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.