History
Completed after the end of the First World War, the L 72 was the third and final Zeppelin of the X class built for the Imperial German Navy. The L 72 was originally built with the intention to bomb New York City, a mission never carried out due to the end of the war. The Zeppelin Company still wanted to fly the L 72 to New York as a demonstration of the Zeppelin's capabilities, but again, the flight was never undertaken due to political reasons. Instead, the British airship R34 became the first aircraft to make the first east-west-east transatlantic flight in July, 1919. The L 72 made its first flight on 9 July 1920 and was surrendered to the French authorities four days later, [4] when the airship was flown by a German civilian crew from Friedrichshafen to Maubeuge and was rechristened Dixmude in honour of the French marines who had died in the defence of Diksmuide in 1914. [5] Under the command of lieutenant Jean du Plessis de Grenédan it was then flown across France to the naval air base at Cuers-Pierrefeu near Toulon.
Dixmude remained in its hangar for the next three years. An attempt was made to reinflate the airship in 1921, revealing that the original gasbags had deteriorated too much for this to be possible. Although new gasbags could have soon been purchased by the Zeppelin company, the French preferred to have their own made in France, resulting in a two-year delay while the technique of using gold beater's skin was mastered. These were delivered in June 1923 and proved less than satisfactory; many small tears appeared, possibly due to the use of an inferior quality of cotton. [6] An ambitious plan to fly across the Sahara to Dakar was approved, and in order to prepare for this a program of trials was begun.
On 2 August 1923, Dixmude made an 18-hour trip to Corsica. Between 30 August and 2 September, it made a 2,800 km (1,700 mi) trip to North Africa, passing over Algiers, Tunis and Bizerte, and returning via Sardinia and Corsica.
On 25 September 1923 at 07:55 Dixmude left Cuers, crossing the Mediterranean to Algiers and then turned westwards, following the coast to Bizerta and then turning south, flying over Sousse and Sfax where it turned inland towards Touggourt. The return flight over the Mediterranean was delayed by a storm which initially caused du Plessis to turn back to Bizerte, but after the weather cleared a successful crossing was made. On reaching Cuers conditions were so favourable that the flight was continued to Bordeaux and then to Paris, which was reached during the morning of 28 September. It then returned to Cuers, which was reached at 8 pm, but, still having fuel on board, then flew to Nice and back, finally mooring at Cuers at 06:30 on 29 September. The flight had lasted 118 hours and 41 minutes and covered 7,100 km (4,400 mi) [7]
This was followed between 17 and 19 October by a flight undertaken for publicity purposes in which it overflew cities in the south and west of France including Toulouse, Nantes, Bordeaux and Lyon.
On 18 December, Dixmude left Cuers with the intention of making a return flight to In Salah, an oasis deep in the Sahara, carrying a crew of 40 and 10 passengers. In Salah was reached at 4 pm on the 19 December; the airship did not land, but dropped a bag of mail from the crew. The intention had been to make a stop at the Baraki airfield near Algiers; a north-west headwind caused du Plessis to alter course to the east, and the airship was seen crossing Tunisia on the evening of the 20th. The last radio message received from Dixmude was sent at 02:08, the airship reporting that it was reeling in its radio antenna due to a thunderstorm.
Railway workers in Sciacca, Sicily, were preparing to take out a train due to leave at 02:30 when they saw a bright flash in the western sky followed by a red glow that sank out of sight behind a hill, while a hunter on the seashore, watching the thunderstorm, saw a flash of lightning strike a cloud, followed by a red glare inside the cloud and four burning objects falling from the cloud. In the morning two aluminium fuel tanks were washed up, bearing the numbers "75 L-72" and "S-2-48 LZ-113" and various other debris, including charred scraps of fabric and fragments of the duralumin girders. However, reports of these events did not reach the outside world for several days; the French government, unwilling to admit the possibility of the airship's loss for political reasons, apparently suppressed these reports and issued its own series of false reports of rumoured sightings of Dixmude, suggesting that it had been blown inland over Africa. [8] It was not until 26 December, when fishermen found the body of du Plessis, identified by documents found in the coat pockets, that the loss of Dixmude was publicly acknowledged. The captain's watch was stopped at 02:27. Only one other body was recovered, that of radioman Antoine Guillaume, which was recovered four months later. [9] The loss of the Dixmude was the deadliest airship accident in history at the time, surpassed by the destruction of USS Akron in 1933, which killed 73 crewmen.
