The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-14
SUPER-zEPPEL|N
 EXCEEDS IN BULK AN OCEAN LINER
Built of Aluminium It Is 68O Feet Long And 72
 Feet Beam.

London, Nov. 14.-It was not long after the battle with Zeppelins on
 Sept. 23 before the British Air Ser vice experts discovered that the air
 ship brought down in flames repre- scented the latest type of enemy raid-
 ers-the super-Zeppelin-as superior in size. engine power, armament and
 bomb-carrying capacity over the first Zeppelins as the latest big U boats are over the original little submarines. The deductions of the experts have shown that Germany's super-Zeppelin
 has engines aggregating LAO horse
 power, as against $40 horsepower in the original naval Zeppelin. It is
 68O feet long and 72 feet in diameter actually larger in bulk than giant ocean liner of the type of the Lusi- tania, though of infinitely less weight, of course. The enormous envelope, although destroyed in the fire that plunged the Zeppelin down to wreck in Essex, has been estimated from the aluminium and steel and copper wire structural work that remains to have been of a capacity to store 2,000, 900 cubic feet of gas-three times as much as the capacity of the earlier
 Zeppelins, then supposed to be the last word in air monsters.
 What inspired admiration and won der in the minds of all who visited the wreck was the incredible delicacy of the workmanship that created something larger than the Lusitania to float in the air. and which against the tens of thousands of tons weight of the Lusitania, with engines, guns.
 bombs and all, the superZeppelin is figured as weighing only 50 tons. The whole aluminium and wire structure weighed only. the experts report. nine tons.
 wreck writes:
 "The externals of the airship, her outer fabrics and gas bags, were de- stroyed, but all the essentials remain, all the elaborate contrivances of at- tack, all the gear for operating the engines, all the tackle for manoeuvr- ing the ship.
 "The skeleton of the monster is not visible until you draw very. close to 1t. It is a strange, spidery affair of deli-
 cate trellis work in silvery metal,
 with no sheen and no tinkle, but a sepu1chral rustic. The girders. are ot almost inconceivable nghtness. What looks a prodigiously bulky portion of the framework can be lifted with one hand. Instead of weighing a hun dredweight it scales a few pounds.
 The whole structure seems like a de- vice from another world and another age"
 Swung under the huge gas envelope were four gondola shaped compart- ments, hooded, with apertures for the use of the navigators and gum
 ners and observers-one gondola al the Zeppelin's nose, two depending side by side in the center, and the third and largest gondola-about 30 feet in 1ength-aft. Her six engine distributed among the gondolas are figured to have been able 10 send the monster along in calm weather at 65 miles an hour. The gondolas are made of stout aluminium, but the ex- perts do not figure that, boat shaped as they are they could float success fully unless the aviators had time to dismantle the flying boats of their armament in a descent or especially in tumble if the gas bags were shell struck. e.,,, The forward >gondoIa is that used for navigation. It was divided into three compartments. In the first was the Captain, right in the bow of the ship, looking through non-inf1ammable celluloid windows, which were pierced through the cotton fabric that closed the gondola in above. Conveniently placed for him were two wheels tu operate the e1evating and horizontal steering rudders and other wheels controlling the water ballast and the petrol tanks. Before him was little keyboard with which bombs were dropped. It showed 60 small buttons like the pushes of an electric bell each of which operated one bomb dropping hook and released a bomb. Another lever withdrew shutter,
 which had to be withdrawn before the bomb could fall
 One of Six Engines.
 Astern of the Captains cabin in the
 same gondola was a little room, 6 feet by 4 feet, used by the wireless operator and containing the wireless l instruments, which were supplied d
 with current from six dynamos one
 attached to each engine, thus leaving
 nothing to chance. Astern of the
 wireless room, again, still in the same l gondola and isolated from the wire less room by an air space of about
 an inch, were one of the six engines and a dynamo, also two machine | guns of ordinary German calibre. on l tripod mountings of amazing light
 ness ":
 The engine is still in good working 1 order. It is of Maybach (Mercedes) I type, and develops 240 horsepower One of the great surprises of this air. { ship is that immediately behind the i forward gondola and driven by. its
 engine is a propeller amidships under meath the ship. There was nothing o1
 the kind in the Zeppelins brough,
 down in France and at Salonica. Ii is one of the distinctive features o1
 the super-Zeppelin.
 | The "Cat Walk"
 Il To pass from the gondola down the ship one had to climb through kind of trapdoor framed ir aluminium into tl the "cat walk" a per1lously marrow
 gangway only nine inches wide. I Near the center of the ship, pro. I gressing from bow to stern, were
 suspended two other gondolas These I hung side by side, spaced out a littls on either beam. They are of much
 smaller size, only Is feet long, ana ,| each contains one Maybach 24O horse T power engine, one dynamo and one machine gun. i Tn the amidships gondolas were T neat little aluminium cupboards which at the time of the capture con tatned comestiblesa They were o1 q good design and took little space Tn.