The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History

Chapter Three

The Brown Deal Box

Six days had gone by.

The weather having continued bright and fine, with a high and steady barometer, all of us at Hendon, quirks and pilots alike, had been up on many occasions.

In secret, I had placed upon my machine – a Breguet monoplane with a 200 horse-power Salmson – another new invention which, with Teddy’s aid, I had devised, and was testing. We were keeping the affair a profound secret. Nobody knew of the contrivance evolved out of my knowledge of wireless, save we two, Roseye and my mechanic Harry Theed.

Carefully concealed from the eye it was carried in a large locked box, while, as further precaution, after testing it each time, I put it on my car and took it away to my chambers with me, for we were not at all anxious for any of the mixed crowd at the aerodrome to pry into what we were doing, or to ascertain the true direction of our constant experiments.

One afternoon down at Gunnersbury Teddy, in mechanic’s brown overalls, was busily engaged repairing a portion of the apparatus which I had broken that morning owing to an unfortunately bad landing.

To the uninitiated the long shed with its two lathes, its tangle of electric wires across the floor, the great induction coils – some of them capable of giving a fourteen-inch spark – the small dynamo with its petrol engine, and other electrical appliances, would no doubt have been puzzling.

Upon the benches stood some strange-looking wireless condensers, radiometers, detectors and other objects which we had constructed. Also dressed in overalls, as was my chum and fellow-experimenter, I was engaged in assisting him to adjust a small vacuum tube within that heavy, mysterious-looking wooden box which I daily carried aloft with me in the fuselage of my aeroplane.

We smoked “gaspers” and chatted merrily, as we worked on, until at last we had completed the job.

“Now let’s put a test on it again – eh, Claude?” my friend suggested.

“Right ho!” I acquiesced.

It was already dusk, for the repair had taken us nearly four hours, and during the past half-hour we had worked beneath the electric light.

The shed was on one side of the large market-garden, at a considerable distance from any house. Indeed, as one stood at the door there spread northward several flat market-gardens and orchards, almost as far as the eye could reach.

Presently, when we had adjusted the many heavily-insulated wires, I started the dynamo, and on turning on the current a bright blue blinding flash shot, with a sharp fierce crackling, across the place.

“Gad! that’s bad!” gasped Teddy, pale in alarm. “Something’s wrong!”

“Yes, and confoundedly dangerous to ourselves and to the petrol – eh?” I cried, shutting off the dynamo instantly.

“Phew! It was a real narrow shave!” remarked Teddy. “One of the narrowest we’ve ever had!”

“Yes, my dear fellow, but it tells us something,” I said. “We’ve made an accidental discovery – that spark shows that we can increase our power a thousandfold, when we like.”

“It has, no doubt, given the wireless operators at the Admiralty, at Marconi House, and elsewhere a very nasty jar,” laughed Teddy. “They’ll wonder what’s up, won’t they?”

“Well, we can’t help their troubles.” I laughed.

“I expect we’ve jammed them badly,” Teddy said. “Look the aerial is connected up!”

“By Jove! so it is?” I said.

I saw what I had not noticed before, that the network of phosphor-bronze aerial wires strung beneath the roof of the shed had remained connected up with the coils from an experiment we had conducted on the previous afternoon.

“I’ll pump Treeton about it to-morrow. He’ll be certain to have heard if there has been any unusual signals at Marconi House,” I said. “They’ll no doubt believe that spark to be signals from some new Zeppelin!”

“No doubt. But we may thank our stars that we’re safe. Both of us could very easily have been either struck down, or blown up by the petrol-tank. We’ll have to exercise far more caution in the future,” declared Teddy.

Caution! Why, Teddy had risked his life in the air a hundred times in the past four months, flying by day and also by night, and experimenting with that apparatus of ours by which we hoped to defy the Zeppelin.

Those were no days for personal caution. The long dark shadow of the Zeppelin had been over London. Women and babes in arms had been blown to pieces in East Anglia, on the north-east coast, and every one knew, from the threats of the Huns, that worse was intended to follow.

