LZ 26

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The Zeppelin LZ 26 was the 26th airship of Count Zeppelin and the fifteenth airship of the German army .

history

The first run of LZ 26 took place on December 14, 1914. The army took over the airship under the military identification Z XII.

As with every new Zeppelin, improvements and innovations were also introduced in the LZ 26. The previously open gondolas of the zeppelins were closed for the first time at LZ 26 and the walkway between the gondolas was partially relocated to the ship's hull.

Since March 8, 1915, the airship was stationed in Maubeuge, France, on the Belgian-French border.

On March 17, 1915, Z XII broke off a night attack on London due to heavy fog and low clouds and instead flew to Calais as a target. For the first time, a scouting basket was used in this attack , which enabled the airship to stay above the clouds, while the scouting basket hung up to 1,000 meters below the ship and the observer in the basket under the cloud cover could give driving and bombing instructions by telephone But the airship could not be made out by the enemy from the ground. During this attack, the scouting basket was lowered by the winch 800 meters below the ship and approached Calais with throttled engines in order not to give the air defense acoustically any indication of the airship. The anti-aircraft guns of the Fort of Calais fired, but without aiming, and the searchlights could not find the zeppelin through the cloud cover. Bombs of various sizes were dropped on military targets in Calais.

A second attempt to attack London during the night of Z XII failed over the North Sea due to heavy rain and so the ship turned on Dunkirk and dropped its bomb load of one and a half tons there. During the attack, Z XII was slightly damaged by the defensive fire. The starboard propeller was shot down and a gas cell received a small leak. A third attack by Commander Lehmann with Z XII on London also failed. Lehmann reached England, but not London, and dropped his bombs on Harwich .

In a second attack on Calais on May 16, 1915, Z XII dropped 1.6 tons of bombs on targets in the city.

In July 1915 the zeppelin was relocated from the western front to the eastern front in Olsztyn and bombed railway junctions on Russian territory from there. In October 1915 Lehmann transferred Z XII to Darmstadt . In 1916, the airship was withdrawn from service at the front and wrecked on August 8, 1917 in Jüterbog.

End of LZ 26 / Z XII

On August 8, 1917, when army airships were discontinued, Z XII in Jüterbog was disarmed. LZ 26 was the army's most successful airship in terms of the bomb load of 20 tons

Technical specifications

  • Carrying gas volume: 25,000 m³ hydrogen
  • Length: 161.0 m
  • Diameter: 16.00 m
  • Payload: 12.2 t
  • Drive: three Maybach engines, each 210 hp (154 kW)
  • Speed: 22.5 m / s (81 km / h)

See also

literature

  • Peter Meyer: Airships - The History of the German Zeppelins. Wehr & Wissen, Koblenz / Bonn 1980.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst A. Lehmann : On air patrol and world travel . Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin 1936, page 57
  2. ^ Ernst A. Lehmann : On air patrol and world travel . Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin 1936, pages 63-69
  3. ^ Ernst A. Lehmann : On air patrol and world travel . Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin 1936, page 87 f.
  4. ↑ History of Airship Travel , Zeppelin Foundation (PDF; 2.3 MB), accessed on October 28, 2019.