German WW1 Zeppelin Paratroopers

Sure, but I wanted to make the point, that at least in the second half of the war the Germans could have build zeps with the necessary capacity if they saw the need. And under the right circumstances a thousand men (let´s say ten airships) dropped at the right place might can make a great difference.

No, this is still not happening. The OTL Zepp design was limited to the size of the building sheds they were housed in. The design was also prone to excessive flexing of the metal fuselage. This means that they can't expand their present design to gain additional lift capacity without making a larger, slower and extremely vulnerable target.
 
As soon as they crossed no man's land they would be lit up by searchlights and hundreds of AA guns. Five to fifteen minutes later any aircraft that mounted a machine gun would be scrambled.

In short, its an interesting idea but not very practical.

Who said they'd only be used on the Western Front? There are plenty of targets on other fronts.

Secondly, even if we choose a target on the Western Front we don't have to take the direct approach; fly in over Switzerland or the North Sea. And we don't strike targets close to the front; they'll be too well defended.

Pick bridges or factories or whatever, all well back from the front, so no large numbers of troops handy to defend them, and few other defenses as well.

It won't really directly affect the outcome of the war, but it will force the defenders to spread out their forces to cover more possible targets, thus diverting troops and resources from the front.
 

sharlin

Banned
Sending heavily loaded, probably dangerious overloaded zepplins over the sea or mountains would be bloody dangerious requiring perfectly clear weather i'd say.
 
No, this is still not happening. The OTL Zepp design was limited to the size of the building sheds they were housed in. The design was also prone to excessive flexing of the metal fuselage. This means that they can't expand their present design to gain additional lift capacity without making a larger, slower and extremely vulnerable target.
But as I pointed out above they did built them with enough payload to carry a company iotl: See L 59 (LZ104) and L 57.
 
The main problem would be convincing the other branches of the German military to give up their share of zeppelins for the formation of an airborne unit. Zeppelins more than earned their keep by performing scouting duties for the Kriegsmarine, and it wouldn't do to forget that the bombing raids over southern England and northern France had a pretty bad rate of attrition in terms of zeppelins shot down.

Also, WWI-era parachutes were notoriously fickle, and it'd be pretty bad for morale if they forced terrified infantrymen to jump out of a low flying airship with maybe only a couple hundred meters of altitude in which to slow their fall.
 
Okay. most of you say this is implausible, but historyfool does have a point. who expects zeppelins to drop troops over the front lines?
no one at first. might make a good surprise attack in conjunction with an offensive. ONCE!
 
No it wouldn't. If you're employing a frontline zeppelin drop on the Western Front, these hypothetical German paratroopers will be landing in a landscape of soft, sinking mud pockmarked by flooded shell craters and barbed wire.

It's very likely that a good number of the paratroopers would drown in the veritable sea of mud, or that their chutes get snagged on barbed wire and the like. Then there's the debacle of regrouping on the ground, which again will be made difficult by barbed wire and the difficult terrain. Any gear that likewise is dropped with the troops may also sink in the mud if they aren't recovered quickly enough.

Finally, if you drop these airborne troops onto enemy positions, that precludes you from bombarding the enemy lines with artillery, which was a prerequisite for any offensive IOTL.
 
Who said they'd only be used on the Western Front? There are plenty of targets on other fronts
Granted.
Pick bridges or factories or whatever, all well back from the front, so no large numbers of troops handy to defend them, and few other defenses as well.
Which means a long, slow trip over enemy territory in what was not, after all, a stealthy craft. Six engines apiece by 1916, apparently. It's hard to see a successful outcome.
 
There's not much infrastructure in the African colonies for shuttling troops back and forth between territories. The LZ104 gambit was designed as a one way trip, as there weren't the necessary facilities for housing the zeppelin or refueling it for the voyage back to the European continent.

Ideally, the European river gunboat flotillas would be sufficient for handling the movement of troops and supplies.
 

Flubber

Banned
maybe they could play a useful role in moving troops around isolated parts of african colonies where there are fewer forces anyway?


You just don't "park" a zeppelin like a pickup truck while you load/unload it, some infrastructure is required.

This is from my copy of "The Golden Age of the great passenger airships, Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg" by Dick and Robinson describing how the Graf was handled. Early zeps were handled much the same way:

Yaw lines dropped from the ship's nose were drawn out to port and starboard by thirty men each, while twenty more on each side pulled the ship down with spider lines (called that because twenty short lines radiated like the legs of a spider from a block). When the airship reached the ground, fifty men held the control car rails and twenty held those of the aft car. With thirty men in reserve, the ground crew totaled two hundred men. The ground crew would then walk the Graf Zeppelin to a short, or ‘stub’, mast, to which the nose of the airship would be attached.

Googling the book turned up a Wikipage that should add a nice bit of reality to the "discussion" here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooring_mast

Take a long look at the various mooring mast pictures and then imagine one of them on a submarine as one poster in another zep actually seriously suggested.
 
Zeppelins were quite capable of bombing London (and other parts of Britain) before effective counter-measures were created. To say that in and of itself a zeppelin can't get in, do this, and get out is not logical. Assuming that the bombs dropped on London had some noticeable weight, and that the supplies a zeppelin was trying to get to Africa also did, then weight/lift wise there seems no reason why a body of paratroops could not have been carried by a zeppelin.

The main question is what to do with them? If the front was open and you were advancing then quite possibly making a drop in support of this makes sense. Similarly, if you are carrying out an amphibious landing.

But for a static front, you would be dropping a nuisance behind enemy lines, one that would be most effective if dressed as civilians and trying to infiltrate (tho the penalty for capture is death).

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
You just don't "park" a zeppelin like a pickup truck while you load/unload it, some infrastructure is required.

This is from my copy of "The Golden Age of the great passenger airships, Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg" by Dick and Robinson describing how the Graf was handled. Early zeps were handled much the same way:

Yaw lines dropped from the ship's nose were drawn out to port and starboard by thirty men each, while twenty more on each side pulled the ship down with spider lines (called that because twenty short lines radiated like the legs of a spider from a block). When the airship reached the ground, fifty men held the control car rails and twenty held those of the aft car. With thirty men in reserve, the ground crew totaled two hundred men. The ground crew would then walk the Graf Zeppelin to a short, or ‘stub’, mast, to which the nose of the airship would be attached.

Googling the book turned up a Wikipage that should add a nice bit of reality to the "discussion" here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooring_mast

Take a long look at the various mooring mast pictures and then imagine one of them on a submarine as one poster in another zep actually seriously suggested.

While good points, I think you over-egg it. Look at the composite video of the Graf Zeppelin on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVP2pZX2yGo

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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