th the German
army. No. 3 had been manoeuvred safely if not successfully in half a
gale of wind, and henceforth it was known as 'SMS. Zeppelin I.,' at the
bidding of the German Emperor, while the construction of 'SMS. Zeppelin
II.' was rapidly proceeded with. The fifth construction of Count
Zeppelin's was 446 feet in length, 42 1/2 feet in diameter,
and contained 530,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas in 17 separate
compartments. Trial flights were made on the 26th May, 1909, and a week
later she made a record voyage of 940 miles, the route being from Lake
Constance over Ulm, Nuremberg, Leipzig, Bitterfeld, Weimar, Heilbronn,
and Stuttgart, descending near Goppingen; the time occupied in the
flight was upwards of 38 hours.

In landing, the airship collided with a pear-tree, which damaged the
bows and tore open two sections of the envelope, but repairs on the
spot enabled the return journey to Friedrichshafen to be begun 24 hours
later. In spite of the mishap the Zeppelin had once more proved itself
as a possible engine of war, and thenceforth Germany pinned its faith
to the dirigible, only developing the aeroplane to such an extent as
to keep abreast of other nations. By the outbreak of war, nearly 30
Zeppelins had been constructed; considerably more than half of these
were destroyed in various ways, but the experiments carried on with
each example of the type permitted of improvements being made. The first
fatality occurred in September, 1913, when the fourteenth Zeppelin to be
constructed, known as Naval Zeppelin L.1, was wrecked in the North Sea
by a sudden storm and her crew of thirteen were drowned. About three
weeks after this, Naval Zeppelin L.2, the eighteenth in order of
building, exploded in mid-air while manoeuvring over Johannisthal. She
was carrying a crew of 25, who were all killed.

By 1912 the success of the Zeppelin type brought imitators. Chief among
them was the Schutte-Lanz, a Mannheim firm, which produced a rigid
dirigible with a wooden framework, wire braced. This was not a cylinder
like the Zeppelin, but reverted to the cigar shape and contained about
the same amount of gas as the Zeppelin type. The Schutte-Lanz was made
with two gondolas rigidly attached to the envelope in which the gas bags
were placed. The method of construction involved greater weight than was
the case with the Zeppelin, but the second of these vessels, built with
three gondolas containing engines, and a navigating cabin built in