The Last Airship

by Christopher Cartwright

  Does he not realize that I want to catch Ribbentrop as much as he does?

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Has he ever left work early, previously?”

  “No, never.” Walter fidgeted with his briefcase as he spoke.

  “And… you just let him leave?”

  “We are civilians. Both he and I are working diligently for the Third Reich, but he is my superior, and if he says that he has to go, then I cannot stop him.”

  “Where did he say he had to go?” The officer persisted, without raising his voice – he never had to. If a person was being questioned by an SS officer, they listened carefully.

  “He told me that he was meeting with another professor today. The meeting was to take place at his house.”

  “But, you say that you went to his house and no one was there?”

  “That’s correct.” Walter replied.

  The skin along the SS officer’s strong jawline tightened in frustration. “And, I have men at his house, even as we speak, determining whether or not Ribbentrop has taken anything with him.”

  Walter sat patiently in his tan leather chair, feeling like a child attending one of his own lectures; a child who had failed to demonstrate satisfactory understanding of a concept and was now to be instructed as to what was expected of him.

  Someone knocked at the door.

  It was probably another SS officer. No one else in their right mind would interrupt an ongoing interrogation by an SS officer otherwise.

  “Yes, who is it?”

  “Rutherford, Sir. Heil Hitler.” The young man, little more than a boy, in his starched SS uniform saluted.

  “Heil Hitler.” The first SS officer didn’t invite the younger officer to take a seat. “Now, Rutherford, what do you have for me?”

  “He’s been spotted riding his BMW south.” Rutherford struggled to disguise the pleasure of his own success.

  “He’s trying to escape Berlin on his motorcycle?” His incredulity was visible. “He must know that he can’t escape Germany that easily. He must have found help. Where is he now?”

  “He’s on the A9 motorway. Do you want us to bring him in for questioning?” Rutherford asked.

  “No, I want you to follow him. Arrest him once he has met with his contact.”

  These people have no idea! Walter was horrified that SS were going to risk Ribbentrop’s escape so that they might have a chance at catching his accomplices.

  The SS officer then looked at Walter, and said, “You’d better pray that we catch this prick.”

  “You have no concept of what’s at stake,” Walter replied.

  *

  Peter gripped one of the levers with his right hand. It controlled the angle of the two forward propellers. He pulled backwards on it, and then turned to the pair of levers beside it, which increased their forward thrust. The idling sound rose to a higher pitch, but nothing happened.

  Franck then released their mooring lines.

  The Magdalena was now floating unrestrained.

  A moment later, the airship started to move forward, ever so slightly.

  Peter’s hands gripped the large wooden steering wheel adeptly, it was not too dissimilar to those which might be found on a sailing ship. Like its naval counterpart, the wheel controlled an oversized rudder at the rear of the airship, allowing directional control.

  A careful movement of his left hand on a somewhat smaller wheel allowed the rear four propellers to pitch the nose up, while preventing it from yawing from side-to-side. On the wall to his right, where his co-pilot Franck sat, were a number of pressure switches, valves and toggles that controlled the pressure of both helium and air, as well as the distribution of ballast.

  Peter felt good to finally nose up with the pitch control wheel so that the Magdalena could reach for the sky.

  It was painfully slow.

  All dirigibles were.

  There was nothing you could do about that. Tonight, Peter felt the slowness. He felt as though he was running from a monster, but, as if in a nightmare, his legs were stuck in the mud and he couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Finally, he felt the Magdalena climb and start gaining forward speed and momentum.

  With both hands fixed firmly on the steering wheel, he kept the enormous, lumbering aircraft under control. With its six engines, six propellers and filled with helium gas, whose buoyancy constantly changed depending on the temperature and atmospheric pressure, piloting the Magdalena was like a combination of flying an airplane and making a scuba dive at the same time.

  “We’re just about to clear those pine trees, Franck. Once we’re over them, we should be ready to switch to flight configuration.

  “Copy, that.”

  Peter’s heart stopped as he heard the rapid staccato of machine gun fire.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “Machine gun fire, but are they shooting at us, or at a ground target?”

  His hand pulled the two levers on his left back further, this increased the speed of the rear four propellers from1450 to 1700 RPM, which was just above the maximum recommended RPMs for the advanced Daimler-Benz engines.

  It seemed pointless.

  The extra strain on the engines barely increased their speed at all.

  Ahead of them, he could hear the sound of more gunfire.

  Suddenly, the area directly in front of the pilot’s cabin lit up with sparks.

  “Holy shit! We’re hit.”

  “What’s our pressure?” Peter was still in control, despite the disaster. He was very glad that he had opted to use the more expensive inert gas, helium, rather than the cheaper and much more highly volatile gas, hydrogen, which had proved so fatal in the Hindenburg Disaster of 1937.

  Franck looked over at the gas pressure gauges.

  There were fourteen separate helium compartments within the Magdalena. Each one had its own pressure gauge and release valves to prevent explosions during air pressure changes, and separate helium cylinders to increase buoyancy if required.

  “Still 5.2 millibars in all fourteen compartments.”

