told me something of the history of this greatest of monoplanes.
"This flying boat," he said, while we waited for the somewhat lengthy
inspection to be completed, "was the last great gift that Count
Zeppelin" (he spoke the name with an awe that was almost adoration)
"gave to his country before he died. He was terribly disappointed by
the failure of the Zeppelin airship as an instrument for bombing,
and the last months of his life were spent in designing something to
take its place. He realized that the size of the mark the airship
offered to the constantly improving anti-aircraft artillery, together
with the invention of the explosive bullet and the increasing speed
and climbing power of aeroplanes, put an end for ever to the use of
Zeppelins where they would be exposed to attack. He set about to design
a heavier-than-air machine that would be powerful enough to carry a
really great weight of bombs, and the 'Giant' you see here is the result.
"As Count Zeppelin did not believe that it would ever be possible to
land a machine of this weight and size on the earth, he made it a flying
boat. But it was not intended for flights over water at all in the
first place--that was to be simply for rising from and landing in. It
was to be kept at one of our seaplane stations on the Belgian coast, as
near as possible to the Front, and from here it was to go for bombing
flights behind the enemy lines. But before it was completed experience
had proved that it was quite practicable to land big machines on the
earth, and so the 'Giant' found itself superseded as a bomber. It was
then that it was brought to the attention of the Naval Flying Service,
and we, recognizing in it the possibilities of an ideal machine for
long-distance reconnaissance, took it over and completed it. Now,
although a few changes have been made in the direction of making it more
of a 'sea' machine, it does not differ greatly from the original designs
of Count Zeppelin."
As to how the machine had turned out in practice he was, naturally,
rather non-committal. The monoplane, he thought, had the advantage over
a biplane for sea use that its wings were much higher above the water,
and therefore much less likely to get smashed up by heavy waves. He
admitted that this machine had proved extremely difficult to fly--or
rather to land--and that it had been employed exclusively for "school"
purposes, for the training of pilots to fly the others of the same type
that had been building. Now that the war was over, he had some doubts as
to whether these would ever be completed. "We are having to modify so
many of our plans, you see," he remarked naïvely.
On the fuselage of several of the machines there were evidences that
signs or marks had been scratched out and painted over, and I took it
that the words or pictures so recently obliterated had probably been of
a character calculated to be offensive to the visiting Allied officers.
One little thing had been overlooked, however, or else left because it
was in a corner somewhat removed from the ebb and flow of the tide of
inspection. I discovered it while passing along to the machine shops in
the rear of one of the hangars, and later contrived to manoeuvre myself
back to it for a confirmatory survey. It was nothing more or less than a
map of the United States which some angry pilot had thoroughly _strafed_
by stabbing with a penknife blade. I was not able to study it long
enough to be sure just what the method of the madness was, but--from the
fact that the environs of New York, Pittsburg, Philadelphia and Detroit
had been literally pecked to pieces--it seemed possible that it might
have been an attack on the industrial centres--perhaps because they were
turning out so much munitions for the Allies.
There were two other maps tacked up on the same wall. One was of Africa,
with the ex-German colonies coloured red, with lighter shaded areas
overflowing from them on to British, Belgian, French, and Portuguese
possessions. This may have been (I have since thought) a copy of the
famous map of "Africa in 1920," issued in Germany early in the war,
but I had no time to puzzle out the considerable amount of explanatory
lettering on it. So far as I could see, this map was unmarked, not even
a black mourning border having been added.
The third map was of Asia, and a long, winding and apparently rather
carefully made cut running from the north-west corner toward the centre
completely defeated me to account for. The fact that it ran through Asia
Minor, Northern Syria, and down into Mesopotamia seemed to point to some
connection with the Bagdad Railway--perhaps a _strafe_ at an enterprise
which, first and last, had deflected uselessly so huge an amount of
German money and material.
The inspection over and the terms of the armistice having been found
most explicitly carried out, we returned to the reception room of the
Casino for lunch. Although the Commander protested that all arrangements
had been made for serving us with _mittagessen_, our senior officer,
acting under orders, replied that we had brought our own food and that
this, with a pitcher of water, would be quite sufficient. The water
was sent, and with it two beautiful long, slender bottles of _Hock_
which--as they were never opened--only served to accentuate the flatness
of the former.
We heard the officers of the station trooping up the stairs as we
unrolled our sandwiches, and just as we were pulling up around the table
some one threw open a piano in the room above our heads and struck
three ringing chords. "Bang!"--interval--"Bang!"--interval--"Bang!"
they crashed one after the other, and the throb of them set the windows
rattling and the pictures (paintings of the station's fallen pilots)
swaying on the wall.
"Prelude in G flat," breathed Major N---- tensely, as he waited with eye
alight and ear acock for the next notes. "My word, the chap's a master!"
