was not prepared to publicly accuse
Bockholt of being culpably negligent or incompetent. In a private letter to
Commander von Knorr, Chief of Staff of the Naval Command, he wrote that
Bockholt was not guilty of "vertretbare Schuld". That expression is at best
obscure. "Schuld" means guilt or culpability. "Vertretbar" could mean
defensible. Thus "defensible guilt" is what Strasser seemed to say Bockholt
was not guilty of. Had Strasser merely clumsily expressed the thought that
Bockholt was tainted by "indefensible guilt"? This would have been
consistent with the tone and tenor of the rest of Strasser's letter.

     The confusing phrase, however, was repeated by others, perhaps as a
convenient way of avoiding expression of their own misgivings. If Strasser
did not want to censure his subordinate directly, he made his feelings clear
when he complained to Knorr in the same letter that Bockholt should have
known that his weather information was inadequate and that he should have
checked with him hefore making the flight. To Strasser misjudging the
weather may have seemed particularly inexcusable. His instincte for weather
was unusually keen. It had even been mentioned when Admiral Scheer
recommended that Strasser be awarded the "Ordre pour le Mérite".

     The crux of the matter is that Bockholt seems to have applied ordinary
judgement and have taken ordinary risks in an extraordinary situation with a
one-of-a-kind ship, ata time when time for the venture was running short.
The newspapers that day brought the unwelcome news that Mahenge, assumed to
be the site of German headquarters in Africa, had been captured by Belgian
troops and that British airplanes had attacked Masasi.

     The loss of "L 57" and the capture of Mahenge left Strasser depressed.
"Early clarification is necessary because the whole enterprise depends on
the situation down there" was his final comment in the letter to Knorr.
Despite his doubts, Strasser did eae withdraw from the project but he did
want to replace Bockholt as the commander of the mission. "L 59", which was
being rebuilt for the Africa flight, had been assigned by reason of flight
seniority to Lt. Cmdr. Herbert Ehrlich, a veteran commander. He was already
at Staaken, where "L 59" was being built, ready to take command of the ship.
Ehrlich was anxious to make the flight. To deny him his request, Strasser
felt, would be seen as a snub and a demotion; giving Bockholt another ship
would not.

     The Naval Command overruled Strasser. Even though Bockholt could not be
absolved of blame in loosing "L 57" when so much at stake, what was done was
done. Bockholt was now familiar with the undertaking and it was better to
keep him as commander. However, the airship was made directly subordinate to
the Naval Command with Strasser retaining responsibility for technical
matters affecting the flight. The move avoided friction between the two
officers and minimized Strasser's need to deal with the man who had been
given command of the flight over his opposition. The Naval Command set the
date for the take off for November 10th, contingent on the situation then
prevailing in Africa.

     Strasser turned to other things. For several weeks bad weather had
prevented offensive action against England. He hoped that the upcoming
moonless period would permit him to mount a massive strike against England.
Interior industrial cities like Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool were to
be the target. The morning weather map on the 19th looked favorable although
the report from Ostende, the most easterly weather station, was missing.
Strasser ordered fourteen ships to be readied for the attack. Late in the
morning, he telephoned the captain of "L 45", Lt. Cmdr. Waldemar Kölle.
"Kölle. The weather is good. Push deep into the interior. Good luck!" Twelve
ships took off, two could not be brought out of their hangars because of
cross winds.

     For once, Strasser's gift for predicting the weather and the
meteorological service failed. Strong air currents at high altitudes had
gone undetected. The ships, flying at great height for protection, found
themselves drifting rapidly and soon out of control altogether. The howling
storm drove them southwards over France. Radio communications broke down
because too many ships tried to get their bearings by radion triangulation
at the same time. The crew became exhausted by the cold and lack of oxygen.
There were numerous engine failures in the freezing temperatures. They were
aggrevated by the inability of the engine mechanics, left dazed and sluggish
by the rarified air, to take timely corrective action. "L 44" went down in
flames over St. Clement, the victim of French antiaircraft guns. "L 55" set
an involuntary altitude record of 24,990 feet while trying to escape French
planes and was wrecked on landing in Germany. "L 50" crashed at Dammartin,
knocked off its control car and, thus lightened, rose and drifted off into
the Mediterranean.

     Kölle reached the English coast at 16,400 feet but much further south
than he had planned. He set his ship on a course for Sheffield, got lost in
the clouds and was unable to get a radio fix on his position. A light
pattern in the clouds suggested industrial smoke stacks beneath and Kölle
dropped six bombs on this "target". Yielding to the wind, he turned south
for London and travelling much faster than expected, reached the English
capital at 20,000 feet. He dropped more bombs as the weather turned into a
storm and his ship was being helplessly pushed southward. At 3 a.m., one of
the engines failed and soon afterwards a second. The ship was down to 40% of
its normal speed. The helmsman asked for a course that would take the ship
to Spain but Kölle refused. He hoped to turn east and slideslip back into
Germany. With the oxygen supply exhausted, the crew suffered headaches and
felt weak, was slow to react and befuddled. At dawn, the Swiss Alps appeared
to the east and Kölle realized that he would be unable to reach Germany. His
ship did not have the power to turn back and breast the winds. The end came
over the steep Buech valley, north of Sisteron, in the south of France. With
only one hour's worth of gasoline remaining in the tanks, Kölle steered the
ship over a small island in the Buech. With superhuman effort the crew
landed it. Kölle and the crew got out of the ship. K$lle armed his signal
gun, a flare arched into the ship and it was in flames. Large crowds of
people had by now collected on both sides of the river to watcen the amazing
spectacle and there was no hope of escape for the Germans. They waded across
the stream, Kölle being carried by one of his men, and surrendered.

     Behind Kölle, "L 49", under the command of Lt. Cmdr. Hans Karl Gayer,
was also being washed southward. Near Bourbonne les Bains, fighter planes of
No. 152 "Crocodiles Escadrille" attacked "L 49". They had no incendiary
ammunition but the planes shot so many holes into the black zeppelin's gas
cells that the ship began to gently settle down into the woods beneath. It
landed with negligible damage. Gayer tried to set the ship on fire with his
signal pistol but it did not work. Adding insult to injury, he and his crew
were captured by a French hunting party which had hurried to the scene. All
the ship's secret papers, radio code, table of call signs and radio
navigation logs were captured and the elite of the navy was locked up in a
barn in Mirecourt.

     Gayer seemed to have jinxed the ships he commanded. His first ship, "L
9", accidentally burned at its base at Fuhlsbüttel only eight days after it
was assigned to him. His next command, "L 16", also burned shortly after he
left to take over "L 49". That ship's nose collapsed as Gayer flew it from
its construction yard to its base at Ahlhorn. Reinforcing the nose section
laid up the ship for so long that Gayer was able to make only two patrol
flights before he took it on its first and last bombing raid. Now "L 45" was
in Allied hands in practically perfect condition, to be studied by English
and French engineers at leisure and in detail.

     Gayer and Kölle soon had visitors. The gentlemen of the French Deuxième
Bureau - Counterintelligence - interrogated Kölle three times, not very
skillfully he thought, and he had no trouble keeping his silence. They
seemed to be mainly interrested in whether he had intended to attack Lyons.
The situation changed a week later, however, when a British major appeared.
He spoke German fluently. He said that he had worked at the Spandau
munitions works for a long time, an explanation which Kölle considered
reasonable, but he was dumbfounded when the English officer began addressing
petty officers in "Plattdeutsch", the difficult dialect of the North Sea
coast.

     The major was without doubt Major Bernhard Trench of the Royal Marines.
In 1907 he had gone to Wiesbaden, a charming spa in central Germany, to
learn German and had qualified as a German interpreter. In June 1910, he was
sent to Denmark for language studies. In the Fall, he left Denmark to travel
to Kiel in Germany with his friend, Lt. Vivian Brandon of the Hydrographic
Office of the Royal Navy. From Kiel they moved on to Heligoland and the
German North Sea Islands until on August 22nd, they were finally arrested at
Borkum, the last German island in the off shore chain, on charges of
espionage. Whether they were guilty of spying in a legal sense until they
reached Borkum, is open to question. They had bought maps which were on
public sale, made notes about objects on public view, often on picture
postcards bought on the spot, hired a guide to show them around Heligoland
and determined the location of the shallows of Sylt by bathing there. In
Borkum, however, Brandon was caught inside a barbed wire fence surrounding a
gun position, and he and Trench were arrested. It was not until the two were
tried later that the Germans learned from Trench's testimony that he had
entered the battery even before Brandon.

     Whether these amateurish activities had official sanction or were a
private venture is not clear. Brandon admitted that he was planned to turn
the information over to "Reggie" and Trench added that "Reggie" was
connected with the Intelligence Bureau of the Admiralty. Who "Reggie" was or
what his connection with the Intelligence Bureau was, neither prisoner would
say. Brandon also admitted at his trial that the "John Birch" mentioned in
correspondence the Germans had found was the covername of Trench. One
wonders if the founders of the John Birch Society would have ever chosen
that name had they known that it was also the pseudonym of a "limey" spy!
After a two day trial before the German Supreme Court, most of it public so
that the Germans could demonstrate to the world that it was the British, not
they who harbored aggressive intentions, Trench and Brandon were convicted
and sentenced to four years incarceration in a fortress. Trench was sent to
Glatz in Silesia and he had much time there to practice his already
excellent German. In 1913, on the occasion of the state visit of King George
V to Germany, the Kaiser pardoned Trench and Brandon. While the Germans had
treated Trench well, they had not, by this episode, endeared themselves to
him. In 1915, Trench became the head of the German section of the Naval
Intelligence Division.

     Trench found K$lle a hard nut to crack. The French had already provided
him with some practice how to resist questions and Kölle hated the British.
Trench did not esteem his prisoner any more highly but he did not let his
feelings interfere with his work. The interrogations were much longer and
better organized now. The tactics changed quickly, at one moment veiled
threats that airship captains had been guilty of war crimes by bombing open
towns, at another attempts at friendly, personal conversation and then
suddenly a brusque, overbearing onslaught. The tactics worked with the crew.
Much valuable information about the state of the airship fleet was obtained.
Kölle, however, knew his rights and refused to answer questions. The major
switched to another approach, the time honored "I know everything anyway so
there is no harm in your answering a few questions". In a confidential, man
to man tone, Trench started to chat with Kölle about the Naval Airship
Division. The bits and pieces of information which the major dropped
nonchalantly showed that indeed he knew the airship service in great detail.
"Why did Bockholt replace Buttlar as commander of 'L 57'," Trench mused.
"Did Kölle know that "L 57" had been destroyed?" A few more questions
suggested that the major not only knew that "L 57" had been lengthened but
also why this had been done.

     Later, faint tapping signals in the walls told Kölle how his petty
officers had been interrogated. The English major had singled out one of
them, told him the date on which he had brought a defective engine to
Friedrichshafen and added that later he had seen that engine. Whether
truthfully or by design, Trench told another airship captain a similar story
—- that he had spent a day in Friedrichshafen during the war.

     The tapping went on: the face of the man taking notes during the
interrogation was so familiar that the crew was certain they had seen him
before. It was at the Zeppelin construction yard at Staaken and the man had
been dressed as a workman!

     Kölle and Gayer surreptiously wrote reports about their interrogations
which were smuggled out of the camp where they were being held. The reports
reached Germany far too late. Had Kölle's report reached Strasser in October
of 1917, he certainly would have taken immediate, vigorous measures to
tighten up security in Staaken, the airship factory at which Kölle's crew
had seen the English "worker" and where the new "China" ship was then being
built.


    ----------------------------------------
    [15] More accurately speaking, these girders were twenty-five
        sided regular polygons.
    [16] "Hochwohlgeboren" literally translated means most. well
        born. There is no real equivalent for this honorific title
        in the English language.




                                Chapter VIII

                                A CLOSE CALL

     "L 59" was completed on schedule. On October 25, it rose from the
Staaken airfield and made its first flight. Four test and shake down flights
followed, not enough to test the ship adequately but all that time
permitted. Operations orders were prepared on the 30th. By authority of the
"All Highest", Bockholt was to proceed across either the Aegean or Asia
Minor, whichever he chose. As he approached the Protectorate, he was to
establish contact with German headquarters, believed to be southeast of
Mahenge and obtain its assistance in choosing a landing site. A morning
landing in the area southeast of Livale, a village 120 miles to the
southeast of Mahenge and the same number of miles inland from the Indian
Ocean, was recommended. The order was not to fall into enemy hands. Livale
was the site of two rubber plantations and a fortified police post which in
peace time had accomodated thirty native policemen.

     Major Wilhelm Göring read the order with concern. He was the head of
the Military Department of the Colonial Office and there in charge of the
"China Affair". He was the oldest son of the first marriage of Dr. Heinrich
Gdring. The son of a judge, the elder Göring had studied law at the
universities of Bonn and Heidelberg and had entered the judicial service to
become a district court judge (Landgerichtrat). In 1885, Chancellor Bismarck
selected him for a new career. Bismarck had always seen the Germany he had
helped to create as a continental power. Colonies were of little interest to
him. However, commercial interests and expansionist sentiment had forced his
hand. Trading companies had concluded treaties with various African chiefs
and had begun to acquire territories there. German interests and the abuses
of the trading companies required a governmental presence in these areas and
Bismarck had decided to appoint a number of local representatives including
a "Reichskommissar" (Resident Commissioner) for Southwest Africa. Dr. Göring
was chosen for the job. In 1885, he was sent to London to be trained for his
new responsibilities. While in London, Dr. Gdring, a widower since 1879,
married the 26 year old governess of his children, Franziska Tiefenbrunner.
The new Mrs. Göring returned to Germany and soon gave birth to her first
son, Carl Ernst. He was later to join the German troops in East Africa where
in 1914 became the adjudant of Colonel Lettow - Vorbeck.

     Meanwhile, Dr. Gdring had been sent from London to Southwest Africa,
(shortly to become German Southwest Africa and now Namibia), to serve as
Reichskommissar until 1890. The main street in Windhoek, the capital of
Namibia, is still named after him. In 1892, he was appointed Consul in Port
au Prince and while he was there, Franziska, at the family home in Rosenheim
in Germany, gave birth to another boy. He was to become the highest ranking
soldier in German history - Reichsmarschall Hermann Gdring.

     Wilhelm Gdring, or Willy as he called himself, had followed a colonial
career. He had served eleven years with the Schutztruppe in East Africa, the
last four years as District Officer in Usumbura and Udjidji. This involved
the care of administrative affairs of the district and adjudicating legal
disputes among the natives. He had been stationed in the colonies well
beyond the usual time when he returned to Germany in 1912. He married Frieda
Schulz, twelve years his junior, and expected to settle down to a well
deserved retirement.

     Fate had made other plans for him. When war broke out in 1914, the
chief of the Military Department of the Colonial Office joined the army in
the field and was killed a few weeks later. Göring was called out of
retirement to take his place. Promotion to major and an Iron Cross, Second
Class were his ultimate rewards. Göring had no experience with the operation
and navigation of airships, but he knew Africa and he could read a map. The
changes that he had seen taking place on the map of East Africa in recent
days were far from reassuring. A Belgian force, coming from the Congo, had
fought its way across the northwestern part of the German colony and had
captured Mahenge on October 9th. Since then, there had been reports of
fighting in the Mbemkuru valley to south of Livale and of steady British
progress into the Lukuledi valley even further south. With the enemy south
of Livale, an airship landing in that area had become a questionable
proposition. The Operations Orders of the 30th, which lay before Gdring, had
been overtaken by events before the typewriter had punched its last period
into place.

     If Gdring had doubts after studying the map that the African operation
was still feasible, he faced a delicate problem. The Colonial Office favored
the project; it was for the benefit of its troops. The Ministry of the Navy,
the Naval Command and Commander Strasser had all endorsed the flight. One
zeppelin had already been sacrificed in the attempt and another rebuilt for
the trip. Though the enemy was steadily advancing in Africa, it was a
gradual process that provided no visible guide posts marking a definite
turning point. Every news bulletin about East Africa spoke of more ground
lost, of more villages captured but had anything occured that clearly said
that the line had been crossed, that the operation could no longer be
carried out? If the risk had grown beyond acceptable limits, who would
declare this in the face of so much positive support?

     On the morning of the 31st, Göring learned of the capture of Livale
from a summary of enemy newsreports of the prior day. The place which the
Operations Orders had named as a suitable landing place was in enemy hands.
The old questions arose again. Where was Lettow? Could his troops hold out
long enough for Bockholt's ship to reach them? Göring at once went to the
Ministry of the Navy on Königin Augustastrasse to confer with the navy. With
the capture of Livale, he explained, the situation in Africa had
deteriorated somewhat. Still, was this sufficient to call of the mission?
Would not Lettow need help now more than ever? If Göring looked for a clue
that the Navy officers saw the problem differently, apparently it was not
forthcoming. The Navy agreed with Göring. It summarized the conversation in
a memorandum for the files, a memorandum which very much sounded like
whistling in the dark.

     To save time, "L 59" had been loaded at its construction yard in
Staaken rather than bringing it to Jüterbog first. At 7:40 a.m. of November
3rd, it left Staaken for Yambol. Dr. Eckener, Lehmann and other airship
experts were along to study the long distance ship in operation. Flying east
along the Sudeten mountains, it became lost in a dense fog for ae time.
Unwilling to break radio silence, "L 59" descended to 900 feet to search out
a navigation check point. Back on course, while still over Germany, it broke
the drive shaft of its front engine and then the chains of both the main and
emergency rudder controls. Out of control, Bockholt stopped the engines and
while the ship floated free like a balloon for two hours, the crew jury
rigged the rudder with a spare chain. As the broken front engine was coupled
to the generator which powered the radio, Bockholt was unable to report his
mishap. Loath to lose time, he dropped a message to the ground, requesting
that spare parts necessary to repair the engine to be shipped to Yambol. The
emergency repairs completed, "L 59" resumed its trip and turned south
through the Moravian Gap towards the Danube valley, past the ancient towns
of Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. At Svishtov it left the river to turn
south into Bulgaria. At 5,200 feet, it crossed the Stara Platina mountains
into the Tunja river valley. To the eastward, located in the easily
identifiable bent of the Tunja where it turned south, lay the Yambol airship
base. "L 59" landed there at 12:50 on the 4th. Despite the various mishaps,
everyone was very pleased with the trip.

     The crew was doubtlessly thankful that "L 59" was scheduled to make
final preparations in Yambol for no more than six days. Yambol was a town of
about 10,000 people. It offered no amenities or distractions. It was a minor
airship port. Only two ships had been stationed there. "SL 10" had
disappeared without a trace over the Black Sea while under way to bomb
Sevastopol. It was followed by "LZ 101" which had been withdrawn within less
than two months when the army demobilized its airship division. The wooden
barracks were low and crowded together. The place was full of flies and rife
with malaria in summer when the sick rate went as high as 35%. In winter it
was plagued with spotted typhus and dysentery.

     As "L 59" was made its final preparations, the Colonial Office began to
read its map differently. By November 6, it concluded that the bulk of the
German forces was not in the Mahenge area but 225 miles to the southeast
near Lindi on the coast. "Recommend approach of the Makonde Plateau north of
the Rovuma" the Colonial Office advised the Naval Command. The Makonde
Plateau was in the extreme southeastern corner of the Protectorate. Naval
Command forwarded the message to Bockholt later in the day without comment.
The Makonde Plateau contained neither settlements size nor military
installations of any size nor were there any German troops to speak of. Why
select it as the landing place for the airship? The Colonial Office, of
course, had no inkling of Lettow's actual plans since it had lost all
contact with the colony. It could only try to put itself into Lettow's
shoes. What would he do under the circumstances? If Lettow chose to make a
last stand on German soil, a natural assumption, the Makonde Plateau was the
best place to make it. It formed a natural bastion, towering over the
surrounding countryside, 1,600 to 3,300 feet high. Steep escarpments on its
northwestern, the western and the southern sides gave it particular
defensive strength.

     The Makonde Plateau, however, also had its drawbacks. The area was too
great to be held by the available German forces. Its interior was not well
explored and the maps were vague and inaccurate. The area was hot, ranging
from a low of 65° to 75° to a high of 85° F. There were few wells as the
sandstone composition of the plateau permitted the otherwise adequate
rainfall, thirty to forty inches per year, to drain away in its draws and
valleys. It was covered with dense shrub, in some places 18 feet high. "Very
dense bush, alternating bush and native clearings, dense bush" were the
markings all over the map. The bush destroyed visibility on the ground and
would have made it difficult for an airship to land and establishing contact
with ground troops. Whether the small fields wh Lets the Makonde people had
cleared would have supported the troops is questionable and there was little
wildlife from which the soldiers could have supplemented their rations. The
Makonde, living in scattered, well hidden villages, were hostile to the
Germans. They had risen against them in the "Maji-maji" revolt of 1905 and
by the time the uprising had been supressed in 1907, some 100,000 natives
had lost their lives. There had been unrest on the plateau again recently
and there had been reports of German soldiers being ambushed. A punitive
expedition had been sent there to supress the unrest. "Stern but just
punishment" had been meted out though one may wonder how, under the
circumstances, the guilty could have been identified. More likely, justice
was rather summary. Willy Göring had described such justice in a letter to
his grandmother in Rasselstein. "At 9 a.m., a tribal chief was hanged. He
had attacked a caravan, plundered it and killed several people. The garrison
took up its position around the gallows, the already aging criminal was
brought up in fetters. First Lieutenant v. R. read the judgment of
execution, the chief was placed on some crates, the noose was placed around
his neck and the crates were knocked over. Dr. A. was able immediately
afterwards to confirm death. A sentry guarded the [the body of the] hanged
man until evening; until that time he remained as a deterrent example".

     A number of colonial officers, Governor Schnee and Commander Looff
among them, in fact favored making a last stand on the Makonde Plateau as
envisaged by the Colonial Office. They thought that the troops could hold
out there until 1919 by which time the war in Europe would surely be over.
The Germans would have a stronger bargaining position when it came to
colonies, if some African soil were still in their hands. Some also thought
that Lettow's strategy of tying down enemy troops in Africa was not as
effective as he thought because they believed that few of these troops could
be used on the European battlefields. At best fifty thousand would be fit
for that service and that would be a drop in the bucket. Lettow, however,
insisted on continuing the hit and run warfare he had so far conducted and
prevailed on this point.

     The recommendation of the Colonial Office that Bockholt land on the
Makonde Plateau gave him little guidance. The plateau encompassed well over
200 square miles. Bockholt had no information where he could find German
troops on the plateau. There were no places which recommended themselves as
logical landing sites. The responsibility for selecting a landing point for
"L 59" had been quietly passed into Bockholt's hands. There was no reason
why he or Zupitza could make that decision better than the Colonial Office
or the naval staffs in Berlin could but by morning of the 9th, the telegraph
demanded to know where Bockholt had decided to land.

