Lighter Than Air

by Guy Warner

  They also gave a new generation of naval airshipmen a wealth of practical experience, so preparing them for the command of the larger and more capable non-rigid airships which were to follow.

  The Coastal Class Airship

  As the activities of the U-boats grew, more extended cruises were required, and according to Murray Sueter, Usborne suggested using the Astra-Torres patents and building 180,000 cubic feet (5109 cubic metre) airships which would have greater range than the SS Class and moreover would benefit from twin-engine reliability. Sueter agreed and indeed claimed to have invented the double-ended car as used in these larger airships – named Coastals. He also wrote that he developed the 150 hp (111 kW) Sunbeam for seaplane work and recommended placing a Sunbeam engine at the end of each car. Later, further improved airships resulting from the Coastal design were the Coastal Star and North Sea types. In 1925 he wrote:

  ‘Admiral Sueter desires to place on record his high appreciation of the hard work and devotion to the airship cause displayed by Commander Usborne. Far into the night and the early hours of the morning, this scientific officer worked to make these airships a success and due to him in large part their wonderful success was due.’38

  A plan view of a Coastal Class airship.

  The Coastal design was indeed based on the Astra-Torres tri-lobe envelope, all connected by porous internal curtains, with four ballonets fitted in the lower lobes, and was developed by the design team at Kingsnorth. The envelope used was that of HMA No 10 and the control car was produced by adapting the fuselages of two Avro 510 seaplanes to produce a push-pull, twin-engine layout. The prototype was named the Yellow Peril because of the chrome yellow dope used on the envelope. There was a problem with the dope and air bubbles as it was applied to the fabric, which was sorted out by Usborne’s ingenuity.39 C1 flew for the first time on 26 May 1915. The production of thirty was agreed on 19 June 1915. The first production airship flew at Kingsnorth in September 1915 and was ready for service in the spring of 1916. It proved to be a very valuable workhorse for the RNAS lighter-than-air division, with its capacity to carry a crew of four or five, a wireless set, two Lewis guns, nearly half a ton (500kg) of bombs or depth bombs, an endurance of up to 22 hours and a maximum speed of 52mph (83kph).

  A Coastal Class airship on patrol.

  Later in the war Tom Elmhirst was the captain of C19 and described his service at Howden in Yorkshire as follows:

  ‘Weather and serviceability permitting, C19 was seldom off patrol. Dispatched at dawn and told to stay on patrol for at least twelve hours was hard going. Hard on the eyes, watching the gasbag pressure, watching the course the coxswain was steering and one eye all the time looking for the enemy – whom I never saw. He could see me from twenty miles distant and submerge. I could only hope to catch sight of a periscope 400 yards away. It was hard on the hands and I came home with blisters from the elevator control wheel after a “bumpy” day, also hard on the backside sitting concentrated for long hours. Food was a pleasant relief and a problem. It did not always taste well in the slipstream of an open-exhaust engine using castor oil! I eventually settled for a large packet of marmalade sandwiches and a bottle of Malvern water. My crew and I did not smoke or “drink” in the air, but just looked forward to a cigarette and a beer on landing.’40

  Before leaving Kingsnorth, Usborne made significant input to an 80-page report which would be issued by the Director Air Services in December 1915, which would give a highly detailed account of: ‘The Experimental Work in connection with Airships, Balloons and Kite Balloons from November 1914 to November 1915’, firstly at Farnborough and then, from March 1915, at Kingsnorth.

  The Zeppelin Menace

  Meanwhile, on 13 August 1915, Usborne was appointed Inspecting Commander of Airships (Building) at the Admiralty. His restless mind was continually occupied by the aeronautical requirements of the war and looking beyond his own immediate task, focussing on the problem of how to increase the range of British aeroplanes and how they would be best used after the end of the war.

  Usborne’s most pressing task, later in 1915, was to draw up schemes to combat the Zeppelin menace. As the RFC was fully stretched in providing support to the BEF in France, it had been agreed in September 1914 that the air defence of Great Britain should be the responsibility of the Admiralty rather than the War Office.

