Zeppelin Spy Basket Development and Use
Captain Ernst A. Lehmann, the German airship captain, described in his book The Zeppelins how he and Baron Gemmingen, Count Zeppelin's nephew, had developed the device. To test the prototype he blindfolded the helmsman of the airship and allowed himself to be lowered by a winch from the bombroom in a modified cask, equipped with a telephone. Hanging some 500 feet (150 m) below the airship using a compass he could tell the helmsman which bearing to take and effectively drive the airship. He later recounted how, while returning from the aborted raid on London in March 1916 in the Z 12, Baron Gemmingen insisted on being the first to use it on their secondary target, Calais. The basket was equipped with a wicker chair, chart table, electric lamp, compass, telephone, and lightning conductor. With the Zeppelin sometimes within, sometimes above the clouds and unable to see the ground, Gemmingen in the hanging basket would relay orders on navigation and when and which bombs to drop. The Calais defenders could hear the engines but their searchlights and artillery fire did not reach the airship.
LZ26's basket was lowered from the airship on a specially constructed tether 1000 metres long; other airships may have used one approximately 750 metres long. The tether was high grade steel with a brass core insulated with rubber to act as the telephone cable.
Despite Gemmingen reporting a feeling of loneliness while being lowered and losing sight of the airship, crewmen would nevertheless volunteer for this duty because it was the one place they could smoke.
Its use is dramatized in the 1930 film Hell's Angels.
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