     Whatever Bockholt and Zupitza thought of the Naval Command and the
Colonial Office at this point, they asked no questions and proceeded with
the project. There were still many details to attend to. Some parts were
still being removed from the ship to further lighten it. The German Mission
to the Turkish General Staff was given the prospective flight plan and was
requested to see to it that local Turkish authorities were informed that an
airship was coming. It meant lifting the veil of secrecy drawn over the
operation a little but insuring the safety of the ship warranted it.
Machinist Mate First Class Schulz was court martialled for gross dereliction
of duty, sentenced to five days imprisonment and returned to Germany.
Somebody discovered that the paylevels of the colonial troops was less than
those of the navy of the same grade and Bockholt had to wire Berlin to make
sure that his men would not suffer a reduction in pay when they joined the
"Schutztruppe" after they arrived in Africa. Among the telegraph messages
which kept flowing back and forth between Yambol and Berlin, the telegraph
was the preferred means of communications as the telephone was so
unreliable, was one which may have startled Berlin a little. On the 6th,
Bockholt asked for the birthdates and birthplaces of General Lettow-Vorbeck
(he had been promoted in October), Governor Schnee and Chief Surgeon Hugo
Meixner. He did not say for what he needed this information - social
amenities in the bush perhaps — but the Colonial Office duly obliged.

     A new radio message was sent to Schnee:" Airship mentioned is to arrive
in Protectorate about 14 November 1917".

     Changes in the crew of "L 59" were made even while the ship was already
at Yambol. The normal crew of a five engined naval airship consisted of
twenty three men, a Commander, an Executive Officer, a Machinist who was in
charge of the engine crew and ten Machinist Mates. A First Mate was in
charge of the deck crew which consisted of two Elevator and Rudder Helmsmen
each, two Radio Operators and a Sailmaker Mate who was charged with
maintaining the gas cells and the hull cover.

     Among the first things which Bockholt had done after assuming command
of "L 57" was to replace Warrant Officer Fegert, the man whom the newspapers
had so praised for sailing the "Royal" home after her capture. He wanted him
replaced with a more reliable man, someone skilled in navigational
computations. First Mate Wald, from Gayer's "L 49", took his place. At the
same time, an elevator helmsman was dropped because he lacked sufficient
skill. A newly assigned man, Seaman First Class Schedelman, was to act as
elevator helmsman along with his other duties. A radio operator was also
removed from the crew. Only one would be needed on the flight; there would
not much for him to do until the time came to establish contact with the
Germans troops in the last phase of the trip. An additional officer had been
added to the ship's company, Army Warrant Officer Emil Grussendorf.

     The photographer arranged the men in a formal pose in three rows along
a hangar wall. Bockholt took the place of honor in the middle of the center
row, his hands thrust in the pockets of his coat to show the necessary
insouciance of the flying officer. On his left stood Grussendorf in his army
greatcoat, his double cockaded visor cap set at a rakish angle. Ensign
Heinrich Maas, in full flying gear was placed on Bockholt's right. He, too,
assumed the hands in pocket pose but it was at odds with the pensive
expression in his face. The Chief Petty Officers, Busch and Wald, flanked
the officers and as a token of their rank wore their naval visor caps. The
rest of the men were arranged around this group. Most wore their fur
collared, leather flying jackets, leather pants and boots with felt soles
which would not strike sparks from the metal parts of the ship. They carried
the peculiar escutcheons of their branch of the service, map cases, large
thermos bottles and flashlights. Some of the men were serious, some stiff
and selfconscious, but the high spirits of the rest suffused the picture.

     With the changes already noted, this was the crew which had already
served with Bockholt on "L 23" and "L 54". The Airship Division tried to
keep officers and men together as a team, even when they were when they
transferred to new ships. They had all volunteered for airship service.
Buttlar-Brandenfels has written that he was told to select an all-volunteer
erew for the flight. Bockholt's crew had been examined for their fitness for
service in the tropics but the record does say whether they had been asked
about their willingness to serve on this particularly hazardous mission. If
they had been asked, it would have been difficult for a member of the crew
to now step aside without seeming a coward or a shirker in the eyes of his
messmates which many shared dangers had knit into a tight, intimate group.

     Bockholt's Executive Officer, Maas, had entered the navy in 1914 as an
18 year old Midshipman. He had graduated the airship training course with
Bockholt and had served with him since that time. The normal table of
organization for airship crews called for a lieutenant to fill this post but
Maas had not yet served the time normally required for promotion to this
rank.

     Maas' youth was balanced by the thrity five year old Grussendorf. He
had served as a petty officer on Count Zeppelin's civilian airships and upon
mobilization joined one of the army's airship battalions. He was given the
rank of "Feldwebelleutnant", a hybrid rank which entitled him to wear the
insignia of a master sergeant and the shoulder straps of a lieutenant. A
Warrant Officer in the U.S. Army is close to the rank but whatever the
American equivalent may be, a Feldwebelleutnant performed the duties of an
officer. For a while, Grussendorf had commanded the army training airship "Z
IV". On October 7th, the army had made him available to the navy. The two
services at times lent personnel to each other and the army, having
disbanded its airship service, had crewmen to spare. His assignment to "L
57" and "L 59" was an anomaly. Airships normally carried only two officers,
He may have been assigned to "L 57" and "L 59" so that one officer would be
on duty with each watch; perhaps he was added because no replacement for the
elevator helmsman Bockholt had dropped had been found. His experience would
be of value the mission and his rank, a grade less than an Ensign, avoided
any conflict with Maas over precedence and protocol.

     Machinist Karl Busch headed the engine crew. He was a career man who
had served in the navy since 1896 on every type of ship from gunboat to
battleship. The original plans for the flight had provided for only nine
machinist mate. One of the engines would not be used at normal cruising
speeds and the normal complement of two machinists would not be needed for
it. However, in the end the engine crew reverted to their normal number of
ten. They were Machinist Mates First Class Bruno Heiman, Peter Broeker,
Gustav Proll, Ferdinand Holland, Karl Schmitz, Heinrich Pabst and Friedrich
Engelke, Berthold Schilling, Max Schmieder and Seaman First Class Kurt
Hocke.

     First Mate Emil Wald, 30 years old, served as navigator and was in
charge of the deck crew, all those not concerned with the engines. vader hin
served Signal Mate Albert Nolte as elevator helmsman. Boatswain's Mate
Bernhard Wisserman and Seaman First Class Adolf Fuchs were the rudder
helmsmen, Signal Mate Kettner functioned as radio operator. On November 6,
Bockholt had ordered Kettner off the ship but evidently had been unable to
obtain a replacement for him and Kettner had stayed. Richard Schulz was the
sail maker who, on this trip, would also be in charge of the gasoline
supplies.

     At Yambol, Bockholt's former clerk, Schedelman, now a member of the
ground crew, volunteered for the mission and Bockholt took him on as a spare
elevator helmsman and to assist Sailmaker Schulz in supervising the gasoline
supplies. It was not a position normally provided for on an airship and the
original Africa plans had not provided for such a crew assignment. The crew
was now larger than had originally been planned for and it is hard to escape
the impression that Bockholt had added this berth only to please a favorite
subordinate.

     The men's ages ranged from Maas' twenty two to the thirty nine years of
Busch, the average age being about thirty one years. They were mostly from
the northeastern part of Germany, the usual recruiting grounds of the navy.
Fuchs came from Constance on the lake over which Zeppelin had first flown
his airships. Perhaps Fuchs was fulfilling a dream of his youth. The older
half of the crew was married, the younger ones were Single.

     Professor Zupitza was not included in the photograph. He was only a
"passenger". When the army had refused to make Captain von Bentivegni
available for the flight, Zupitza had been chosen to accompany the flight as
an Africa expert. The Colonial Office had originally planned to send a
physician and an interpreter; in Zupitza it got both. He was given two days
to get ready and then he was to report to Jüterbog to take part in the
flights of the experimental airship "L 35" which was stationed there. This
was to give him his "airlegs", so to say.

     In his fiftieth year, long removed from active army service and not
having lived in East Africa for the last 12 years, Zupitza was not the ideal
choice for this flight; certainly he was not a good recruit for Lettow-
Vorbeck's hit and run army. Zupitza's participation in the flight presented
another problem. When he had been released from war captivity he had given
his parole, his word of honor, that he would not engage in further acts of
hostility against the Allies for the duration of the war. Zupitza was about
the assist in the transportation and landing of guns, ammunition and other
military supplies aboard a craft operated by the Imperial Navy. This clearly
violated his oath. Only the year before, Dr. Wilhelm Knorr had written a
learned treatise on the "Parole of Prisoners of War" in which he casually
remarked that those who violated their parole were to be hung or condemned
to life imprisonment in a fortress.

     It is unlikely that the British would have hung poor Professor Zupitza
had they captured him again, but obvioulsy somebody was concerned about the
matter. Zupitza was dubbed a "passenger" and was "forbidden" to participate
in the operations of "L 59". It is not clear who the Germans thought they
would fool with this flimsy legal fiction. Perhaps it was meant to reassure
Zupitza.

     The Naval Command had calculated that allowing for necessary parations,
the ship would start for Africa on the 6th or 7th. These dates passed while
"L 59" waited for parts to repair the front engine drive which had broken on
the trip to Yambol. The weather, too, was bad.

     The Naval Command tried to be patient but it had its own kibbitzers. On
the 6th, the Kaiser's headquarters phoned to find out how the "China"
operation was going.

     On the 9th, the Naval Command finally telegraphed Yambol: "When can we
expect departure?" Bockholt answered the next day: "Monday morning in case
of weather. Please encipher as whole Balkans know". The cipher clerk in
Berlin dutifully added that Bockholt probably meant "In case of favorable
weather". Bockholt's answer either got lost in Berlin or the Naval Command
pretended that it had because there was the same exchange of messages two
days later.

     Delay not only increased the threat that the mission would come too
late but it also endangered the security of the operation. There had been
leaks at the Zeppelin factory already and at Jüterbog, the base personnel
and the crew had openly bragged about the flight. German officers in Sofia
talked freely about the operation. An airship officer, wearing the insignia
of his service, travelling to Yambol on business, was approached by a fellow
officer and asked whether he was a member of the Africa expedition. When he
claimed ignorance about the matter, he was told with a laugh that the
proposed trip was common knowledge in Constantinople. The Bulgarians could
not be depended on. Many of them had opposed their country's entry into the
war and were hostile to the Germans. Prisoners of war were working on the
base, a large group of hostile eyes and ears. Prisoner of war camps somehow
never could be made leakproof. More messages, more activity simply increased
the chances that the enemy would pick up some clues about the plan.

     On the 11th, the repairs of the engine drive were finally completed and
Bockholt sent a short report about his flight plans to Strasser. It did not
reach him until the 20th. Meanwhile, Berlin was in the dark as to what
Bockholt meant to do. Its previous inquiries had elicited no satisfactory
replies and so on the 12th, the Naval Command went on a new tack. It asked
the Naval Attache in Sofia whether the ship had left and, as if suspicious
about what Bockholt was doing, what the weather in the Balkans was. Arnim,
the Naval Attache, probably thought he had better things to do than collect
weather reports - wasn't there a meteorological service for this - but he
telephoned the naval substations throughout the Balkans to ask. The next day
he reported back that the weather had been none too good but added a more
cheerful note. "L 59" had made a good two hour trial flight.

     Arnim had the weather right but not the news about "L 59". It had taken
off on the 13th, probably not without causing muttering among the crew as
airshipmen tended to be superstitious.[17] The ship had risen directly into
an air inversion which had sucked it downward until the ship's bow had come
to rest on top of the airship hangar. Well over 7,000 pounds of ballast and
ammunition had been hastily thrown out of the ship to lighten it and get it
free again. Fortunately, "L 59" had suffered no damage but with so much
ballast lost, Bockholt could not proceed with his journey. Once up, however,
he had used the opportunity to cruise near the field for two hours to test
the newly repaired engine. To avoid missing a favorable take off
opportunity, Bockholt previously had decided not to flight test the engine
drive. He had planned to run it during the early hours of the flight and, if
it proved to be in sound condition, to continue to Africa, otherwise to turn
back. Now Bockholt had an unwanted chance to test the drive. It had
functioned satisfactorily. Bockholt had landed safely and "L 59" had
followed its groundcrew back into its hangar like a docile elephant, to wait
for another day.


    ----------------------------------------
    [17] This did not prevent the German navy from commissioning "L
        13" which survived a near record number of 17 bombing raids
        on England until it was decommissioned as obsolete in August
        1917.




                                 Chapter IX

                             ORDEAL OVER TURKEY

     The flight of the 13th led to an important discovery. When calculating
how much the ship could carry at take off, the Germans had assumed that the
air temperature at Yambol at 1,500 feet altitude would be about 43 degress
F. It was, in fact, as high as 62 degrees F. which meant that in the warmer,
less dense air, the airship would not be able to lift as much as had been
expected.[18] The ship was overloaded. After the flight of the 13th,
Bockholt had already unloaded 7,060 pounds, 5,300 pounds of it was cargo,
mostly ammunition, but as he saw it, a safe start could be made only by
unloading another 4,400 pounds. Bockholt was not keen on leaving more cargo
behind; the alternative was to wait for colder air. It would be denser and
give the ship greater support. He had lost one ship already and had come
close to losing this one too. He could not gamble again by taking off under
marginal conditions. Bockholt decided to wait for colder weather. The
present weather pattern had lasted eight days already; it would soon have to
change.

     Events, however, generate their own pressure. The English news reports
about East Africa of the 12th, 13th and 15th continued their doleful litany
- 142 Germans and 1,400 askaris surrendered; many rifles and machine guns
captured! Captain Tafel's detachment, near Mahenge, was desperately trying
to break through to reach Lettow's force. The British forces, which had
advanced from Lindi and Kilwa had met at Ndanda Mission, possibly trapping
Lettow between them. Numerous hospitals had been captured, Mahina, Masasi
and Malembwe had been taken. The report of the 13th placed the British south
of the Makonde Plateau. "Enemy breaking up in East Africa" proclaimed the
London Times on the 15th.

     On the 14th, the Naval Command sent an urgent wire to Yambol, advising
that the landing should take place south of the Makonde Plateau, somewhere
between Kitangari and the Rowuma River, the border between the German
Protectorate and Portugese Mozambique. At best, this was a strip 25 miles
wide.

     The moon was new again on November 14th. There would be only a few
moonless nights now and if "L 59" was to have the cover of these dark
nights, the start would have to be made soon. On the 15th, the Naval Command
telegraphed Bockholt again:" When is take off planned for. Everything OK?"
to which Bockholt once again replied: "According to weather. Ship ready".

     The morning of November 16th was overcast and rainy. The weather
forecast was for westerly crosswinds at low altitudes, changing to stiff
headwinds higher up. Despite the unfavorable weather, Bockholt took off at
8:48 a.m. Drawing on the experience gained on the 13th, he had increased his
ballast to 15,400 pounds at the expense of his cargo which now stood at
30,200 pounds.

     Under a low lying dense cloud cover, "L 59" flew east to the Black Sea.
Near Burgas, the ship was approached by an airplane of the German squadron
at Varna. The Varna station should have been notified that a German airship
would be operating in the Balkans but somehow this had not been done. There
were some tense moments as the plane flew alongside "L 59" but then it
dropped away in acknowledgment that it had recognized the ship as a friendly
craft.

     The ship turned south and flew towards Constantinople. The most direct
route to East Africa which it could have taken was directly south across the
Aegean Sea, well to the west of its present course. This was in fact the
route envisionaged in the original "China" plans. The many islands which
dotted the Aegean Sea, were mostly under Greek, some under Turkish
sovereignty. Pushed by internal and external pressures, Greece had gradually
shifted from a German-friendly neutrality towards the Allied camp until
Greece formally declared war on Germany in June 1917. As a result, Allied
bases and airfields were now spread across the Greek as well as some
captured Turkish Aegean islands. The Allied airplanes stationed in the
Mediterranean were a mixed bag of obsolete Farmans, Bristols and Short
seaplanes but the German planners were well aware of the potential threat
which even these elderly planes represented and had carefully studied the
disposition and strength of Allied air squadrons. Among the reports in the
German files was one about the interrogation of a Flight Lieutenant Alcock.
Flying a large, twin engined Handley Page 0/400 bomber, Alcock had greatly
annoyed the Turks by singlehandedly attacking such targets as Constantinople
(Istanbul)[19] and Adrianople (Edirne). On June 17th, when he raided Hayda
Pasha on the Gallipoli Penninsula, his plane lost one of its propellors,
forcing him to come down in the water a half mile from the beach. Alcock and
his companion swam ashore but were obliged to surrender to the Turks the
next morning. They were interrogated numerous times, once by the commander
of the German forces in Turkey who told Alcock that he lied well. Alcock's
name was to appear in the annals of aviation history again when in 1919 he
first challenged the long distance capabilities of the airship by flying a
Vickers "Vimy" bomber across the Atlantic.

     Despite the presence of Allied air units in the Aegean, Strasser had
approved the original plan to fly directly across the Aegean because he was
of the opinion that it could be done safely during a moonless night. As far
as the Germans knew, none of the Allied flying fields in the Aegean were
equipped for night operations. Flying across the Aegean directly would have
been preferable to flying across the Turkish mountains of Anatolia, up to
7,000 feet high, which would require the "China" ship to discharge a great
amount of ballast to attain the necessary altitude. This was inadvisable at
the beginning of the flight already since no one could predict how much
ballast would be needed during the next three days.

     In the end, the operations orders issued to Bockholt gave him the
choice of crossing the Aegean or flying across Turkey. Bockholt, for once
more cautious than Strasser, decided against crossing the Aegean. Perhaps he
thought of the successful use the British had made of the new American
Curtiss flying boats in harassing and shooting down zeppelins along the
Dutch coast earlier in the year. He may have wondered how his former ship,
the "L 23", was destroyed along the Danish coast, also a "safe" area.[20]

     Bockholt chose the Turkish route, but plotted a circuitous path through
Anatolia to avoid its highest mountains. When he reached the Sea of Marmara,
which divides Europe from Asia Minor, he began to follow the railroad which
zig-zagged south from Panderma (Bandirma) through the valleys and passes of
Anatolia to Smyrna (Izmir). As the ship penetrated the valleys southward,
headwinds became more troublesome and low lying clouds hindered navigation.
Heavy cumulus clouds signaled thunderstorms. At Soma, about ninety miles
south of Panderma, the furies descended upon the ship. What everyone had so
much feared happened. On the 7th, German headquarters in Constantinople had
been requested to advise the Turks of the planned flight and the projected
route over Turkish territory. "Firing on the airship by own forces must be
avoided at all costs". The lessons learned by the army ballast still on
board and 2,200 pounds of cargo tumbled out of the ship, followed by 14
drums of gasoline. The ship shot up to 2,300 feet. Bockholt decided that he
would have to turn back. With the setting sun, he rose out of the
treacherous valleys and came about at 4,800 feet.

     At 7:30 p.m. "L 59" reached Constantinople. Bockholt attempted to
contact the ground to obtain a weather report but his radio was not working.
Rain had penetrated the electrical generator which powered it. The crew
signalled with a searchlight but received no answer. Fearful of losing his
way in the storm, Bockholt decided to ride it out over the glimmering city
until day break.

     With dawn came a short respite and "L 59" started north again. Soon the
ship was once more tossing in a thunderstorm, bouncing up and down between
3,900 and 6,500 feet altitudes. Clouds enveloped the ship. Patches of
darkness among the clouds suggested mountains below and Bockholt turned his
ship in the direction of the Black Sea to escape them. He tried to climb
above the cloud layer, which he estimated reached up to 6,900 feet, but did
not succeed.[21] When the storm at last abated, Bockholt cautiously took "L
59" down through the clouds to determine his position. He finally broke
through the clounds and found the coast at Midia (Midye). Anxious not to
lose this sure guide, he followed the coast line at only 1,000 feet until he
reached Burgas. From there, a short dogleg of 50 miles, almost due east,
took him home to Yambol. This time the ship was lucky. When it reached the
base at 4 p.m., the wind died down sufficiently to risk a landing. The ship
was safely brought into the hangar and as soon as it was secured, the storm
began to rage again. Frozen and rainsoaked, exhausted by a wild 32 hour
flight, the crew stumbled out of the ship. The storm had torn loose fourteen
guy wires and broken some of the lateral braces of the hull. Five bullet
holes were found in the gas cells.

     The Naval Command allowed Bockholt three days to refit. On the
afternoon of the 20th, when it had no report of a take-off, it lost its
patience and fired off an ultimatum to Bockholt: "Trip must begin without
further loss of time or attempt must be abandoned".


    ----------------------------------------
    [18] Readers interested in an explanation of the laws governing
        airship flight are referred to the Appendix of this book.
    [19] In this book, the place names used are those of 1917.
        Modern place names are added in parenthesis.
    [20] The Germans did not know this, but "L 23" had fallen victim
        to a Sopwith "Pup" fighter plane which had been carried to
        the Danish coast by an English cruiser. The airplane had
        taken off from a short flight deck erected over the
        cruiser's foredeck. "L 23" had not observed the airplane and
        had continued to shadow the English squadron for over an
        hour, long enough for the "Pup" to climb to the zeppelin's
        altitude, close with it and shoot it down in flames.
    [21] This account is based on Bockholt's official account which
        he prepared belatedly on November 28, 1917, after he had
        returned from the Africa trip. In a number of minor
        respects, it differs from the account given by Göbel, who
        had a copy of Bockholt's diary and alkso from the altimetric
        record of the trip.




                                 Chapter X

                      EAVESDROPPER EWING AND HIS CREW

     While Bockholt was waiting in Yambol for the weather to improve, in
German East Africa an orderly entered the tent of Captain Gurdon during the
night of November 20 — 21 and shook him awake. The captain, an intelligence
officer with the British East African Expeditionary Force, sat up and took
the paper the soldier handed him. It was a coded message. As he had done so
often before, the captain sat down and decoded it at once. It was a direct
message from the Director of Military Intelligence in London: "Airship will
attempt to land at Kitangari".

     This was nothing new. Early in November, the captain had first decoded
a message from the War Office that an enemy airship with supplies might try
to land at Kitangari on about the 20th of the month. All radio stations were
instructed to jam radio signals from the airship. Local headquarters were to
be advised of the time and place at which the airship had been observed and
of the direction in which it was flying. Speed was of paramount importance.
The message was to be sent as a priority message without encoding it.
British air squadrons were instructed to attack the zeppelin with bombs;
there was no incendiary ammunition in East Africa.

     Since that first, startling message, Captain Gurdon had been awakened
more than once to decode "immensely long cyphers" from London, instructing
the British forces in great detail about action to be taken with respect to
the airship.

     How had London known about the plan to fly an airship to Africa? How
had Major Trench known that Bockholt had replaced Buttlar as commander of "L
57", that the ship had been lengthened and then had been destroyed? Where
had he learned that Kölle's ship had shared a hangar with Buttlar's "L 54",
that Kraushaar was married to an English woman (was he considered reliable,
the major had asked) and that Kölle had married while on two weeks leave in
January? Trench had indifferently scattered these details about in the
interrogation as if he were accustomed to regularly exchanging gossip with
German airship officers over a glass of brandy.