Our searchlights and aerial guns had been proved of little use. London, the greatest capital of the civilised history, the hub of the whole world, seemed to lie at the mercy of the bespectacled night-pirate who came and went as he pleased.

As is usual, the public were “saying things” – but were not acting. Both Teddy and I had foreseen this long ago, for both of us had realised to the full the deadly nature of the Zeppelin menace. It was all very well for a Cabinet Minister to assure us on March 17, 1915, that “Any hostile aircraft, airships, or aeroplanes which reached our coast during the coming year would be promptly attacked in superior force by a swarm of very formidable hornets.”

Events had shown that the British authorities at that time did not allow sufficiently for the great height at which Zeppelins could travel, or for the fact that, while the airship could operate successfully at night-time, darkness was the least suitable time for aeroplanes in the stage of development which they had reached, on account of the difficulties of starting and of landing in the dark, as well as of seeing or hearing the airship from a machine flying aloft.

The German Government and the German people had thrown their fullest energies into the development of aircraft for war. Unfortunately we had not, and it is not too much to say that, during the first few months of the war, the responsible authorities in this country did not take the aerial menace seriously.

We, as practical airmen, had taken it up seriously – very seriously, and, as result, had devoted all our time and all our limited private means – for my governor was not too generous in the matter of an allowance – towards combating the rapidly increasing peril of air attack.

The first German attempt had been on Christmas Day in the previous year. As I happened to witness it, it had fired me with determination.

Shall I ever forget the excitement of that day. I had gone down the Thames to spend Christmas with my old friend, Jack Watson, of the Naval Flying Corps, when, under cover of a light fog, a German airman suddenly appeared.

We first saw him over the Estuary, slightly to the south of us, flying at a height that we estimated at about 9,000 feet. There was great excitement. Anti-aircraft guns at once opened on him, but they failed to hit him. Lost to our view in a mist, he was not seen again until well up the river, and from the reports afterwards published it seems that fire was once more opened on him from our guns. Rising higher to escape our shells, he made a complete half-circle. By now, several British aeroplanes were in pursuit, and the German, seeing that it was hopeless to attempt to go farther, turned back. Thousands of people had a good view of this – the first real air-battle on the British coast. Shells were bursting in the air apparently all round the German. Time after time it seemed that he had been hit, yet time after time he escaped. Men could not fail to admire the skill with which he handled his machine. At one point a sudden dip of the aeroplane seemed to show that a shot had got home. Still, however, according to what I heard afterwards, he kept on, circling, dodging, twisting, climbing and diving with almost incredible swiftness to escape his pursuers. He made straight for the sea – and escaped. Weeks afterwards a rumour was received that some fishermen had found a body away out in the sea which was believed to be that of the German airman, but no satisfactory confirmation was ever published.

It was that incident which first set me thinking of how to combat hostile aircraft. At once I thought of aeroplane versus aeroplane, but when three weeks later, two Zeppelins came over to the east coast to reconnoitre, and dropped nine bombs, blowing to pieces two old people, then my attention was turned towards the Zeppelin, and in Teddy Ashton I found a ready and enthusiastic assistant.

This raid, and those which followed on points on the north-east coast, small as their immediate results were, yet demonstrated one thing. The German Press proclaimed that German genius had at last ended the legend that England was invulnerable owing to her insularity. An English writer had pointed out that it was certainly proved that the seas no longer protected England from attack. She was no longer an island. Should she hope to keep her shores inviolate, and to allow her people to live in the safety that they had enjoyed for so many centuries, she must be prepared to meet invaders from the sky, as well as on the water. Both Teddy and myself saw that the coming of the German airship was the beginning of a new chapter in the history of this country.

The real German defence was summed up in a semi-official message published, which read: “The German nation has been forced by England to fight for her existence, and cannot be forced to forego legitimate self-defence, and will not do so, relying upon her good right.”

Her good right! Had Germany a right to drop bombs blindly on open villages, and kill our women and babes at night?

That had fired us both, and the result had been that long shed, and the great mass of electrical apparatus it contained.

