Airship hangar in Biesdorf-Süd
The airship hangar in Biesdorf-Süd was a rotating hangar for airships on the grounds of the Biesdorf estate . The estate and Biesdorf Castle belonged to Georg Wilhelm von Siemens , who transferred a 120 hectare area of the estate to Siemens-Schuckertwerke to begin developing military airships there. The planning for the hall came from the mechanical engineer Karl Janisch employed in the Siemens group , advised by the civil engineer Otto Leitholf . The construction was carried out by Steffens & Nölle AG from Tempelhof .
Building description
The hall was 135 m long, had a clear width and height of 25 m each and weighed 1200 tons. The basic construction consisted of iron girders, the side walls partly made of brick, partly (to save weight) of glass, the roof of wood and roofing felt. There was an observation platform and an electric beacon on the roof. At the bottom, individual rooms were separated by plaster walls along the long sides, which served as engine rooms, workshops and living spaces. The rear end of the hall (facing the wind) was tightly closed and somewhat pointed. The front was somewhat widened to accommodate the airship and could only be closed by a canvas curtain. Red and green position lights at the entrance indicated the position of the hall from afar. There was also a tethered balloon that could be raised on a boom to determine the wind and as an orientation aid for the airship crew.
The hall was the first airship hall in the world that could be rotated according to the wind direction . This enabled the opened side to be turned into the slipstream before the airship entered, and cross winds could be avoided, which in other halls often led to damage to the hall or the airship. In the middle, the hall rested on a concrete pivot with a diameter of 8 meters. The rotation took place on eight so-called support cars, which ran on two rail rings - four on the inner and four on the outer rail ring. A complete rotation took about an hour. The power supply for rotating the hall was provided by two 40 HP petrol engines, each connected to a 24 kW dynamo. These were also used to charge the batteries that supplied the machines in the workshops with electricity.
A ring-shaped, 2.2 m high ramp was built around the hall to compensate for the difference in height between the hall floor and the ground in every direction of rotation. 3000 hydrogen cylinders for filling the airship were stored below this ramp.
use
The hall was built in 1907–1909 for the semi-rigid airship Siemens-Schuckert I , the planning and construction of which began around the same time as the hall. The Siemens-Schuckert I was the only airship built in the hall. After it crashed on a test run on May 2, 1912, it was scrapped and airship development at Siemens stopped. The hall was used again from January to August 1914 when Georg Wilhelm von Siemens made it available to the army administration for test runs with the airship M IV . In 1919 it was dismantled under the terms of the Versailles Treaty .
source
Frank Wittendorfer: the hall. Airships between Biesdorf and Karlshorst. Kulturring in Berlin eV, Berlin 2007. ISBN 3-9810679-5-9
Individual evidence
- ^ Citizens' network of Marzahn-Hellersdorf: Airship hangar in Biesdorf-Süd. ( Memento of the original from July 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 8.4 ″ N , 13 ° 32 ′ 49.6 ″ E