     Some of Major Trench's information had no doubt been supplied by those
men and women who followed the ancient profession of spying and treason,
motivated by almost every emotion that dwells in the human breast - greed,
lust for excitement, revenge for hurts, real or imagined, fear of blackmail
and in some cases, a sense of patriotic duty.

     Human beings have an almost atavistic fear of spies - the unseen
watchers, the readers of sealed letters and locked files, the betrayers of
confidences and friendships. Spies are the breach in the wall of community
into which men retreat for safety and reassurance. A spy does more than
steal information. He sunders the fraternal ties, he undermines the feeling
of trust and solidarity of the group and leaves each man alone, without
support, because he no longer knows whether his brother is a friend or a
secret foe. That is the unforgivable treason. In war, it traditionally
demands the ultimate penalty. If war makes the danger of espionage more
immediate, the cry of "spy" in peacetime can also produce a reaction tinged
with hysteria. This is not confined to current times and the Iranian
militants who seized the American Embassy in Teheran as a "nest of spies".
The Europe of the early 20th century contracted its own form of spy fever.

     There had been truly notorious espionage cases and these served to
excite the fever. The Dreyfuss case became the vehicle of a right wing
political and antisemitic campaign which deeply divided France, perverted
the French judicial system, led to the acquittal of the real traitor and the
transportation of the hapless Captain Dreyfuss to Devil's Island. There was
the case of Colonel Redl whose sexual preferences the Russians levered into
a betrayal of the mobilization plans of the Austrian army. But there was
also a steady stream of lesser incidents to keep the fires stoked. Two weeks
after Trench and Brandon had been arrested, two English officers on an
afternoon ride on the heights overlooking Portsmouth observed a gentleman
making sketches. As they drew near, he stopped and the officers asked to
look at his sketchbook. The stranger obliged and when asked to identify
himself, presented his calling card. It read: Lieutenant Siegfried Helm,
21st Nassau Engineering Battalion, Imperial German Army. The English
officers informed him that he should call for his sketchbook at the local
police station in the morning when he could probably have it back. The
sketchbook contained details of the fortifications of Portsmouth, some of
which were, to be sure, quite venerable, but also details of the harbor and
dock yards. Helm was arrested.

     To several German newspapers, the case was immediately clear. Helm, a
picture of naivity, would never have been arrested had it not been for the
recent arrest of two real English spies. " Lt. Helm is simply nothing but a
hostage.. less of a mistake than somewhat malicious revenge". Unlike Trench
and Brandon, who were to be tried by the German Supreme Court, Lt. Helm was
not arraigned before the House of Lords but faced the awesome authority of
the Police Court of Farnham instead. He had to appear for a preliminary
hearing to determine whether he should be held for a violation of the
Official Secrets Act. The case was an instant sensation; only a favored few
of the crowd clamoring for admission obtained tickets for the few seats in
the small courtroom. Strict decorum was maintained. A photographer had to
give up his plates when he attempted to take a picture of the defendant and
an artist lost his sketchbook while drawing the portrait of a witness. After
four hearings, the Police Court reduced the charge to a misdemeanor but held
Helm for the Winchester Assizes. Bail was set at £200. Lt. Helm did not win
his conditional freedom until October 4th. While Helm's case was proceeding,
two German lieutenants were imprisoned in Moscow for spying on Russian army
maneuvers. The charge was without substance and they were quickly released.
The Wichester grand jury indicted Helm and the case came on for trial on
November 15. Leading counsel for the defense rose and informed the court
that, the offense being undeniable, the defendant wished to plead guilty.
The mitigating circumstances, favoring the prisoner, including the
possibility that a conviction might ruin the career of the young officer,
were laid before the court. The Attorney General stated that he was
satisfied because the case had established the principle that the acts
committed by Lt. Helm constituted an offense under the Official Secrets Act.
Since Lt. Helm had admitted the offense and had already been confined to
jail for four weeks and if the prisoner was prepared to express his
unfeigned regret and undertook never to repeat these acts again, the
Attorney General was prepared to recommend the utmost leniency to the court.
Helm was discharged.

     The release of Lt. Helm stimulated much discussion in the German press
concerning the pending espionage case of Capt. Trench and Lt. Brandon. It
was assumed that the Englishmen were guilty and to the Germans the only
question was how England could be deprived of the information they had
gathered. The Berliner Neue Nachrichten suggested long imprisonment "with
appropriate mental diversion (entsprechender geistigen Zerstreuung) so that
the recollection of what they had seen would not remain too clear and
vivid". The London Times translated the phrase "mental diversion" as "mental
treatment", a translation which literally speaking was not justified
although the original German sentence carried with it, whether intended or
not, somewhat sinister overtones. The translation became the subject of
several letters to the editor, some critical, but the Times stuck to its
guns.

     During the trial of Capt. Trench and Lt. Brandon, the German Supreme
Court forbade any reference to the Helm case on the specious grounds that it
did not have jurisdiction over it. Five days before the trial, Baron von
Ungern-Sternberg, a Russian who was a correspondent for the Austrian
Correspondence Bureau in St. Petersburg, was sentenced to four years of hard
labor after a closed trial. It seems that the baron had given the Austrian
Military Attaché a copy of the minutes of the meeting of the Duma, sitting
in secret session on the armament budget. In fact, five hundred copies had
been printed and distributed to every member of the Duma and the London
Times reported that these could be obtained without difficulty in St.
Petersburg!

     We now know that at least one of these soldiers in the shadows, Sgt.
Tony Mortimer, played his part in the "China" drama. In the Fall of 1917,
Sergeant Mortimer of the British Intelligence Service travelled to an
airfield near the Italian front. An airplane took him into Austria where he
landed by parachute. He made his way to Vienna and at a designated hotel
waited for an American businessman from Bulgaria. He was to bring
information about a zeppelin which, it was said, was being built there.
Mortimer was to find out what its destination was and what cargo it was to
carry. He returned from his mission but what he learned has been
extinguished by the secrecy that surrounds most intelligence operations.

     Yet the information about the Naval Airship Service which Maj. Trench
possessed was so detailed, comprehensive and up-to-date that it does not
seem to have been collected by conventional espionage methods. So extensive
a spy network and such ready means of transmitting information even the
fabled British Secret Service was unlikely to possess, even assuming that
the British were willing to devote such large resources to what was, in the
grand picture, of only secondary importance.

     To unravel the mystery of how Major Trench knew so much, we must turn
back to a slightly hazy summer morning, August 25, 1914, when a small German
squadron, consisting of the light cruisers "Magdeburg" and "Augsburg"
together with the destroyers "V 26" and "V 185", left Gotland off the
Swedish coast in the Baltic, and steamed northward towards the Gulf of
Finland. Their mission was to attack Suitable Russian war vessels likely to
be found at the entrance of the gulf, in order to demonstrate to the world
that the German flag flew even over those far reaches of the Baltic.

     As the day wore on, fog settled over the sea and grew steadily thicker.
By 9:00 p.m., "Magdeburg" had lost sight of the squadron leader "Augsburg"
though she was only 3000 feet ahead.

     At 11:07. near the Finnish coast, the captain of the "Magdeburg",
Commander Habenicht received radio orders to steer southeast by east. It was
a course which would take his ship across the mouth of the Finnish Gulf
towards the Estonian coast. Habenicht felt uneasy steaming blindly into the
fog but he had no choice but to follow the orders issued when the squadron
set out: " In case of fog, keep on course until you receive radio signal".

     The fog was very thick. No stars showed by which Habenicht could
determine his position. He had only a rough idea where he was. His escort,
"V 26", kept disappearing and rematerializing. The lead, thrown out every
ten minutes, kept shortening - 58 meters, 43 meters, finally 34 meters. The
50 meter line marked the edge of the deep channel extending from the Baltic
into the Gulf of Finland. "Magdeburg" was well out of the channel and
approaching land. "Augsburg" remained silent. Commander Habenicht made up
his mind. If by 12:30 a.m. "Augsburg" had not radioed new orders, he would,
on his own responsibility, put the ship on a new course, away from land. A
minute or two before the self imposed deadline, a coded radio message
started to arrive. Habenicht held his course while it was being decoded. At
12:34 decoding was completed. It was a new, northerly course, away from
land. The signal came too late. As "Magdeburg" made her turn, she ran hard
aground on the rocks off the northern tip of Odensholm Island, near the
Estonian coast.

     Attempts to get the cruiser off the rocks began immediately. Despite an
all night effort, they were of no avail. At 8:30 in the morning, two Russian
torpedo boats found the "Magdeburg" and "V 26", which had rejoined the
cruiser during the night. Soon afterwards, two Russian heavy cruisers crept
out of the fog and 6" and 8" shells began bracketing "Magdeburg" and "V 26".
Even while "V 26" had tried to tow the cruiser off the rocks, the crew had
begun preparations for disabling the ship and destroying her secret
documents. Indecision and confusion attended these efforts. After a
carelessly executed demolition of the foredeck, the order to abandon ship
was given. Panic now gripped the crew. In a mad rush, many went overboard,
heedless of their duties or the safety of others. Despite shouts that the
afterdeck of the "Magdeburg" would also be blown up momentarily (Habenicht
had given the order but somehow it was not carried out), the captain of "V
26" courageously laid his destroyer to the stern of the cruiser and saved
most of the remaining men. Nevertheless, 102 of her crew were drowned,
killed or were unaccounted for. Among the missing was Commander Habenicht
and Lt. Bender, the officer who had been in charge of destroying the ship's
secret papers.

     A court of inquiry decided that the loss of the "Magdeburg" and the
handling of the secret materials involved no culpability on part of the
crew. It recommended that the inquiry be closed. The Commander in Chief of
the Baltic, Prince Henry, however, was not satisfied. He ordered a further
inquiry into the disposal of the secret documents and recommended to higher
authority that as a matter of caution, the naval signal codes be changed.
The second inquiry came to a less reassuring conclusion:

        ",..{I]t must be taken for almost certain that the maps
        were fished out of the water by the Russians. The code
        key probably fell into Russian hands in the saine way.
        Finally, one must count on the possibility that the
        Russians, diving in the shallow, clear waters, may
        recover one of the signal books. The war diary, too, was
        probably captured by the Russians as it apparently was
        left on the deck of H.M.S. "Magdeburg'".

     In short, none of the important, classified papers could be accounted
for as having definitely been destroyed. Nevertheless, the navy did not
change its signal code. It would have been well advised to follow Prince
Henry's recommendation. The Russians had found at least one of the secret
code books.

     The "Magdeburg" code book was brought to London and on October 13,
1914, the Russians handed it to Rear Admiral Sir Henry Oliver, R.N. and Sir
Alfred Ewing. Admiral Oliver was the head of Naval Intelligence. Sir Alfred
had been active in naval education until the outbreak of the war but few
knew what he was doing now or why he was with the admiral that day. The
explanation was simple but for many years highly secret.

     Soon after the outbreak of the war, The English radio station at
Stockton had begun receiving radio signals which it could not read and which
were not of British origin. Assuming that they were coded German messages,
it sent them to Admiral Oliver. The Marconi Company and the Post Office had
begun to intercept similar signals. Admiral Oliver was curious about them
but discovered that the navy's mobilization plan had made no provision for
personnel to intercept and decode enemy messages. Oliver remembered that
Ewing had been vaguely interested in constructing ciphers and had recently
built a "futile cyphering mechanism" as Sir Alfred had descibed it. The
admiral sent for him. Ewing was intrigued by the puzzle which the admiral
handed him. Yes, he would try but he was not sure he could succeed. Relieved
to be rid of that business, Oliver issued orders that henceforth all
intercepts were to be delivered to Sir Alfred. Soon hundreds of messages,
addressed to "Ewing Admiralty" piled up in his small office, sometimes more
than two hundred a day.

     Meanwhile the soft spoken, genial Scot borrowed codebooks and books on
ciphermaking from the British Museum, the Post Office and Lloyds and
assidiously studied them. He often sat in his office in the Old Building of
the Admiralty with two discreet friends who spoke German well, to find the
key to the meaningless jumble of letters in the messages which lay before
them. Ewing thrived on the challenge. "My present work makes me feel
younger" he confided to his diary.

     A few bright, young men with a flair for numbers or languages and men
from the Naval Colleges at Osborne and Dartmout and others with more arcane
skills were gradually added to the staff and it was moved to a larger office
in the building, Room 40. Unfortunately, they made no progress towards
breaking the German codes.

     In the meantime, German radio messages gushed through the air. The
Naval Command was talking with its ships and the long distance station at
Nauen was sending an endless stream of directives overseas to embassies,
colonies and naval units on the high seas. "Der Feind hört mit!" (The enemy
listens in) the Germans were to remind everyone in the Second World War but
in the summer of 1914, the thought seems not to have troubled them. There
was no cause for concern. All messages were carefully enciphered. The key to
the ciphers was changed every three months so that there was no chance that
the enemy would be able to decode the messages. Besides, the traffic for the
fleet in Heligoland Bay went out on a radio band which was too weak to be
intercepted in England.

     With the "Magdeburg" cipher book, the Russians handed Ewing the key to
the inscrutable messages which were flooding his office. It was also a
fitting climax to Admiral Oliver's duties in Naval Intelligence. He went on
to a new assignment the next day and his post was taken over by Captain
Reginald Hall (not the "Reggie" to whom Trench had planned to pass his
information before the Germans caught him). "Blinker" Hall, his nickname was
derived from a tic that afflicted one of his eyes, took a great interest in
the work of Intelligence Division 25, the code breaking group in Ewing's
charge. He further enlarged its staff and moved it to still larger quarters
but the bland anonimity of the name "Room 40". so ephemerally disguised the
purposes of Ewing's band that it stuck with it for good. The volume of its
work increased once again when two radio amateurs showed the Royal Navy how
it could listen to the radio traffic of the German navy in Heligoland Bay.

     By November, I.D. 25 was able to read the messages exchanged between
the various naval staffs, the fleet and naval attaches. Yet reading the
messages was not enough. For security reasons, important orders did not go
through the ether. They were delivered by hand, wire or visual signal. Room
40 still had to learn how to use the information it had obtained, how to
correctly interpret the subsidiary messages, the warnings to outposts, last
minute changes in orders to squadrons already at sea, orders to minesweepers
and submarines and the like. This would provided the mosaic pieces from
which the larger picture had to be constructed.

     On December 14, 1914, the first fruits of Room 40's work were gathered.
A message was deciphered which stated that German battle cruisers were to
leave their anchorage in the Jade river early the next day and that they
would return the following evening. Sceptical of the value of such
intelligence, Admiral Jellicoe, who was in command of the British Grand
Fleet, nevertheless sent the Second Battle Squadron to the Dogger Bank.
German ships bombarded Scarborough and Hartlepool on the 16th and turned
home. The British forces were in a perfect intercepting position athwart the
German return route and only bad weather prevented them from engaging the
Germans. On January 25, 1915, I.D. 25 decoded another message. A German
squadron was to reconnoiter the Dogger Bank. Once more an English squadron
put to sea. This time, it found the Germans and in the ensuing fight sank a
heavy cruiser and damaged two battle cruisers.

     It was a period of great activity for Room 40 and "Eavesdropper Ewing",
as some of his informed friends were calling him now. "My work goes on
blithely and keeps me engrossed - so much so that it is difficult to find
time to get my hair cut", Ewing noted in his diary.

     Possession of the German naval code demonstrated the great
possibilities inherent in the newly developing art of electronic
intelligence. To extend its reach, more German code books were needed. A
copy of the "Handelsschiffverkehrsbuch" (Commercial Shipping Code) had been
found on a German merchantman in Australia at the beginning of the war and
sent to England by the fastest means possible. Such was the state of
communications then that the book did not reach London until the middle of
September. The Commercial Shipping Code, however, was of little help to the
British; it only permitted them to listen to radio traffic with auxiliary
vessels and airships and yielded little of importance about German
operations.

     A copy of another code was smuggled out of Brussels in 1915 and later
in the year, Code 13040, a diplomatic code, was found in the luggage of a
German agent in Iran. It was this code that was later used by Zimmerman, the
German Foreign Minister, to communicate his harebrained scheme to entangle
the United States in a war with Mexico and Japan to keep it out of the war
in Europe. His Excellency accomplished quite the opposite; the telegram was
intercepted by Room 40 and helped to make up President Wilson's mind and
align the United States on the side of the Allies.

     If one could not always steal or capture a code book, there were other
ways of getting these precious tomes. In December 1914, an English fishing
trawler had already dragged up the safe of one of the destroyers which
H.M.S. "Dauntless" had sunk along the Dutch coast on October 16th. It
contained a new code book. Early in 1916, the Royal Navy located the wreck
of a German Submarine off the Kentish coast. A diver was sent down and
managed to enter the ship. In the officer's mess, he found a safe which
contained still another naval code book. Sunken submarines were now
routinely searched whenever possible. Shipwright Miller became a specialist
in this vital work which often required him to thread his way through
corpses floating in the submarines and past huge eels, seven or eight feet
long, which had made their homes in the steel hulks.

     The naval climax of the First World War came with the Battle of Jutland
in 1916. The new commander of the German fleet, Admiral Scheer, had decided
that the German fleet could not meet the British Grand Fleet on equal terms.
His strategy was therefore to defeat it by overwhelming individual
squadrons, one by one, or by drawing them into concentrations of submarines
or into minefields. Scheer had planned such an operation for May 23, 1916. A
cruiser bombardment of Sunderland was to bring out the British fleet. An
advance by the German High Seas Fleet into the Skagerrak was to entice part
of the Grand Fleet into the grasp of the concentrated German fleet, first
drawing it across a line of ten submarines as it steamed towards its rendez-
vous with the waiting German guns. Shorly after May 17, Room 40 began to
suspect that some major operation was planned. It detected a concentration
of eight submarines in the North Sea, soon joined by more U boats until they
numbered sixteen. At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, Room 40 intercepted a Signal to
the U boats that they might sight the German Battle Fleet during the next
two days. Signals to minesweepers, picket boats and other units led Room 40
to conclude that the operation was under way. What the German intentions
were was not known. Those had not been radioed and lay beyond the reach of
Naval Intelligence. One radio Signal was in a new code. Judging that this
security measure was meant to shield a message of particular importance,
Naval Intelligence decided that it was the signal to set Sail. It advised
the Admiralty which at once ordered Admiral Jellicoe to sea.

     In a sense, the German fleet was defeated before the first gun was
fired. Forewarned by Room 40, the Grand Fleet met the enemy as a single unit
and Scheer's hope of defeating the Royal Navy piecemeal came to naught. The
Royal Navy retained control of the seas and with this laid the foundations
of ultimate victory.

     After the Battle of Jutland, the Germans changed their entire ciphering
system. Naval Intelligence was groping in the dark again. By this time,
however, Room 40 had a large, experienced staff. It set to work immediately
to break the new codes.

     German carelessness once more helped the British. On September 24,
1916, Lt. Cmdr. Peterson took off in naval airship "L 32" to bomb England.
In accordance with standard operating procedures, he radioed his take off to
the Chief of Airships, Cmdr. Strasser, adding the words "Only HVB on board"
to his message. Since March 1915, German airships had been under orders not
to take secret code books with them when operating over enemy territory.
They were only to carry the Commercial Shipping Code, known as the "HVB",
and they were to confirm this when taking off. In fact, Peterson's signal to
Strasser was not true. For some unknown reason, Peterson took one of the new
signal code books with him. He should have known better.

     One of the six airship captains of the original Airship Division,
Peterson knew the vulnerability of airships first hand. His "L 12" had been
hit by anti-aircraft fire over England and had been forced to land in the
English Channel. That time he had been in luck because German destroyers had
been able to tow him back to the Belgian coast.

     The listening posts in England heard Peterson's "Only HVB on board".
They knew the significance of these words. Another zeppelin raid was under
way. The airship alert was sounded. Over northeastern London, Peterson was
intercepted by an airplane and set on fire. "L 32" crashed near Great
Burstead and burned for an hour. A special intelligence team, standing by to
examine crashed airships, rushed to the site of the crumpled wreckage. In
it, they found the Signal code book, burned but still readable.

     Winston Churchill later wrote about the "Magdeburg" and the naval code
retrieved as a result of her foundering, but he belittled the value of the
code: "The Germans, however, repeatedly changed their codes and it was only
occasionally and for fitful periods that we were able to read them". This
was, of course, untrue but Churchill probably felt justified in tampering
with the truth for he was helping to keep the operations of Room 40 a secret
on the chance that its inethods might be useful again in the future. Nor did
Admiral Hall say anything about this critical aspect of his work. When in
1925 he was asked to comment on a sensational article which revealed the
story of the Zimmerman telegram, he told the reporter of the Daily Mail: "It
is the tradition of the Intelligence Department that we never say anything
about our work". He did add: "The great mistake the Germans made during the
war was that they never gave us credit for any intelligence; they never saw
our side of the question". As if to explain, he continued: "Of course, our
whole object was to prevent the Germans from giving us very much credit for
intelligence". Ewing finally disclosed the secret, "never more successfully
observed", in December 1927 when he described the work of Room 40 in a
lecture before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. Yet so intent was
the Admiralty to preserve the secrets of Room 40 that it made Ewing promise
not to say anything further about it without its permission and even as late
as 1932 would not let him write about his wartime work.

     Even though in the latter stages of the war, the Germans began to
change their code key every day, I.D. 25 was reading the enemy messages as
soon as two hours after the key had been changed, and never more than ten
hours later. The Germans, content that the constant changes in the code key
would make it impossible to break the naval code, never learned of the
success of Naval Intelligence. The story was to repeat itself in the Second
World War when the British succeeded in penetrating the German "Enigma"
codes and the Germans, thoroughly convinced that it was impossible to break
them, never could get themselves to accept the possibility that the Allies
might do so, to its immense damage.

     Zeppelins contributed their share to the flow of radio messages that
was so helpful to the British. From his headquarters in Ahlhorn, Strasser
kept tight control over the operations of his airships. The airships had to
report to him whenever they took off. Strasser radioed instructions to them
when changes in the weather or tactical conditions required it. The airships
often stated the purpose of their mission as they started off: "Took off for
reconaissance", "Took off for transfer to Tondern airfield", "To guard
minsweepers" and so on. On April 23, 1917, "L 30" radioed "Took off to
search for uC 30", thus advising the British that their attempt to destroy
this submarine had probably suceeded. While aloft, the airships reported
their sightings and mishaps encountered and called each other to cooperate
in their work. They asked for weather reports and for radio fixes, which
incidentally permitted the British to check the accuracy of their own radio
location system with which they tracked the zeppelins on their flights. The
German airships became particularly chatty as they retreated from England
after a completed raid, reporting their successes and exchanging
experiences. From these bits and pieces, British Intelligence built up its
picture of the Airship Division and its activities.

