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.