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, Hochwohlgeboren¹⁶".

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.