Zeppelin LZ55 LZ85
Salvaged framework of LZ55, partially reconstructed and put on display near the White Tower in Salonika
First flight : 12 September 1915
Class : P
General information :
6 attacks dropping 14,200 kg (31,300 lb) of bombs on Dünaburg ( Latvia ), Minsk , the railroads of Riga , and Saloniki (twice); damaged by fire from the battleship HMS Agamemnon on 5 May 1916, it came down in the Vardar marshes. The crew of 12 were captured.
LZ55 crashed in marches at the mouth of the Vardar River during the Salonika campaign
On 5 May 1916 LZ55 made another attack on Thessaloniki (Salonika) harbour. Part way through the attack it was caught in spotlights and all the ships in the area opened fire with their anti-aircraft guns. LZ55 continued its attack but HMS Agamemnon 12-pounder anti-aircraft gun hit LZ 55; breaking it in half according to one of the crew. The airship crashed in the swamps at the mouth of the Vardar River west of Thessaloniki and its crew were captured. The crash site soon became a tourist attraction, with a report that "a dozen Canadian nurses. They had come up ... and waded through to it. What a sight they did look, skirts up round their waists wading through mud and slime up to their knees."
The metal structure of the Zeppelin was dragged by Allied soldiers from the swamps to the White Tower of Thessaloniki . There it was reconstructed so that Allied engineers could study how the Germans built airships.
(extraction from Wikipedia)
Crew : 18 useful load : 16200 kgs
Length : 163.5 [m] diameter : 18.7 [m] volume : 31900 [m3]
Empty weight : 20800 [kgs] fuel capacity : 4800 [kgs]
Gross weight : 37000 [kgs]
Engines : 4 x Maybach HS Lu 6-cyl. Water cooled in-line piston engines 240 hp each driving 2-balded fixed pitch propellors
Max. speed : 96 km/hr cruise speed : 90 km/hr
Range : 4300 km service ceiling : 2800 [m]
Armament : machine gun in hull-top position.
Google earth satellite map showing the crash location
Literature :