Great Britain -- History; Great Britain -- History, Naval
A correspondent of the _Globe_ who was at Düsseldorf at the time gives
the following account of what an eyewitness saw of Flight-Lieutenant
Marix's exploit and its effect. "A friend of mine saw an aeroplane one
day near Düsseldorf. He followed its movements with great anxiety, and
saw that it dropped when it was close by the Zeppelin shed. He had an
idea that something was wrong, but about 200 metres from the ground the
machine turned again and disappeared. Almost at the same moment he heard
two explosions, and a few moments after saw big flames of a light
colour, giving him the impression that the whole shed was on fire. My
friend went down to the place as quickly as he could, but at a distance
of a few hundred metres the people who had already run to the spot were
kept away by a ring of soldiers. A few minutes later a rumour spread
through the crowd that two more enemy aeroplanes were reported from
Cologne, and immediately all the soldiers were ordered near the shed to
be ready for firing at the new-comers. My friend followed the soldiers,
and came quite near the place where he had seen the flames. He saw that
the contents of the shed had been entirely burnt out, and only the walls
of the building were erect. In the shed was the carcass of a Zeppelin,
burned and broken to pieces. It was one big heap of aluminium."
The next exploit of the Naval Air Service was the attack on the Zeppelin
sheds at Friedrichshafen, on the Lake of Constance. There are three or
four big sheds here close together, with workshops and all appliances
for building and fitting out these monster air-ships. The newspapers had
for some time previously been publishing paragraphs giving accounts of
Zeppelin experiments at this place. Some may have been more or less
correct, while others bore the stamp of the usual "bogey-bogey" stories
set about by the Germans with the somewhat childish idea of frightening
us. Anyway the naval airmen made up their minds to go and see for
themselves. Of course their departure from the usual scene of their
activities in the north was made "without beat of drum", and, as
Friedrichshafen was something like 150 miles from the French frontier,
their visit was entirely unexpected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account