The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History

Chapter One

Over a “Gasper.”

“To-morrow? To-morrow, my dear Claude! Why, there may not be a to-morrow for you – or for me, when it comes to that – eh?”

“Yes. You’re quite right, old son,” was my cheerful reply. “I’m quite aware that these experiments are confoundedly dangerous – and, besides, there are nasty wind-pockets about just now. I got into a deadly one yesterday afternoon, just across the line at Mill Hill.”

“I saw you,” replied my friend Teddy Ashton, a fellow-aviator and chum at Hendon. “It gave me a nasty moment. You had engine-trouble at the same time.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I was up over eight thousand feet when, without a second’s warning, I found myself in a pocket spinning over. Phew! If ever I nearly came to grief, it was at that moment!”

“I was on the lawn, having tea with Betty, and we were watching you. I quite expected to see you come plumb down,” Teddy said. “You righted your old bus splendidly.”

“She’ll have to have a new dope, I think,” was my reply, endeavouring to turn the conversation into another channel, for I did not care to discuss my narrow escape from death over the mishap which was certainly my own fault.

I was standing with Teddy in one of the long work-sheds of the Barwick Aeroplane Factory at Hendon on that bright morning early in October, 1915. The wind was light, the barometer high, and both of us had been up, as we had been testing our monoplanes.

As he stood leaning against a half-finished machine idly smoking a “gasper” – a cigarette in the airman jargon – he presented a fine picture of the clean-limbed young Englishman in his wind-proof aviation suit, with leather cap and ear-pieces, while his goggles had been pushed upon his brow.

Both of us, “as quirks,” had learned to fly at the same school at Brooklands before the outbreak of war, and both of us were enthusiastic airmen.

In introducing myself to the reader of this chronicle of fact I suppose I ought – at the risk of using the first person singular a little too much – to explain that I, Claude Munro, aged twenty-five, am son of Sir Reginald Munro, a man well-known as a physician, a prominent prescriber of pills and powders in Wimpole Street.

On coming down from Cambridge I had read for the bar a short time, but finding that my inclination was more in the direction of electricity and mechanics, my indulgent father allowed me to take a course of study at a Wireless School, where I was not long in learning most of the recent discoveries in the field of radio-telegraphy.

One Saturday afternoon, about two years before, my father had taken me in his car to Hendon to see the passenger-flights at two guineas a head, and the excellent Verrier had taken me up with him. Immediately I became “bitten” with aviation, and instantly decided to adopt it as a profession.

At first the governor – as all governors do – set his face firmly against such a risky business, but at last I persuaded him to plank down the fees, and thereupon I began a course of tuition in flying, with the result that I now owned my own big monoplane upon which I was conducting certain important experiments, in association with Teddy Ashton.

“See that in the paper this morning about the new German Fokker monoplane?” I asked him as we both smoked and rested, our machines standing side by side outside.

“Of course, my dear old Claude,” was his reply.

“It would be one of the jokes of the war if it wasn’t such a grim jest. Remember what they said recently in Parliament – that we held the supremacy of the air, and that it is maintained.”

“All humbug,” I declared bluntly. “Sad though it is to admit it.”

“Of course it is!” cried Teddy very emphatically.

“The fact is that the public haven’t yet realised that the joke is against our Government ‘experts’ who now see all their science set at nought by a rule-of-the-thumb Dutchman who, by the simple process of putting a big engine into a copy of an obsolete French monoplane, has given his own country’s chief enemy the freedom of the air.”

I agreed with him; and his words, I confess, set me thinking. The papers had been full of the Fokker aeroplane, of its great superiority over anything we possessed, and of it as a real peril to our pilots in Flanders.

“The real fact is,” declared Teddy, in the intervals of a deal of hammering, “that there’s nothing extraordinary about the Fokker except that it is built sensibly for a definite job and does it, while our own ‘experts’ have tangled themselves and the British aircraft industry in a web of pseudo-science and political scheming which has resulted in our lack of the proper machines and engines to fight the Zeppelins.”