  ‘On 3 September, Lord Kitchener asked me in cabinet whether I would accept, on behalf of the Admiralty, the responsibility for the aerial defence of Great Britain, as the War Office had no means of discharging it. I thereupon undertook to do what was possible with the wholly inadequate resources which were available.’41

  Since the early experimental days in the first decade of the twentieth century, Zeppelins had been developed considerably in reliability and carrying capacity. Between 1910 and 1914, the Zeppelin Company had established the first scheduled commercial airline, DELAG, (Deutsche Luftschiffahrt Aktien Gessellschaft) with passenger airships including LZ6, LZ7 Deutschland, LZ8 Deutschland II, LZ10 Schwaben, LZ11 Viktoria Luise, LZ13 Hansa and LZ17 Sachsen, offering short haul air tours in Germany. At first it was a modest success at best, but with Dr Eckener as Flight Director it was established on a much sounder basis by greater emphasis being placed on crew training, ground handling, engine performance and reliability, and weather forecasting. He summed up the achievement as follows:

  ‘More and more we learned to overcome our difficulties by making proper arrangements and developing a sure skill. The DELAG fulfilled its main purpose, which was to train a nucleus of qualified commanders and steersmen, and above all to develop a familiarity with the elements in which the craft had to fly in the ocean of the air, with all its dangerous tricks. The DELAG became the university of airship flight.’42

  A total of 34,028 passengers were carried in more than 2000 flights, with a total distance covered of more than 100,000 miles (160,900 km) and an excellent safety record. One airship alone, the Viktoria Luise made a total of 1000 trips between Hamburg, Heligoland and Copenhagen in the years 1912–14. As has been noted, the War Office in London was slow to appreciate the potential of aerial warfare, noting in 1910 that it was; ‘Not convinced that either aeroplanes or airships will be of any utility in war’ and that it seemed unlikely that it would be possible to, ‘arrest or retard the perhaps unwelcome progress of aerial navigation.’43 It is of interest to note that the Admiralty’s attitude to the introduction of steamships some 100 years before was similarly unwelcoming; ‘Their Lordships felt it their bounden duty to discourage to the utmost of their ability the employment of steam vessels, as they consider that the introduction of steam is calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the Empire.’44

  The Imperial German Navy’s Airship Division was formed in 1912 with the plan to take the war to the enemy by means of a bombing campaign. The first naval Zeppelin was the LZ14, which was commissioned into service as the L 1. It was lost at sea the following year; among those killed was the senior officer of the Naval Airship Division, Korvettenkapitän Metzing. His replacement as commanding officer was Korvettenkapitän Peter Strasser, who was convinced that the Zeppelin was a strategically important weapon which could make a real difference to winning the war, saying that Britain could be defeated: ‘Overcome by means of airships, through increasingly intensive destruction of cities, factory complexes, dockyards….’45

  Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the German General Staff from 1906 to 1914, believed that Zeppelins possessed potent possibilities, as also did the German aviation press. On 24 December 1912 he advised the War Ministry that:

  ‘In the newest Zeppelins we possess a weapon that is far superior to all similar ones of our opponents and that cannot be imitated in the foreseeable future if we work energetically to perfect it. Its speediest development as a weapon is required to enable us at the beginning of a war to strike a first and telling blow, whose practical and moral effect could be quite extraordinary.’46

  In 1914, t
he Zeppelin represented a threat, with a payload of 500lbs (227kg) of bombs, at a time when fixed-wing aircraft were deemed suitable for unarmed reconnaissance only. It was also an unknown quantity with all the fear that such a novelty would bring. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, was more sanguine, stating in his speech following a banquet at the Mansion House on 5 May 1913:

  ‘Any hostile aircraft or airships which reached our coast during the coming year (1914) would be promptly attacked in superior force by a swarm of very formidable hornets.’47

  Hornets would indeed have had to do the job, as there was a distinct lack of suitable aircraft. Indeed, when Flight Sub-Lieutenant Eric Beauman reported for duty with the RNAS Air Defence Flight at Hendon in September 1914, he was somewhat disquieted to discover that there was one aircraft and one pilot (himself) allocated for the aerial protection of London.48

  However, at this early stage of the war, neither the German Army nor the Imperial Navy had an abundance of airships available for service. The army had six Zeppelins and one wooden-framed Schütte-Lanz type. Three of these were lost in ill-advised missions in support of the invading troops in the initial war of the frontiers. The navy had only one operational airship, which was fully tasked with reconnaissance for the High Seas Fleet.