  “Okay, copy that. Let’s check the rest of our systems to see if anything else has been damaged.”

  “Everything looks all right.” Franck then started to tap the compass. “Damn. It must have knocked off our forward gyroscope.”

  “Okay, we’ll have to work something out by dead reckoning.” Years of piloting had taught him to work on a problem rather than to panic over something you couldn’t change.

  Because of the metal used within the gondola, an interior compass was made fundamentally useless. To circumvent this problem, the Magdalena had a mounted gyroscope at the nose of the ship.

  The sound of the machine gun fire was becoming quieter with distance.

  Just a little further and we’ll be out of their range.

  “Okay, we’ve reached 25 mph. Let’s switch the ship to flight configuration and see if we can increase our speed some more.”

  “Copy that,” Franck said, as he pulled the levers before him, to a horizontal level. Now, the Magdalena was using its fins, not its engines, to control the ship's motion.

  Like a ship in water, the Magdalena’s steering wheel felt as though it was having more of an effect on their direction now that their speed had increased.

  The ship now flew more like a yacht with a rudder. As such, Peter had to contend with other factors, such as air currents and thermals. It had taken years of experience, but he had learned to make minor adjustments early for expected changes.

  “Good, our speed is picking up. It’s now at 30 mph.” Peter then noticed that his left hand was struggling to keep the pitch of the nose straight and level. “Can you check the helium again, she seems to be sinking?”

  Franck ran his hands over each of the gauges and then he stopped at number fourteen. It was the one that was placed in the nose of the ship.

  “It’s already down to 3.5millibars. We’re quickly leaking gas from compartment number fourteen,”
Franck said.

  “Okay, we’re going to have to re-route some of the helium from the other tanks.”

  “Copy that.” Franck started to make the adjustments on the valves to move helium from the remaining thirteen compartments to the front. “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “How long can we keep her in the air by doing this?”

  “I don’t know. Four, perhaps five hours?” Peter said. Then, tapping on the pressure gauge to make certain the swivel stick hadn’t become stuck, he said, “It will be close, but we might just make it. We’re going to lose some gas as we fly over the mountains. I’ll get up into the canopy shortly and see if I can repair the helium bladder by myself.”

  After a couple of minutes the Magdalena seemed to return to her normal flying capabilities, and, with the exception of a faulty compass, they were on their normal route for the night. They might still make it.

  Their planned route was going to take them east, over Lake Constance at the base of the Alps. Then, by maintaining a more northerly route, they would avoid the Alps and enter Switzerland over Mount Uetliberg. At the entrance to Zurich, in northeast Switzerland, Mount Uetliberg rose to an elevation of 2850 feet above sea level.

  A zeppelin had a maximum ceiling height of 650 feet. The Magdalena was not a zeppelin, and Peter had specifically engineered her for travel through Europe which has a number of high mountains. As the airship rises, the helium expands, and contracts when it descends. In order to maintain a constant pressure within, a ballonet is installed, which is simply a bag of air, which is inflated or deflated in order to maintain a constant pressure inside the envelope despite changing air pressures. This, in turn, allows the helium to expand and contract. When the ballonet is completely empty, the airship is said to be at its "pressure height."

  The initial design of the ballonet size determines an individual airship's maximum change of altitude capability. The Magdalena had a maximum change in altitude of 4000 feet, but it could, in theory, continue to rise indefinitely if the expanding helium was constantly released. The problem was that by doing so, you would waste a lot of helium.

  Peter set his course at a dead reckoning.

  “Okay, Franck. I’d better get back there and make sure our guests are all right. Keep the nose between those two stars there,” he said, pointing in front of him.

  “Copy that.” Franck said, as he gripped the steering wheel and then added, “Don’t take too long. I might need you up here.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  Peter opened the door of the forward pilot gondola and stepped out onto the open air gangway to the primary gondola. The cool air was refreshing. He looked at the trees, which looked more like grass, scattered over the hills far below. There were no lights on. Concerns over British air raids still prohibited the use of lights during night time hours. Behind him, he could just make out the center of Berlin.

  He loved it up there.

  Many of the people he studied with were interested in building faster and more powerful planes. They said that after the Hindenburg disaster, airships would become antiquated. It was a shame, he thought, since this was the way he wanted to see the world.

  He wondered if he’d built the last airship.

  Like all engineers, Peter inspected the frame of his precious canopy first, before checking on his human cargo. From the outside it appeared intact, although he dared not shine a flashlight on any of it in case he exposed the Magdalena to attack. He was certain that some of the bullets had placed little holes inside her canopy, and the subsequent loss of helium would be insurmountable. He opened the hatch above his head and climbed inside the canopy.

  He shined his flashlight through each helium bladder, one by one, listening for the telltale hissing of a gas leak.

  Peter barely prevented himself from crying out when he first saw it.

  If there was a small hole in the helium bladder in compartment number fourteen, at the bow of the Magdalena, he could fix it, but there was no way he could possibly repair the three foot tear he saw before him.

  Without wasting more time, he climbed back down to the air gangway and then opened the door to the primary gondola and his guests.