Sometimes, when I begged more money from my father for the purposes of those experiments, he had grumbled, yet always when I pointed out what Teddy and I were actually doing, he was ready again to sign a further cheque.

Teddy was, of course, richer than myself. His father had been a cotton-weaver who had lived in Burnley, and had died leaving his whole fortune to his only son. Therefore my friend was possessed of considerable means, and had it not been so, I fear that we should never have been able to establish such an extensive plant, or go to the big expenses which we had so often to incur.

The secrets of that shed of ours had to be well guarded. Our night-watchman was a retired police-sergeant, John the father of my faithful mechanic, Harry Theed, and in him we reposed the utmost confidence.

“If anyone ever wants to get into this ’ere place, sir,” old Theed often said to me, “then they’ll have to put my lights out first – I can assure you.”

“Well,” Teddy exclaimed presently, as he slowly lit a fresh cigarette. “Let’s adjust things a bit better, and we’ll then try how she goes – away out on the pole. It’s getting quite dark enough to see – especially with your glasses.”

“Right you are,” I said, and then, after another ten minutes of manipulation with the wires, during which I “cut out” the aerial and several big glass-and-tin-foil condensers, all was ready for the experiment.

Teddy had drawn a heavy wooden bench in front of the door, and upon it I placed the big box of brown-stained deal which contained our mysterious apparatus from which we both expected such great things. Indeed, that curious machine, had just escaped bringing upon us instant death.

Yet that mishap to which we had been accidentally so near had revealed several things to me, causing me to reflect upon certain crucial and technical points which, hitherto, I had not considered.

In that square, heavy box, connected up by its high-tension wires to three of the big induction coils upon the table was, we believed, stored a power by which the Zeppelins could be successfully destroyed and brought to earth.

It was nearly dark when I opened the door of the shed situated opposite to where I had placed the box, and looked out to ascertain if anyone was about, as we wished for no prying eyes to witness our experiment.

I walked out, and around the building, but nobody was near. Then, when I returned to the door, I stood for a moment gazing away across the wide area of market-gardens to where, perhaps half a mile distant, stood a high flag-pole which had been erected for me a couple of years before, and which had, before the war, borne my wireless aerial.

The little white hut near by I had built, and until the outbreak of war, when Post Office engineers had come and seized my private station, I had spent many hours there each evening reading and transmitting messages.

The pole, in three sections, which in the falling darkness could only just be discerned, was about eighty feet in height and stayed by eight steel guys, each of which was in three sections connected together by green-glazed porcelain insulators, so that any leakage of electrical current could not go to earth. Affixed to the pole and protruding some two feet above it was a copper lightning-conductor with four points, an accessory which I had had put up recently for experimental purposes.

“Nobody’s about,” I said to Teddy when I returned. “Will you run the dynamo, if all is in order?”

Then, after a final examination of the various electrical connexions, he started the engine and the dynamo began to hum again.

I drew over a switch at the side of the box, when a loud crackling was heard within – a quenched-spark of enormous power. Afterwards, I quickly seized my binoculars and going out through the open door, taking great care not to pass before the lens, – where in the place of glass was a disc of steel – something like that of a big camera, forming the end of the box, I focussed my glasses eagerly upon the flagstaff.

“Hurrah! Teddy!” I cried in glee. “It works – Gad! come and look! At last! We have it at last!”

Next moment, my friend was eagerly at my side, while at the same instant we heard a light footstep and Roseye, in her big motor-coat, stood unexpectedly before us.

“It works! Roseye! It works, darling! Mind! Don’t pass in front of the box. Do be careful!” I cried in warning, while at the same time Teddy Ashton, with the binoculars at his eyes, gasped:

“By Jove, Claude! It’s wonderful. Yes! You’re right! We have success at last!”

Chapter Four

Concerns the Secret

In our eagerness, Roseye and I set out to walk towards the pole, leaving Teddy in charge of the apparatus.

To approach the spot, we had to leave the market-garden and take a road lined by meagre cottages, then at last, skirting two orchards and yet another market-garden, we came out upon a second road, which we crossed, and at last found ourselves at the disused wireless-hut.

