Of Zeppelins and "Super Zeppelins"

So here is the second installment in my Blimps vs Zeppelins oddity.  Sometimes the best ideas just will not work out.  That is really the story of the Germans in WWI and their Zeppelin forces.

This is a photograph of the L20, the first of the Q (more on what that means if you read on) class of Zeppelins and her rather ignominious fate of crashing on the Norwegian coast where her crew was interned and the ship shot to set off the hydrogen and keep it from drifting into a nearby village.

The Germans in WWI developed 12 different classes of Zeppelins, each one getting an alphabetic class designation starting with "M" and ending with "X".  They also had zeppelins from before the war that they used for military purposes, but they were generally smaller in size and limited in their usefulness.  Primary Zeppelin forces can further be broadly broken down into basic groups: the early war Zeppelins, the "Height Climbers", and the oddities.

The most common Zeppelins were the early war ships (classes M-P).  They continued to be used through the entire war and did most of the work of the Zeppelin corps.

The "Height Climbers" were an off shoot of the general Zeppelins (Classes Q-X).  The course of the war led the German designers to realize a shortcoming of Zeppelins, particularly when used in military situations - Flak.  If a Zeppelin traveled into range of a flak gun, the flak guns could shoot as high as 10,000 feet and one near miss could easily do in a Hydrogen filled Zeppelin.  "Height Climbers" are specifically designed to be able to fly at least to 10,500 feet which put them safely out of Flak danger.  It had the added benefit of being well out of airplane reach as well.  However these ships were not without their own risks.  Several of the designs were simply an earlier class redesigned to take in an extra gas bag which provided more,lift and could reach the desired height.  As an example, the L20 was the first of the Q Class , which were simply redesigned P Class Zeppelins with another Hydrogen bag included to increase lift.  However, sometimes these redesigns developed problems.  In the case of L20 the problem was that the engines had difficulty handling the larger craft, and thus could cause things like structural failure, or in L20's case when caught by high winds - engine failure.

The first purpose built Height Climber was the R Class.  When the British first encountered the R Class they dubbed the "Super Zeppelins", as in general combat situations there was nothing the British could do to these ships at height.  However, up above 10,00 feet the Germans discovered Two things: the air is mighty thin and up there the engines do not work very well.  These factors limited the time that a Zeppelin could spend at Height and led to the British deciding to try and use their Zeppelins and blimps to fight the Germans, hopefully off the coast.

Here we have my first three Zeppelins, from top to bottom a P class, and R class, and an X class (the largest of the war time airships.

Here, I have reversed the order and put the basic paint job on the ships.  The first thing that stood to me was that the German Zeppelins were really pretty plain, slightly better than the British, but still very plain

Here I have painted on the camouflage for the P Class ship, I chose one of the more interesting designs for an M class numbered L11.

Here I have added the decals, one cross on each side about the mid point.  and the call numbers.  The Navy used the letter "L" and then a numerical designation based one when the ship went into service. This system led to sometimes earlier design ships have higher numbers than later designed ships.  The German Army also had its one Zeppelins.  They used the letters "LZ" followed by the numerical production number of the specific ship.

At this point I realized that it was not very interesting to discuss the painting of Zeppelins so I decided against focusing on the paining and instead decided to focus on the ships themselves.  Here is an R Class, the first designed from the start "Height Climber"  This is L34.

Here is another "Height Climber", this one is number L56 and it is a U Class.

The differences between these two classes are rather slight with the U class slightly longer and in this case a slightly different camouflage.  This camouflage was for night time bombing over Britain and the idea was that the black bottom would be harder to see in the dark, and the white top would blend in with clouds if anything got above them.

Here is an X class, the L70. The Height Climbers were used in an all white camouflage in order to try and blend into the clouds during daylight bombing missions.  I chose this version of the L70 because the very first time the L70 went out in the black and white camouflage things did not go well from the German perspective

As she was crossing the North Sea the L70 was caught by a DeHavilland.  The pilot had previously shot down a Zeppelin on his own.  The Observer had also previously shot down a Zeppelin while flying on his own.  Together, they caught the L70 at lower altitude and managed to get in an extreme range shot at the L70 as she was trying to climb to safety.  The shot was lucky and hit a Hydrogen cell causing the entire Zeppelin to explode at about 9,000 feet, there were no survivors.  In L70 on that fateful voyage was Peter Strasser, the Captain in charge of the entire Navy Zeppelin corps. The painting above captures the moment the hydrogen cell has been hit and the chain reaction began.  

The Early War Zeppelins had a khaki coloration and are Extremely bland.  

Here is the L9, a standard example of the ships.  These P classes made up the larges single class of Zeppelins (22 made in total).  

To try and step up the painting a notch, I specifically chose the N11, it has the most interesting camouflage of all the Zeppelins in my opinion.  I refer to the design as a Rorschach style, but each can see what thy like here.

Here is my attempt at the design.

Lastly we have the LZ88, she started service in the Army but was later transferred to the Navy for the latter half of the hostilities.  "LZ" is literally the building code designation a Zeppelin received as its construction began, so this was the 88th zeppelin built during the war.  The army simply kept the designation and made it the actual identification number for the craft.  At least it looks a little different.

Here are all three P classes for a group shot.

And finally here are all six Zeppelins for a unit picture.

All the Zeppelins come from Shapeways.  Their productions are all well proportioned (remember it is 1/1250 scale).  The models clean up well (just wash with soapy water).  They paint easily and look very good when done.  There is an issue with washing and overcoating as they tend to roll over, and if the washed model is allowed to roll over the wax will stick to paper or most anything else so a careful watch must be kept during the drying process.  But since they have no competition they are a very good thing if you are looking for the era. You can also get them in larger sizes, but the cost skyrockets as the model size increases.