The super-Zeppelin "L 71," surrendered by Germany under the Peace Treaty, duly arrived at Pulham, Norfolk, and was berthed in the shed which accommodated the "R 34" after her epoch-making Transatlantic cruise.
This is not the first visit of the "Z, 71" to this district. The last occasion was in very different circumstances, during the dark days of the war. Then the vessel came as a terrible visitant, - dropping devastating bombs all around the city of Norwich.
Efforts had been made to obliterate all outward marks to denote that the airship was the "L 71." The design of an Iron Cross on the stern of the vessel had been blackened over, but so imperfectly that it, was visible to a keen observer. Thus camouflaged, the former pride of the German air' war service reached Putham in the early hours of the morning.
The landing party of some 300 soldiers were not at the flying ground at the time of the airship's arrival, and so the "L 71"—the first German Zeppelin to be handed over to the British—delayed her descent, and, incidentally, gave thousands of people an opportunity of seeing her without being haunted with the fear of destruction. For two hours or more she maneuvred over the district, and then made for Norwich, which she reached shortly after nine o'clock, and where the drone of her engines caused large crowds to gaze skywards with curiosity. For nearly an hour the airship remained almost stationary over the city. Even on the return to Pulham she did not immediately descend, but continued to beat over the country, presenting a superb picture in her coat of black.
Finally, she gracefully settled down on' British soil, and was berthed about one o'clock in the afternoon, though she had reached Pulham seven or eight hours earlier New Fearores rx "Rs0."
As the design of the airship Rso recently launched at Barrow, was only in the preliminary stages' when full particulars of the L33 and the other German vessels were available, Vickers (Ld.), the builders, had the advantage of being able embody such details of the German ships as appeared to be of real value, and superior to their own practice. Rs0 was designed especially for use for long patrol cruises over the sea, and particularly to obtain the greatest endurance and speed possible. By means of improvements in general construetion, the elimination of unnecessary head resistance, and cutting down weight by refinements in detail design, the builders have produced in R80 a ship of only 1,250,000 cubic feet capacity that will give a performance in speed and endurance
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.