“Yes,” I answered with a sigh. “You’re quite right, Teddy. But something must be done. We must find some means by which to fight the enemy’s dirigibles. We have a few good aeroplanes, I admit, but, as you say, those are not the product of the Government factories, but have been produced by private firms. Why? Because airmen have been so badly let down by their experts.”

At that moment a shadow was cast before the door of the shed, and a bright musical feminine voice cried:

“Hulloa, Claude! I followed you hard, right from Hertford.”

It was Roseye – “Rosie” of the aerodrome! Roseye Lethmere, daughter of Sir Herbert Lethmere, was my own well-beloved, whom I had taught to fly, and who was at that moment perhaps the most notable airwoman in England.

“Really,” I exclaimed, as I advanced to meet her.

“Why, I hadn’t any idea you were here. Nobody told me.”

“Miss Lethmere is always elusive,” Teddy laughed, bowing to her. “Have you been up on your own bus, or on Eastwell’s?”

“On Mr Eastwell’s. My engine did not run well, so Barnes, his mechanic, lent me his machine,” was her reply. Then, turning to me, she said: “I went up only five minutes after you. I wonder you didn’t look back when you banked over the railway line at Wheathampstead. I was just behind you then, though I could not overtake you, as my engine seemed a little sluggish.”

“That doesn’t occur very often in Eastwell’s bus,” remarked Teddy. “I flew it last Thursday, and found the 150 Gnome ran perfectly.”

“Well, Claude, you outdistanced me altogether,” declared my well-beloved. “From Hertford, with the wind behind you, you absolutely shot back. I thought that Mr Eastwell’s machine would outmatch yours, but, though I put every ounce into the engine, I was hopelessly out of it. It hadn’t been tuned up well.”

“That’s curious, Roseye,” I replied. “I had no idea that my bus was any match for his! I thought that his Mertonville machine was much faster than mine – or than yours as a matter of fact.”

“To-day mine is out of the running,” she laughed. To you, my reader, I suppose I ought to describe my own beloved Roseye. Well, I am not good at describing women. As the only son of a blunt, white-haired physician who having made expert study of all the thousand-and-one ailments of the eternal feminine, including that affection called “nerves” – mostly the result of the drug habit, I had heard, from my youth upwards, many disparaging remarks upon the follies and the unbalance of the mind of the gentler sex.

This, however, did not prevent me from loving Roseye Lethmere, daughter of Sir Herbert, who had come into my life quite unexpectedly a year ago.

As she stood there chatting with us, attired in her airwoman’s clothes, her appearance was certainly workwomanlike. She was dressed in a wool-lined leather coat, and overall trousers, with a knitted Balaclava helmet, and over that again a leather skull-cap, the whole tied down tightly beneath the chin. A huge khaki woollen muffler was around her throat, while a pair of unsightly goggles hanging around her neck completed the picture. She had followed my advice, I noted, and tied her muffler very securely around her chin.

How very different she looked at that moment to when I took her – as I so frequently did – to a play, and afterwards to supper at the Carlton, the Savoy, or Ciro’s. She was a girl who, on the outbreak of war, had decided to play her part in the national crisis, and she certainly had done so.

Three times had she flown across the Channel with me, and three times had we returned in safety to Hendon.

Indeed, only a week before, she had flown by herself on a British-built Duperdussin with 100 horse-power Anzani engines from Brooklands across to France, descending a mile outside Abbeville. She had had lunch at the old Tête de Boeuf hotel in that town, and returned, landing safely at Hendon – a feat that no woman had ever before accomplished.

Roseye Lethmere certainly possessed a character that was all her own.

In her ordinary costume, as a London girl, she was inexpressibly dainty and extremely well dressed. Her curiously soft blue eyes, almost child-like in their purity of expression, were admired everywhere. Whenever, however, her picture appeared in the papers it was always in her flying costume.

Most women, when they take up any outdoor exercise, be it hunting, golfing, strenuous tennis, or sport of any kind, usually acquire a certain indescribable hardness of feature, a sign by which, when they sit in the stalls of a theatre, the mere man at once knows them.

But the beauty of Miss Rosie – as she was known at Hendon – in spite of her many exciting and perilous exploits in the air, was still soft and sweet, as it should be with any fresh healthy girl of twenty-two.

