{"id":10873,"date":"2016-01-31T14:00:33","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T20:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=10873"},"modified":"2016-01-31T14:00:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-31T20:00:33","slug":"operation-china-snow-top-secret-mission-of-germanys-zeppelin-l59","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/31\/operation-china-snow-top-secret-mission-of-germanys-zeppelin-l59\/","title":{"rendered":"WW I History: Operation China Snow, The Top Secret Mission of Germany’s Zeppelin L59"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"zeppelin-airship\"<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe mission would be a risky one \u2013 no airship had ever flown such a distance.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

TO DESCRIBE<\/strong> Germany\u2019s Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck<\/a> as a thorn in the side of the\u00a0British Empire\u00a0is something of an understatement.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 1914, the dashing 34-year-old Prussian lieutenant-colonel led a rag-tag band of 3,000 regulars and 10,000 colonial troops in an audacious four-year guerrilla campaign against the Allies in East Africa<\/a> \u2013 modern day Burundi<\/a>, Rwanda<\/a> and Tanzania<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A master of ambush, sabotage and hit-and-run tactics, von Lettow-Vorbeck, also known as <\/em>Der L\u00f6we von Afrika<\/em> or the \u201cLion of Africa\u201d, never lost a battle and consistently outfoxed the 300,000-British, Belgian and Portuguese troops\u00a0tasked with destroying him.<\/p>\n

Operating\u00a0deep in the African bush, von Lettow-Vorbeck\u2019s brigade, known as the Schutztruppe,<\/em>spent much of the war living off the land. By in 1917 however, they were in desperate need of resupply. For Berlin, figuring out how to sustain this force, which was\u00a0keeping hundreds of\u00a0thousands of enemy troops pinned down in a remote backwater, was vital to the German war effort. But getting fresh equipment and ammunition to them was going to be a challenge. British control of the Atlantic and Indian oceans ruled out shipping materiel by sea. And no plane yet had the range to reach the region, which was more than 4,000 miles from friendly territory. Some in the high command wondered if a Zeppelin<\/a> might be up to\u00a0the task.<\/p>\n

A Zeppelin to the Rescue<\/strong><\/h2>\n

German airships had been mounting bombing raids on French cities since the war\u2019s opening days and beginning in 1915, they were flying long-range strikes against England itself<\/a>. Might a specially equipped navy dirigible operating from southern Europe be able to deliver supplies to von Lettow-Vorbeck a hemisphere away? No one had ever flown such a vast distance, but in theory<\/em> it could be done (and so it had to be tried).<\/p>\n

German manufacturer Luftschiffbau Zeppelin\u00a0GmbH<\/a> offered one of its newest machines, the L 59<\/a>, for the mission, which Berlin codenamed China-Sache<\/em> or \u201cChina Show\u201d.<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at Military History Now<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe mission would be a risky one \u2013 no airship had ever flown such a distance.\u201d TO DESCRIBE Germany\u2019s Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck as a thorn in the side of the\u00a0British Empire\u00a0is something of an understatement. Beginning in 1914, the dashing 34-year-old Prussian lieutenant-colonel led a rag-tag band of 3,000 regulars and 10,000 colonial troops…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1286,17,1898,3545],"tags":[4116,4117,3823,4118,4119],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}