     Of course, the picture of German airship activities obtained through
radio intelligence could not be complete. Telegraph, telephone and hand
carried messages were beyond the reach of Room 40 and it is difficult to see
how Major Trench could know from radio intercepts that Buttlar had lost the
command of the "China" ship to Bockholt. Such messages normally were sent by
telegraph and not by radio. However, no intelligence service relies on one
source of information alone but combines a variety of them to form its view
of the enemy. The signals London had sent to Africa to expect an airship
landing at Kitangari around November 20th suggest that the British had not
been able to read the radio messages Berlin had sent to Governor Schnee
about the coming airborne relief but that London had obtained this
information from another, albeit inaccurate source. Kitangari had not been
mentioned by the German Colonial Office or the Naval Command as a possible
landing place for "L 59" until well after the first signal from London had
gone off to Africa, describing the village as the spot where the Germans
proposed to land. Neither had the Germans fixed any particular time for the
take off or ianding of "L 57" or "L 59", Weather and cicumstances were to
determine the starting date. The November 20 date, therefore, could not have
been obtained from radio intercepts which never mentioned such a date or any
other take off dates. Again, it must have come from another source which,
however, had the wrong information or made the wrong deduction.

     For Room 40, the Africa airship was only an interesting sideshow but
the messages which it sent to East Africa set the stage for the biggest game
hunt yet - bagging a zeppelin in Africa!

     Kitangari was now closely watched by the British aviators for any sign
of an expected zeppelin landing. Kitangari was a small village on the
Makonde Plateau, not far from its western edge, amid hilly, thin bush
country. About 2-1/2 miles south of the village, the Germans had built an
encampment of some forty huts. Two good dirt roads led into the village and
they might be used to carry off the cargo of " L 59". The aviators saw that
the roads had been heavily used by wheeled vehicles lately but so far
nothing suggested that the Germans were preparing the area for the arrival
of an airship.

     As it happened, the airforce of the Fast African Expeditionary Force
was not well prepared for this sport. Its aircraft were seriously deficient
in performance.

     Wo. 26 Squadron at Mtua, twenty miles inland from Kilwa, had six BE2C
and BE2E machines in operating condition. No. 8 (Naval) Squadron at Nahunga
mustered three Voisin 3's. The basic design of the BE2 machine dated from
1912. It was a gawky boxkite like affair with a skinny fuselage and a large
fourbladed propellor. Tne plane accommodated a pilot, an observer and a
machinegun and carried 224 pounds of bombs. The best speed of which the BE2C
was capable was 72 m.p.h. as against the 64 m.p.h. maximum speed of "L 59".
While the airship could not have attained its best speed because one of its
engines was not operating, the difference did not give the airplane a
decisive edge. Moreover, the BE2's climbed slowly and their maximum ceiling
was 10,000 feet. This was well below the height at which "L 59" had planned
to travel across East Africa, although its search for Lettow's troops would
have had to be carried out at much lower altitudes. The performance of the
Voisins was equally limited. Midair interception of the airship would
therefore be a matter of great luck und uncertain of success as the British
planes lacked incendiary ammunition. The best chance of destroying the
zeppelin lay in attacking it with bombs while it was landing or on the
ground. However, locating it on the ground quickly was essential; the
airship would have to be destroyed before any large amounts of the cargo had
been unloaded. Once the ship had been emptied, its destruction would not
have mattered.

     The British airmen were not dismayed by the difficulties they faced.
They kept their machines ready, Commander Looff saw them on the 25th as he
was driven by after his tea party, and they waited for their chance for the
greatest trophy yet - the African zeppelin!




                                 Chapter XI

                              "CHINA" AT LAST

     The afternoon of the 20th brought Bockholt the weather forecast he had
wanted. "Clearing, gusty, northeast groundwinds, winds at higher altitudes
from north to northeast above 22.4 m.p.h." A low pressure area was moving
across Yambol from west to east. Cold air masses from the north were rushing
into this low. This was the cold air and the tailwin? for which Bockholt had
waited. The weather pattern was expected to continue for the next two days.
That was just enough time for "L 59" to get across the Mediterranean area.
Eckener and Bockholt studied the report and nodded in agreement: "L 59"
would start early next morning!

     The German evening radio news contained a short item about the fighting
in France:

        "In the area between the streets leading from Bapaume
        and Peronne to Cambrai, the British attacked with strong
        forces and gained ground. Our countermeasures are fully
        under way".

     This news not likely to attract Bockholt's attention. Attacks were
constantly being made on the western front; trencna lines were won and lost
and always without decisive results. If Bockholt thought that this bulletin
was like all this others, he was mistaken. The bland announcement hid the
fact that this attack had been a startling British success. At 6:20 that
morning, without the usual preliminary artillery barrage which might have
warned the Germans, a roaring, clanking mass of steal, no less than 376 Mark
iV tanks, had plunged into a weakly held sector of the Hindenburg Line,
British infantry had followed closely behind, wiping out the antitank
defenses encountered. Nests of resistance which the tanks could not quickly
overcome were bypassed and left behind to be mopped up later. Airplanes flew
low over the battlefield and attacked the German troops. The aim was to
punch a hole into the German barbed wire and trench lines through which
infantry and cavalry could follow and spread out into the enemy's rear. The
attack, which for the first time tank officers had been permitted to
organize, was the precursor of the modern blitzkrieg. The first chapter of
modern, armored warfare had been written. The day of the individual
gladiator was over; the age of the mechanized mass army had begun. All this
Bockholt did not know. Had he known, it would probably have made no
difference to him. A mission, which was bound to make history, awaited him.
His "Paper Steamboat" lay ready. "Paper Steamboat" was the name the crew had
given "L 59", It was an apt summary for the contradictory elements which the
zeppelin combined - a huge structure which the overriding need to save
weight had driven to a point of near fragility.

     Radio London that night had a modest report about the first successes
at Cambrai but it also had one of unusual length about the war in Africa. An
unprecedented number of German soldiers had surrendered. Advancing British
troops had found 262 German soldiers and 700 askaris waiting for them at a
camp near Kitangari, south of the Mahenge Plateau. Many of the prisoners
were reported to be perfectly fit for service. Numerous fully equipped
askaris were deserting, the announcer continued, and the last of the German
artillery pieces had been found abandoned. Portuguese troops were
approaching Nevala, the last German base in the Protectorate. As usual,
careful listeners in Berlin copied the report, translated it and arranged to
have it distributed early next morning.

     Among the babble of tongues and the beeping morse code messages which
flowed through the ether that night was one which was not meant for the
public. It was a message from the Director of Military Intelligence in
London to the Commanding General of the Fast African Expeditionary Force. It
was encoded, a jumble of symbols which was meaningless to the Germans.

     At Yambol, "L 59" lay wainting in its hangar, a huge wooden shed, 787
feet long and 115 feet high. The ship's gasoline tanks and ballast
containers were full. There were 7950 gallons of gasoline on board and 447
gallons of oil. After again finding himself with insufficient ballast on the
17th, Bockholt had taken on another 576 gallons of water ballast and the
total now stood at 2425 gallons. Hung in the keel, were the bags and cases
of cargo to be flown to East Africa. There were thirty machine enaresy
400,000 rounds of ammunition, 7800 pounds of medicine and 7300 pounds of
miscellaneous other cargo, spare parts of all sorts, rifles, ammunition
boxes, field glasses and sewing material. In all, the ship carried 111,496
pounds of fuel, ballast, crew and cargo.[22] The gasoline, oil, water, food
and ballast was distributed in the airship in such a way that its balance
would not be disturbed as these supplies were being used up during the
flight, the cargo was concentrated around the ship's center of gravity.
Somewhere in the keel, too, hung a parachute. Most airships did not carry
parachutes for their crews. They were not considered to be of great value in
escaping a crashing airship and they were too heavy. This parachute was for
Grussendorf. He had volunteered to jump down to any troops that "L 59" might
locate when it arrived in Africa to make sure that they were in fact
Germans.

     There were also 234 pounds of mail for the white troops in Africa who
had been cut off from all personal communication with Germany for more than
three years. Among the letters was one From Wilhelm Solf, the Secretary of
State for Colonies, for Colonel Lettow - Vorbeck. Solf wrote that as far as
he knew, the colonel's family was well. Whoever had made the inquiries for
Solf had served him badly. One of Lettow's brothers, a captain in the 89th
Infantry Regiment, had been killed in Belgium in August 1914; the other was
gravely ill from war gas poisoning. In his biography, Lettow commented on
the sad errors in this letter with great bitterness. It was the only time
that he mentioned "L 59" in his writings.

     Early Wednesday morning, the eighteen ratings of "L 59" fell in once
again outside their barracks. It was foggy and still dark. The wind swept
amb inde across the plains of the Tunja river and it was freezing cold. The
men wore regulation furlined, leather flying suits, tightfitting leather
helmets, suits and boots specially made for airship crews. The hoots were
felt soled so that they would not strike sparks from the ship's metal parts
and ignite any hydrogen gas which might be leaking from the gas cells. The
black powder makers of old had worn similar shoes. Each man carried a pistol
for personal defense. Beside them stood their sea bags, stuffed with their
tropical uniforms, two woolen blankets and sixteen pounds of whatever
personal equipment each man chose to bring with him. Forty-four pounds were
allotted to each man for his baggage, the same amount that airlines permit
passengers to carry free of charge to this day. The officers were permitted
twice this amount. What they wore and what was in their bags would be all
the comfort and civilization they were likely to see for quite a while. A
quick roll call, the men picked up their bags and marched over to the hangar
which darkly loomed up to the northwest.

     At 5 A.M., the doors of the airship hangar were rolled open. Inside,
the great flood lights had been turned on, giving the men a ghostly,
greenish pallor.

     The crew climbed into the ship and went to their take-off stations. The
baggage was handed up and stowed. The engines were started for a final test.
A deafning roar reverberated through the hall. Perched in the narrow engine
compartments, each crew checked its special ward. Once warmed up, the
Maybach motors were shut off again. Gas hissed through canvas hose pipes to
top off the gas cells. The ground crew, 500 men, stood by and waited
patiently. Most were young recruits of the Bulgarian army in greygreen
Russian style great coats. Scattered among them were a few German airship
handlers in their sailor's blues. The Bulgarian cecruits had at first caused
concern. Classroom instruction had left them bored and disinterested. Once
the practical work began, however, they had gone at it with a will and
turned in a creditable performance.

     On the navigator's table on the right hand side of the control cabin,
First Mate Wald had spread out the motley collection of maps that had been
scraped together for this enterprise: German General Staff maps of the
Balkans, Italian maps of North Africa and provisional English maps of East
Africa. They were to see "L 59" to its goal and Wald carefully checked once
more that he had a complete set.

     Behind him stood Grussendorf, testing the elevator controls. The
elevator controls, like the rudder, were so evenly balanced that they could
be operated by hand. Unlike the controls of an airplane, in which the
operation of the elevator and the rudder is carried out through a common
control element, the "Stick", the elevator and rudder on an airship were
separated, each being controlled by a steering wheel that resembled the
traditional ship's steering wheel, though of much lighter construction. At
the front of the cabin, the rudderman was testing his controls also. He
glanced at the compass before him. It was an ordinary liquid-filled compass
but at least on this trip, it was not likely to freeze up as it had on other
zeppelins when they had flown in low temperatures.

     Each crewman was occupied with his task and there undoubtedly was also
busy-work to help to reduce the tension of waiting for the take-off. At
7:03, the sun rose and with it the spirits of those on board.

     Now Ensign Maas began the test which was cruicial to a safe take off -
checking the ships balance. The zeppelin had to be in perfect trim for take
off, neither nose nor tail heavy and its lift and weight so completely
balanced that it would not rise away nor sink into the ground. The ground
crew detached the sandbags, which anchored the ship to the ground, and
seized the hand rails on the command and engine cars and the handling lines
which hung from the ship. Maas signalled to the ground crew to release its
hold of the control car so that he could see whether the nose of the ship
would rise or fall. It held steady.

     Another hand signal and the crew let go of the ship briefly. It floated
evenly.

     "Airship ready for departure, Sir" Maas reported. Bockholt shook hands
all around and boarded.

     A whistle shrilled. "Airship forward march!"

     Led by Boatswain Kruger, the ground crew began to move the ship out of
the hall. Two interpreters imarched with them to relayed instructions from
the German airship handlers among them to the Bulgarians, but for the most
part, the Bulgartian recruits followed the rule: do what the Germans do. It
was the best way to overcome the language barrier and make up for their lack
of experience.

     At a marching pace, the shin cleared the hall. A few hundred yards out
on the field, the crew stopped and turned the nose of "L 59" into the north
wind. The photographer, who had been waiting in the hangar, took the shot he
had planned beforehand - a lengthwise view of "L 59", framed by the open
hangar doors.

     Maas once more checked the trim of the ship. Tne 86-ton airship floated
a few feet above the ground without moving as if pinned there by a great,
invisible needle.

     At 8:20 a.m., the engines were started again. Bockholt listened for a
while. The Maybachs ran smoothly. The handling lines were dropped; the ship
lay steady in the hands of the groundcrew. The men tensed, there would be
only one more order. It came at "Up ship!"

     The ground crews let go of the handrails on the control car and the
rear engine car, the men at the control car giving the ship a good shove
upwards as they did so. With the ship perfectly balanced, this was enough to
point its nose upwards. Water ballast splashed out of the hull. Slowly, the
gray monster rose, Zupitza waived, as befitted his civilian status. Bockholt
saluted in farewell.

     At 300 feet above the ground, the engine telegraph honked: "Stern
engines full power ahead!"

     Chief Machinist Mate Busch in the rear engine car, nodded to his
mechanics. They engaged the rear propellor clutch and the large propellor
started to spin into a glittering disk.

     At 450 feet, "L 59" released more water ballast. A substantial amount,
680 gallons, spewed into the air. Grussendorf turned his wheel to "up
elevator". The engines shifted into full power. The ship climbed more
rapidly and 15 minutes later reached its cruising altitude of 2,000 feet.
Maas made the first entry in the log book. "Start of long distance mission
pursuant to operations order of the Naval Command".

     The ship was off to "China". Exactly where in Africa Bockholt proposed
to land is not known. Probably he did not know himself. He may have
concluded that all he could do was to leave the choice of landing place to
circumstances as he found them in East Africa. His confidence that he would
be able to find Lettow would have been badly shaken had he known that on the
day before, at Newala, the men operating the last German radio station in
Africa had smashed their equipment and had joined Lettow's soldiers who were
rapidly marching southward towards the Ruwoma river.

     The rudderman, stiff in the 25° F. cold, turned the ship south. The
Tundja river below gave him his bearings for Adrianople (Edirne), "L 59"'s
first way-station.

     A northwest wind from astern pushed "L 59" along at a great rate; the
ground speed was 77 m.p.h. The check points on the map ticked off quickly.
The city of Adrianople was reached at 9:45 a.m. "L 59" turned southeast for
Rodosto (Tekirdag) on the north shore of the Sea of Marmara. It reached it
at 11:05 a.m. and began to cross the Sea of Marmara once more. To the east
lay the domes and minarets of Constantinople, to the west the Gallipoli
Straits. German planes cruised over the Straits, ready to intercept any
Allied attempt to interfere with the flight. By 11:45, the shin had crossed
the Sea of Marmara and was over Panderma. It dropped a coded message for the
Naval Command, giving its position, and began to follow the railroad tracks
which lead from Panderma (Bandirma) southwest by south through Belikesir and
Soma to Smyrna (Izmir). This time, the Turkish soldiers left ship
unmolested. Particular pains had been taken to advise the Turks of the
flight and huge German and Turkish flags had been painted under "L 59's"
bow.

     Smyrna was reached at three o'clock in the afternoon. To the west, the
islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos, on which the Allies had built a chain of
flying fields, formed a barrier which "L 59" had to avoid. Further south,
progress was blocked by bases on Rhodes and Crete. So far, the Germans had
detected no signs of Allied counter measures. A reconnaissance patrol had
flown over the main British flying field at Mytelene on Lesbos that morning
and had observed no unusual activity. Still, as long as any Allied aircraft
were in the area, crossing the Aegean in daylight was too dangerous. The
airship turned into the Manisa valley to the east of Smyrna to cruise there
until dusk. Behind it, two German planes flew protective patrol while the
rest of the squadron stood ready at Smyrna for immediate take-off.

     When dusk fell, the airship emerged from the Manisa valley and followed
the railroad from Smyrna south. The rails, glistening in the moonlight,
showed the way and islands lying off the coast provided visual checkpoints.
Despite the war, a few navigation lights still were lit. The towering
mountain ranges to the east of the ship masked the low flying "L 59" from
observation from seaward. At the mouth of the Menderes river, "L 59" turned
toward the sea and began to cross the Lipsos Straits, circling west to avoid
the island of Kos. It was 7:40. The wind had picked up and the sky was
becoming cloudy. Once clear of Kos, the ship turned south toward Crete. Its
eastern end, sere and craggv, passed below at 10:25. The camel had threaded
the eve of the needle; the open sea had been safely gained. By now, the sky
was solidly overcast.

     At midnight a thunderstorm struck. Rain squalls soaked the ship. Foul
black clouds released a continuous crescendo of thunder and chain flashes of
lightening tore across the sky. Each lit the control cabin to daylight
brightness.

     Airships had standing orders to evade thunderstorms if at ali possible.
The danger to the easily inflammable ships was too great. This foul weather
front, however, was too broad to be evaded. The only thing left to do was to
try to duck under it at a low altitude. As the ship was tossing helplessly
in the storm, there came a cry from the look-out on top of the hull.[23]
"Snip's on fire!"

     The whole ship was bathed in a blue pulsating electric light, each
projecting object wore an electric halo. The vast, eerie glow of static
electricity, however, was a sight that mariners knew well though none had
ever seen it on such a vast scale. It was St. Elmo's fire. It was harmless
and the frightful alarm had been a mistake.

     Ancient lore held that St. Elmo's fire foretold the ebbing of the storm
and this proved true. It gradually abated. The officer of the watch noted in
the log pook in the approved laconic Fashion: "Over Mediterranean, frequent
thunderstorms with rain". "L 59" left the clouds behind and headed into the
starlit sky.

     Quietly, the ship slid south. At 5:15 in the morning of the 22nd, "L
59" reached the North African coast near Mersa Matruh and crossed into
Egypt. An entry point far west from the Nile valley had been chosen to avoid
the airfield at Alexandria and the numerous garrisons which the British had
established in Egypt since 1914 after Egypt had broken its ties of
suzerainty with Turkey.

     From a height of 2100 feet the crew stared at the novel scene — the
grey-blue sea, lined with long white breakers, the blotched yellow-brown
land beyond, rocky, punctuated by a few scrub bushes which cast long shadows
cast in the low morning sun.

     Now the crew was truly on its own. The land below them was enemy
territory; the terrain was hostile to all. There would be no one to help
them, all ties with their familiar world had been broken. The twenty-two
Germans were isolated in a universe of their own, floating in the sky, in
their cramped cabins and the impersonal, comfortless vastness of the grey
hull.

     Prodded by the rudderman, "L 59" changed its course slightly to the
east in the direction of the oasis Farafrah, 300 miles inland.

     A small camp appeared below. The tents were conical European tents, not
like the flat Arabian tents. A thin tracery of lines around the camp
suggested a barbed wire entanglement. As luck would have it, "L 59" seemed
to have stumbled upon a small military encampment and unwelcome observers.
At the moment all was quiet. The ship was flying at 2300 Feet in a cloudless
sxv with a following wind. The engines hummed steadily. They were kept
throttled back at 1240 to 1280 r.o.m. to avoid overloading them. Following
normal practice, each engine in rotation was shut down every eight hours to
allow it to cool and permit routine maintenance. One of the machinists was
now fussing over his charge, rotating valves to keep them from burning
through, a common problem at the time, topping off the oil, pumping fuel
from the gasoline drums in the keel into the gravity tanks above each
engine, and doing all those maintenance jobs which his skills and the
knowledge of "his" engine suggested.

     At 6:30, the watch changed. The men stood watch as ona naval vessel -
four hours on, four hours off under Maas or Wald as Officer of the Watch.
The old watch left their stations and climbed into the hull. A dreary
breakfast awaited them. The night had been freezing cold and the men looked
forward to some hot coffee. They were disappointed; the boilers for heating
food and water would not work. The men had to do with what was left in their
thermos bottles. There was also food which had been packed in selfheating
cans, "Kaloritkonserven", but when the crew opened the cans, they found that
the food was old and much too salty, particularly the ham and sausages. The
Food rations of the zeppelin crews was adequate though at home and even at
the Fighting fronts, food already was in short supply. Each man got 6.6
pounds per day, canned vegetables with meat, sausage, tea or coffee,
biscuits or chocolate, fresh or canned bread and butter or lard. There was
about half a gallon of water for drinking and washing for each man per day.
On "LZ 120", there had been 1.3 gallons for each man, but that ext had been
a luxury cruise by comparison. In addition, there were iron rations of food
and water, should the ship meet with an accident. The provisions which "L
59" carried could be made to last three months, if necessary, and they could
be supplemented by hunting game. Four rifles had been put on board specially
for this purpose, together with 4000 rounds of ammunition.

     After breakfast, those who had taken their fill of the still strange
African landscape that was slowly passing below them were free to retire to
their hammocks, slung in the keel at carefully calculated intervals so as to
maintain the delicate balance of the ship.

     After his long flight on "LZ 120", Lehmann had made a number of
suggestions as to how the crew could be made more comfortable on extended
cruises, ranging from rattan chairs to sit on to a few pictures on the wall
of a dayroom which should tie provided for the crew. There were no such
amenities on "L 59", The crew took its breakfast in the keel among the
cargo, gasoline drums and ballast containers. The large load carried by "L
59" permitted no frills and there was no compromise between the purpose of
the mission and consideration For the men who were to carry it out.[24]

     Seventy-five miles south of the coast, the ship crossed - the steep
escarpment which bounded the Qatara Depression, that impassable dried salt
marsh which in 1943 shielded General Montg omery's flank as he made his
stand at Fl Alamein. Soon afterwards the Sitra Oasis came in sight. A
brakish bluegreen lake lay in its center and swarms of wild ducks fled from
it in noisy agitation from the strange apparition that appeared in the sky.
By now, the early morning sun had given way to an intensely bright,
cloudless sky which blotted out the subtle variations of form and color
which earlier had given the land beneath an exotic charm. The landscape was
hard and monotonous and began to wear on the nerves of the men. The rudder
and elevator helmsmen had no protection against the sun's shimmering
reflections on the desert sands and suffered great eyestrain and headaches.

     The sum was evaporating the rain which had soaked the shin during the
night. The elevator nelmsman pushed the nose of "L 59" down to minus 2° to
counteract the ship's slow rise as it shed its wet load.[25] To get the ship
back into balance, the crew trudged 1650 pounds of cargo towards the rear of
the ship, carrying the bundles along the series of narrow step plates,
unprotected by any railing, which formed the cat walk running the length of
the ship.

     At about 12:30, Farafra Oasis came into sight. Life reappeared in the
desert. Small square, irrigated fields and gardens patterned the ground and
date palms and olive trees dotted the landscape. The ship crossed the
village of Qasr Farafra, where some 600 people lived. In prankish high
spirits, the crew threw "souvenirs" down to them, empty food cans and other
garbage.