The workmen started hammering again, fitting a new propeller to a machine in course of hurried completion for the front, so we all three went outside, where our own machines stood close together.

Theed, my mechanic – who had been the governor’s chauffeur before I took up flying – was busily testing my engine, and I could hear it missing a little.

“Hulloa!” I cried, looking up at a big monoplane at that moment passing over us. “Why, Eastwell’s up in Thorold’s new bus!”

“Yes,” answered Roseye. “I passed quite close to him behind St. Albans.”

The October morning was bright and sunny, with a blue, cloudless sky, just the morning for trial flights and stunts, and, in consequence, two pupils were out on the aerodrome with their instructors, preparing for their lesson.

Roseye noticed this, and smiled across at me. She remembered, probably, how carefully I used to strap her into the seat, and how, more than once, she had gasped when we made a nose-dive, or volplaned for an undesired landing. Yet, even in those days, she had betrayed no fear in the air for, apparently, she reposed entire faith in my judgment and my capabilities at the joy-stick.

We stood watching Eastwell as he banked first on one side, then on the other, until at last he made a graceful tour of the aerodrome and, swooping down suddenly, landed quite close to us.

“Morning!” he cried cheerily, as he slowly unstrapped himself and climbed out of his seat. “Morning, Miss Lethmere,” he added, saluting. “Well, how does my bus go? You had a little engine-trouble, hadn’t you?”

“Yes. I couldn’t overtake Mr Munro,” she replied, laughing. “Were you watching me?”

“Yes. I’ve just come back from Cambridge. I left here this morning as soon as it was light – ” Eastwell, in his aviator’s leather jacket, fur helmet and goggles, presented a tall, gaunt, rather uncouth figure. Yet, in his ordinary clothes, he was something of a dandy, with light brown hair, a carefully-trained moustache, and a pair of shrewd grey eyes.

Roseye had been acquainted with him for over two years, and it was she who had first introduced us.

They had met at Wiesbaden, where her father, Sir Herbert, had been taking his annual “cure.” Eastwell had been at the Kaiserhof Hotel where they had also been staying and, being a young Englishman of means and leisure, an acquaintanceship had sprung up between them.

Lionel Eastwell was a great lover of music, and for that reason had been at Wiesbaden, where, in the Kursaal, the programme in the pre-war days was always excellent.

On their return to London Eastwell called at Cadogan Gardens, and Sir Herbert had then ascertained that the pleasant young man – who for two years had taken such a great interest in aviation – was possessed of a very comfortable income, was a member of the aero club, and lived in a very snug set of chambers half-way up Albemarle Street.

At the Royal Automobile Club he was also a well-known figure in the select circle of rather go-ahead airmen who made that institution their nightly rendezvous.

As a result of hearing Lionel Eastwell speak of the pleasures and exhilaration of the air, and after watching his flights at Hendon, Roseye had at last determined to seek the new sensation of aerial navigation, and in taking her lessons she and I had met.

Airmen and airwomen form a very select coterie practically unknown to the world outside the aerodrome. They fly; they risk their lives; they make their daily experiments with their new engines, new wings, new airscrews, new strainers, new magnetos, and all sorts of newly-invented etceteras, all the time risking their lives in a bad nose-dive, or with a buckled wing.

Our quartette, all of us enthusiasts, and all holding our own views regarding the British supremacy of aerial navigation in the war, stood chatting for ten minutes, or more, until turning to Roseye, I said:

“Well, I’m going over to see what Theed is up to.” Then, together, we left Eastwell to go back to his own machine.

Yet, in that second, a strange thing occurred. Perhaps I may have been unduly suspicious – if so, I regret it and offer apology – but I felt certain somehow that I saw in Roseye’s face a look of displeasure that I should have taken her from the man whose sudden appearance had caused her countenance to brighten.

And, at the same time, as I glanced surreptitiously at Lionel Eastwell, while in the act of offering him a “gasper” from my case, I most certainly saw a strange and distinctly sinister expression – one that caused me through the next hour to reflect very deeply, and ponder over its cause.

