Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1911-12-08
CHAPTER III.
The German Air Fleet.

X playing that weird mysterious
part-the part of an interna-
- tional spy. He was seeing Sc
cret things. He had, in fact, crossed
the designs of no less power than the
German empire; he had blundered into
the hot focus of Welt-Politik; he was
drifting helplessly toward the great
imperial secret, the immense aero
nautic park that had been established
at headlong pace in Franconia to de-
velop silently, swiftly and on an i'm
mense scale the great discoveries of
Hunstedt and Stossel, and so to give
fleet Of airships, the air power and the
empire Of the world.
Later, just before they shot him
down altogether, Bert saw that great
Urea Of passionate work warm lit in
the evening light, a great area of up
land on which the airships lay like a
herd of grazing monsters at their feed
In shape they were altogether fishlike,
for the great airships with which Ger
many attacked New York in her last
gigantic effort for world supremacy
before humanity realized that world
supremacy was dream-were the
lineal descendants of the Zeppelin air.
ship that flew over Lake Constance in
1906 and of the Lebaudy navigables
that made their memorable excursions
over Paris in 1907 and 1908.
These German airships were held
together by riblike skeletons of steel
and aluminium and a stout inelastic
canvas outer skin, within which was
an impervious rubber gas bag, cut up
by transverse dissepiments into from
fifty to hundred compartments. These
were all absolutely gas tight and filled
with hydrogen, and the entire aerostat
was kept at any level by means of n
long internal balloonette of oiled and
toughened silk canvas, into which air
could be forced and from which it
could be pumped. So the airship could
be made either heavier or lighter than
air, and losses of weight through the
consumption of fuel, the casting of
bombs, and so forth, could also be
compensated by admitting air to sec
tions of the general gas bag. Ultimate
ly that made a highly explosive mix
ture, but in all these matters risks
must be taken and guarded against
There was steel axis to the whole
affair, central backbone which termi-
mated in the engine and propeller, and
the men and magazines were forward
In q series of cabins under the expand
ed headlike fore part. The engine
which was of the extraordinarily pow
erful Pforzheim type, that supreme tri-
umph of German invention, was
worked by wires from this fore part,
which was indeed the only really hab-
liable part of the ship. If anything
went wrong the engineers went aft
along rope ladder beneath the frame
The tendency of the whole affair to
roll was partly corrected by a horizon
tai lateral fin on either side, and steer
ing was chiefly effected by two YER
teal fins, which normally lay back like
gill flaps on either side of the head
1t was indeed most complete adapta-
ton of the fish form to aerial condi-
: tions. the position of swimming blad-
der, eyes and brain being, however
below instead of above. A striking
and unfishlike feature was the apDa-
ratus for wireless telegraphy that dan
gled from the forward cabin-that is
to say, under the chin of the fish.
These monsters were capable of
ninety miles an hour in n calm, so
that they could face and make head
way against nearly everything except
the fiercest tornado. They varied in
length from 500 TO 1000 feet and they
had a carrying power of from 20 70
200 tons. How many Germany pos
sessed history does not record. but
Bert counted nearly eighty great bulks
receding in perspective during his'brief
inspection. Such were the instruments