LZ 24

L 3
Type:	Zeppelin type w
Design country:	German Empire
Manufacturer:	Airship construction Zeppelin
First flight:	May 11, 1914
Production time:	1914/15
Number of pieces:	12

The Zeppelin LZ 24 was Count Zeppelin's 24th airship and the third zeppelin of the Imperial Navy with the identification L 3 . It was the first type m zeppelin , of which a total of 12 ships were delivered in equal parts to the army and the navy by March 1915.

history

The first trip from LZ 24 took place on May 11, 1914. LZ 24 carried out a continuous journey of 35 hours and was then taken over by the Navy. The navy identifier for the airship was L 3 . Its two predecessors, the airships L 1 and L 2 , however, were lost due to accidents in autumn 1913 after very short periods of service (eleven months and five weeks, respectively). The new airship was used for reconnaissance tasks at sea during fleet maneuvers.

L 3 in front of his hall in Fuhlsbüttel

At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, the L 3 was still the only airship in the Navy. The zeppelin was stationed in a rented hall in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel in order to be available to the Imperial Navy in the North and Baltic Seas. By the turn of the year, the airship department of the Navy under Corvette Captain Peter Strasser was reinforced by the delivery of the sister ships L 4 , L 5 , L 6 , L 7 and L 8 , which, however, only gradually became operational as there was a lack of trained personnel. The civilian airship LZ 11 Victoria Luise served as a training ship . Nordholz near the mouth of the Elbe was added as a port of operations for reconnaissance over the North Sea in 1914 , later Hage in East Friesland and Tondern in North Schleswig as well as Ahlhorn in 1916 and Wittmundhaven in 1917 .

Since the beginning of the war, L 3 was used for reconnaissance trips over the North Sea. On the night of January 19-20, 1915, the L 3 , together with the new L 4 naval zeppelin , launched the first airship attack on England. L 3 was loaded with eight 50 kg bombs and eleven 28 kg incendiary bombs and dropped them over industrial plants on the Humber .

End of LZ 24 / L 3

Remnants of L 3 on Fanø

On February 17, 1915, L 3 was on the march back from a reconnaissance voyage towards Norway and came across the North Sea off southern Denmark at the height of Blavandshuk in a snow storm. One engine failed at around 11 a.m. and another at around 1 p.m. When L 3 was still in a snow storm off Hanstholm (Northern Denmark) at 1 p.m. , the zeppelin reported its difficulties to the navy via radio and turned south. L 3 wanted to reach the airship port of Tondern. But when the last engine also failed, L 3 had to make an emergency landing on the Danish island of Fanø in order not to drift helplessly over the North Sea. The commander Kapitänleutnant Fritz destroyed the papers and burned the ship. The crew was interned in neutral Denmark according to international rules until the end of the war. The sister ship L 4 , which wanted to make an emergency landing at Blavandshuk , was also lost in the same storm .

Technical specifications

• Carrying gas volume: 22,500 m³ hydrogen
• Length: 158.0 m
• Diameter: 14.90 m
• Payload: 9.2 t
• Drive: three Maybach engines, each with 200 hp (147 kW)
• Speed: 22.4 m / s (80.6 km / h)

See also

• List of Zeppelins

literature

• Hans-Jürgen Becker, Rudolf Höfling: 100 years of airships. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-613-02071-8 .
• Peter Meyer: Airships - The History of the German Zeppelins. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-7637-5951-4 .