On the other hand, being up front was no picnic either. Between unexpected turbulence, freezing temperatures, and unpredictable weather at altitude, no one on the crew of a zeppelin had an easy time of it. It was a mark of a man’s toughness—both physical and mental—to be selected for airborne service. They were an elite group, hand-picked for this important mission, and justifiably proud.
In Wilhelm’s mind, and he knew likewise in the minds of his crewmates, flying was worth every hardship. To soar high above land and sea, to look down upon cities and mountains and oceans alike was an experience like no other, and Wilhelm was willing to face a thousand hardships for the opportunity to do it again and again. Nothing compared to flight. Nothing ever would.
Kapitaenleutnant Ludwig Bockholt, L59’s skipper, stood with legs splayed wide as his eyes scanned the horizon out the forward window. The deck of the gondola swayed and bumped, but unless they encountered heavy turbulence, it was nothing compared to the motion of a surface vessel. Still, old habits died hard. Plus, he was the captain of an Imperial Navy airship. It was fitting that he stand like one.
On his left, the ship’s wireless set let out an audible squeal and a crackle loud enough that the young petty officer sitting at the station flinched and ripped the headphones from his ears. Ludwig raised an eyebrow and looked in his direction.
“Everything all right, Mueller?”
“Aye, sir,” Mueller said, having the grace to look a bit shamefaced as he replaced his headphones. “Just a static burst. It’s possible we’ve a storm ahead.”
“Why do you say that?” Ludwig asked, his tone mild. He noticed that his second in command and his chief enlisted man both turned to observe the conversation between their captain and the wireless operator.
“Well, sir, it was that static burst,” Mueller said, squaring his shoulders as he, too, noticed the additional scrutiny. “Procedure is that we bring in the wireless antenna during storms, lest we attract a lightning strike due to the ionization along the metal antenna that ignites the hydrogen in the bag.”
Ludwig nodded. This was common knowledge among airship crews, and one of the reasons they tended to give storms a wide berth when able.
“The thing is, even when we’re well outside of range of a lightning strike, the massive ionization of the storm can still cause smaller static discharges. The antenna will pick these up, and the wireless set will emit a crackle or a squeal, as you just heard.”
“I see,” Ludwig said, then turned to look again out the forward window. They had just crossed the last of brown hills and tall cliffs of the Turkish coastline, and the wine-dark Mediterranean stretched ahead, glinting in the afternoon sun. Up until now, the sky above shone clear and blue, no sign of a cloud in sight.
Yet.
Ludwig raised his binocular glasses and peered at the horizon. Sure enough, a dark, ominous smear hung low over the barely visible Cretan coastline.
“It seems your reasoning is sound, Mr. Mueller,” Ludwig said, lowering the glasses. “There does appear to be some convective activity over Crete. We shall have to circumvent it if we can. We may not have the fuel to go far.”
Ludwig turned and bestowed a small smile upon the young wireless operator. “I appreciate your timely warning, Mueller,” he said. “Well done.”
The younger man smiled for just a moment before his military bearing snapped back into place and he nodded. “Aye, sir,” he said. “Thank you.” As Mueller turned back to his wireless set, Ludwig watched as his chief enlisted man, Engelke, nodded as well, acknowledging the scene.
Not that Ludwig was particularly surprised by Mueller’s intense competence. Indeed, all of his men were excruciatingly good at their jobs, especially considering that the merest bit of the technology they used was cutting edge. Transitioning from the surface navy to the air service was highly competitive, and only the best of the best joined the elite airship crews. He rather expected his men to perform in such an admirable manner.
Still, Ludwig thought as he raised his binoculars once again, it was important to acknowledge excellence, especially in front of his peers. The man would perform all the better for it. And heaven knew they needed nothing less than consistent excellence on this particular mission!
“Operation China Show,” as it was called, was by far the most ambitious undertaking by a military zeppelin crew in all of history. Whenever he thought of the sheer audacity of the plan, Ludwig couldn’t decide whether he should feel more pride or fear about what they were attempting to do. Since he was a military man, and no stranger to action, he usually defaulted to pride… but the fear was always there, too.
They would fly for four days south across the African desert to deliver fifteen tons of badly needed weapons and supplies to General von Lettow-Vorbeck and his Schutztruppe. For nearly three years, the aptly named “Lion of Africa” had kept three hundred thousand British, Belgian, and Portuguese troops occupied down there, where they could do no harm to the German Imperial troops hammering it out on the Western Front. General von Lettow-Vorbeck had never lost a battle, and his mastery of lightning raids and guerrilla tactics made him a constant thorn in the side of the Entente colonial forces.
But none of that could continue without supplies. And with the British Navy prowling the Mediterranean as they did, a surface-based mission would be little more than a suicide run. But while the British claimed the sea, Germany led the world in the air.
And he, Ludwig Bockholt, was in command of this most audacious aerial resupply mission. It all had to be conducted with the utmost secrecy, of course. For while German fighters, at least for now, were far superior to anything owned by Britain or France, an enemy plane could still shoot down the slower zeppelins. Indeed, the differing speeds between lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air craft meant that an escort of fighters was completely impractical for this trip, even if there were places for them to stop and refuel along the route.
Which there weren’t.
But the sky was large, and Ludwig had never been a man short of nerve. So he and his elite, dauntless crew would trust in skill, secrecy, and luck to complete this resupply run, saving the Lion of Africa, and making history in the process.
When he lowered the binoculars again, Ludwig couldn’t hold back a smile.
“Bring the antenna in now, Mueller.”
“Aye, sir,” Wilhelm said, keeping the relief out of his tone. After the heady experience of having the captain praise him in his work, he’d returned to his task of monitoring the wireless communications with renewed vigor. But the static and squealing had only increased over time. While they drew ever closer to the island of Crete, the ship herself started to buck up and down as the air turned more and more turbulent from the storm’s outflow. As the bucking continued, Wilhelm’s knuckles turned white from his death grip on his console. He tried hard not to think about the fact that if the turbulence got bad enough, the ship could actually break apart in midair.
Sometimes, such knowledge wasn’t necessarily helpful.
Wilhelm removed his headset and pulled his heavy leather gloves on over the lighter woolen ones he used while operating the wireless. His tasks required a good deal of manual dexterity, and the larger gloves made him fumble-fingered on the set’s dials. He pulled his flying helmet down tighter over his ears and stepped back onto the narrow catwalk that formed the deck of the gondola. Then he turned sideways and eased his way between the rudder and elevator operators, careful not to jostle either man as they struggled to keep the ship flying through the unpredictable air in a controlled, coordinated manner.