  Everyone inside the gondola was so quiet that, at first, he didn’t even realize what had happened. Then he saw her. It was young Sarah. Her skin was so white, that he wondered whether she might be dead. Then, he noticed that the professor had torn part of his shirt and used it as a tourniquet to wrap around her arm.

  She was still breathing.

  “Is she going to be all right?”

  “Yes. She’s been shot in her arm, and has lost a lot of blood, but I believe she will make it – so long as we get her to a doctor before morning.”

  “Peter, what happened?” Margaret, Sarah’s mother, asked as she accosted him.

  “We were fired upon.” To Peter, it seemed like such an obvious answer to a question that barely required one.

  “But of course we all realize that. What I want to know is, are we okay? I mean, will we make it?”

  “One of the bullets tore a hole in compartment number fourteen, and we’re venting large amounts helium. Also, our magnetic gyroscope has been shot to pieces, so we’re flying somewhat blind, but yes, I believe we will indeed make it.”

  Peter looked at Margaret.

  The edge of her lip curled as though she had just bitten something pungent, “This is your fault for waiting so long before taking off!”

  There was nothing he could say in response. It was true, if he’d left earlier, Sarah wouldn’t have been shot. “I’m very sorry. Now, I must continue making inspections of my ship.”

  He then walked to the back of the gondola and stepped out of the door and into the open air gangway to check on the motors in the rear gondola. Ordinarily, he would have a team of at least five mechanics and an engineer on board, to constantly assess the engines. Tonight, they would simply have to make it on their own.

  Before Peter shut the door, Fritz followed him through it and said, “Thank you for waiting for me. Let me assure you, it was important.”

  Peter imagined that every passenger aboard thought that their life was important. He knew damn well that they would have made a clean getaway if he hadn’t waited for Ribbentrop. “Let’s just hope we make it, Fritz. If we don’t, their deaths will be on your head.”

  “Of course, they will,” Fritz replied with a shrug of his shoulders, seemingly comfortable accepting such responsibility.

  Again, Peter wondered how it was possible that such a senior member of Hitler’s regime to feel the need to escape tonight, and hoped that he hadn’t misjudged his old friend. Peter didn’t consider it for long. He still had a job to do, if any of them were going to make it out of Germany safely.

  All four engines in the rear gondola seemed to be in fine working order.

  He listened to the pitch of their hum. Like any good engineer, his ears told him all that he needed to know. They’re fine. At least that’s something. He then walked back, through the primary guest gondola. Everyone was quiet this time, and he didn’t wait around to hear them voice their complaints again.

  No, he thought. He’s not like any one of them.

  He then opened the door to the pilot gondola, and asked, “How are we looking, Franck?”

  “Good. Nothing’s changed. The slope is increasing, and I’ve raised the angle of our nose by one degree to maintain our rate of ascent.”

  “Really? It seems a bit early to do that.” He checked his watch. They had been in the air for just under an hour. “Are you certain?”

  Peter could already see the mountain up ahead.

  They had apparently made a mistake with their dead reckoning, but, like all fools, Peter decided to continue, lost. He took hold of the large wooden steering wheel again and said, “Okay, I have command. Let’s start our ascent.”

  He pulled the lever which changed the angle of the four rear propellers and then tilted the elevators, built into the side of
the canopy, so that the angle of the ship increased to eight degrees. It was a little sharper than was normal, but he didn’t want to waste any helium. It might be uncomfortable for some of the passengers who would be unaccustomed to it.

  They started to climb.

  He watched as his altimeter increased.

  Every thousand feet they ascended took them closer to the Magdalena’s ceiling. Soon, they were flying at 3500 feet.

  In the distance, the mountain continued to rise ahead of them.

  “Where are we, Franck?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, sir. Could it be St Gallons?”

  “No, too high for St Gallons.”

  Peter calmly got out the book of maps, which contained aerial photographs of the landscapes and mountains. None of them seemed to match the area over which they flew. When he got to the last of the maps, frustrated, he handed the book across to Franck, and said, “Here, see if you can find anything you recognize.”

  They were approaching the Magdalena’s maximum ceiling height of 4000 feet, and their altimeter reading kept rising. The mountain ahead of them showed no signs of leveling off.

  There was no point in trying to turn the airship around, they just had to keep on going.

  Then they attained their final possible height, and the mountain looked as though it was going to go on forever.

  “Okay, Franck. I need you to vent some of that helium. It’s the only way; we’ll just have to refill the compartments once we start to descend again.”

  “But we’re almost out of helium already.”

  “I know that. God damn it, but we don’t have any other choice, do we?”

  “No, sir.”

  Peter listened as the distinct sound of gas being released by the blow off valves, which were designed to avoid rupturing the hull, were each opened.

  And still they climbed.

  At 10,000 feet, Peter noticed his dizziness.

  It was one of the first signs of hypoxia and he couldn’t ignore it. There simply wasn’t enough oxygen up there to breathe, at that altitude.

  He looked at Franck, who was concentrating on taking slow, deep breaths, in order to help his oxygen starved brain continue to function.

  “How are you doing there, Franck?”