     The relief which the variegated scene on the ground offered soon
dissipated. As the ship left the oasis behind, the sun and the desert
resumed their assault on the seared eyes and minds of the Germans. "L 59"
began to pitch violently in hot air columns rising from the desert, like a
ship breasting heavy seas. Fine sand began to collect in corners of the
ship.[26] Several men became airsick, vomited and complained of violent
headaches. Bockholt decided to shorten the watches to two hours and
rearranged the crew assignments.

     The violent pitching of the ship made particularly great demands on the
skills of the men handling the elevator controls. Even under normal
conditions, the job of the elevator helmsman required far greater abilities
than that of the rudderman. Tne wide, slow turns which an airship made
generated only small centrifugal and aerodynamic forces which did not
greatly disturb the balance of the ship. A rudderman therefore needed little
skill beyond being able to keep the ship on course. In fact, the navy
thought it could easily train the physician and the interpreter, which the
original "China" plans had intended to add to the crew, to double in brass
as rudder helmsmen.

     On the other hand, for an airship to remain in balance, its center of
gravity and the center of its lift had to coincide in one point so that the
zeppelin would not start to turn about its center of gravity. Climbing or
descending could affect the location of the center of lift (and also of the
center of gravity if ballast was dumped at the same time as was likely in a
climb). It also could change the dynamic lift generated by the ship's hull
(see p.). Seasoned judgment was needed at such a time in handling the
elevator to maintain the ship's equilibrium. "L 59" also had a special quirk
for which the elevator helmsman had to watch. Once the nose of the ship was
raised more than six degrees over the horizon, the great length of the ship
blocked the airflow over the upper rudder surface and it no longer responded
to the rudder controls. This characteristic was troublesome because
Bockholt, to save ballast, tried to fly the ship nose up whenever he could
to take advantage of the dynamic lift thus produced. [27]

     For Grussendorf, this was a particularly difficult time. One of the
elevator helmsmen, Muller, had been left behind. Grussendorf took his place,
glahgahae Nolte who was regularly assigned to this duty. Bockholt reported
later that the "other helmsman" was inexperienced but he did not say who the
"other" helmsman was. He also ignored the fact that "L 59" had two "others"
on board, Nolte and Bockholt's former clerk, Schedelman, whom he had
ostensibly taken along to also serve as rudder helmsman. Neither Nolte nor
Schedelman could master the badly pitching ship and Grussendorf, besides
standing his regular watch, had to take over the elevator controls from them
whenever the going became difficult.

     As "L 59" struggled on across the desert, the crew was briefly diverted
from its misery by a scene that had occured only once before, and then only
in the imagination of a great humorist. The reader may recall the story "Tom
Sawyer Abroad" which Mark Twain had written in 1894. In St. Louis, Tom and
his friends by chance had been swept away in a powered balloon along with
the balloon's inventor, a mad professor. The ballon was a truly wonderful
machine. It had no trouble reaching a speed of 100 m.p-h.; it climbed or
dove a mile in no time; it could hover stockstill over the ground or dash
off to execute any maneuver demanded of it. Before the professor was
accidentally lost overboard, he fortunately had taught Tom to operate the
balloon. It was done mostly by pushing buttons.

     Within a day, Tom and his friends found themselves flying high over the
Sahara Desert. There they espied a camel caravan crossing the sea of yellow
sand. Amazed, they steered their balloon down to 300 feet to have a closer
look. The sight of the balloon panicked the camels and they fled in all
directions. It took their frightened Arab keepers an hour to round them up
again to continue their journey.

     Most likely, none of the men on "L 59" had read Twain's fanciful tale
but his fantasy now translated itself into reality. Ahead, on the track
leading from the Farafra oasis to Dakhla to the south, moved a camel
caravan. The camels reacted to the grey monster appearing in the sky much as
they had in Mark Twain's story, to the great hilarity of the airship men. As
they lost sight of the scattered caravan an hour later, the frightened and
bewildered camel drivers were still trying to restore order among the more
ancient ships of the desert.

     At 3:30 p.m., a huge rock formation, Bab el Calliad, 1300 feet high,
came into view and behind it Dakhla Oasis. It covered about 212 square
miles; several villages, mosques and a Senussi cloister shone in the sun.
About 17,000 souls lived there, growing olives, dates, nuts, grain and
citrus fruits. Many of them now gathered to gaze at the alien thing that
came droning from the north.

     The inhabitants of Farafra and Dakhla had seen machines fly in the
skies before. In May 1915, the Turks and the Germans had stirred the Moslem
Senussi sect, already at war with the Italians in Lybia, into rising against
the British in Egypt. Four thousand Arab horsemen took the field, aided by
Turkish artillerymen and machine gunners and varying number of irregulars.
The British soon regained control of the situation and forced the Senussi to
retreat into the desert, first to Siwa Oasis and later to Farafra and
Dakhla. Without sufficient forces to re-occupy these places, the British at
first contented themselves with keeping them under aerial surveillance until
the Imperial Camel Corps and the Light Car Patrol could reoccupy Farafra and
Dakhla in October of 1916. Although the arabs of the oasis had come to
accept the strident gnats the foreigners sent, they knew of no precedent for
that gray leviathan that now flew over them. A German aviator, landing at
Dakhla sixteen years later, found the outlines of a zeppelin scratched over
the doors of many huts in the oasis. "A mighty sign appeared in the heavens
over the desert!" it was explained to him.

     At 4:20, the crew in the command car was startled by a loud bang coming
from the engine compartment installed in its tail. The mechanic on duty at
this station quickly stopped the engine. As on the trip to Yambol, the
propellor drive housing had broken. This was alarming. The engine drove the
electric generator which powered the ship's radio sender. Mow "L 59" had no
means of contacting Lettow - Vorbeck when it arrived in East Africa. Busch
inspected the engine and decided that it could be repaired sufficiently to
put it to limited use again. Repairs were begun at once.

     "L 59" continued its southerly course, a steady 44 m.p.h., hour after
patient hour. It began to darken. A pink cloud appeared in the east and as
the ship drew closer, it dissolved into a swarm of flamingos in unbelievable
numbers. The Nile had to be near. At 9:45 p.m., the ship reached the great
river at Gabla Selim, on the westerly curve of the huge S which the Nile
describes as it leaves the juncture of the Blue and White Nile at Khartoum
and flows north through the Nubian desert on its way to Egypt. A narrow
green belt marked the river shores. White houses were scattered about and
Dhows plied the river. Bockholt would have preferred to remain hidden in the
desert throughout the trip and not be seen over the Nile valley but he
needed a visual check point to verify the course of his ship which had been
navigated by celestial observation and dead reckoning since it left Turkey.

     The air near the river was hazy and humid. A thunderstorm boiled to the
east. The air, instead of cooling at sunset, rapidly grew warmer. It had
been 53.6°F. at noon, reached 68°F. by 10 p.m. even though the ship was
flying at 3,300 feet altitude and within the hour rose another 4°. By 3
a.m., it was to reach 77°. The engines were beginning to run hot. "In the
future, we will have to fly further to the west" thought Bockholt and
changed his course a little in that direction to escape the heat of the
river plain. Meanwhile, the dead vistas of the Dongola region slid beneath
them - gravel desert with hummocks and hills of basalt, granite or
limestone, a rare tree tucked away in the wadis, sucking up by some
mysterious process life-giving water that had long disappeared from view.

     The morale of the crew was high. They had evaded the enemy in Europe,
mastered a fierce storm over the Mediterranean and they were learning how to
live in their peculiar universe in the sky. The African landscape, by its
strange and alien appearance, gave witness that their unprecedented
adventure was succeeding. The news reports picked up on the ship's radio
that evening were good. German troops had scored some successes along the
Piave river in Italy and it looked as if they might break through that front
and perhaps repeat the disastrous defeat which they and the Austrians had
inflicted on the Italians at Caporetto. A splendid sunset seemed to put a
seal of approval on their efforts.

     Bockholt looked at his maps with satisfaction. He had covered 1900
miles already, the trip was half completed. Two more days' would see him
past the bare bluffs of Mt. Elgon, northeast of Lake Victoria, past fabled,
snow-capped Kililmanjaro in German East Africa to the mouth of the Rovuma
river. Once he had steered his ship to that clearly identifiable landmark,
he would turn back a short distance to the Makonde Plateau. There had been
no news about Africa since they had left Yambol. He had requested that for
six days after his departure, the radio station at Nauen inform him at
midnight what the news from Africa was. Perhaps Nauen would have some news
tonight.

     Towards midnight, Signal Mate Kettner tuned his radio set in the
control car to Nauen. The receiver was not affected by the breakdown of the
front engine; it operated on batteries. Nauen was sending its nightly
instructions to the submarines at sea. Kettner waited for the call sign of
"L 59".


    ----------------------------------------
    [22] This is a close approximation of what the ship carried.
        What was actually stowed on board on the morning of the 21st
        cannot be determined exactly, in part because of the
        constant changes that were made in the payload. Göbel in
        "Afrika zu unseren Füssen" gives a detailed cargo list but
        his weights do not agree with weighing diagram of the ship
        at take off, contained in the report on the trip.
    [23] installed on top of the forward section of the German
        airship hulls. Access to it was gained through the forward
        ventilation shaft in the hull. On "L 57" and "L 59", the two
        Parabellum machine guns usually mounted on this platform,
        had been omitted to save weight.
    [24] The rations consisted of 2.2 pounds of canned vegetables
        with meat, three men sharing four cans. There further were
        1.65 pounds of butter, lard, condiments and tea or coffee,
        1.1 pounds of biscuits or chocolate and 1.65 pounds of
        bread. Preserved bread was packed in 2.2 pound cans.
    [25] This is an application of the dynamic lift principle (see
        Pp.) in reverse. Just as the raising of the airship's nose a
        few degrees will generate upward lift, so depressing the
        nose will produce downward pressure, counteracting any
        tendency to rise which the ship may have acquired by the
        loss of weight.
    [26] The ship was flying at 2,000 feet altitude at that time.
        That so much sand could be suspended in the air even at that
        height was a lesson from which those who planned the flight
        of the helicopters into Iran to rescue the American hostages
        could have benefited. Two of the helicopters failed, at
        least in part by desert sand penetrating into their engines,
        and thus forced a cancellation of the attempt.
    [27] Some of the planners of the Africa trip had thought that
        the trim of the ship could be controlled solely by flying it
        nose up or down, as needed, and that dropping of ballast
        could be dispensed with entirely during the trip, an
        expectation that quickly proved completely unrealistic.




                                Chapter XII

                                  RETREAT

     At 12:15 a.m., Signal Mate Kettner, waiting at his radio receiving set,
sat up. The call sign of "L 59" was coming in. Carefully, he wrote down the
groups of numbers which beeped in his earphones. They were meaningless to
him; the message was in code. When the message ended, he handed it to Maas
to decode.

     Zupitza watched. Unable to sleep, he had climbed down from the hot and
confining hull into the control car to while away the time. The rudder
helmsman was keeping the ship on a course due south; Grussendorf was at the
elevator controls. The green radium markings of the instruments shone dimly
in the darkness. The Nile valley was slowly receding to the east but it was
still hot and humid - 72.5°. The sky was black.

     Maas completed the slow task of decoding the message. With a stunned
look he handed it to Bockholt.

        "Cancel mission, return. Enemy has occupied greater part
        of Makonde Plateau, is already near Kintangari.
        Portugese attacking remainder of Protectorate troops
        from south".

     Nauen repeated the message several times. There was no mistake. Kettner
had done his work accurately. Damascus confirmed: "Cancel mission!"

     What lead to this unexpected turn of events was this. In the evening of
the 20th, while "L 59" was still resting in its hangar in Yambol, Radio
London had broadcast an extensive report about the war in Africa. It was not
much different from those of the 16th and the 18th but it was far more
detailed. The fighting had moved close to Kitangari, the landing point which
the Colonial Office had last suggested to Zupitza and Bockholt. Some time on
the morning of the 21st Major Göring reached his office and read the usual
transcript of the London radio reports of the previous night. It was now
clear that there was little territory left which was still under German
control where "L 59" could land. The situation was bound to worsen during
the next three or four days while the ship was on its way. Although several
gentlemen in the Colonial Office were drafting a press release belittling
the English claims - "Contrary to what the English would have us believe,
they have not yet reached the Makonde Plateau" - Gdring saw the matter
differently. "L 59" would arrive in Africa too late. At that moment, "L 59"
was making steady progress south; at 9:45 a.m. it had reached Adrianople. At
noon the Colonial Office made its decision. It could no longer Support the
operation. "L 59" was now flying through the valleys of Anatolia. Göring
called the Naval Command. It agreed with the Colonial Office and by late
afternoon, messages went out to Yambol and the Military Mission in Turkey to
recall the airship. "L 59" was then in the Smyrna area, some three hundred
miles from its base.

     Yambol at once began signalling "L 59" but was unable to make contact.
The ship was already beyond the range of its radio station. At 6:05, it gave
up and advised Berlin to try to contact "L 59" over the long distance
station at Nauen. Arrangements had already been made with Nauen to radio "L
59" at midnight. With atmospheric disturbances generally diminishing during
the night, the late night hours offered the best chance of getting an
ungarbled message to the ship.

     By the time Nauen started broadcasting, "L 59" was tossing in the
thunderstorm it had encountered over the Mediterranean. With its radio
antenna reeled in, it was deaf to the messages streaming through the ether.
During the next night, Nauen tried again and this time, its message had
reached "L 59", Bockholt handed the message from Nauen to Grussendorf and
Zupitza. An impromptu council of war took place.

     Should they obey the order? Maas and Grussendorf wanted to continue the
flight. If Lettow was in so much trouble, he would need help now more than
ever. Zupitza was more cautious. Kitangari was only thirty miles from the
Rovuma river. With the Portugese having crossed the river and advancing
north, there would be little space left in which to land. Since the
situation was so fluid and so little land was still in German hands, there
might not be enough time to land and unload before the British or the
Portugese found them. The ultimate decision had to be Bockholt's. The
temptation to continue the trip must have been great. A triumph seemingly
lay lay close at hand. How much greater would it be if it were achieved in
disregard of these cautious orders to return. "It's the orders you disobey
that make you famous", General Douglas MacArthur was to say later.

     To a junior officer, molded on the drill fields of Kiel, in the crowded
barracks of Tsingtao and the innards of a battleship, disregarding a direct
order would have been difficult at best but in a sense, the decision had
already been made for Bockholt. Having lost "L 57" under questionable
circumstances, his naval career and his personal reputation would have been
utterly ruined if he were to lose "L 59" while disregarding an explicit
order to return.

     Bockholt's great mission, the relief of Lettow, the hopes of his
officers and men dissolved in the lowering African night. He gave his order.
At 2:50 a.m. of the 23rd, at 16°30' north latitude and 30° East longitude,
"L 59" came about in a wide turn and set course almost due north. Bockholt
sat down to improvise a new flight plan.

     A few years later, when the story of "L 59" became known, a hot debate
ensued about the wisdom of the recall order. Should the airship not have
continued its flight despite what Radio London was broadcasting? Some argued
that a great propaganda victory could have been won, whether "L 59" had
found General Lettow - Vorbeck or not. They assumed, of course, that the
ship could have made its way safely to East Africa, that the 1,900 miles
which still lay ahead could have been covered without untoward incident.
Events soon proved that this could by no means be taken for granted.

     Since 5 p.m., "L 59" had been dropping ballast from time to time to
counteract the loss of lift which was normally expected in the evening as
the gas cells contracted in the decreasing temperatures. This was standard
procedure, followed by Bockholt the previous night as well. In order to
minimize the amount of ballast lost, Bockholt had flown the ship with its
nose up at 4° and its four operable engines turning over at maximum speed.
He wanted to generate as much dynamic lift as possible. Four degrees up
approached a critical angle.

     At 3:10, a random gust hit the ship and it stalled. As on an airplane
wing which is set at too high an angle in relation to the airflow, the
smooth airflow over the back of the airship collapsed. With this, the lift
which the hull had generated disappeared and the ship began to sack away
rapidly. Within five minutes it had dropped from 3,100 to 1,200 feet
altitude. The crags of Jebl El' Ain started to rise menacingly before the
ship. A series of jerks ran through "L 59" and it rolled slightly as though
it had touched ground. The engine telegraph blatted through the night to
stop the engines and prevent the ship from ramming the crests ahead. Hurried
hands pulled down the ballast releases over the elevator controls and great
quantities of water gushed out of the bottom of the ship. The crew scurried
along the runway in the keel to throw out the cargo which had been earmarked
for just such a contingency. Nothing guided them in the darkeness along the
foot wide, unguarded catwalk in the keel except their familiarity with the
ship and patches of florescent paint glowing in the dark here and there.
Over 5,500 pounds of cargo, much of it sie LAE, was thrown overboard. The
ammunition exploded as it hit the ground, the sound reverberating along the
mountain ranges. "The echo from the long mountain side created an impression
as if a fort was firing at us with small caliber artillery" was Zupitza's
description.

     Gradually the ship rose. The jerks shuddering through the ship had been
caused by the weights attached to the ends of the radio antennas which had
caught among the rocks on the ground. The ship had come within 400 feet of
stranding. The crew had barely been able to cope with the emergency, but for
the moment the ship was safe.

     Lehmann later wrote that among the cargo sacrificed at Jebl El' Ain had
been bottles of cognac and champagne that had been taken along to celebrate
the meeting with Lettow. The ship's cargo list revealed no such items but
such liquor might not show up on a ship's manifest. True or not, the tale
was symbolic of the spirit of the crew at this point. It had been crushed,
wasted like the good cognac dashed upon the ground. The hardships overcome,
the fears conquered and the hopes of glory long nurtured were for naught.
The return trip would be difficult but whatever happened now would be
anticlimax.

     "L 59" cautiously began retracing its steps. By 3:40 a.m., it had risen
to a safe 5,900 feet altitude. Bockholt kept it at that height for the next
several hours. Unsure how much the ship had drifted during the night, Wald
shot the sun with his sextant at eight in the morning. The ship was on
course. Navigation over land had been by dead reckoning and at night by
celestial navigation.

     The desert sun once more began to beat down on the ship. The machinists
on duty in the cramped engine gondolas had already run out the retractable
radiators as far as possible to catch every last breath of cooling air. Now,
shouting into the telephone to make themselves heard over the noise of the
laboring Maybachs, they reported to the officer of the watch in the control
car that the engines were running hot. The gas cells had dried out
completely and crackled as they rubbed against each other. Bockholt feared
that they would become too porous or produce a fatal electrical discharge.
The ship had not been built to operate under these conditions. By noon,
Bockholt feared eminent engine failure. If another engine stopped, it was
doubtful that the ship would be able to get home. At noon, as he was about
to cross back into Egypt, Bockholt decided that the time had come to destroy
his operations orders lest they fell into enemy hands.

     Still, Bockholt fought on. He slowly increased the altitude of "L 59"
to search for more favorable winds. Between 6,000 and 6,500 feet, he found a
counter monsoon, blowing from the south-east which would help the ship on
its way. The outside temperature steadied and then began to drop and the
engines continued their comfortable drone. Once more, the crisis had been
overcome.

     The nervous tension of the last two days and the disappointment of
having to turn back was now exacting its toll. The off-duty watch, though
exhausted, was unable to sleep. The keel, in which they had slung their
hammocks, was filled with the banging and rattling of the cloth covering of
the ship and the whining of the guy wires. The temperature inside that giant
tent in the sky was running over 82°, temperatures to which the crew was not
accustomed. Old and overly salty food plagued the crew with thirst and
constipation. Some men were feverish. Zupitza examined them but there was
little he could do. Only the end of this odyssey could bring relief. At 6:00
p.m. Dakhla oasis was reached and at 8:30 Farafra came into view again. Back
over the desert, clouds began to accumulate on the horizon but now they were
a welcome sight. They foretold the approaching coast. At 3 a.m. of the 24th,
in the vicinity of Sollum, she ship crossed the African coastline again and
headed into the Mediterranean. Below ship's searchlights stabbed into the
night but none of the beams found its target. The moon was brilliant, it
seemed like day in the cabin. It was even possible to use the
"Schattentabelle", a table which permitted the navigator of the airship to
determine its speed by measuring the time which the ship's shadow required
to pass a fixed point on the ground and by looking up the observed time in
the "shadow table" to read off the corresponding groundspeed. The ship had
climbed to 9,800 feet; altitude was now the ship's best defense. To the
discomfort of the crew was now added the cold and strong drafts. Despite
leather flying suits and two wool blankets, the men were shivering.

     South of Crete, extensive thunderstorms were building up. "L 59" turned
to starboard to avoid them. It flew easterly some sixty miles, south of
Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes, towards the Bay of Adalia on the Turkish coast.
Zupitza thought this the most beautiful part of the trip; a deep blue sea,
towering cumulus clouds, now white, now dark and threatening, to which the
afternoon added the gleaming snowcapped mountains of Asia Minor. Zupitza
drank in the rare sight; there was little else to occupy him. South of
Karpathos, two steamers and two escort vessels were Sighted, zig-zagging on
a westerly course. The vessels evidently had not spotted the zeppelin. They
held their course and did not use their radios. A note was made in the log
but the ships were not worth breaking radio silence for.

     Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes each of these romantic islands harbored an
Allied airbase. The alarm was not long in coming.

     "Aircraft, sir!"

     There it was, far below, a tiny speck over the dark, blue ocean. Up
went the binoculars to define the threat, soon to be dropped again with a
sigh of relief. It was only a small steamer heading for Rhodes. The island
hove in sight. It was covered by haze. This was good since it would
discourage any aircraft stationed there from taking off.

     At one in the afternoon, Cape Chelonia was reached. "L 59" was over
friendly territory again, friendly, that is, if the Turkish soldiers
remembered their orders not to shoot at the German sky ship. The snip was
laid on course for Adalia (Antalya) to the north which it reached at 2:30.
It continued until it reached Lake Egredir. Wishing to skirt the highest
Anatolian mountains, Bockholt now turned west and continued on to about 29°
East longitude. Turning north once more, he flew over Usak and Simav towards
Brussa (Bursa) and Constantinople.

     The difficult, improvised return seemed to be succeeding. In
anticipation of the cooling of the air which would set in at sun down, "L
59" had since 2:55 been dropping ballast, mostly ammunition. 3,750 pounds
had been dropped by nightfall. The ship was flying at 5° to 6° positive
pitch, with four engines working at full power. The crisis came as suddenly
as at Jebl El' Ain. At 6:20 p.m., in a gusty headwind, the ship began to
drop precipitously. 6,800 pounds of ballast went overboard before it
recovered. The lesson to be learned, Bockholt reported later, was that the
ship should not be flown above 3° positive pitch and that for each night of
the flight, no less than 6,600 pounds of ballast would be required to
counteract the loss of lift which would have to be expected. This was 30%
more than "L 59" had carried at take off.

