The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History. Le Queux William
Theed.
Carefully concealed from the eye it was carried in a large locked box, while, as further precaution, after testing it each time, I put it on my car and took it away to my chambers with me, for we were not at all anxious for any of the mixed crowd at the aerodrome to pry into what we were doing, or to ascertain the true direction of our constant experiments.
One afternoon down at Gunnersbury Teddy, in mechanic’s brown overalls, was busily engaged repairing a portion of the apparatus which I had broken that morning owing to an unfortunately bad landing.
To the uninitiated the long shed with its two lathes, its tangle of electric wires across the floor, the great induction coils – some of them capable of giving a fourteen-inch spark – the small dynamo with its petrol engine, and other electrical appliances, would no doubt have been puzzling.
Upon the benches stood some strange-looking wireless condensers, radiometers, detectors and other objects which we had constructed. Also dressed in overalls, as was my chum and fellow-experimenter, I was engaged in assisting him to adjust a small vacuum tube within that heavy, mysterious-looking wooden box which I daily carried aloft with me in the fuselage of my aeroplane.
We smoked “gaspers” and chatted merrily, as we worked on, until at last we had completed the job.
“Now let’s put a test on it again – eh, Claude?” my friend suggested.
“Right ho!” I acquiesced.
It was already dusk, for the repair had taken us nearly four hours, and during the past half-hour we had worked beneath the electric light.
The shed was on one side of the large market-garden, at a considerable distance from any house. Indeed, as one stood at the door there spread northward several flat market-gardens and orchards, almost as far as the eye could reach.
Presently, when we had adjusted the many heavily-insulated wires, I started the dynamo, and on turning on the current a bright blue blinding flash shot, with a sharp fierce crackling, across the place.
“Gad! that’s bad!” gasped Teddy, pale in alarm. “Something’s wrong!”
“Yes, and confoundedly dangerous to ourselves and to the petrol – eh?” I cried, shutting off the dynamo instantly.
“Phew! It was a real narrow shave!” remarked Teddy. “One of the narrowest we’ve ever had!”
“Yes, my dear fellow, but it tells us something,” I said. “We’ve made an accidental discovery – that spark shows that we can increase our power a thousandfold, when we like.”
“It has, no doubt, given the wireless operators at the Admiralty, at Marconi House, and elsewhere a very nasty jar,” laughed Teddy. “They’ll wonder what’s up, won’t they?”
“Well, we can’t help their troubles.” I laughed.
“I expect we’ve jammed them badly,” Teddy said. “Look the aerial is connected up!”
“By Jove! so it is?” I said.
I saw what I had not noticed before, that the network of phosphor-bronze aerial wires strung beneath the roof of the shed had remained connected up with the coils from an experiment we had conducted on the previous afternoon.
“I’ll pump Treeton about it to-morrow. He’ll be certain to have heard if there has been any unusual signals at Marconi House,” I said. “They’ll no doubt believe that spark to be signals from some new Zeppelin!”
“No doubt. But we may thank our stars that we’re safe. Both of us could very easily have been either struck down, or blown up by the petrol-tank. We’ll have to exercise far more caution in the future,” declared Teddy.
Caution! Why, Teddy had risked his life in the air a hundred times in the past four months, flying by day and also by night, and experimenting with that apparatus of ours by which we hoped to defy the Zeppelin.
Those were no days for personal caution. The long dark shadow of the Zeppelin had been over London. Women and babes in arms had been blown to pieces in East Anglia, on the north-east coast, and every one knew, from the threats of the Huns, that worse was intended to follow.
Our searchlights and aerial guns had been proved of little use. London, the greatest capital of the civilised history, the hub of the whole world, seemed to lie at the mercy of the bespectacled night-pirate who came and went as he pleased.
As is usual, the public were “saying things” – but were not acting. Both Teddy and I had foreseen this long ago, for both of us had realised to the full the deadly nature of the Zeppelin menace. It was all very well for a Cabinet Minister to assure us on March 17, 1915, that “Any hostile aircraft, airships, or aeroplanes which reached our coast during the coming year would be promptly attacked in superior force by a swarm of very formidable hornets.”
Events had shown that the British authorities at that time did not allow sufficiently for the great height at which Zeppelins could travel, or for the fact that, while the airship could operate successfully at night-time, darkness was the least suitable time for aeroplanes in the stage of development which they had reached, on account of the difficulties of starting and of landing in the dark, as well as of seeing or hearing the airship from a machine flying aloft.
The German Government and the German people had thrown their fullest energies into the development of aircraft for war. Unfortunately we had not, and it is not too much to say that, during the first few months of the war, the responsible authorities in this country did not take the aerial menace seriously.
We, as practical airmen, had taken it up seriously – very seriously, and, as result, had devoted all our time and all our limited private means – for my governor was not too generous in the matter of an allowance – towards combating the rapidly increasing peril of air attack.
The first German attempt had been on Christmas Day in the previous year. As I happened to witness it, it had fired me with determination.
Shall I ever forget the excitement of that day. I had gone down the Thames to spend Christmas with my old friend, Jack Watson, of the Naval Flying Corps, when, under cover of a light fog, a German airman suddenly appeared.
We first saw him over the Estuary, slightly to the south of us, flying at a height that we estimated at about 9,000 feet. There was great excitement. Anti-aircraft guns at once opened on him, but they failed to hit him. Lost to our view in a mist, he was not seen again until well up the river, and from the reports afterwards published it seems that fire was once more opened on him from our guns. Rising higher to escape our shells, he made a complete half-circle. By now, several British aeroplanes were in pursuit, and the German, seeing that it was hopeless to attempt to go farther, turned back. Thousands of people had a good view of this – the first real air-battle on the British coast. Shells were bursting in the air apparently all round the German. Time after time it seemed that he had been hit, yet time after time he escaped. Men could not fail to admire the skill with which he handled his machine. At one point a sudden dip of the aeroplane seemed to show that a shot had got home. Still, however, according to what I heard afterwards, he kept on, circling, dodging, twisting, climbing and diving with almost incredible swiftness to escape his pursuers. He made straight for the sea – and escaped. Weeks afterwards a rumour was received that some fishermen had found a body away out in the sea which was believed to be that of the German airman, but no satisfactory confirmation was ever published.
It was that incident which first set me thinking of how to combat hostile aircraft. At once I thought of aeroplane versus aeroplane, but when three weeks later, two Zeppelins came over to the east coast to reconnoitre, and dropped nine bombs, blowing to pieces two old people, then my attention was turned towards the Zeppelin, and in Teddy Ashton I found a ready and enthusiastic assistant.
This raid, and those which followed on points on the north-east coast, small as their immediate results were, yet demonstrated one thing. The German Press proclaimed that German genius had at last ended the legend that England was invulnerable owing to her insularity. An English writer had pointed out that it was certainly proved that the seas no longer protected England from attack. She was no longer an island. Should she hope to keep her shores inviolate,