Osprey - Duel 085 - Zeppeli vs British Home Defence 1915-18.pdf

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ZEPPELIN
BRITISH HOME DEFENCE
1915–18
JON GUTTMAN
ZEPPELIN
BRITISH HOME DEFENCE
1915–18
JON GUTTMAN
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chronology
Design and Development
Technical Specifications
The Strategic Situation
The Combatants
Combat
Statistics and Analysis
Aftermath
Further Reading
Index
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8
11
19
37
41
51
72
77
79
80
INTRODUCTION
Britain’s first inkling that the English Channel was no longer the watery barrier it had
been in ages past came on 17 January 1785, when Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John
Jeffries flew across it in a hydrogen balloon. In that same year, Lt Jean Baptiste
Meusnier of the French Corps of Engineers conceptualized an elliptical gasbag using
hand-cranked propellers for both propulsion and steering, although he could not raise
the funds to realize it. That would have to wait until 9 August 1884, when French
Capitaines Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs unveiled the first successful airship, a
streamlined hydrogen envelope with an electric motor running a four-bladed airscrew
that propelled it at up to 15mph for 23 minutes. In the early 1900s, Alberto Santos-
Dumont perfected a steerable airship using a gasoline engine, which he flew all
around Paris.
On 2 July 1900, Germany grandly outdid them all as
Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ.1,
a
rigid hydrogen airship incorporating an aluminium-zinc alloy framework 420ft long
and 38ft in diameter, and powered by two 14hp Daimler engines, rose above Lake
Constance, culminating ten years of obsessed experimentation by its creator, Ferdinand
Graf
von Zeppelin. His achievement would be emulated in 1905 by August von
Parseval’s keeled semi-rigid airship and in 1909 by
SL.1,
the first of a series of rigid
airships using a wire-braced wooden framework devised by the Schütte-Lanz
Luftschiffsbau.
At last freed of its tether, the airship could carry passengers and cargo anywhere
within the range of its fuel supply. Whether its inventors approved or not, the airship’s
military application swiftly followed, as the balloon’s ability to spy on enemy forces,
utilized since 1794, could now be self-projected deep into his territory.
After 1903, that potential would be challenged by the emergence of another
innovation – the heavier-than-air craft. Both airship and aeroplane would undergo
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a spurt of rapid development in World War I, largely because it pitted them
against each other. The prospect of aerial attack had been anticipated as early as
1899, when The Hague Declaration prohibited future combatants from ‘launching
projectiles from balloons or other kinds of aerial vessels’. Although 44 nations
signed it then, only 27 of them signed the renewal in 1907, one of the abstainers
being Germany.
In 1908, Britain began planning for aerial attack – a prospect made even more
plausible on 25 July 1909, when Louis Blériot flew his monoplane across the Channel.
By 1910, the British had added 3in and 4in artillery and 1-pounder pom-pom guns,
capable of being directed skyward from makeshift high-angle platforms or from
trucks, to its defences.
On 4 August 1914, the
Deutsches Heer
(Imperial German Army) marched into
Belgium, and Britain, sworn by treaty to safeguard Belgian neutrality, declared
war. In the face of continuing Belgian resistance, the Germans committed bloody
depredations that fed an Allied propaganda campaign representing them as
scourges of civilization – ‘Huns’, as the British called them. Those ‘atrocities’
included a bombing raid on the fortress town of Liège by army Zeppelin
Z.VI
on
6 August, killing nine civilians, and night attacks on Antwerp on 25 August and
2 September.
Zeppelin airship
LZ.1
makes its
first ascent over Lake Constance
on 2 July 1900. (Library of
Congress)
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