Forum Eerste Wereldoorlog

[Tandorini]

On 13 October 1912, several eyewitnesses reported seeing a vast German airship over Sheerness. Then on the night of 22/3 February the captain of the City of Leeds, en route from Grimsby to Hamburg, reported seeing a large airship heading for the Humber. These were early endurance trials, probably of the German navy’s first Zeppelin, the L1. But as far as the British were concerned, the sightings were never substantiated and the Germans flatly denied that they had entered British air space.

The first of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s aerial express train projects had been abandoned in 1894. But by 1900, the LZ1 project was well underway. In 1907, the LZ3 showed sufficient promise to prompt the German government to lay down a challenge to von Zeppelin to create an airship capable of twenty-four hours of flight. The LZ5 achieved this specification in 1909 and the German military began its, initially reluctant, involvement with airships.

The military interest was, at this stage, limited, but von Zeppelin pressed on and his LZ10 (1911) carried 1,500 passengers in a year. Meanwhile, the German navy took an even more cautious approach and did not order their first airship, the LZ14 (L1) until April 1912.

verder lezen:
https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2017/06/01/the-first-german-raids-on-britain-the-zeppelin-offensive-1914-16-part-i/

Deel 2:
https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2017/06/01/the-first-german-raids-on-britain-the-zeppelin-offensive-1914-16-part-ii/

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