Chapter Two

The Murder-Machines

An hour later I made another flight in order to try my new gyroscopic stabiliser, which – for the benefit of those unversed in aerial navigation – I may say is an invention which incorporates a horizontal reference plane of accuracy and integrity to which all angles can be referred.

I flew across to the Thames, and followed the winding silvery streak with dotted blotches of houses up to Windsor and back, finding that the invention rendered my machine a platform which was not only steady, but was also held in constant relation to the horizontal.

That morning was ideal for flying and, on my return, I was not surprised to find that both Teddy Ashton and Roseye were up again. Indeed, as I brought my machine to earth I saw Roseye flying at a great height coming in from the south.

Two or three of the school-buses were up, circling the aerodrome, including an unwieldy one that always reminded us of poor Cody’s “cathedral.”

As soon as I landed, Eastwell came across again, eager to inquire how the new gyroscope arrangement had worked, for, like myself, he was a great enthusiast over all new notions, however wild they might be. Indeed, I believe he had tried every newfangled idea produced during the past couple of years.

I having pronounced it good, he begged me to let him try it, and a few moments later he was in the pilot’s seat. Then after Theed had spun the propeller, our friend rose quickly, and went out to meet my well-beloved on her return.

Roseye, seeing my bus, thought I was flying it, but as she circled gracefully down she realised at last that it was Eastwell, and both machines, after making several fine circuits of the aerodrome, came to earth almost at the same moment.

I had been watching Roseye. For a woman, she was certainly a most intrepid flyer. Crossing to her, I glanced at her self-registering altimeter and saw that she had been up over eight thousand feet.

“I’ve been across to Dorking,” she laughed gaily, as she sprang out of her seat, raised her goggles and pulled off her heavy leather gloves. “I followed the railway from Dorking along to Guildford and met two men up from Farnborough. At Guildford I kept over the South Western line to Surbiton, and then steered back by compass.”

She also inquired how my stabiliser had worked, and I told her that Lionel had been trying it.

Later, Eastwell was full of most glowing praise of the new invention, after which I put my machine back into the hangar and, taking Roseye with me in my two-seater, deposited her at home in Cadogan Gardens in time for lunch.

Then, as was my habit, I went on to the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, and, after my meal, sat in the window of the big smoking-room chatting with three of the boys – airmen all of them.

George Selwyn, a well-known expert on aircraft and editor of an aircraft journal, had been discussing an article in that morning’s paper on the future of the airship.

“I contend,” he said firmly, “that big airships are quite as necessary to us as they are to Germany. We should have ships of the Zeppelin and Schutte-Lanz class. The value of big airships as weapons of defence cannot be under-estimated. If we had big airships it is certain that Zeppelin raids – more of which are expected, it seems – would not be unopposed, and, further, we should be able to retaliate. We’ve got the men, but we haven’t got the airships – worse luck! The Invisible Hand of Germany has deceived us finely!”

“That’s so,” I chimed in. “The Germans can always soothe their own people by saying that, however dear food is and all that, yet they can’t be strafed from above – as we unfortunately are.”

“I quite agree,” declared Charlie Digby, a well-known pilot, and holder of a height-record. A tall, clean-shaven, clean-limbed fellow he was lying back in the deep leather armchair with his coffee at his side. “But is it not equally true that, if we had aeroplanes of the right construction and enough of them, we could give the night-raiders in Zeppelins a very uncomfortable time?”

“Quite so. I’m all in favour of suitable aeroplanes,” Selwyn admitted. “We must upset this Zeppelin menace by some means or other. Here we are – the greatest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, worried three times a month by the threat of these German gas-bags! It is quite possible to obtain such aeroplanes as would enable us to fight the Zepps. As somebody wrote in the paper the other day regarding the future range of the naval big guns, it is useless to send up half-trained quirks on soggy seaplanes accompanied by still less trained spotting officers equipped with short-range wireless which cannot receive. The gun-spotter in a Fleet action should be a fully trained and experienced gunnery-Jack, seated in a comfortable observation-car where charts and navigating instruments can be used with accuracy. Therefore, if we can’t get the proper aeroplanes, we must have airships for the purpose, as they are at present the only apparent vehicle for scientific gunnery in a Fleet action.”