  The Schütte-Lanz Airship Company had been founded in 1909 by Dr Johann Schütte and Dr Karl Lanz with the backing of a group of industrialists. Its growth had been encouraged by the army, perhaps to provide a counterweight to the Zeppelin monopoly. Some twenty of these had been constructed in equal number for the army and navy before the end of the war. The laminated plywood used was successful only up to a point. It was undoubtedly lighter than metal, but beyond a certain size lacked sufficient strength. Moreover, a nautical environment was particularly unforgiving. In the words of Peter Strasser: ‘Most of the Schütte-Lanz ships are not usable under combat conditions, especially those operated by the navy, because their wooden construction cannot cope with the damp conditions inseparable from maritime service.’

  The first city to be bombed by a Zeppelin was Antwerp on 24–25 August 1914, where twenty-six citizens were killed. Shortly afterwards, three Zeppelins were in action on the Eastern Front, bombing the town of Mława on the Russo-Prussian frontier. That autumn, the citizens of London were subject to air raid precautions for the first time, with street lamps being extinguished and a blackout being imposed. It was defended by a handful of guns that had been modified to fire at a higher angle, searchlights were ordered and training in night flying was recommended – though the few available aircraft had neither the speed, climb rate, nor weapons, to be a credible counter to any marauders. A Zeppelin could climb at 850–1000 feet (260–300m) a minute, whereas a BE2c took an hour to reach the Zeppelins’ cruising height of 10,000 feet (3004m). One of the finest of Zeppelin commanders, Kapitan-Leutnant Heinrich Mathy of the Imperial German Navy commented:

  ‘As to an aeroplane corps for the defence of London, it must be remembered that it takes some time for an aeroplane to screw itself up as high as a Zeppelin and by the time it gets there the airship would be gone.’49

  The raiders did not come in late 1914 and a false sense of security developed. Aggressive countermeasures were taken, however, by the RNAS, bombing Zeppelin sheds at Düsseldorf and Friedrichshafen. The Kaiser hesitated to attack, for he was fearful of the effect that such an unprecedented form of warfare would have on neutral opinion.

  In early 1915, with nine newly constructed Zeppelins ready for action, he gave qualified approval for attacks on military targets only – a somewhat futile gesture, as bombs could not be dropped with such a degree of accuracy. Accurate navigation by night was very difficult, compounded by the fact that the airships’ commanders were reluctant to use the radio navigation aids available in case they revealed their position to the enemy. They were also highly subject to the weather conditions – heavy cloud, strong winds or storms, made missions impossible and they were not usually able to find out what weather they would encounter over England until they got there. The initial Zeppelin raids across the North Sea were made in January 1915 to King’s Lynn and Yarmouth, and were followed by an attack on Tyneside, the Humber area and East Anglia in April. In May, the German High Command ordered that Zeppelin raids should aim to bomb Britain into submission. London and Southend were attacked in May, Hull and Jarrow in June, London again in September and October. A total of over 200 civilians were killed and more than 450 injured in twenty-three successful, or attempted raids, during 1915. There was also considerable damage to property, but of even more value were the psychological effects and the defensive efforts which had to be diverted from other theatres (eventually some 17,000 officers and men were employed on AA defence in the UK). The public demanded a visible response, and a degree of hysteria and xenophobia was whipped up by the press, with headlines such as; ‘The Coming of the Aerial Baby-killers.’50 Reaction in German newspapers was understandably different:

  ‘The most modern air weapon, a triumph of German inventiveness and the sole possession of the German forces, has shown itself capable of carrying the war to the soil of old England.’51

  Indeed, a naval air service contemporary of Usborne’s did not believe that the Germans were deliberately aiming to kill civilians:

