What has become of the German airship fleet initiated by the late Count
Zeppelin is now known to the Intelligence Department of the French Army,
which has given out a complete list of the 100 or more dirigibles
constructed since the first one was launched over Lake Constance.
Up to August, 1914, the total of Zeppelin airships built numbered
twenty-five, while since the war the two great works at Friedrichshafen
and Staaken have produced between seventy-five and eighty. As the mean
period for the building of a Zeppelin is known with certainty to be two
months, there must always have been four new airships on the stocks at
the same time.
Most of the Zeppelins launched into the air before the war came to
grief, thus leaving in the service of the German Army and Navy a fleet
of less than a dozen when fighting began. Since then nearly all the
dirigibles, old and new, have been handed over to the German Navy, which
has used them for many kinds of work, such as bombing expeditions,
protection of mine layers and small torpedo boats at sea, chasing
submarines, searching for mine fields, and, last and most important,
reconnoitring for the High Seas Fleet.
Disaster has attended the flight of an overwhelming majority of these
air monsters, no fewer than thirty of which are known to have been
destroyed in one way or another, as is shown by the following list:
L-1--Destroyed just before the war, when it fell in the North
Sea near Heligoland.
L-2--Burned at Buhlsbuettel just before the war.
L-3--Descended at Famoe in Denmark at beginning of the war, and
was burned by its crew.
L-4--Descended at Blaavands Huk, Denmark, at beginning of the
war, and was burned by its crew.
L-5--Brought down on the Belgian front in 1915; part of crew saved.
L-6--Burned at Buhlsbuettel in its hangar in September, 1916.
L-7--Brought down by British destroyers off Portland, crew being
drowned, in 1915.
L-8--Brought down by machine guns in Belgium, part of crew being
killed, in 1915.
L-9--Burned at Buhlfriettel in its hangar at same time as L-6.
L-10--Struck by lightning near Cuxhaven during its initial
flights, and lost with its crew.
L-12--Destroyed at Ostend in 1915 when returning from a raid on
England.
L-15--Brought down in the Thames, England, in 1916.
L-16--Destroyed on Oct. 19, 1917.
L-18--Burned in a hangar at Tondern in 1916.
L-19--Fell in the Baltic while returning from a raid on England.
L-22--Burned accidentally while coming out of its hangar at
Tondern.
L-23--Fell on the English coast.
L-25--Destroyed while being employed as a training balloon at
Wildpark.
L-31--Fell in London in 1916.