But the next chord was never struck. Instead, there was a gruff order,
the scrape of feet on the floor, and the slam of a closed piano,
followed by the confused rumble of several angry voices speaking at the
same time. Then silence.
"Looks like the majority of our hosts don't think 'Inspection Day's'
quite the proper occasion for tinkling Rachmaninoff on the ivories,"
observed Lieutenant-Commander L----, U.S.N., after which he and Major
N---- began discussing plans for educating the popular taste for "good
music" and the rest of us fell to on our sandwiches.
The fog--that all-pervading East Frisian fog--which had been thickening
steadily during the inspection, settled down in a solid bank while we
sat at lunch. With a scant dozen yards of visibility, the Commander
rated the prospects of crossing to the mainland so unfavourable that he
suggested our remaining for the night at one of the Norderney hotels
still open, and going over to Borkum (which we were planning to reach by
destroyer) the next morning by launch. It was the difficulty in securing
a prompt confirmation of what would have been a time-saving change of
schedule which led Captain H---- to reject the plan and decide in favour
of making an attempt to reach Norddeich in, and in spite of, the fog.
The Commander shook his head dubiously. "My men who know the passage
best have left the station," he said; "but I will do the best I can for
you, and perhaps you will have luck." He saw us off at the landing with
the same quiet courtesy with which he had received us. He was a very
likable chap, that Commander; perhaps the one individual with whom we
were thrown into intimate contact in the course of the whole visit to
whom one would have thought of applying that term.
Noticing that the launch in which we were backing away from the landing
was at least double the size of the one in which we had crossed, I asked
one of the German officers if the greater draught of it was not likely
to increase our chances of running aground.
"Of course," he replied; "but the larger cabin will also be much more
comfortable if we have to wait for the next tide to get off."
As the launch swung slowly round in the mud-and-sand stained welter of
reversed screws, I bethought me of the "Riddle" again, and fished it
forth from my pocket. It was disappointing to leave without having had
a glimpse of the town where "Dollmann" and his "rose-brown-cheeked"
daughter Clara had lived, but the fog closed us round in a grey-walled
cylinder scarcely more in diameter than the launch was long. But we were
right on the course, I reflected, of the dinghy which "Davies" piloted
with such consummate skill through just such a fog ("five yards or
so was the radius of our vision," wrote "Carruthers") to Memmert to
spy on the conference at the salvage plant on that desolate sand-spit.
I turned up the chapter headed "Blindfold to Memmert," and read how,
sounding with a notched boathook in the shallows that masterly young
sailor had felt his way across the _Buse Tief_ to the eastern outlet of
the _Memmert Balje_, the only channel deep enough to carry the dinghy
through the half-bared sandbanks between Juist and the mainland. Our
own problem, it seemed to me, was a very similar one to that which
confronted "Davies," only, in our case, it was the entrance of the
channel where the _Buse Tief_ narrowed between the _Hohes Riff_ and the
_Itzendorf Plate_ that had to be located. Failing that, we were destined
to roost till the next tide on a sandbank, and that meant we were out
for all night, as there would be no chance of keeping to a channel,
however well marked, in both fog and darkness.
Ten minutes went by--fifteen--twenty--with no sign of the buoy which
marked the opening we were trying to strike. Now the engines were eased
down to quarter-speed, and she lost way just in time to back off from
a shining _glacis_ of steel-grey sand that came creeping out of the
fog. For the next ten minutes, with bare steerage way on, she nosed
cautiously this way and that, like a man groping for a doorway in the
dark. Then a hail from the lookout on the bow was echoed by exclamations
of relief from the German officers. "Here is the outer buoy," one of
them called across to us reassuringly; "the rest of the way is well
marked and easy to follow. We will soon be at Norddeich."
Presently a fresh buoy appeared as we nosed on shoreward, then a
second, and then a third, continuing the line of the first two. Speed
was increased to "half," and the intervals of picking up the marks
correspondingly cut down. Confident that there was nothing more to worry
about, I pulled out "The Riddle" again, for I had just recalled that it
was about halfway to Norddeich, in the _Buse Tief_, that "Carruthers"
had brought off his crowning exploit, the running aground of the tug
and "invasion" lighter--with Von Brunning, Boehme, and the mysterious
"cloaked passenger"--as they neared the end of the successful night
trial trip in the North Sea. Substituting himself for the man at the
wheel by a ruse, he had edged the tug over to starboard and was just
thinking "What the Dickens'll happen to her?" when the end came; "a
_euthanasia_ so mild and gradual (for the sands are fringed with mud)
that the disaster was on us before I was aware of it. There was just
the tiniest premonitory shuddering as our keel clove the buttery medium,
a cascade of ripples from either beam, and the wheel jammed to rigidity
in my hands as the tug nestled up to her final resting-place."
