Quote:
Originally Posted by Gurgast
Still, it must be said, they do look like happy bunnies for all that!
Did you hear about the even worse job given to the unpopular chaps on airship crews? Apparenty they used to winch a man down in a little tin box on a few hundred feet of cable so he could telephone up from below the cloud-base and tell them where London was. If the Zeppelin was attacked they didn't have time to wind him up again, so they just got out a big pair of bolt cutters and bid him "bon voyage" or whatever the German equivalent is ...
|
The story is going somewhat over the top, no way did a Zeppelin crew sacrifice a crew member in this way.
There is the foloowing story in Wilbur Cross - Zeppelins of World I (1991). I have excerpted the following (p. 61-62).
Quote:
When the airship was struck by flak and the crew had to jettison everything possible, he was told on the intercom that the whinch had jammed because of enemy fire and the airship would cut its forward speed and come down low enough for the car to touch the ground. At that instant he was to notify the control car that he was on the ground and leap out because the cable would be instantly cut.
"You will be on your own," he was informed. "We are sorry but there is nothing else we can do except lighten the ship and try to get back to Germany."
This unique mission was accomplished, although the jolt when the car scraped the earth almost knocked its occupant out. He was able, however, to acknowledge that he was grounded. The cable was cut. The airship disappeared. And he found himself in a flat pasture, on British soil, and with no sense of location or direction.
For al,ost two months the stranded observer roamed enemy territory, hiding out in haylofts, cowsheds, and abandoned outbuildings by day and rummaging for food at night. Through road signs and once by venturing close to a village unseen, he judged eventually that he was somewhere in Sussex, not far from the English Channel. He was finally captured when a civilian coastal patrol spotted him crossing behind a farmhouse at dusk. He surrendered without a struggle, in fact relieved that he would no longer be on the run, and spent the rest of the war in a detention camp.
|
Also this story is highly unlikely, but a nice story. I believe it when evidence is presented from the archives, for instance an interrogation of the unlucky crew member.
Cheers
Kees