The "Almanac and Year-Book for 1914" reported that the airship "was destroyed by the explosion of a gasoline tank, which occurred as the ship was making a trial trip above the city of Johannisthal, near Berlin. All except one of the twenty-seven military men on board, including the entire admiralty trial board, were killed.
Thousands of people who had been watching the evolutions of the L-2, which, if accepted, was to have been the flagship of Germany's new aerial fleet, heard a heavy detonation and saw the craft suddenly become enveloped in flames and drop to the ground from a height of 270 metres (900 ft).
On reaching the spot in the road where the wreckage of the airship had fallen the spectators found nothing but a mass of crumpled aluminum and twisted wreckage. The only man found alive was Lieut. Baron von Bieul, a guest on the trip, who was fatally injured. The passengers of the center gondola were blown through the sides of the car by the explosion and their bodies fell a quarter of a mile away from the wreck of the dirigible.
The pilot of the airship was Capt. Gluth, who had been in
Count Zeppelin
's employ for a long time.
The admiralty trial board consisted of seven officers, including Lieutenant-Commander Behnish, and Lieut. Freyer, both personal friends of
Emperor William, Naval Constructors Neumann and Pietzler, Naval Engineer Busch, Lieut. Trenk and Chief Engineer Haussmann were among the others killed."[1][2]
References
^Langland, James, M. A., compiler, "Almanac and Year-Book for 1914", The Chicago Daily News Company, Chicago, Illinois, 1913, page 397.
.jpg)