On May 30 in the first stage of that battle it will be recalled that Admiral Sir David Beatty was cruising with his scout fleet looking for the Germans several hundred miles east of the British grand fleet, which was under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, somewhere off the Orkney Islands. Flying out under the protection of a fog-bank that was moving down over the North Sea a German naval Zeppelin discovered the isolated position of Admiral Beatty’s scout fleet and sent a wireless message to the German high-seas fleet, which came out under Admiral Von Scheer with the sole object of cutting off and destroying Admiral Beatty’s fleet before it could unite with the British grand fleet. Undoubtedly, had it not been for a seaplane launched from the mother ship Engadine and flown by Flight Lieutenant Frederick J. Rutland, who discovered the entire German navy coming out, the British scout fleet might have been cut off and completely destroyed before Admiral Jellicoe could come to the rescue.
In the meantime another Zeppelin was hovering over the British grand fleet far to the north and was keeping the German Admiral Von Scheer fully informed by wireless of every ship in the squadron. It was this Zeppelin which finally warned the German admiral to return to the protection of secure fortresses and defenses of the great German naval base of Helgoland. By thus saving the Hun fleet from annihilation in this naval encounter it was possible for the Germans to hold a complete, continuous, and dangerous threat that their navy might again come out to attack England or France and cut off English troops from the Continent. This possibility alone compelled the Allies to maintain, until the close of the war, an enormous fleet at all times in the North Sea.
There is no gainsaying that in time of war the aeroplane has many advantages over the Zeppelin. The heavier-than-air machine can be produced in quantity much more readily than the lighter-than-air craft. Exact figures on the cost of Zeppelins are not available. W. L. Marsh, in the British publication Aeronautics, gives half a million dollars as the estimated cost of a superdirigible of sixty tons, having a lift of thirty-eight tons. This high cost is due, among other things, to the enormous building in which the airship must be constructed, for it must be borne in mind that one of these dinosaurs of the air extends its bulk along the ground farther than the Woolworth Building towers in the air. Indeed, it could not descend in an ordinary city street because of its bulk, and if it did it would extend more than three city blocks of two hundred feet frontage! Moreover, the plant necessary to generate the hydrogen gas sufficient to inflate a bag of two million cubic feet capacity would cost fifty thousand dollars alone. The amount of aluminum in the L-49, forced to land in France in the spring of 1918, would make a foot-bridge over the East River as long as the famous Brooklyn Bridge!
To land and house such an elusive and buoyant monster requires many winches and some two hundred men. Even then some have been known to run away. This happened in the winter of 1907, when the Patrie, a French semirigid dirigible, which was only a third as large as the German super-Zeppelins, was caught in a gale of wind near Verdun and in spite of the two hundred soldiers who held her in leash she broke her moorings and, flying over France, England, Wales, Ireland, shedding a few fragments on the way, finally disappeared into the sky above the North Atlantic.
On the other hand, a six-ton aeroplane can carry a useful load of two tons and does not cost more than $50,000. Also the wing spread of 150 feet of the largest aeroplane is small compared to a 700-foot Zeppelin. Consequently, aeroplanes can be more readily produced in quantity, can be housed, and require only a half-dozen men to take care of them.
Because of the small size of the scout machine—with only a 26-foot wing spread—and its speed of more than a hundred miles an hour—compared to the Zeppelin speed of 60 or 70 miles—the aeroplane was invaluable for scouting over short distances, for duels in the air, for directing artillery-fire, for contact patrol; and the larger aeroplanes were useful for bombing in huge fleets.
In all other purposes of war the Zeppelin is far superior to the aeroplane. Even the contention that the aeroplanes stopped the Zeppelin raids on England is absurd. It is true that two Zeppelins were brought down over England by aeroplane, but it was September 3, 1916, two years after the breaking out of the war, when young Leefe Robinson brought down the first Hun dirigible over London. It was June 3, 1915, when a Canadian sublieutenant, R. A. J. Warneford, flying a Morane monoplane for the Royal Naval Air Service, got above a dirigible returning to its aerodrome in Belgium from a raid on England and dropped a bomb upon the gigantic gas-bag, blowing it up and killing the crew; but before that came to pass thirteen Zeppelin raids had already been visited upon England, 408 bombs had been dropped, twenty-one persons had been killed and a thousand injured. In both this case and in the case of Lieutenant Robinson, more than a year later, the aeroplanes happened to be in the air above the Zeppelins before they came along, and the aeroplanes in both instances were blown completely upside down by the force of the explosion. Needless to say, a moment later Lieutenant Robinson looped the loop for joy when he saw what destruction he had wrought.
In other words, because the Zeppelins could put out their lights, shut off their motors, and drift through clouds unheard in the night at two thousand feet altitude, and because the dropping of the bombs, like the throwing out of ballast, allowed the dirigibles to jump suddenly up to much higher altitudes, they were as a rule far too elusive for the aeroplanes to get near enough even to shoot incendiary bullets into them.
In point of flying comforts and safety, time that can be spent in the air, flying distances and useful load carried, the Zeppelin is far in advance of any kind of heavier-than-air machine ever built.
Before the war the passenger-carrying Zeppelins Schwaben and Victoria Louise were equipped with cabins for the accommodation of twenty-four passengers and crew. Meals were served à la carte; two rows of easy-chairs were arranged before the windows, with a passageway between; and there was a wash-room with water-faucets; which will give an idea of the completeness of the appointments for the comfort of passengers. In the super-Zeppelins constructed since then, and now being fitted to fly the Atlantic, there is ample room for a promenade of four to five hundred feet in the keel. Moreover, there is even a greater opportunity for the giant sky-liners to provide luxurious cabins and other comforts for the travellers, such as of course cannot possibly be supplied on a heavier-than-air machine, where even the chief engineer cannot so much as leave his seat to examine the engine once the machine is in flight!