And very like that it was with us. It was a guttural oath from somewhere
forward rather than any perceptible jar that told me the launch had
struck, and it was not till after the screw had been churning sand
for half a minute that there was any perceptible heel. It had come
about through one of the buoys being missing and the next in line out
of place, one of the Germans reckoned; but whatever the cause, there
we were--stuck fast. Or, at least, we would have been with any less
resourceful and energetic a crew. If their very lives had depended on
it, those four or five German seamen could not have worked harder, nor
to better purpose, to get that launch free. At the end of a quarter of
an hour their indefatigable efforts were rewarded, and a half hour later
we were settling ourselves in the warm compartment of our waiting train.
The Hun has no proper sense of humour. Reverse the _rôles_, and any
British bluejackets I have ever known would have run a German Armistice
Commission on to the first sandbank that hove in sight, and damned the
consequences.
V
NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS
I have written in a previous chapter of the great contrast observed
between the _morale_ of the men at Norderney, and the other seaplane
stations visited by parties from the Allied Naval Commission, and that
of those in the remaining German warships, accounting for the difference
by the fact that the former had been kept busier than the latter, and
that they had not suffered the shame of the "Great Surrender" which has
cast a black, unlifting shadow upon the dregs of the High Sea Fleet.
Whether the airships were kept as busy as the seaplanes right up to the
end it would be difficult to say, but, whatever may be the reason for
it, we found the _morale_ of the great Zeppelin stations suffered very
little if at all in comparison with that of the working bases of the
naval heavier-than-air machines.
For all the barbarity of many of their raids, there was splendid stuff
in the officers and crews of the Zeppelins which engaged in the campaign
of "frightfulness" against England, and it is idle to deny it. In a
better cause, or even in worthier work for an indifferent cause, the
skill and courage repeatedly displayed would have been epic. Considering
what these airships faced on every one of their later raids--what their
commanders and crews must have known were the odds against them after
the night when the destruction of the first Zeppelin over Cuffley, in
September, 1916, proved that the British had effectually solved the
problem of igniting the hydrogen of the inner ballonettes--one cannot
but conclude that the _morale_ of the whole personnel must have been
very high during even this trying period. If it had not been high, there
would undoubtedly have been mutinies at the airship stations, such as
are known to have occurred on so many occasions among the submarine
crews. Even in the light of present knowledge, there is nothing to
indicate that there had ever been serious trouble in getting Zeppelin
crews for the most hazardous of raids. So far as could be gathered from
our visits to the great airship stations of the North Sea littoral,
this very excellent _morale_ prevailed to the last; indeed, practically
everything seen indicated that it still prevails.
Of the several German naval airship stations visited by parties from
the Allied Commission, the most important were Althorn, Nordholz, and
Tondern. The interest in the latter was largely sentimental, due to
the fact that it was practically wiped out last summer as the result of
a bombing raid by aeroplanes launched from the _Furious_. It was known
that little had been done to rehabilitate it as a service station since
that time, and the Commission's airship experts' desire to visit what
was left of the sheds was actuated by a wish to see what damage had been
done rather than by any feeling that the station really counted any
longer as a base of Germany's naval air service. Our visit to the ruins
of Tondern, and what we learned there of the way it was destroyed, is a
story by itself, and I will tell it in a separate chapter.
Germany had very ambitious plans for the development of the Althorn
station, and it is probable at one time that it was intended that it
should supersede even the mighty Nordholz as the premier home of naval
Zeppelins. If such were really the intention, however, there is no doubt
that it was effectually put an end to by a great fire and explosion
which occurred there about the middle of last year, the material
destruction from which--in sheds and Zeppelins--was vastly greater even
than that from the British raid on Tondern. The Germans speak of this
disaster with a good deal of bitterness, usually alluding to the cause
as "mysterious," but rather giving the impression that they believe it
to have been the work of "Allied agents." If this is true, the job will
stand as a fair offset against any single piece of work of the same
character that German agents perpetrated in France, Britain, or America.
Only the blowing up of the great Russian national arsenal in the second
year of the war is comparable to it for the amount of material damage
wrought. Althorn remained a station of some importance down to the end
of the war, however, and that the Germans still expected to do important
work from there was indicated by the fact that one of its new sheds
housed the great "L-71," the largest airship in the world at the present
time.
But it was in the great Nordholz station that the airship sub-commission
was principally interested, not only for what it was at the
moment--incomparably the greatest and most modern of German Zeppelin
aerodromes--but also for what had been accomplished from there in the
past, and even for what might conceivably be done from there in the
future. Nordholz is a name that would have been burned deep into the
memories of South and East Coast Britons had it been known three years
ago, as it is now, that practically all of the Zeppelin raids over
England were launched from there. The popular idea at the time--which
even appears to have persisted with most Londoners down to the
present--was that airship stations had been constructed in Belgium,
and that these alternated with those of Germany in dispatching raiders
across the North Sea to England. A single glimpse of such a station as
Nordholz is enough to show that the huge amount of labour and expense
involved in building even a comparatively temporary aerodrome fit for
regular Zeppelin work would have been fatal to the idea of establishing
such installations in Belgium, or anywhere else where Germany did not
feel certain of remaining in fairly permanent control. The station at
Jamboli, in Bulgaria, for instance, is known to have been able only to
dispose of one or two Zeppelins, and considerable intervals between
flights were imperative for keeping them in trim. It would never have
been equal to the strain of steady raiding.