  ‘Most of us believed that the Zeppelins set out to bomb military targets, only bombing open towns and villages as a result of losing themselves in the dark.’52

  It is certainly true to say that they did not want to believe that the German naval officers, with whom they had been on excellent terms at far flung stations all around the world in the long years of peace, could be capable of wilful atrocities. Whatever the case, there had to be a concentrated effort to find an effective solution and it was this problem that Usborne attempted to resolve. In October 1915, he wrote a paper on Anti-Zeppelin Defence, which he submitted to his superiors in the Admiralty, reviewing current proposals for defensive measures.53 The first involved stationing balloons all over London, each fitted with a car containing two men and a Davis, 6-pounder, recoilless gun. These would be capable of ascending to 12,000 feet (3657 metres) inside six minutes. When a Zeppelin was spotted all the balloons would be released and the nearest one would engage the intruder. His recommendation was to carry out a trial of the installation. The second idea was to use a balloon to lift an aeroplane to patrol height. The aircraft would only be slipped from the balloon if a Zeppelin was spotted, otherwise it would simply descend by gently deflating the envelope. The third was to moor an armed kite balloon at a similar altitude to the ceiling of the massed balloons. He regarded this as being the most technically challenging and costly plan. A fourth notion was to suspend nets over London by means of balloons, which was dismissed as totally impracticable. The fifth was a design which would become known as the Airship Plane and which will be discussed in more detail below. The final scheme was an aerial torpedo carried by a model airship, released from the ground and directed, ‘by W/T or other suitable means.’ To this end experiments with sound detection and radio control were in progress. A few months later, in January 1916, just as the Germans were resuming raiding following a suspension forced on them by the winter weather, Usborne received a letter from Vickers comparing the weight, horsepower, maximum rate of climb and maximum/minimum speed of a range of aircraft:

  Scout – 1000lbs, 110 hp, 7000 ft/8 ½ min, 118–50mph,

  Fighter old – 2200lbs, 110 hp, 300 ft/7 ½ min, 72–42mph,

  Fighter new – 2200lbs, 110 hp, n/k, 85–45mph,

  2 engine fighter – 2800lbs, 2x110 hp, n/k, 105–40mph,

  New big – 20,000lbs, 1000 hp, 3500 ft/9 min, 95–45mph54

  None provided the perfect answer to getting explosive material quickly enough and closely enough to the Zeppelin’s gasbag to detonate the highly volatile hydrogen it contained, as Flight Sub-Lieutenant Rex Warneford had proved on 7 June 1915 when he destroyed LZ37 over Ghent by bombing it from his Morane Parasol. Captain Sueter’s sati
sfaction with Warneford’s success was tempered by a summons to a meeting with three Sea Lords. Instead of receiving congratulations on behalf of the work of one of his young officers, he was taken to task for permitting sub-lieutenants to go to music halls at night while under training to become SS Class airship pilots.55

  LZ37, which was destroyed by Flight Sub-Lieutenant Rex Warneford.

  How was the problem to be solved of an aircraft attaining height rapidly enough to be able to attack a Zeppelin successfully on a regular basis? Moreover, could an aircraft be given the longer endurance required to patrol at height and so intercept an enemy airship? Usborne’s fertile brain devised a solution which has been described by the airship author and expert Ces Mowthorpe as a brilliant concept – suspending a complete BE2c from an envelope similar to that used by the SS type airship. The idea of the Airship Plane was that it could patrol as an airship and then, on spotting the Zeppelin, the aircraft section could be slipped to intercept, while the gently deflating envelope made its way slowly to earth. In a letter to Admiral Fisher, Usborne wrote:

  ‘It is recognised that an aeroplane, once it gets above a Zeppelin, can destroy the latter without great difficulty. On the other hand, it is recognised that for an aeroplane, flying at night is almost too dangerous to be practical as a routine, also, that the rate of climb of an aeroplane is so slow that it cannot reach the altitude of a Zeppelin in the time available. The idea is to substitute a complete aeroplane for the car normally carried by a small airship. This aeroplane will be attached in such a way as it can slip itself from the envelope once it has established itself above the Zeppelin.’56