With this we all agreed.

“Another point,” I said, “was advanced by a clever writer in the Aeroplane the other day. It was pointed out that in the matter of fighting Zeppelins, however good aeroplane patrols may be, they must depend on their eyes to find enemy airships. One may silence engines, but one cannot silence air, and, though one may shut off and glide slowly, yet there will always be enough whistling of wind round wires and struts to wash out any noise of airship engines, gears, and propellers, unless they are very close indeed. An airship, on the other hand, can shut off and float. There may be some creaking of the girders, and stays, but there will be no continuous whistling. Therefore an airship makes a perfect listening-post for enemy aircraft of all kinds.”

“I’m quite sure of that,” declared Charlie Digby from the depths of his chair. “If we are to win the war we must fight the Zeppelin. We want a real good man at the head of affairs and we should allow him a free hand, and put a stop to the endless committees and conferences and confabulations which have been the curse of this country in every department since war began – and before. Let that man have the advice of all the specialists he may require, and let him encourage people with ideas to offer their advice, instead of turning them down, as is the custom of most people in commanding positions.”

Those same sentiments I had read in one of the papers that very day.

I said nothing more. It was time for me to be off, so I rose and left, having an appointment with Teddy Ashton.

As I passed through the big hall of the club I reflected how true were Digby’s words. If we were to win the war we must fight the Zeppelins effectively.

But how?

That same question had occupied the minds of both Teddy and myself for many months, long indeed before the first Zeppelin had crossed the North Sea. Both of us had realised the deadly peril of those huge murder-machines against which we would be utterly powerless.

During the first year of war the public had laughed at the idea of Zeppelins coming over to drop bombs on undefended towns, or making an air raid upon London. The popular reply to anyone who ventured to express fear of such a thing as had been openly threatened in the German Press was: “Bah! they haven’t come yet!”

But at last they had come, and they had dropped bombs upon inoffensive citizens. There were some writers already crying, “Never mind the Zeppelins!” In the sluggish apathy which refused to worry as to the state of our air-defences they discovered a sort of heroism! “Surely,” they exclaimed, “civilians, including women and children, ought to be really glad and proud to share the risks of their sons or brothers in the trenches.”

A poor argument surely! The unarmed people of London and the provinces, when summoned to confront the hail of fire and death, had showed an imperturbable coolness worthy to compare with the valour of the soldiers in the field. On that point, testimony was unanimous. The people had been splendid. But they expected something more than passive heroism. It was so very easy to shut one’s eyes to the ghastly record of suffering a hundred miles off, easy, as somebody had said, to doze under the hillside with Simple, Sloth and Presumption.

Long ago I had agreed with Teddy that some means must be found to fight effectively the German airships now that anti-aircraft guns had proved unreliable for inflicting much damage, except in a haphazard way. In conjunction, therefore, we had been actively conducting certain secret experiments in order to devise some plan which might successfully combat the terror of the night.

Zeppelins had flown over the coast towns and hurled bombs upon its defenceless inhabitants. Each raid had been more and more audacious in its range, and in its general scheme. London and the cities of the Midlands had been, more than once in sight of the enemy’s airships. Yet a certain section of the Press were still pooh-poohing the real significance of the attempt to demoralise us at home.

Out in St. James’s Square – on the cab-rank which the Club had taken for its own – I jumped into my car and drove away down to Gunnersbury, beyond Chiswick, where, in a market-garden, I rented a long shed of corrugated iron, a place wherein, with Teddy, I conducted the experiments which we were making into the scientific and only way by which Zeppelins could be destroyed.

While the world had been wondering, we had worked, and in our work Roseye constantly assisted us. It was hard and secret work, entailing long and patient study, many experiments, and sometimes flights necessitating much personal risk.

Failures? Oh! yes, we had many! Our failures were, indeed, of daily occurrence. More than once, when we thought ourselves within an ace of success, we found that we were faced with the usual failure.

Many, alas! were the disappointments. Yet we all three had one goal in view, keeping it ever before us – the fighting of the Zeppelin.

Little did we dream of the strange, dramatic events which were to result from our secret scientific investigations, undertaken in all our enthusiasm.