     Zupitza told a charming story later in connection with this incident,
not out of his own experience but allegedly to him by Professor Rodenwaldt,
a medical officer who had been stationed in Smyrna. According to this story,
among the ballast dropped were several tin cans of guinine. Mirable dictu,
the precious medicine had nevertheless found its way into the right hands.
"One day, the beaming Turkish Chief Physician, stormed up to [Rodenwaldt]
with the cry: "Allah be praised! Allah is great! In his mercy, Allah has
caused quinine to be sent down to us". Allah was indeed great for under
normal circumstances one would have expected a tin can, fully packed,
dropping several thousand feet, to burst open on impact. Prof. Rodenwaldt,
in his lengthy reminiscences about his war service in Turkey, does not
mention this story.

     Once Bockholt had regained control of the ship, he took it back up to
safe altitudes. By 7.40, "L 59" had risen to 12,800 feet, a safe margin to
clear the mountains that still lay ahead of it. The crew paid the
unavoidable price for this safety. Sweltering in the hull in 82° F.
temperature on the day before, one crew member claimed that the temperature
had reached 90.5°, it now tried to carry on in -12° F. The cold had to be
endured by all, crew and officers alike. It was what zeppelins hed to face
while flying at great altitudes.

     At 7:46 in the evening, near Simav, safely in the north of Turkey, "L
59" broke radio silence. The front engine had been repaired sufficiently to
turn over at 1,000 r.p.m. but Bockholt did not have to use it. The wind
milling propellor was sufficient to drive the radio generator. Message 1658
for the Naval Command went out to Constantinople and Yambol: "Desert west of
Khartoum. Request weather report Yambol, Constantinople. Landing 7 a.m. L
59". Over Constantinople, at 10:20, he received the requested weather
report. It was favorable for a morning landing. Yambol confirmed this.

     During the night, a radio broadcast from British Malta brought "L 59"
the first news about Africa which it had received during the flight. "The
left wing of our forces in East Africa, which had crossed the Makonde
Plateau, penetrated into the Simbas and Kitangari valley, seven miles
northeast of the Kitangari Mission station...On the same day, the right wing
entered Nevala". Nevala was only eighteen miles from the Portugese frontier.

     On the last leg of the trip, strong winds permitted little progress.
Adrianople was not reached until three in the morning and then easterly
winds drove "L 59" towards the Black Sea. In the winds and the dark, it lost
its bearings until near Burgas, radio triangulation gave it a fix on its
position again. The ship reached Yambol at 4:30 a.m. A radio message had
already gone out to the base. Putting first things first, Bockholt asked for
relief for his rank smelling, itchy crew: "Request hot baths for crew
immediately upon landing. Show searchlight from 3 a.m. Ship will remain near
airport during night". Yambol acknowledged at 4:58 and assured Bockholt that
everything was ready.

     As Yambol lacked night landing equipment, "L 59" cruised in the
vicinity of the field to await day break. In weary boredom and frustrated
impatience the crew waited for the sun to rise. At dawn, it once more stood
to stations and rallied to its duties with precise discipline and
concentrated attention. At 6:30, the ship slowly approached the landing
field. At about 500 feet, the engines ceased their labors. Once more, the
ship was put into that perfect balance required for landing. Three landing
lines dropped from the nose of the ship. The ground crew seized them and
pulled the ship down, finally taking hold of the handrails on the control
and the rear engine car. At 7:40, "L 59" was on the ground. Fortunately,
Bockholt had disregarded one recommendation made to him for lighting the
ship after take off. He had not dropped the shock absorbing bumper and the
weight bearing struts which tied the control car to the hull after take off.
Without them, the landing could not have been made safely.

     The crew dismounted, stumbling on legs still attuned to the pitching of
the ship, frozen to the marrow and suffering from colds, fever and
overwhelming fatigue. Machinist Busch and three others seemed seriously ill.
Bockholt got off a short telegraph message to the Naval Command, tersely
summarizing the trip. He did not forget to mention the little convoy they
had spotted south of Karpathos for whatever interest that dated news might
be to the German submarines in the Mediterranean. The men had been in the
air for nearly four days and had flown a distance of 4199 miles.

     What impact did the failure of "L 59" to complete its mission have on
the war in Africa?

     At the end of the rainy season in 1917, the Allies hada commenced a
concentric attack upon Lettow's forces to bring an end to the war in East
Africa. In a bloody four day battle at Mahiva, Lettow had inflicted heavy
casualties on his enemies but he had also used up nearly all of his
supplies. Only 400,000 rounds of rifle ammunition and 300 rounds for his
artillery remained. His depots contained less than 550 tons of food and the
new harvest would not be brought in until March. He was down to fifty
machine guns, light and heavy and 2500 rifles, a great number of them of an
obsolete type. The troops often had to lend their rifles to the reserves as
they come up to to the line to relieve them. His troops numbered 669 whites
and an estimated 5,200 Askaris, many of them sick and disabled. All of this
was not enough to see Lettow through another serious battle. Worst of all,
only one month's supply of quinine was available and there was no way to
replenish these stocks. Of the airship that was to bring relief, Lettow knew
nothing. The messages from Nauen had not been received.

     On October 24th, the day on which "L 59" had been completed, Lettow met
with Governor Schnee and explained to him his plans for dealing with this
situation. Consistent with his aim of tying down as many enemy troops in
Africa as long as possible, Lettow proposed to abandon the few square miles
of German East Africa still left to them, cross into Portugese Mozambique
and carry on guerilla war there. Schnee objected to the plan; he wanted to
stand fast in German Fast Africa. Lettow, however, prevailed. To be able to
move fast and live off the land, he had to trim down his forces and get rid
of his heavy equipment. His artillery pieces, save two light ones, were
abandoned or destroyed. The task of culling out the unfit men was begun.
Every man was given a medical examination. The wounded, the sick and those
no longer fit for the ardeous campaign ahead were removed from the ranks.
Some, like Commander Looff, had to step down over their vigerous protest but
Lettow was stung by the number of fit Germans who were willing to quit him
and be done with this war. When Lettow was done, 300 Germans and 1700
Askaris had been hand picked for the new campaign. The rest of the men were
left behind in camps and hospitals on the Makonde Plateau to surrender to
the British.

     On the day that "L 59" returned to Yambol and as its crew sought
release from the hardships of the last four days in the mean huts of Yambol,
Lettow — Vorbeck's troops were fording the shallow Rovuma river, just to the
west of the point where the Lugenda, rising to the south, Flows into the
Rovuma. Their goal was a Portugese military camp on the west bank of the
Lugenda near the village of Ngomano.

     The Portugese camp was astir. Laggard German discipline, careless
shooting and a brief encounter with Portugese scouts had put the Portugese
troops on the alert. Lettow, observing the camp from a small hill to the
west, estimated that there were about three thousand enemies before him. His
own troops numbered about that. Conventional military wisdom had it that the
attacker should outnumber an prepared defender three to one and Lettow
regretted having sent Captain Gdring anf three companies off on a Side
expedition. However, Lettow had no choice. The camp had to be captured for
whatever suppplies it contained. He was confident that his troops could do
it.

     Now, at Ngomano, Lettow saw a chance to repair his supply situation. He
attacked and the attack was completely successful. The Portugese were driven
off with heavy losses. The camp's stores yielded ample supplies of the best
quality, enough quinine for a year, six machine guns and enough rifles to
re-equip almost half of the German force. The failure of "L 59" to reach
East Africa no longer mattered, possibly it never had mattered.




                                Chapter XIII

                             THE END OF "L 59"

     When the return of "L 59" was reported to the Kaiser, his only response
was to ask offhandedly: "Where is it to be used now. Palestine?"

     Palestine was very much in the news. The British troop movements, which
in October had helped furnish the cover story for "L 59", had erupted into a
new assault on the Turkish lines at Gaza in southern Palestine. General
Allenby, covering his preparations with elaborate deceptive measures, had
outflanked the Turks and rolled up their positions. The Allied watchword
"Jerusalem before Christmas!" seemed close to fulfillment. How different it
had been in 1898 when the Kaiser had made his highly publicized visit of
state to Jerusalem. Tne Turkish authorities had hurried to fill in the
ancient moat between the Jaffa Gate and the Citadel, the Castle of David as
it is often called, so that the Emperor would not have to walk through the
narrow, angled Jaffa Gate but could make his entrance in style[28]. The
Kaiser had let it be known that he would enter the holy city as a "devout
pilgrim"; he entered in the white uniform and the polished metal helmet of
the Prussian Guards. "A brilliant achievement redounding to the honor of
Christendom and of the German nation", the North German Gazette reported.
"This voyage of peace has gained more for the German people than all the
crusades which the old emperors led to the Holy Land" noted a biography of
the Kaiser.

     Tne staff persuaded His Majesty that the airship could not be used in
Palestine. For the moment, however, they could not say what was to be done
with it. There were no plans for "L 59". It was not supposed to return.

     Soon, however, two ideas for exploiting the long distance capabilities
of "L 59" were put forward. One was to try the flight to Africa once again.
The other was to fly a supply mission to the Turkish troops which the Arab
revolt had left stranded in Yemen. Inquiries with the Turkish authorities to
find out whether they were interested in the latter undertaking were
initiated at once. Bockholt pounced on these proposais. He had been deprived
of the chance to complete a spectacular mission and he was eager for another
opportunity. The ship and the crew had proven their ability to carry out
long distance flights. There was no doubt that "L 59" could have finished
the trip to East Africa with margin to spare. It still had 3317 gallons of
gasoline on board when it returned to Yambol, enough to fly another 56
hours.

     On the evening of the 26th, Bocknolt telegraphed the Naval Command from
Yambol. He argued that the news from Africa had turned more favorable and
the trip should be repeated. He could guaranty the delivery of a ten ton
cargo. Was he permitted to repeat the trip or could he undertake the Yemen
operation?

     Tne favorable news from East Africa had evidently escaped the Naval
Command. Next morning, the Chief of Staff of the Naval Command, von Knorr,
reached Bockholt by telegraph.[29] "Mornin'" he greeted Bockholt, perhaps
joshing him about his Rhineland accent. "Welcome back!" Bockholt gave Knorr
details of the flight. He did not omit the small convoy he had spotted in
the Karpathos Straits on the 24th. "Unfortunately had no bombs on board", he
added, a silly bit of swagger as if an attack on those small steamers could
have converted the flight of "L 59" into a success. Knorr wanted to know
what the good news from Africa was. Bockholt repeated the newsbroadcast from
Malta which had been intercepted during the last night of the flight. There
was nothing favorable to the Germans in that report; it was favorable only
in the inferences that Bockholt drew from it. The fighting which Radio Malta
had reported had taken place in the southern part of the German held African
territory. Hence, since there was no news from the northern areas held by
the German troops, or at least held until recently, the situation there
could not have deteriorated as much as in the south, Bockholt seems to have
concluded. The reasoning might have been sound in relation to the war in
Europe where deeply dug trench lines separated the combatants and demarked
friendly territory from that in the hands of the foe. The inference drawn by
Bockholt, however, had no logical connection with the war in Africa, fought
by small, small units scattered over a vast territory. The ease with which
Bockholt skipped over the flaws in his logic bespeaks his eagerness to try
again.

     Knorr did not demur. Could Bocknolt be ready by Sunday to repeat the
trip? Yes, he answered Knorr eagerly, he could repair and test his front
engine # by Friday and if it worked well, he could take off again by Sunday.
He needed gasoline, a machinist, two machinist mates and a good elevator
helmsman. All should be good, stout volunteers. Bockholt asked for more men
than he needed but there was so much malaria about that he wanted a small
reserve in case one Of his men were stricken with the disease. Knorr told
Bockholt to be ready by Sunday. The Naval Attache in Sofia went scurrying
around to look for 3,700 gallons of gasoline. Bockholt ordered the ship to
be gotten ready for another Africa flight.

     Bockholt's request for extra personnel proved to be prudent. Three days
later, two machinist mates, besides Busch, and four men of the maintenance
crew became sick, one man was under arrest and another had to be sent home
because of embezzelement. Strasser could spare Bockholt only the most badly
needed men. a machinist and an elevator helisman.

     In the formal report presented to the Emperor on the 29th, the Colonial
Office stated that in the northeastern part of the Makonde Plateau and in
the area west of Livale, strong units of the Protectorate troops were still
holding out. Its reasoning seems to have paralleled that of Bockholt. If the
Colonial Office, which knew the conditions prevailing in Africa better than
Bockholt, was willing to share his ideas, it seems clear that the Colonial
Office too had lost touch with reality. The view that the area northeast of
Livale must be in German hands because the British had reported no fighting
there, and that therefore the Livale area was a Suitable landing place, was
a point of view which Major Göring had maintained since the beginning of the
operation. He continued to adhere to it even though German resistance
throughout colony was collapsing and though there was no indication of any
kind that there were German troops in the vicinity. Since it would take
until the 30th to outfit "L 59" anew, the Colonial Office recommended to the
Emperor that consideration of the feasibility of the flight should be taken
up again at that time.

     In fact, the Colonial Office was fantasizing! The German force which
had been deployed to the northwest of Livale, Captain Tafel's detachment,
had been driven far to the south. Out of food and unable to break through to
Lettow-Vorbeck, it had surrendered on the 27th. The northeastern part of the
Makonde Plateau was firmly in British hands. Wishful thinking and tenuous
surmise, however, seemed to rule the day and and provide the rationale for a
new "China" operation.

     Commander Strasser at once objected. The enemy must now know the
purpose of the Africa flight and the ship was likely to become an enemy
trophy if it repeated the attempt. A 2,300 mile trip across the Arabian
desert to Yemen was too much and the ship was likely to be smashed trying to
land in the desert heat. Strasser wanted the ship to be rebuilt as a seven
engined, fast reconnaissance craft for use over the North Sea though earlier
he had not liked this idea.

     Soon, the excitement over another Africa trip and the Yemen venture
evaporated. The Naval Command suggested an alternative - searching for the
mine fields with which the Russians blocked the Black Sea approaches to
Constantinople. Strasser opposed this project also and Bockholt agreed with
him. Mine searches were possible only for short periods of time when light
condtions were favorable, when the sun stood high. A trial flight on
December 2nd, on which he had tried mine searching off Varna, had proven
that to him. Besides, frequent mine searches were not feasible because the
hydrogen supply at Yambol was not reliable, confirming another reason upon
which Strasser had opposed further operations by "L 59" from Yambol. The
mine searching idea was dropped also.

     On December 1st, the Naval Command seemed to have made up its mind that
no further airship operations were to be undertaken in the Balkans. "L 59"
was to return to Germany and be detailed to fleet operations. Strasser at
once assumed control over "L 59" again and advised Bockholt and Mangelsdorf,
the ground crew commander, that he would instruct then when they were to
return.

     Bockholt now developed his own plans. Stimulated by a request by the
Mediterranean Division that "L 59" be used he submitted a memorandum to the
Naval Command. He suggested that "L 59" be used as a long range bomber in
the Mediterranean. Numerous inviting targets were strewn over a wide sector
spanning from Italy to Egypt to Palestine, reaching out as far as the Aswan
dam, far south in the Nile valley. The enemy would be forced to deploy large
forces to defend these targets once a threat to them had been made real. The
ability to strike at far distant targets would boost the prestige of the
zeppelins and help morale. Trade, particularly through Port Said and
Alexandria, would be disturbed and the attacks would have a great political
impact. "The appearance of a bomb dropping airship over Cairo or Aswan would
consitute proof for the inhabitants of North Africa of Germany's greatness
and might".

     With Bockholt's memorandum, the decision of the Naval Command to return
"L 59" to the North Sea came undone again. The ship remained in Yambol while
the Naval Command pondered the new proposal. It could come to no conclusion.
Still undecided, it ordered the zeppelin to return to Germany. On the
morning of December 11th, it took off for Jüterbog. At precisely noon of
that day, General Allenby, with well calculated simplicity, strode through
the Jaffa Gate into Jerusalem. He entered that venerable city at the same
spot at which the Kaiser had entered nineteen years earlier.

     Upon returning to Germany, those of the crew who did not yet wear the
decoration were awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class - Grussendorf, Holland,
Heiman, Bröcker, Proll, Schmitz, Hocke, Fuchs, Schedelman and Kettner. There
was no recognition for the efforts of those who already had been awarded the
black and silver Maltese Cross shaped decoration. Nor was there any medal
for Bockholt. He already had his "EK II". The Naval Cabinet decided against
recommending Bockholt for the Order of the House of Hohenzoller, the
decoration which would have customarily been awarded in the circumstances.
"L 59" had not attained its military goals and this could be ascribed in
part to the loss of "L 57". Bockholt could have avoided its loss if he had
evaluated the weather report more carefully on that fateful day in Jüterbog.
An Imperial Commenddation would do.

     Reminded that he had not yet made a decision concerning the report
about the loss of "L 57", the Chief of Staff of the Naval Command issued an
order on December 17th determining that Bockholt had not peen guilty of any
"vertretbare Schuld" in that connection, echoing Strasser's peculiar phrase.
The way was now clear for Bockholt's Commendation. A perfunctory one was
issued at last on December 29th. It wound its ponderous way through
channels, from the Naval Cabinet to the Chief of the Naval Command and from
him to the Chief of Airships who in turn forwarded it to Bockholt.

     At the request of the Naval Command, Bockholt now wrote a more
elaborate version of his December 4th memorandum for presentation at the
Kaiser's headquarters. He sent it off from his billet near Jüterbog on
December 16th.

     Strasser may have had some notion what was afoot then. On the 18th he
sent an order to Bocknolt that henceforth all applications and reports were
to be directed to him. He referred to the decision of the Naval Command of
December 1st releasing "L 59" for duty with the fleet and informed Bockholt
that by virtue of that decision the direct subordination of "L 59" to the
Naval Command had ceased and had reverted to him. However, Bockholt had
escaped his grasp already.

     The memorandum py Bockholt, which Strasser had failed to stop, repeated
his arguments concerning the use of "L 59" as a long distance bomber. Once
more he included the Nile dam at Aswan among the long list of targets he had
drawn up. A dam to control irrigation in the lower Nile valley had been
built across the river at Aswan in 1902. Breaching the dam would no doubt
have been a spectacular feat but Bockholt seems to have given no
consideration to the political effect such a disaster might have on the
Egyptians who so far had shown little sympathy to the cause of their British
occupiers. Nor had he considered the practical difficulties of successfully
breaching such a large, solid structure.

     The original memorandum on the proposed use of "L 59", which Bockholt
had written on December 4th, had not reached Strasser until the 11th.
Strasser had not answered it, perhaps feeling with the ship returning to
Germany that day, events had overtaken these ambitious plans. Now,
apparently annoyed that the project to employ the Africa ship in the
Mediterranean was being revived without prior consultation with him, Straser
sent a telegraphed the Naval Command that he opposed the proposed use of the
ship.

     Strasser wrote out his report by hand the next day and sent it off by
special messenger. Again, he strongly opposed Bockholt's recommendations. He
was now short of ships and he could not spare a valuable ship like "L 59".
As a bomber, the airship was a weapon of opportunity, Strasser argued. Used
in the right circumstances, it could render valuable services but
exceptional operations like the "China Affair" were not the gauge for the
normal use of an airship. It was not possible to fly extended missions on a
regular basis and Yambol was not capable of supporting such operations.
Bockholt had not even mentioned that question although he had direct
experience with the limitations of the Yambol base. "Airship operations",
Strasser continued, "have never been worthwhile and never will be except in
the North Sea, scouting for the fleet, and in air raids on England". The
trouble with Bockholt was that he got carried away by the Africa flight. It
was "aeronautically a great risk which could be taken only because of the
great importance of the mission. The return of the ship must be attributed
to extraordinary circumstances... Bockholt is a fine airship commander and
an aggressive officer [but] he has not enough experience with the
capablities of airships" Strasser concluded. Bockholt, after all, had never
flown a bombing attack. "Bockholt's recommendations are heading for failure
while using large resources and manpower".

     Between the 19th and the 21st, the Naval Command belatedly made up its
mind. Bockholt would have his bomber. It ordered Mangelsdorf to remain in
Yambol. The news reached the base too late. Lt. Commander Mangelsdorf and
his men had already left. Mangelsdorf did not learn of the order until he
reached his home station Ahlhorn. his men, who were following him, were
turned around en route and returned to Yambol, not doubt uttering the same
observations about the abilities of higher commanders that soldiers have
made since Moses appointed "captains over the hundreds and captains over the
thousands" at Kadesh-barnea. Ludendorff took the opportunity to personally
write to the Naval Command that the 56 army men still operating the hydrogen
generating plant at Yambol would be withdrawn. It was indeed a rare
occurence that the First Quartermaster General concerned himself personally
with the fate of some fifty enlisted men.

     "7, 59" was flown to the Zeppelin factory at Friedrichshafen to be
refitted as a bomber. On January 5, 1918, operations orders were issued to
Bockholt. He was to report to the Naval Command directly. Once more,
Strasser, the Chief of Airships, was excluded from decisions concerning
Bockholt was granted complete freedom of action. He was free to select his
targets as weather conditions allowed. With the exception of the Aswan dam,
the target list was the one that Bockholt had submitted to the Naval
Command. Port Said, at the northern end of the Suez Canal was assigned first
priority. It was followed, in decreasing order of importance, by Alexandria
in the Nile delta, an important British naval base, Malta - the naval base
athwart the narrow straits between Sicily and Africa - and the harbor of
Naples. A number of additional targets in Italy, Lybia and elsewhere in the
Mediterranean rounded out the list.

     Work at Friedrichshafen proceeded slowly and the refitting of "L 59"
was not completed until almost the middle of February. As soon as the
inclement winter weather permitted, on the 14th, Bockholt started for
Yambol. Within three hours, the ship returned and signaled for a landing
crew. Over Kempten, 40 miles to the east, "7, 59" had run into a dense fog
and, as if to recall the night over Jebl El 'Ain, had torn off its radio
antenna.

     The airport commander assured Bockholt that it was a minor matter, a
new antenna could be installed in an hour. He omitted any gerevenes to the
spare antenna which the ship carried for just such this contingency.
Bockholt would have none of this. Suddenly turned cautious, he ordered the
surprised commander to have "L 59" hangared. Bockholt insisted he must first
talk to Munich about the weather before he did anything further.

     The Ministry of the Navy telephoned the news to the Naval Command,
adding "There were no technical reasons for the return and the failure to
start again". The petulant tone of the message cannot be missed.

     "L 59" arrived back in Yambol on February 21, 1918. Three of the Africa
hands were no longer among the crew. Busch was sick; Schedelman had had nor
real place in the crew and Bockholt had tried to get rid of Kettner even
before he left for Africa. First Signal Mate Karl Savoye, an elevator
helmsman, and radio operator Wilhelm Müller of the original crew had
returned to the ship. Hans Marholz had replaced Busch as Machinist, Conradt
was added to the engine crew and Heinrich Boldt came on board as a second
radio operator.