There a strange spectacle greeted our eyes for, the darkness having by that time become complete, we saw, around the lightning-conductor on the pole and over the steel stays, blue electric sparks scintillating.

“Look, darling!” I cried. “See what we have at last produced by the unseen directive current!”

“Yes,” replied my well-beloved. “Look at the sparks! How pretty they are! Why – they seem to be jumping across the insulators from one stretch of wire-rope to the other!”

“That effect is exactly what Teddy and I have for so long laboured to produce,” was my answer, as I stood there fascinated by the sparks and the slight crackling which reached our ears where we stood.

The fact was that though our apparatus was half a mile away, yet upon those steel strands, as well as upon the copper lightning-conductor, the electric waves which we were discharging – a new development of the discovery of Heinrich Hertz – was such as to spark over all the intervening gaps, even though the space where the insulators were inserted was quite three inches.

It was a phenomenon such as had never before been witnessed by any experimenter in electricity. The theories I had formed and so often discussed with Teddy were now proved to be quite sound, for they had resulted in the construction of that apparatus which must, I knew, be most deadly to any Zeppelin.

The sparks, as we watched them, suddenly ceased.

For a moment I stood surprised, yet next instant realised that Teddy had, no doubt, some very good reason for stopping the engine. Somebody might have come upon the scene, and we were always extremely cautious that nobody should know in what we were engaged. The neighbours knew us as airmen, and believed we were engaged in making some kind of new propellers.

What I had seen in those few minutes, the flashing crackling sparks running over the surface of those porcelain insulators and, indeed, over part of the wooden pole – for it happened to have been raining until an hour before, and all the surfaces were damp – was, to me, sufficient to cause me to hold my breath in excitement.

“We have made a great and most important discovery to-day, Roseye,” I said as calmly as I could, as together we walked back to the shed. “This discovery is undreamed of by Germany. It will give us power over any Zeppelin which dares to come to our shores, providing that we can approach sufficiently near.”

“Ah! if you can,” replied the girl at my side. “No doubt we shall increase the range,” I replied. “We have, this evening, established the one most important fact that our apparatus is really capable of directing the rays, and that between metal and metal we can now, as Hertz endeavoured to, set up an electric spark from a distance.”

“You certainly have done that – but I don’t yet see the trend of your argument, Claude. I know I’m only a woman and unversed in technicalities, so please forgive me, won’t you?”

“Well,” I said as we walked, my arm linked in hers. “First, as you know, a Zeppelin is constructed mostly of aluminium, its stays and practically all its rigid parts are of that metal except some of light steel. It consists of a number of ballonets filled with highly inflammable gas, and around those ballonets are ribs of aluminium and steel. There must be joints in these ribs, and over those joints we have now proved that we can create sparks from a considerable distance. From the ballonets there is a constant leakage of gas, therefore if we charge the aluminium and steel so that they spark wherever there is the slightest gap we shall ignite that escaping gas and cause the whole airship to explode with terrific force. Do I explain it clearly?”

“Quite, Claude,” was her slow, thoughtful reply. “I see now in what direction all these wonderful and patient experiments have been made. To-night you have certainly produced sparks.”

“And ere long I hope we shall increase our range, and be able to do without half the current and all its consequent paraphernalia,” was my confident reply. “I’m certain,” I said, “as certain as we are walking here together, that we have at last established a sound means of protecting Great Britain against Zeppelin raids.”

“I hope you have, dear,” Roseye replied. “Oh! what a great thing it will be for the country. You and Teddy will deserve monuments – if you really can succeed.”

“We shall succeed, darling – with your assistance. I’m confident of that!”

“I – how can I help?”

“In many ways. You’ve already assisted us enormously,” I said. “Teddy was only saying so to-day,” and I gripped her arm more tightly, as we turned the corner and approached the shed where Ashton was, we knew, awaiting us.

“Splendid, my dear fellow!” I cried as we re-entered. “Sparking beautifully, all over – like fireworks!”

“Pretty dangerous fireworks!” my friend remarked. “I cut off the current just now.”