There were other German airship stations within cruising distance of
England, but Nordholz was so much the best equipped, especially in
the first years of the war when Zeppelin raiding was the most active,
that the most of the work, and by long odds the most effective of it,
was done from there. There were grim tales to be told by that band of
hard-eyed, straight-mouthed, bull-necked pilots--all that survived
some scores of raids over England and some hundreds of reconnaissance
flights over the North Sea--who received and conducted round the
Naval Commission party, though, unfortunately, we did not meet upon a
footing that made it possible more than to listen to the account of an
occasional incident suggested by something we were seeing at the moment.
The route which our party traversed from Wilhelmshaven to the Nordholz
airship station--the latter lies six or eight miles south of the Elbe
estuary in the vicinity of Cuxhaven--was a different one from any
followed on our previous visits, all of which had taken us more to the
south or east. It was through the same low-lying, dyked-in country,
however, where the water difficulty, unlike most other parts of the
world, was one of drainage rather than of irrigation. Great Dutch
windmills turned ponderously under the impulse of the light sea-breeze,
as they pumped the water off the flooded land. Cultivation, as in the
region traversed to the south, was at a standstill, but overflowing
barns--great capacious structures they were, with brick walls and lofty
thatched roofs--proved that the harvest had been a generous one.
Instead of routing our two-car special over the all-rail route _viâ_
Bremen, distance and time were saved by leaving it at a small terminus
opposite Bremerhaven, crossing to the latter by tug, and proceeding
north in more or less direct line to our destination. Little time was
lost in getting from one train to the other. The tug, which had been
held in readiness for our arrival, cast off as soon as the last of
the party had clambered over its side, and the short run across the
grey-green tide of the estuary was made in less than a quarter of an
hour. Four powerful army cars--far better machines, these, than the
dirigible junk heaps we had been compelled to use at Wilhelmshaven--were
waiting beside the slip, and another ten minutes of what struck me as
very fast and reckless driving, considering it was through the main
streets of a good-sized city, brought us to the station and another
two-car special. Both going and returning, it was the best "clicking"
lot of connections any of the parties made in the course of the whole
visit, showing illuminatingly what our "hosts" could do in that line
when they were minded to.
Swift as was our passage through the streets of Bremerhaven, there was
still opportunity to observe many evidences of the vigorous growth it
had made the decade preceding the outbreak of the war, and of the plans
that had been made in expectation of a continuation of that growth.
Blocks and blocks of imposing new buildings--now but half-tenanted--and
the nuclei of what had been budding suburbs were more suggestive of
the appearance of a Western American mushroom metropolis after the
collapse of a boom than a town of Europe. The railway station--a fine
example of Germany's so-called "New Art" architecture--in its spacious
waiting-rooms, broad subways, and commodious train sheds looked capable
of serving the city of half a million or so which it had confidently
been expected the empire's second port would become at the end of
another few years. As things have turned out, Bremerhaven will at least
have the consolation of knowing that it is not likely to be troubled
with "station crushes" for some decades to come.
The astonishingly well-dressed and orderly crowd of a thousand or more
waiting outside the portal of the station in expectation of the arrival
of a train-load of returning soldiers made no unfriendly demonstration
of any character. On the contrary, indeed, as at Wilhelmshaven, a number
of children waved their hands as our cars drove up, and a goodly number
of men solemnly bared their heads as we filed past. The special which
awaited us at a platform reached after walking through a long vaulted
subway running beneath the tracks consisted, like the one we had left
on the other side of the river, of an engine and two cars. The rolling
stock of this one was in better shape than that of the other, however,
and with a better maintained road-bed to run over, the last leg of our
journey was covered at an average speed of over thirty miles an hour,
quite the fastest we travelled by train anywhere in Germany.
For the most of the way the line continued running through mile after
mile of water-logged, sea-level areas crossed by innumerable drainage
canals and bricked roadways gridironing possible inundation areas with
their raised embankments. At the end of an hour, however, the patches
of standing water disappeared, and presently the bulk of the great
sheds of Nordholz began to notch the northern skyline, where they stood
crowning the crest of the first rising ground in the littoral between
the Dutch frontier and the Elbe. With only a minute or two of delay in
the Nordholz yards, the train was switched to the airship station's own
spur, and at the end of another mile had pulled up on a siding directly
opposite the main entrance.