Dixmude (airship)
Dixmude (ex-LZ 114) | |
---|---|
Zeppelin Luftschiffbau | |
Designer | |
Service | French Navy |
History | |
First flight | 9 July 1920 |
Last flight | 21 December 1923 |
Fate | Destroyed after crash and explosion |
The Dixmude was a
Name
The ship was named after the Belgian city of
.History
Completed after the end of the
Dixmude remained in its hangar for the next three years. An attempt was made to reinflate the airship in 1921, revealing that the original gasbags had deteriorated too much for this to be possible. Although new gasbags could have soon been purchased by the Zeppelin company, the French preferred to have their own made in France, resulting in a two-year delay while the technique of using
On 2 August 1923, Dixmude made an 18-hour trip to Corsica. Between 30 August and 2 September, it made a 2,800 km (1,700 mi) trip to North Africa, passing over Algiers, Tunis and Bizerte, and returning via Sardinia and Corsica.
On 25 September 1923 at 07:55 Dixmude left Cuers, crossing the Mediterranean to Algiers and then turned westwards, following the coast to
This was followed between 17 and 19 October by a flight undertaken for publicity purposes in which it overflew cities in the south and west of France including Toulouse, Nantes, Bordeaux and Lyon.
On 18 December, Dixmude left Cuers with the intention of making a return flight to In Salah, an oasis deep in the Sahara, carrying a crew of 40 and 10 passengers. In Salah was reached at 4 pm on the 19 December; the airship did not land, but dropped a bag of mail from the crew. The intention had been to make a stop at the Baraki airfield near Algiers; a north-west headwind caused du Plessis to alter course to the east, and the airship was seen crossing Tunisia on the evening of the 20th. The last radio message received from Dixmude was sent at 02:08, the airship reporting that it was reeling in its radio antenna due to a thunderstorm.
Railway workers in Sciacca, Sicily, were preparing to take out a train due to leave at 02:30 when they saw a bright flash in the western sky followed by a red glow that sank out of sight behind a hill, while a hunter on the seashore, watching the thunderstorm, saw a flash of lightning strike a cloud, followed by a red glare inside the cloud and four burning objects falling from the cloud. In the morning two aluminium fuel tanks were washed up, bearing the numbers "75 L-72" and "S-2-48 LZ-113" and various other debris, including charred scraps of fabric and fragments of the duralumin girders. However, reports of these events did not reach the outside world for several days; the French government, unwilling to admit the possibility of the airship's loss for political reasons, apparently suppressed these reports and issued its own series of false reports of rumoured sightings of Dixmude, suggesting that it had been blown inland over Africa.[8] It was not until 26 December, when fishermen found the body of du Plessis, identified by documents found in the coat pockets, that the loss of Dixmude was publicly acknowledged. The captain's watch was stopped at 02:27. Only one other body was recovered, that of radioman Antoine Guillaume, which was recovered four months later.[9] The loss of the Dixmude was the deadliest airship accident in history at the time, surpassed by the destruction of USS Akron in 1933, which killed 73 crewmen.
Specifications
Data from Robinson 1973, p. 341.
General characteristics
- Length: 226.52 m (743 ft 2 in)
- Diameter: 23.90 m (78 ft 5 in)
- Volume: 68,490 m3 (2,418,700 cu ft)
- Powerplant: 6 × Maybach Mb IVa6-cylinder water-cooled piston engine, 175 kW (235 hp) each
Performance
Citations
- ^ Robinson 1973, p.347.
- ^ "The Missing Dixmude." Times [London, England] 28 Dec. 1923: 8. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 10 July 2013.
- ^ Historique: : Le dirigeable
- ^ Robinson 1973, p. 341.
- ^ Naming Dirigibles in FranceFlight 30 September 1920, p. 1037.
- ^ Robinson 1973 pp. 345-6.
- ^ French Airship's Record Voyage Flight 11 October 1923
- ^ Robinson 1973 p. 348.
- ^ AAHS 1964, p.99.
Sources and references
- Robinson, Douglas H., Giants in the Sky. Henley-on Thames: Foulis, 1973 ISBN 0-85429-145-8
- Robinson, Douglas H., Mystery of the Dixmunde. Journal of the American Aviation Historical Society, Summer 1964
- Dixmude : l'histoire oubliée d'un dirigeable de la Marine
- Le Dixmude
- Cuers-Pierrefeu Aerodrome with Dixmude Memorial