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word zeppelin came to be commonly used to refer to all forms of rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and as scouts. Numerous bombing raids on Britain resulted in over 500 deaths.
USS Los Angeles was a rigid airship, designated ZR-3, which was built in 1923–1924 by the Zeppelin company in Friedrichshafen, Germany, as war reparations. She was delivered to the United States Navy in October 1924 and after being used mainly for experimental work, particularly in the development of the American parasite fighter program, was decommissioned in 1932.
LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was a German passenger-carrying hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. The ship was named after the German airship pioneer Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a count in the German nobility. It was conceived and operated by Hugo Eckener, the chairman of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.
The R.38 class of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of the First World War, intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four similar airships were originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of these were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and R.38, the lead ship of the class, was sold to the United States Navy in October 1919 before completion.
A rigid airship is a type of airship in which the envelope is supported by an internal framework rather than by being kept in shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope, as in blimps and semi-rigid airships. Rigid airships are often commonly called Zeppelins, though this technically refers only to airships built by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company.
Airship hangars are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a serious risk.
The ZeppelinLZ 1 was the first successful experimental rigid airship. It was first flown from a floating hangar on Lake Constance, near Friedrichshafen in southern Germany, on 2 July 1900. "LZ" stood for Luftschiff Zeppelin, or "Airship Zeppelin".
The spy gondola, spy basket, observation car or sub-cloud car is a crewed vessel that an airship hiding in cloud cover could lower several hundred metres to a point below the clouds in order to inconspicuously observe the ground and help navigate the airship. It was a byproduct of Peilgondel development. They were used almost exclusively by the Germans in the First World War on their military airships.
Jean Joseph Anne, comte du Plessis de Grenédan (1892–1923) was a French naval officer, who died on 21 or 22 December 1923 when the airship Dixmude, of which he was the commander, exploded over the Mediterranean Sea near Sicily.
The ZeppelinLZ 4 was a German experimental airship constructed under the direction of Ferdinand von Zeppelin. First flown on 20 June 1908, it made a series of successful flights including a 12-hour flight over Switzerland. It was destroyed when it caught fire after landing to carry out engine repairs during a projected 24-hour endurance trial. This disaster proved fortunate for Zeppelin: donations by the German public raised 6.5 million marks, so guaranteeing the future of his development of airships.
LZ 18 was the second Zeppelin airship to be bought by the Imperial German Navy. It caught fire and crashed with the loss of all aboard on 17 October 1913 before entering service.
The Zeppelin P Class was the first Zeppelin airship type to be produced in quantity after the outbreak of the First World War. Twenty-two of the type were built as well as twelve of a lengthened version, the Q Class. They were used for many of the airship bombing raids on the United Kingdom in 1915-16, for naval patrol work over the North Sea and Baltic and were also deployed on the eastern and south-eastern fronts.
The Zeppelin R Class was a type of rigid airship developed by Zeppelin Luftschiffbau in 1916 for use by the Imperial German Navy and the German Army for bombing and naval patrol work. Introduced in July 1916 at a time when British air defences were becoming increasingly capable, several were lost in the first months of operation, leading the Germans to reconsider their technical requirements and eventually to develop airships capable of bombing from a greater height. Most surviving examples were modified to meet these requirements, by reducing weight at the expense of performance. A total of 17 were built.
The Imperial German Army Zeppelin LZ 47 was a P-class World War I zeppelin. Destroyed by enemy fire on 21 February 1916 in the Battle of Verdun, killing the crew of 15.
The Imperial German Navy Zeppelin LZ 48 was a P-class World War I zeppelin.
The Imperial German Navy Zeppelin LZ 53 was a P-class World War I zeppelin.
The Imperial German Army Zeppelin LZ 43 was a P-class World War I zeppelin. While taking part in a bombing raid of the United Kingdom the Airship was hit by AA fire and it crashed outside of Ostend, Belgium on 10 August 1915. While being towed into the harbour, it burst into fire.
The LZ 121 was a civilian airship from the Weimar Republic, a Y-Class zeppelin with a total length of 130.8 metres. It received the nickname Nordstern while in German service, before it was given to France as war reparations on 13 June 1921. In France she was renamed the Méditerranée and operated as a civilian air transport for a year. She was transferred to the French Navy and served in the Mediterranean for four years. She was decommissioned and broken up in August 1926.
The Imperial German Navy Zeppelin LZ 112, given the tactical number L 70, was an x-class / L70-class World War I zeppelin of the Imperial German Navy.
