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Zeppelin LZ26 ZXII
First flight : 14 December 1914
Class : N
Z XII made 11 attacks in northern France and at the eastern front, dropping 20,000 kg (44,000 lb) of bombs; by the summer of 1915 Z 12 had dropped around 9,000 kg (20,000 lb) of bombs on the Warsaw to Petrograd trunk railway line between the stations at Malkina and Byalistok . One flight carried a load of 3,000 kg (6,600 lb)
Decommissioned 8 August 1917.
Spy Basket :
Captain Ernst A. Lehmann , the German airship captain, described in his book The Zeppelins how he and Baron Gemmingen , Count Zeppelin 's nephew, had developed a spy basket. To test the prototype he blindfolded the helmsman of the airship and allowed himself to be lowered by a winch from the bomb-room in a modified cask, equipped with a telephone. Hanging some 150 metres (500 ft) below the airship using a compass he could tell the blindfolded helmsman which bearing to take and effectively drive the airship. He later recounted how, while returning from the aborted raid on London in March 1916 in the Z 12 , Baron Gemmingen insisted on being the first to use it on their secondary target, Calais . The basket was equipped with a wicker chair, chart table, electric lamp, compass, telephone, and lightning conductor. With the Zeppelin sometimes within, sometimes above the clouds and unable to see the ground, Gemmingen in the hanging basket would relay orders on navigation and when and which bombs to drop. The Calais defenders could hear the engines but their searchlights and artillery fire did not reach the airship. [4]
LZ26's basket was lowered from the airship on a specially constructed tether 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) long; [4] other airships may have used one approximately 750 metres (2,460 ft) long. [5] The tether was high grade steel with a brass core insulated with rubber to act as the telephone cable. [4]
Despite Gemmingen reporting a feeling of loneliness while being lowered and losing sight of the airship, crewmen would nevertheless volunteer for this duty because it was the one place they could smoke. [5]
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