“Yes,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, do you know, old chap, I thought I heard somebody about!” he replied. “Even with the dynamo running I fancied I overheard voices. Therefore I cut off at once, and went outside to see. Strangers seemed to be somewhere at the back.”

“Did you find anyone?” Roseye asked.

“Nobody – yet I’m quite certain I heard voices,” he insisted.

“Some of the men from the market-garden perhaps,” I remarked.

“I don’t think so,” was Teddy’s reply.

“Why not?” I demanded in surprise.

“Well – because what I heard – and I tell you, Claude, I heard it quite distinctly – was a sudden exclamation of surprise.”

“Surprise!”

“Yes. As though somebody had made an unexpected discovery,” Teddy said. “I had just been watching the effect on the pole through your glasses, and had returned inside when I heard an exclamation, followed by some quick words of surprise that I could not catch. It was a man’s voice.”

“Surely there could not be anybody else watching the sparking upon the pole!” I exclaimed in quick apprehension.

“That’s just what I believe has happened,” Ashton replied seriously. “We’ve been watched – as I suspected we were.”

“You’ve said so all along, I know.”

“And now I’m quite convinced of it. And whoever has watched us making our experiments now knows that to-night our efforts have been crowned with success.”

“Well,” I remarked after a pause. “If what you say is true, Teddy, we shall have to be very wary in future. I know there are a great many unscrupulous persons who would be ready to go to any length in order to learn this secret discovery of ours which, when fully developed, will, I feel convinced, mean the buckling-up of the Zeppelin menace.”

“That’s quite true, Claude,” Roseye declared. “At Hendon and elsewhere there are, I know, a number of men intensely jealous of your success, and of the one or two ideas which you have patented, and which are now adopted in the construction of our military aeroplanes.”

“It’s really astonishing how many enemies one makes quite unintentionally!” declared Teddy, leaning against the bench. “Claude has more than I have, I believe – and I never disguise from myself that I’ve got a really fine crop.”

“Only the other day, when Lionel dined with us, he was speaking to dad about spies,” Roseye said. “He told us that he felt sure that we had men in our air-service who sent every new development and idea to Germany. Do you think that’s really a fact?”

“A fact!” I echoed. “Why, dearest, of course it is! We’ve seen the result of it many times. As soon as we had that integral propeller the Germans knew, and copied us; the secret of Jack Pardon’s new dope was known in a few days, and the enemy are using it on every one of their machines to-day. Nothing is secret from those brutes.”

“But who does all this?” asked Roseye.

“Why, what I call the Invisible Hand,” was my reply. “The Invisible Hand was established in our midst in about 1906, when the Kaiser sat down and craftily prepared for war. He saw himself faced by the problem of the great British power and patriotism, and knew that the Briton would fight every inch for his liberty. Therefore the All-Highest Hun – the man who will be held up to universal damnation for all time – proceeded to adopt towards us the principle of dry-rot in wood. He started a system of sending slowly, but very surely, his insect-sycophants to burrow into the beam of good British oak which had hitherto supported our nation. That beam, to-day, is riddled by these Teutonic worms – insects which, like the book-worm, are never seen, yet, directed by the Invisible Hand, are only known by their works.”

“Then you think there really are spies at Hendon?”

“Of that I’m quite certain,” was my reply. “We all know that there are spies at every aerodrome – while in the higher ranks those who control our air-services, though patriotic enough, seem to suffer by reason of the still higher control which divides responsibility.”

“Have any spies been lurking about here to-night?” asked Roseye very anxiously.

“That is my firm conviction,” was Teddy’s reply to her. “I believe that there have been two strangers here. One was, perhaps, gazing through his glasses at the pole and, seeing in the darkness the sparking over the insulators set in the steel guys, ejaculated the natural expression of surprise that I overheard. But they got away noiselessly, and all my search failed to discover them.”

“Well – we must be very wary, my dear Teddy,” I repeated. “They must not get at this secret of ours, otherwise from the gondola of a Zeppelin they will be able to use the invisible force against any of our aeroplanes in a stronger and greater degree than we could ever hope to do it. Then we ourselves would be destroyed by the secret power we have invented.”