     Engine overhauls and bad weather kept "L 59" on the ground until March
3rd. Then it started off on a bombing raid on Naples. The first part of the
trip took it across the snow covered Albanian mountains, a stretch of the
trip which Bockholt enjoyed very much. He called it "very pretty", the only
time such an adjective crept into his reports. A radiator froze up but was
thawed out as the ship waited over Scutari for night to fall. As "L 59"
moved out over the Adriatic coast, it began to run into 45 m.p.h. headwinds.
There was no chance of completing the attack in this wind and over Hvar
Island, Bockholt turned back to Yambol. The wind relentlessly drove "L 59"
northeastward. Bockholt lost his bearings in the darkness and did not
recover them until he was over Belgrade, about 200 miles off course. Once
more he turned toward Yambol but when he reached the field on the noon of
the next day, he had to ride out another storm for six hours before he could
land. Bockholt sent an apologetic message to Berlin.

     "You have freedom of action. Don't overdo things" the telegraph ticked
reassuringly in reply.

     Bad weather kept the ship grounded for the next six days. The
inactivity depressed the crew as did the bad food. Rations were too small
and the food was poor and monotonous —- rice and beans and tougn, canned
meat one day after another. The Bulgarians, who issued the rations to
Yambol, refused to increase the food allowance; they treated one rear
echelon unit like any other. The German Naval Attache in Sofia had already
tried to secure better rations for the German aviation units in Bulgaria,
without success, and he was obliged to point out to Berlin that the food
situation in Bulgaria was not good. The men in Yambol tried to supplement
their diet Out of their own meager pay, but to no great avail.

     On March 10th, "L 59" took off for another attempt to bomp Naples. Two
men reported ill and weak from hunger but took their stations. Eight
potbellied bombs, five feet tall, each weighing 660 pounds and forty 220
pound bombs hung in the keel. Flying west, the ship reached Scutari on the
Albanian coast and cruised there for five hours to await darkness. When the
sun set, it flew across the Adriatic and the Italian penninsula to its
target. "L 59" approached Naples at 12,000 feet, high enough to be safe from
aircraft 'attack. The hum of the engines was hardly audible on the ground.

     Years of inactivity had dulled the vigilance of those charged with the
city's air defenses. The city was brilliantly lit. The sky was clear and the
stars shone brightly."The city slept, unaware of the impending disaster...It
seemed that the hours dedicated to rest and passion would pass without
disturbance".

     The targets which Bockholt had selected clustered around the ancient
Castle Nuovo at the harbor's edge. There lay the navy arsenal, the military
and the mercantile port and the jong mole jutting into the sea, protecting
the harbor. The choice of the targets had apparently been inspired by a
letter which a "Mr. Weber had sent to the navy in 1916, giving it the
benefit of what he had learned while living in this beautiful city for
thirty years.

     The bomb doors dropped open. Ensign Maas stood in the front of the
command car, next to che man handling the rudder. His eye was pressed
against the rubser eye piece of the Zeitz bomb sight. He watched the dense
pattern of the city streets slide under his sights. At 12:55, as his targets
neared the crosshairs of his telescope, he reached for the the bomb release
switches to his right and began to flip them over. The bombs plummeted from
the ship towards the targets below. About eight seconds later, the mushrooms
began to march across the city - across the Corso Vittorio Emanuel, Via
Santa Apparente, the Via Corso di Nola, Via Roma, the Via Municipo - a good
bomb pattern, west to east, straight towards the intended targets.

     Bockholt saw explosions, a fire broke out and sections of the town and
its surroundings blacked out. He concluded that he had hit a power station.
As a result, of the blackout, however, one of his primary targets, the
Armstrong Works, manufacturing naval guns and shells, disappeared in the
darkness. Nevertheless, Bockholt was satisfied with his work. He had caught
the enemy by surprise and had dropped 10,500 pounds of bombs on his target
unhindered. Now he steered for the blast furnace of the Stabilimento Ilva,
just east of the village of Bagnoli, about 4-1/2 miles away. Herr Weber had
reported that artillery shells were being made there. 3,500 pounds of bombs
were dropped on this target. At 1:18 a.m., the last bomb was gone and "L 59"
turned home. Relieved of its bomb load, it had climbed to 15,000 feet.

     At the sound of the first explosions, the people of Naples ran
curiously to whatever observation point lay near - the streets, windows,
balconies. Curiosity quickly turned into terror as the bombs crashed into
heavily populated areas of the city. When the resulting fires were
extinguished and the rubble cleared away, sixteen dead were found, seven of
them old retirees in the Hospice of the Sisters of the Poor. Fifty had been
injured. The bomb pattern stopped just west of the Castel Nuovo, 500 yards
short of the harbor's edge. Maas' aim had been good but the altitude from
which the ship had attacked was too great to permit real bombing accuracy.

     The attack on Naples created a sensation. A separate report was sent to
the Kaiser. The Naval Command issued a special bulletin, announcing that "
aerial forces" had attacked Naples with good results. There was no point in
disabusing the Italians of the notion, which they entertained for several
days, that they had been attacked by airplanes. The Italian Minister of War
relieved the commanders of the anti-aircraft defenses of Naples, Foggia and
Termoli of their command. A few days later, the Austrians handed the German
Naval Attache in Vienna a fat target folder on Bologna, complete with maps
and photographs, and offered any other assistance that might be needed. "I
have the impression" the Naval Attache wrote to Berlin " that some here feel
neglected because we did not use the assistance of the Austrian authorities
in our airship attack on Naples and they now feel a need to make their
oxzistence known again".

     The victims of Naples were given a great public funeral. The mayor
demanded of the grieving crowd "an indestructible tenacity to resist until
victory, until the liberation of the fatherland!" Indignation and demands
for retaliation were widespread. In fact, retaliation by both sides was well
under way. On the 9th, French planes had attacked Mayence and the Gothas had
dropped bombs on Paris. The German planes struck Paris again, on the 12th,
leaving 29 dead and fifty injured. During the same night, English planes
attacked Coblenz on the Rhine in the ever-widening air war.

     Italian reports of civilian losses quickly reached Berlin through
Switzerland. It probingly mentioned them to Bockholt on the telegraph.
Bockholt swore that he had struck far worse blows than the Italians had
admitted. "If I should ever marry, I probably won't be able to take a
honeymoon trip to Naples," the nemesis of Naples bragged. It was the first
victory in the campaign he had devised. He did not yet know something which
other commanders had come to suspect - target observation from great
altitude at night is extremely unreliable. As if to put the seal of
authenticity on his accomplishment, Bockholt recommended that Maas and
Machinist Marholz be decorated with the Iron Cross First Class.

     The attack on Naples had been marred by one incident. The crew of the
rear engine gondola had been found overcome by gasoline vapors. They had
lain unconscious for two hours but the quick action of Marholz, who had
found them, had saved them. Machinist mates on "L 53" had not been so lucky.
Two had died this way several days earlier. The accumulation of such vapors
was also highly dangerous to the ship; a spark from the machinery or static
electricity could have instantaneously transformed the ship into a giant
torch.

     Berlin soon seems to have had second thoughts about the attack on
Naples. In October and November of the previous year, German and Austrian
troops had inflicted an immense defeat upon the Italians at Caporetto. Only
Ludendorff's failure to commit sufficient reserves to what he considered a
secondary theater of war had saved the Italians from being knocked out of
the conflict. Why strengthen the enemy's will to resist with attacks on his
civilian population. On March 16th, the Naval Command told Bockholt not to
attack Italy for the time being.

     On the 20th, "L 59" was ready to strike again. This time the target was
Port Said in the Nile delta. Again the ship carried seven tons of bombs.
Since there was no longer any need to hug the dense, lower airlayers as
there had been on the flight to Africa, the dirigible crossed the Turkish
mountains directly at a safe altitude. It left land behind at Adelia, 400
miles north of its target, and reached the Nile delta in the early morning
of the 21st. When it arrived, it found that rain and clouds shrouding the
African coast. "L 59" spent three hours searching for Port Said and
Alexandria and finally found a lit up target below. As the ship was about to
begin its bombing run, the target was recognized. It was Damietta, once a
harbor of some importance but now blocked by sandbars to all but the
smallest ships, a village of about 20,000 inhabitants. it was indeed a
"politically unsuitable" target as Bockholt reported upon his return. "L 59"
turned east hoping to find Port Said and the Suez Canal. The city was
blacked out and in the darkeness, the ship overshot its goal. It had to turn
into a stiff wind to regain its target.Port Said was reached just as the sun
rose. A daylight attack could not be risked since resistance from' aviation
or warships had to be expected and at 4:40 the attack was abandoned. It was
just as well; the ship had been spotted from the ground. What action the
surprised British aviators might have improvised one cannot say. Climbing to
the altitude of the zeppelin would have taken some time and they had no
incendiary ammunition. It is safe to say, however, that, given a chance, the
British airmen would have "had a go at it". To the armchair warriors in
Germany it looked different. "Too bad, should have tried it anyway" one of
them wrote into the margin of Bockholt's report.

     "L 59" steered for its alternate objective, the British base at Suda
Bay on the northwest shore of Crete. As the ship reached the bay, it was
swallowed up by snow clouds and lost sight of the ground. Strong winds
tossed the zeppelin about. Since Bockholt was running low on gasoline, he
decided to abandon this attack also and turn northward for home. But the
gods of frustration had not yet tired of their game. A strong gust broke one
of the longitudenal girders in the hull, the ship lost bearings and the wind
became so strong ever the Aegean that for an hour "L 59" made no headway at
all, pitching up and down through a range of thirty degrees.

     Over Saros Bay, north of the Gallipoli peninsula, "L 59" regained its
bearings and headed for Adrianople. There, Turkish anit-aircraft guns fired
on the unlucky craft for ten minutes despite the recognition signals it
flashed. And, as if to complete the picture of a flight on which nothing
went right, a 220 pound bomb dropped accidentally a few miles beyond
Adrianople. Fortunately, it was not fused.

     At 7:15 a.m. of March 22, after almost 59-1/2 hours, "L 59" landed at
Yambol again, defeated by poor weather forecasting and bad luck.

     Bockholt was not discouraged. He would try Port Said again, he told the
Naval Command. If necessary, he would "hide out in the desert" and approach
the city at night from the southeast. For the moment, however, a major
engine overhaul and the approaching full moon required that this project be
put off until the end of the month.

     Meanwhile, Bockholt faced another dilemna. Next to Port Said and
Alexandria, Malta had highest priority among the targets assigned to him.
However, because fickle spring weather or enemy action might make it
impossible at the last minute to complete the attack, it made no sense to
try to bomb Malta unless there were alternate targets available in southern
Italy. Without such alternate targets, the whole attempt upon Malta might
then go for nothing. On the 26th, Bockholt therefore asked for permission to
attack the Italian naval base at Taranto despite orders issued after the
Naples attack. He also asked brought up the Aswan dam again. te vaceived no
arseor to his inquiry and by the 30th, Bockholt a village of about 20,000
inhabitants. It was indeed a "politically unsuitable" target as Bockholt
reported upon his return. "L 59" turned east hoping to find Port Said and
the Suez Canal. The city was blacked out and in the darkeness, the ship
overshot its goal. It had to turn into a stiff wind to regain its target.
Port Said was reached just as the sun rose. A daylight attack could not be
risked since resistance from aviation or warships had to be expected and at
4:40 the attack was abandoned. It was just as well; the ship had been
spotted from the ground. What action the surprised British aviators might
have improvised one cannot say. Climbing to the altitude of the zeppelin
would have taken some time and they had no incendiary ammunition. It is safe
to say, however, that, given a chance, the British airmen would have "had a
go at it". To the armchair warriors in Germany it looked different. "Too
bad, should have tried it anyway" one of them wrote into the margin of
Bockholt's report.

     "L 59" steered for its alternate objective, the British base at Suda
Bay on the northwest shore of Crete. As the ship reached the bay, it was
swallowed up by snow clouds and lost sight of the ground. Strong winds
tossed the zeppelin about. Since Bockholt was running low on gasoline, he
decided to abandon this attack also and turn northward for home. But the
gods of frustration had not yet tired of their game. A strong gust broke one
of the longitudenal girders in the hull, the ship lost bearings and the wind
became so strong Over the Aegean that for an hour "L 59" made no headway at
again telegraphed for leave to bomb Taranto or Brindisi.

     While waiting for the weather to break, a young machinist mate from
Hamburg, Albert Rieck, joined the crew to replace Conradt and "veteran"
Seaman First Class Adolf Fuchs celebrated his 24th birthday. Bockholt
received permission to purchase additional food for the base and the mess
improved.

     On April 3rd, the Naval Command approved the attacks on Taranto and
Brindisi. The were legitimate military targets - major naval bases. Now
Bockholt was free to make his attempt on Malta. So far, in six weeks of
operations, he had flown one successful mission but he had little else to
show for the ship and the over four hundred men that the Naval Command had
put in his hands. In France, Ludendorff had launched his long prepared,
grand offensive that was to end the war. He had attacked in the St. Quentin
sector to breach the Allied line and press the British back against the
Channel coast. He had won a great amount of ground but so far, the enemy
line had held and no decision had been gained. It was a time for action.

     On the 6th, Bockholt was ready to mount his attack on Malta. He called
in his meteorologist, Goebel, to obtain the latest weather reports. Goebel
advised against the attack. There was a possibility of thunderstorms over
the Adriatic; the base radio was picking up much static which confirmed the
presence of electrical disturbances. Standing instructions to airships were
to avoid flying in thunderstorms. Only six days earlier, "SL 9" had blown up
in a thunderstorm, underscoring the importance of these orders. Bocknolt was
torn between prudence and his urge to act. Finally, he ordered a take off
for early next morning.

     On April 7, 1918, "L 59" headed for Malta. The plan was to fly east to
the Adriatic, turn south, pass the Straits of Otronto, seperating the
Italian boot from the Albanian coast, and proceed along the Italian and
Sicilian coasts southwest to Malta. Bockholt flew to Lake Skandorsko near
the Adriatic coast. Over this easily identifiable checkpoint, well outside
the sight of any ship passing along the Adriatic shore, Bockholt again
waited for the night which was to shroud his moves into the enemy regions.
At about 7 p.m., Bockholt moved on. At 7:30, he passed the lookout post at
Duleigno (Ulcini) near the Albanian border and flashed his recognition
signal. About an hour later, he was off the lighthouse of Cape Rodoni.
Bockholt now left the Austrian occupied shore of the Adriatic behind and
entered hostile areas. The shores on either side of him were now in Allied
hands. To the southwest lay Brindisi, flanked by several destroyer and
seaplane stations, there was another Allied base on the opposite, Albanian
shore. A net and mine barrier sitaubesker' across the mouth of the Adriatic,
the Straits of Otronto, starting south of Brindisi and stretching to the
island of Corfu, off the Albanian shore. Intended to keep German and
Austrian submarines bottled up in the Adriatic. it was guarded by numerous
naval units, including 36 American submarine chasers. Throughout the area
were scattered many radio location stations, at Corfu, Santa Teresa,
Otronto, Palascia, Contorne and Ginosa, to name the nearest points, ready to
intercept any German or Austrian radio signal and by triangulation determine
the location of the ship or aircraft that had sent it.

     It was a heavily overcast, humid night. Occasional rain squalls broke
on the ship. A haze overlay the phosphorescent waves. A lookout was kept for
the Allied ships patrolling the mouth of the Otronto Straits but a submarine
passed on the surface almost directly below without being spotted. Lightning
played through the sky. Strong static crackled in the ship's radio, audible
evidence of the electrical discharges coursing through the air. By 9:30
p.m., "L 59" reached a position 41°2' north by 18°53' east, north of the
Otronto Straits. Suddenly, Bockholt heard two explosions. The night around
him brightened. The ship had caught fire. Bockholt - all the crew knew what
this meant. They had been riding a gigantic Roman candle through the skies
and now fate had lit its fuse. Several more explosions followed.

     The awesome scene was witnessed by the crew of the German submarine "UB
53". This was the submarine over which "L 59" had blindly passed a little
earlier. At 8 o'clock, its deck watch had observed a large airship coming up
from astern. The submarine commander, Lieutenant Sprenger, had thought that
it might be an Italian semi-rigid airship on patrol. The Italians made
active use of these airships for naval patrols and had put no less than 49
in service ducing the war. Sprenger had ordered his boat cleared for action.
However, he had been doubtful of his identification and had held his fire.
The ship had passed over at 650 feet. Sprenger wondered whether the airship
realized how easily visible it was from below. " A rifle shot would have
been a certain hit" he said later. Sprenger saw that the airship was German
but as a matter of caution refrained from giving a recognition signal. The
airship had disappeared into the night like a ghostly apparition.

     Ninety minutes later, Sprenger saw two bursts of fire in the night sky.
He took them to be shrapnel bursts. Shortly afterwards, a huge flame turned
the horizon into day, there were more explosions and a fiery mass fell into
the water. It burned for twenty minutes.

     Watchers on the Italian and Albania coasts also saw the terrible sight.
A French ship of the Otronto patrol spotted the glare in the northern sky
and took its bearings. "UB 53" steered toward the spot where it had seen the
blaze to search for survivors. It found none. Two Austrian destroyers went
to investigate and found neither survivors nor wreckage. An Austrian
seaplane, joining the search, crashed.

     The sightings of the midair explosion were at once reported to Berlin
and the failure of "L 59" to return to its base quickly led to the
conclusion that the ill fated ship had at last met its end. None of the
Allies claimed to have destroyed an airship and the Germans therefore
decided that the ship had fallen victim to an accident despite Lt.
Sprenger's pelief that he had observed shrapnel bursts. What the cause of
the accident was, nobody could say. Lightening striking the ship certainly
was a possibility. Italian guards and one of the Austrian destroyers had
seen a lightening storm in the area.[30] Perhaps faulty gasoline lines or a
defective engine had permitted gasoline vapors to accumulate in the ship as
they had in the Naples attack. Lehmann speculated that mishandling of a
bombfuse might have caused the accident. German airship crews did not mount
fuses on their bombs until the ship had left friendly territory behind, but
"L 59" had already crossed the Albanian coast more than two hours earlier.

     Later, recalling his stand against sending "L 59" back to Yambol,
Strasser wrote what may serve as an epitaph for the men of "L 59": "I had
the feeling that I had given up a capable crew with the certainty of an
early loss for a useless purpose".


    ----------------------------------------
    [28] Filling in the moat unfortunately made it appear as if a
        large gap had been torn into the old town wall and
        "knowledgable" natives today often show tourists the place
        where the wall had been demolished to let the Kaiser enter.
    [29] The Germans used two telegraph systems in which the words
        sent were printed out by the receiving apparatus and which
        permitted the recepient to answer in the same manner. The
        two parties could in this way "talk" to each other as if
        they were using the telephone. For long distance
        communication, the telephone proved unreliable and the
        Germans preferred to use the telegraph.
    [30] In the book about "L 59" which Goebel later wrote, he ruled
        out the possibility that lightening destroyed the ship
        although in private correspondence at about the same time,
        he mentioned this as a possible cause, pointing to his
        weatherforecast.




                                Chapter XIV

                                  EPILOGUE

     Though events had vindicated Strasser's judgment that bombing
operations from the Yambol base were not worthwhile, it seemed for a while
as if Bockholt's ideas would once more triumph over those of his former
commander. No sooner had "L 59" crashed but that the Naval Command proposed
to send another zeppelin to Yambol. Once again, Strasser objected. Once
again, the Naval Command overruled him. One can only wonder what had led to
the stubborn conflict between the much respected Strasser and the Naval
Command.

     In the end, no ship was sent to Yambol but the base was kept
operational until October 1918 when the collapse of Bulgaria forced its
abandonment. At the airfield, the garrison left behind a simple memorial, a
rough, unfinished stone bearing a simple plaque inscribed: "In memory of the
crew of 'L 59' - Last flight April 7, 1918".

     If this seems like only a small memorial to the sacrifices which twenty
three courageous men had made during their life times and in death, it is
nevertheless in due proportion to the accomplishments of "L 59" in the
overall perspective of the great war.

     What did the men of "L 59" accomplish with their few, but arduous and
dangerous flights? "From a military point of view, the flight to Africa
accomplished nothing. This was not the fault of the crew. Their orders were
clear — return! There was no room for the exercise of discretion in those
orders; the Naval Command had not intended that there should be. Nothing
reached Africa that helped Lettow; the Allies were not diverted from their
plans. the flight had no propaganda impact because it was kept secret until
after the end of the war.

     The fundamental reason for the failure of the Africa flight was that it
started too late. The rebuilding of "L 57" and "L 59" was accomplished
promptly but the Berlin bureaucracy was unable to move as quickly. The
Colonial Office took the Africa plan to the Ministry of the Navy at the end
of July but it took until the middle of September for the Ministry's
recommendation to reach the Naval Command. Perhaps it took this long to
explore the novel features of the proposal. However, the additional delay of
two weeks to obtain the Imperial approval of the operation seems hard to
understand. The Naval Staff and the Ministry of the Navy had already agreed
that the mission could and should be carried out. If the Emperor had to
approve an airship flight at all, why could the necessary audience be
granted more quickly when the acknowledged urgency of the project was so
great? However, the most serious and ultimately fatal delay was caused by
the destruction of "L 57". Lettow-Vorbeck has been quoted as saying that the
flight started four weeks too late. This was precisely the time needed to
get "L 59" ready after "L 57" was wrecked. Some of the delay in getting the
Africa flight started was also due to Bockholt's decision to fly across
Turkey rather than the Aegean, the ropute provided for in the original plan.
This complicated his problems. Threading his way through the Anatolian
valleys at low altitude, as he did, was difficult and risky. Bockholt chose
to fly low because he wanted to provide his heavily laden ship with the
greatest possible boyancy. If he had flown directly across the Turkish
mountains directly he would have needed alkighter ship. This would have
meant less payload. However, a lighter ship would not only have permitted
Bockholt to fly a more direct route but would have made him more independent
of the vagaries of the weather. Bockholt felt that he had to wait until the
weather was just right. With alighter ship he would have had more
flexibility, The cold airmasses for which Bockholt had decided to wait, and
which did not arrive until the 20th, would have been of lesser importance.
The usefulness of the mission would not - have been materially reduced if "L
59" had carried less ammunition. The key to its success was getting quinine
to the troops in Africa. Four hundred thousand rounds of rifle ammunition
meant roughly eighty rounds for each man of Lettow's force a day's combat.
The Ministry of the Navy had been uneasy about the usefulness of this part
of the cargo. In its recommendation to the Naval Command, the Ministry took
pains to point out that the Schutztruppe was specially trained to use
ammunition economically as if to show that this relatively small number of
rounds was more significant than it seemed. The temptation to load the ship
with as much as it could carry was, of course, was great and there was not
enough metereological information to allow a precise estimate of the
enormous amount of ballast which was ultimately needed. Only the flight
itself could provide the information that was critically needed in the
planning stage.

     One might also speculate whether the loss of "L 57" and the delays due
to the refitting of "L 59" might have avoided by a more seasoned captain
with greater experience and knowledge of the weather. Perhaps Strasser had
practiced false economy in not giving Buttlar the command of the "China"
ship.

