The Last Flight
of the L48

Windsock Datafile Special

Albatros Productions

Reviewed by Rob Baumgartner

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On the 17th of June 1917, a German Zeppelin fell burning to earth.

It was attacked by British Home defense aircraft and crashed in a small Suffolk village. The residents witnessed the destruction of L48, an incident in which only three of its crew members survive.

Eighty nine years after the event, the crash site was visited by aviation archaeologists and recorded by the BBC2 Timewatch film crew. Thanks to this and other ongoing research, the story of L48 can be expanded and this has resulted in the latest addition to the “Datafile Special” series.

Ray Rimell has covered this subject before in his long out of print book “Zeppelin!” which was published in 1984. Some of that narrative appears here but in this case it is greatly expanded and has a number of errors corrected.

This A4 size publication contains 24 pages within its covers, all on good quality stock.

The text keeps the reader highly entertained with a good mixture of storyline and personal accounts from those of both sides that witnessed or participated in the events.

A combination of over 60 photographs and colour plates are found in this book. They are well chosen for their subject matter and the reproduction of the images is as good as one can expect.

Three of the British aircraft involved on that fateful day have been reproduced as colour profiles and the author has done a lovely job of these. Understandably a couple of plates are provisional but are none the less representative of the machines flown.

Martin Digmayer contributes with a single side view of L48, this being done to 1:720. The gondolas are given the same perspective but are drawn in the larger 1/96 scale.

This publication presents the reader with a full and up to date account of the day that L48 met its demise.

It’s amazing how much information can be gathered concerning this event and the list of footnotes and sources is testimony to the thoroughness of the research.

The engaging way in which the author presents the data will surely draw more followers to the fascinating subject of Zeppelins.

Highly Recommended

Thanks to Albatros Productions for the review sample

Review Copyright © 2006 by Rob Baumgartner
This Page Created on 29 November, 2006
Last updated 24 December, 2007

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