july 2016 AH 47PREVIOUS PAGES: ©OSPREY PUBLISHING, PART OF BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING PLC; OPPOSITE ABOVE & RIGHT: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; OPPOSITE BELOW: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM Q65578; ABOVE: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM Q20640
latter could always outclimb them.”
To cover the North Sea, in March 1915 the
Germans constructed two zeppelin sheds at
Tondern, on the northernmost border with
Denmark, naming them Tobias and Toni. The
base included two 10,000-liter fuel storage tanks,
hydrogen production and storage facilities, bar-
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damnably near and the spies are good.”
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Only aircraft could reach across the mine-strewn,
U-boat-infested Heligoland Bight to attack Ton-
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at sea. For that they replaced the forward gun tur-
ret on the half-completed light battlecruiser Furious
with a boxlike hangar, designating its roof as a
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July 1917. Now the trick was to actually land on it.
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slow, that their speeds comfortably overlapped. On
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Dunning, side-slipping his Pup over Furious¼ÆQOP\
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and went over the side. Dunning drowned. To rem-edy the dog-leg landing pattern with a straight-in
approach, over the winter the British replaced
Furious¼IN\\]ZZM\_Q\PIVW\PMZPIVOIZIVLÆQOP\
deck, but the ex-cruiser’s centerline superstructure
and funnel created such turbulence aft that pilots
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per mission mattered less than the expenditure of
a torpedo, since in those days torpedoes actually
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hile the British faltered, the Germans
forged ahead. Tondern, which would
eventually launch more than a dozen
different zeppelins, underwent up -
grades to accommodate their ever-increasing
size. By January 1917, Toska, a huge third shed
(if that’s the proper word for a steel building 730
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every other day owing to the fact that the landing
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been taken away until such time as at least part
of the ground could be made more or less suitable
for them.”
1V2]VM! PI^QVO\ZILMLQ\[8]X[NWZ\_W
seat Sopwith 1½-Strutter reconnaissance planes
IVLIVI^IT^MZ[QWVWN \PM;WX_Q\P.+IUMT\PM
.¹;PQX[+IUMTºFurious joined the 1st Light“THE AFTER
END OF THE
ZEPPELIN WAS
NOW A MASS
OF FLAMES
AND...THE NOSE
WAS POINTING
TO THE SKY....”
DIVIDED DECK
The crew of the
converted battle
cruiser Furious
secures a naval
airship that has
just landed on its
deck in 1918.- FLIGHT SUB-LIEUTENANT
BERNARD ARTHUR SMART