     Ultimately, however, it is doubtful that the arrival of the airship and
its cargo would have greatly influenced the war in Africa. While the arrival
and successful unloading of new supplies of quinine and medical supplies
would undoubtedly have helped Lettow in the short run, since these supplies
were essential to him and he had no way of knowing in advance about the
bountiful stores he would capture at Ngomano. In the long run, Lettow's
forces were too spent and the enemy's superiority too great. Despite the new
supplies, it is likely that Lettow would have had to abandon the small
sections of German East Africa which his troops still held. They would still
have had to resort to the guerilla campaign which they conducted from
November 1917 until their surrender to the British forces on November 23,
1918, 12 days after the armistice in Europe went into effect.

     If one accepts the judgment that the expedition started too late, the
question inevitably arises as to why the flight started at all. Why was it
not cancelled while "L 59" was still safely in Yambol? Berlin knew that
speed was required if the supplies were to arrive in Africa in time to do
any good. It also knew that its plan was steadily falling behind schedule.
The news from Africa was constantly growing worse, yet nobody seems to have
been willing to consider whether time had not overtaken "Operation China".
On November 20th, the day before Bockholt's departure, the Naval Command
finally showed a consciousness that time was running out on the venture when
it told Bockholt that he had to start without further delay. However, the
record as a whole shows little inclination to critically reconsider the
mission as the days went by. Perhaps the dispersion of authority among the
Naval Command, the Ministry of the Navy and the Colonial Office made it too
tempting to let someone else make the unpleasant decision to acknowledge
failure.

     Equally strange is that while Berlin was waiting for Bockholt to take
off, nobody in the Colonial Office or the Naval Command stood by to evaluate
the nightly news broadcasts from London as soon as they were received. The
broadcasts were practically the only source of information that Berlin had
about the fast moving events in Africa. This information becaine ever more
important as the days went by. "L 59" was still in its hangar when the
London evening dispatches of the 20th, the very ones which led to the
cancellation of the Africa mission, were received in Berlin. Had these
dispatches been acted upon at once rather than left to wait until Major
Göring arrived in his office the next morning, it would have been possible
for the efficient German communications system to deliver the decision not
to proceed to Yambol before the take off of "L 59". As it was, the decision
to cancel the mission was not made until about 13 hours after the news upon
which it was based was received. By then, the ship was already well under
way on its hazardous journey and beyond the range of the Yambol radio
station. Yet in thinking about these apparent misjudgments, it must be borne
in mind that the mission was in all respects a venture into the unknown.

     The public did not learn of the "China" story until after the end of
the war when a former naval captain, Lothar Persius, wrote a book which was
highly critical of the organization and tactics of the German navy. He
mentioned in passing that the engines of the naval airships had proven
unreliable. The Maybach Engine Company, which had manufactured these
engines, published an advertisement in rebuttal in Feburary 1919. It proudly
pointed to the performance of its engines during the 95 hour flight to
Khartoum and back. The breakdown of the forward engine of "L 59" was not
mentioned. Presumably, this would have complicated the story too much. The
Maybach advertisement was quickly followed by other reports in the German
and foreign press. A spiderweb of careless error and patent deceit guickly
enmeshed the "L 59" story. An English reporter who spoke no German,
interviewed Buttlar, who spoke no English, and announced that Buttlar had
commanded the "China" flight. Another writer decorates Bockholt with
Germany's coveted decoration, the "Ordre Pour le Mérite", and still another
dubbed him "von Bockholt", evidently on the assumption that every German
officer was a nobleman. A book stated that "L 59" was transported to
Bulgaria in sections and assembled there. Why a zeppelin could not fly the
1,200 miles to Yambol when it was expected 'to fly 4000 miles to Africa is a
question which seems not to have troubled the author. In announcing his
order to turn back, Bockholt faced the threat of the first sky-jacking in
history according to still another author. And finally, in a popular German
war book, Bockholt's death is lifted to the plane of classical apotheosis:

        "Near London, the dashing Bockholt, after he made the
        famous Africa trip to help Lettow-Vorbeck, takes his
        zeppelin up to 23,600 feet to escape an English
        airplane. But it succeeded in climbing even higher, its
        machinegun sends a volley of incendiary bullets into the
        hull of the ship. Burning, the ship and crew sink into
        the sea. As not a few of them, flaming pillars of
        sacrifice and German heroism".

     In this hothouse of fantasy, another group of stories began to
flourish, stories "explaining" why "L 59" was ordered to break off its
flight. To many, there was something odd about the decision to recall the
ship. Something was missing, logically and psychologically. If the decision
to start on the 21st was the right one, did the recall on the 23rd manifest
a loss of nerve? Conversely, if the decision to recall "L 59" was correct,
was the start on the 21st an error? To admit an error in launching this
odyssey seemed iadmissable to the patriotic German of the day. There also
was something inconsistent between the bold inspiration which gave birth to
this feat and the sober calculations which ended the venture. There had to
be a more satisfactory answer.

     Göbel, the meteorologist at Yambol, wrote a factually corect account of
the voyage and described how the radio station at Nauen managed to reach the
ship with its message to return. Yet, he goes on to muse: "The Balkans,
which for ages past, have been the playground of cunning espionage, were no
exception in this respect during the World War. Detail after detail seeped
out in 1917 already. London was quite well informed about the flight of "L
59" to Khartoum. This is not the most farfetched explanation of the recall
message which reached 'L 59' over the Sudan". But what was this "farfetched
explanation"? Göbel acknowledged that the order recalling the zeppelin
originated in Berlin. Still he implies foul play; what it is he will not
say.

     Others were less reticent. One theory had it that it was all the fault
of the British. They fooled the Naval Command into ordering "L 59" to return
by spreading exaggerated rumors about the situation in East Africa! Buttlar
and Lehmann, who had been close to the "China Affair", re in this vein.
Others made the misleading rumors more specific —- London had falsely
broadcast that Lettow had surrendered. The fact that the British never
claimed to have captured him was ignored. When most of these "we were
misled" claims were made, both General Lettow-Vorbeck and Governor Schnee
had already written books about the war in Africa and it would have been
possible to check their accounts against the allegedly misleading news
reports from London. The comparison would have shown that the English
reports were substantially correct and that the Naval Command, far from
being misled by then, / was reasonably well informed.

     The false rumor school was soon outdone by a much bolder claim: the
recall message was a fake and had been sent by the British Secret Service.

     The earliest version of this claim seems to have been into circulation
by none other than an English Intelligence officer, who, by reason of his
former duties, gave the story greater credence than it deserved. It was
quickly taken up in Germany. At first, the Forged Message thesis was stated
on a tentive basis:

        "There is a theory, and a number of probabilities
        support it, that the radio message containing the order
        to return was sent from England. Thanks to an excellent
        espionage organization, the British were probably
        informed about the Africa trip and possibly took certain
        countermeasures with this radio message".

     The author thought this a reasonable hypothesis because: "The fact of
the matter is that at the time the radio message was sent, Lettow-Vorbeck
was in no particular difficulties; to the contrary, he had just won new
successes on the Makonde Plateau...", an explanation which might have
surprised Lettow, Schnee and others. A popular magazine, the "Koralle",
painted a more vivid picture. After relating how the front engine was
finally repaired so that "L 59" could again receive radio messages (the
reader will recall that this engine failure did not impede radio reception),
the first encoded message is received. It is quickly deciphered and handed
to Bockholt.

        "His lips tighten grimly. He has flown thousands of
        kilometers across enemy territory without mishap. He is
        close to his goal. Return? At once? Was all this for
        nothing? But a German officer can do only one thing -
        obey! At the same hour, Lettow-Vorbeck's entire force
        still stands exactly where 'L 59's' nose points, on the
        Makonde Plateau. Not one of his troops has been
        captured. The German Naval Command knows nothing about
        the alleged defeat of the Germans. It therefore cannot
        have sent the signal. The whole message is a hoax. The
        British Intelligence Service has fashioned a
        masterpiece. It has camouflaged itself as Nauen,
        enciphered its message in the secret German code and
        accomplished what its own aviators, what the elements
        had been unable to achieve".

     If such stories are needlessly false and often absurd, they do serve a
purpose. They permit the story teller to enhance his tale, they also
conveniently absolve those guilty of a possibly flawed judgment in launching
or stopping the "China Affair". They permit the cancellation of the mission
to be blamed on "pusilanimous politicians", as one German airforce officer
did, a mini-version of the "stab in the back" theory applied to the "China
Affair".

     Man does not like to see his heroes fall victim to the ordinary
vicissitudes of life. It is antithetical to the concept of a hero for he is
something larger than life. So a hero may not be defeated by an ordinary
being nor may his quests fall victim to happenstance, stupidity or error. To
remain a hero, he must succumb to a force of at least equal magnitude. From
this arises the stab-in-the-back theories of history. Siegfried, the German
folk hero, is slain by Hagen only after he treacherously tricked Siegfried's
wife into revealing the spot on her husband's back which had not become
armored by the bath which Siegfried had taken in the blood of the dragon he
had slain. So too, the heroism of the German armed forces in the first World
War could be brought to nought only through immense treachery at home, the
"Dolchstoss Legende" — the stab in the back theory. And so too, the noble
enterprise of "L 59" could not fail because, through error Or accident, it
started too late; it could not end through the dry calculations of some
staff aide, balancing probabilities of failure against the chance of
success. It had to fail in the heroic vein, the unconquerable hero falling
before the base, but magically potent villain. To many Germans, that villain
has always been the British Secret Service. "L 59" had to end ensnared in
its net.

     As a result, to this day the story repeats itself that: ".,.. some time
presumably had to elapse before Bockholt recovered from his chagrin on
learning that the orders from the German Admiralty had been sent by the
British".

     For those who accept that Berlin did indeed recall "1 59", the debate
is not ended, however. Should the order to return have been given at all,
keeping in mind the military and psychological results at which the "China
Affair" had aimed?

     Even those who argue that "L 59" should have continued its flight
despite what Berlin perceived the military situation in Africa to be, do not
say that a safe conclusion of the venture was guaranteed. Rather, they
emphasise the psychological results which had been expected from the flight.
The flight was to dramatize the genius of German technology and the
willingness to fight with all means possible and where ever possible. Even
if the progress of the British campaign in Africa and Lettow's change in
tactics in October and November of 1917 had deprived the flight of its
military significance, would not the arrival of an airship in Africa, even
if too late, still dramatize the superior technical skills and determination
of Germany? Did those responsible display sufficient political skill and
insight? Was the Colonial Office and the Naval Command justified in throwing
away these potential advantages?

     The question whether of "L 59" should have continued its mission in
face of certain failure and with grave risk to the lives of the crew raises
a nice question of military ethics. There will be occasions when under the
imperatives of the situation a military commander must carry out an
operation even though it has little chance of success and presents great
dangers to the men involved. History is not without examples of death
incurred in making a symbolic gesture, justified by the profound impact it
had on the course of the conflict. Whether the hoped for psychological
results of the completed, but unsuccessful flight of "L 59" would have
justified the likely sacrifice of its crew is a question which these critics
do not raise.

     There is little doubt that if the operation had been successfully
completed, it would have aroused the highest admiration from friend and foe
alike. However, the tendency to discount failure, even gallant failure, is
great. If the mission had been able to continue to its bitter end, it might
easily have turned into an opéra bouffe or worse, into a reprehensible,
futile sacrifice. What would have been the world's reaction to Grussendorf
manfully parachuting into the midst of what turned out to be British troops
or of "L 59" stranding while vainly searching for Lettow who was then
marching south into Mozambique, knowing nothing of the relief Berlin was
sending him? What would have been the focal point of a picture of the giant
airship falling prey to the waiting British planes - would the focus have
been upon the German ability to make the unprecedented flight or upon the
British ability to frustrate its success? The heroic aspects of the flight
might easily have been swallowed up by the judgement that the flight was
quixotic and irresponsible.

     The proposition that the expedition should have been continued for
psychological and political reasons has been seriously supported by many,
though not by all Germans. The German Official History of the War finds that
the order was proper in the circumstances. Some may be inclined to discount
this conclusion because of a suspicion that the account was likely to
approve whatever the German command had done but the Official British
History of the Great War also arrived at the judgment that "L 59" should
have been ordered home.

     Like the Africa trip, Bockholt's Mediterranean campaign must be written
off as a wasted effort. Strasser's view that it was not possible for the
airship to mount a sustain bombing effort was fully vindicated, During the
three months that "L 59" operated in the Mediterranean, it completed only
one successful mission, the raid on Naples.

     Yet the British Intelligence Service saw the Mediterranean as a
promising field of operations for airships. The role which the Royal Navy
envisaged for airships was as scouts for German and Austrian submarines,
guiding the U boats to their targets, inducing the convoys to scatter or
shepherding them towards the submarines. Special instructions on how to deal
with these tactics were issued to Allied Mediterranean convoys. Bockholt
mentioned the valuable assistance which he could render the submarines in
determining Mediterranean shipping routes in his proposal of December 16.
However, he apparently did not mean that this should be done on a systematic
basis, but rather he thought of it as an incidental benefit of other
flights, just as he had reported the convoy he had sighted in the Karpathos
Straits on his way home from Africa. The emphasis of his proposals to the
Naval Staff and in the operations orders which were issued to Bockholt on
the basis of them was on bombing operations. The Germans never attempted to
combine aerial and submarine operations in the First World War. Insufficient
range and endurance of the standard naval airship, unreliable communications
and dependence on the weather may have acounted for this but even in the
North Sea, where the proximity of the German bases minimized these
shortcomings, there were few occasions on which fleet and airships
cooperated in offensive operations. "L 59" never attempted to work with
German and Austrian naval units and since its other successful operations
were confined to a single raid on Naples, the ship's presence in the
Mediterranean theater of war made no discernible impact on the course of the
war there.

     If the operations of "L 59" had no impact on the course of the war,
neither did they have any influence on the future development of military
airship operations in Germany. The day of the German naval airship was
almost over. For all practical purposes, the end came on August 5, 1918 when
five airships crossed the North Sea to make a new attempt to bomb London.
Strasser was on board "L 70", the navy's newest ship of an improved design.
It was under the command of von Lossnitzer, a former aide to Strasser with
comparatively little airship experience. He had been given command of the
ship quite out of the normal order of seniority. As the zeppelins approached
England, Strasser horrified his captains by sending out an overly long radio
signal, long enough to let the British direction-finding stations get a fix
on the approaching airships by radio triangulation. Strasser may have
thought that the great height, 16,500 feet, at which his flotilla was
approaching was sufficient protection for the ships. He had always seen
altitude as the dimension in which the airship could outperform the airplane
and find safety. However, the radio call was not Strasser's death warrant; a
lightship had already spotted the zeppelins in the light of the setting
summer day. Fifteen planes took off to meet them, three heading out to sea
to try for an early interception. A De Havilland DH 4, a new light bomber
which had been drafted into airship defense work because of its 23,000 foot
operating ceiling, caught "L 70" and shot it down in flames before it
reached the English coast. The remaining ships abandoned the raid. It was
the last raid ever mounted by German airships. Strasser's energy and elan
were lost to the service which he had created.

     In the meantime, Claudius Dornier, one of Count Zeppelin's engineers,
was developing flying boats which by 1919 could have taken over the
reconnaissance and patrol work of the naval airships. The airship officers
had been forced to the reluctant conclusion that the airplane had gained
"temporary superiority" over the airship. After the war, the German army and
navy made no further plans to use airships. The Treaty of Versailles, which
had ended the war, forced the Germans to turn over all of its remaining
airships, a few had been sabotaged by their own crews, to the Allies and
forbade further construction of airships though this ban was later lifted.
This Prohibition would not have stopped the Germans, had they wanted to
develop military airships, anymore than the prohibition against constructing
military aircraft had stopped Col. Thomsen from planning anda developing a
new airforce for Germany. The use of military airships ended when the
Germans saw that the zeppelin was no longer needed to patrol the North Sea
and that it was too vulnerable for military use. It was no longer a military
asset.

     The abandonment of the rigid military airship by the Germans did not
end the military use of airships elsewhere. The United States and England,
concerned with controlling the wide ocean spaces surrounding them,
experimented with rigid airships as long range reconnaissance vehicles. They
were, however, unable to develope them into sufficiently useful and reliable
instruments. Non-rigid airships, however, fared better. Less spectacular
than the zeppelins, British and French "blimps" and Italian semi-rigids, had
enjoyed a great measure of success in the First World War, primarily in
coastal patrolling and anti-submarine warfare. In pre-war Germany, Major
Gross had experimented with small, non-rigid airships and Parseval had
successfully built a number of semi-rigid craft. German officialdom,
particularly Strasser, did not like them. The Parsevals suffered the
additional handicap that they required large amounts of rubber for their
envelopes and rubber was in short supply in wartime Germany. They were also
too small and fragile to serve as bombers, a role in which the zeppelins
served until the end of the war. Whether the Germans would have been better
off foregoing the zeppelin raids and using smaller and cheaper craft for
patrol purposes is difficult to say. The cry: "Gott strafe England" (God
punish England) was a powerful one and the zeppelins were the means to
inflict this punishment. Even Ludendorff did not try to meet this argument
when the admirals advanced it to counter his demand that the navy give up
its airships. The threat of the zeppelin raids certainly required a large
anti-aircraft establishment to be maintained in England but the lack of
bomber airships might also have encouraged the army to put the far more
effective "Gotha" bombers into service much earlier than it did. Perhaps the
blimps were also too slow for tactical reconnaissance but whatever arguments
may be made for or against the non-rigid airships, their potential was not
developed in Germany. 'The Allies got good service from them. British ships
flew over 11,200 missions in the First World War and the French flew 3,300.
One British blimp, "NS 11", made a 101 hour flight in 1919, covering over
3000 miles, a respectable performance compared to that of "L 59". As if
history had sought to repeat itself, "NS 11" later crashed in a thunderstorm
with the loss of all its crew. The performance of blimps was further
improved during the Second World War. They again served the United States
Navy in fighting German submarines. They made 55,900 flights and escorted
89,900 vessels without loosing any of their charges to the enemy. After
1945, the U.S. Navy built additional blimps for antisubmarine and early
warning duties. One flew 7,000 miles non-stop without refueling during its
eleven day journey. However, they too became technically obsolete and after
one of the blimps collapsed in mid-air in 1960, they were retired in during
the next year. The last series of blimps built had attained a displacement
20% greater than Bockholt's "L 23", For German commercial airship
operations, the "China" flight of "L 59" proved a great stimulus. It was a
harder and more realistic test of the possibilities of using zeppelins for
long distance overseas flights than "LZ 120" had provided. The record set by
"L 59" was soon challenged. In 1919, the Atlantic was crossed by a
dirigible, the English "R 34", though it had lost the honor of the first
Atlantic crossing to Lts. Alcock and Brown and their Vickers "Vimy"
aircraft. "R 34" had remained in the air seven hours longer than "L 59", The
Germans, however, were rightfully able to point out that "R 34" was a
faithful copy of one of the super-zeppelins which had been shot down over
England. Before peace was formally restored, the Germans had already built
two small, fast commercial zeppelins, "Bodensee" and "Nordstern" which they
operated on a regular, scheduled service between Friedrichshafen and Berlin.
However, these two ships shortly had to be turned over to France and Italy
as replacements for the ships which the German navy aircrews had sabotaged
after naval vessels, lying at Scapa Flow, scuttled themselves to avoid
falling into Allied hands. Neither Italy or France made any use of the
airships they had received.

     Construction of the "Los Angeles" for the United States Navy kept the
Friedrichshafen works alive and after the ban on the construction of
airships by Germany was lifted in 1924, the Zeppelin Company laid down its
127th ship. It displaced 3,708,600 cubic feet, 50% more than "L 59". It had
accomodations for twenty passengers. "LZ 127" was powered by five 530 h.p.
engines which could use either gasoline or hydrocarbon gas. 'The latter had
the same weight as air. As it was used up, the cells in which it was carried
could be refilled with air. This helped to solve the problem of how to keep
the airship balanced as the consumption of fuel lightened the ship. In the
days of "L 59", this could only be done by releasing precious lifting gas.
The new ship carried a crew of seven officers and thirtyfour men, enough to
allow a complete crew change every eight hours and provide the passengers
with a commissary officer, a steward and a cook besides. On July 9, 1928,
the ship was proudly christened "Graf Zeppelin". German airship navigation
had been reborn and no more fitting name could have been given to the ship
than that of the man who had nurtured an idea, conceived in a captive
balloon over St. Paul, Minnesota, into a grand reality. "Graf Zeppelin" was
one of the few exceptions to the rule that hydrogen filled, rigid airships
could not Operate safely for long.[31] During its life, it made 590 flights,
including 144 ocean crossings, carried 13,110 passengers and 235,300 pounds
of mail without the slightest mishap. Those who flew on the "Graf" described
it as the most enjoyable form of transportation ever devised - quiet,
smooth, retaining some of the charm of shipboard life and flying low enough
so that the ground below remained real and alive and was not flattened out
into the abstract, seemingly endless two dimensional pattern which passes
below the air borne traveller today.

     The success of the "Graf Zeppelin" led to the construction of the
"Hindenburg". Germany was now alone in the field of commercial airship
flight. Britain had tried and failed. Hoping that the rigid airship might
knit together its farflung empire, England had embarked on an ambitious
"Empire Communications Scheine", a network of airship routes reaching from
London to Australia. Two large airships, "R 100" and "R 101" were built in
1930, but the badly constructed "R 101" crashed in France on its first
operational flight. All but six of its fifty four passengers and crew died.
With that, the British gave up the use of airships, civilian and military.
In 1935, the crash of the U.S. naval airship "Macon" brought American rigid
airship operations to an end.

     The "Hindenburg" was completed in 1936. With a length of 803 feet and a
displacement of 7,063,000 cubic feet, it was the largest airship ever built.
Cruising at 78 m.p.h., its four 1,100 h.p. Mercedes diesel engines were
capable of driving it at a top speed of 84 m.p.h. It could carry 50
passengers for a distance of 8750 miles. It began a regular transatlantic
flight service. The eastbound crossing took on the average 65 hours. With
the prevailing winds over the Atlantic being from the west, the homeward
trip was made in 52 hours. On May 5, 1937, the "Hindenburg" was about to
land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, to open the second transatlantic season, when
the now famous tragedy occured. Its hydrogen gas burst into flames and the
ship crashed. A discharge of static electricity near a gas leak may have
caused the loss. Thirty six passengers and crewmen died. Among them was
Ernst A. Lehmann, once the commander of "LZ 120". The captain of the
"Hindenburg", Max Pruss, formerly one of Baron Buttlar's helmsmen, survived.

     Determined to end the ungovernable menace of hydrogen gas, the Germans
built the next airship, a modified Hindenburg type, for helium operation.
Helium was an inert gas which would not burn or explode. The United States,
however, refused to sell helium to Nazi Germany and there was no other
source from which the Germans could obtain sufficient quantities. Without
helium, the new ship, the "Graf Zeppelin II" had to be inflated with
hydrogen gas. It made only a few was found wanting in the scales of commerce
and technological progress buried the rigid airship in the crypts of
history, the world is the poorer for no longer being able to see its
majestic progress through the skies.

        Finis.


    ----------------------------------------
    [31] "L 14", the lucky ship of the German navy, made 526
        operational and training flights during three years it was
        in operation.