A Zeppelin April Fool, an April fish. The reverse contains a message dated March 29, 1915.
1r Avril1- Je suis le poisson d'Avril- Je ne tiens qu'a un fil- Moins dangereux que je n'en ai l'air- Je ne suis en sureté que sur terre2Le moindre petit coup de ventMe retourne complétementVous avouerez, pour un dirigeableQue c'est plutôt lamentable.1- I am the April Fool- I am hanging on by a thread- I'm less dangerous than I am in the air- I'm not reliable other than on Earth2The slightest gust of windTurns me completelyYou must admit, for an airshipThat it is rather dismalJK 9506Reverse:Message dated March 29, 1915
"Breithaupt was in dire straits. His LZ.15 was damaged seriously; the amidships Cell 11 was empty, Cell 12 forward and Cell 9 aft were both leaking. Cell 16 in the bow was also empty, which made the ship nose-heavy. Breithaupt realized that his only sanctuary was Belgium. He had jettisoned all of his bombs and all but four hours of fuel. Next, the heavy machine guns, engine covers, and spare parts went over, but despite these emergency efforts it was obvious that LZ.15 was doomed to end in the sea. Breithaupt's secret documents were wired to the radio stool and dumped into the Thames, and finally after reporting, NEED IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE BETWEEN RIVER THAMES AND OSTEND, the wireless instruments were tossed overboard.At 12:15 A.M., wallowing along at 500 feet, LZ.15's framework buckled in two at Rings 7 and 11 and the airship nosed into the sea about a mile from the Kentish Knock Lightship."
Zeppelin LZ.15 under the commander of Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant Commander) Joachim Breithaupt, was one of seven Zeppelins that set out on March 31, 1916 to bomb London, which had improved defenses since the prior year. As he followed the Thames River to find the blacked out city, the airship was picked up by searchlights and hit by a shell. As Breithaupt turned from London, he was briefly chased and fired upon by a British flyer who soon lost the Zeppelin. Searchlights again picked up LZ.15, and scored another, more serious hit. A second British flyer in a B.E.2c with lights of its own found the Zeppelin and attacked three times with explosive darts, incendiary bombs, and machine gun. It's at this point that the quotation above picks up. LZ.15 went down on April 1. The Zeppelin was an airship with a rigid frame, the 'rings' being part of that, and multiple independent cells containing gas, to minimize the chances of a single blow bringing down the ship.
The Zeppelin Fighters by Arch Whitehouse, pp. 122, 123, copyright © 1966 by Arch Whitehouse, publisher: New English Library, publication date: 1978
1916-04-01, 1916, Zeppelin, LZ.15, April Fool, April fish, April 1
