LTA Japan

History

At the end of World War One Japan was awarded the German Navy's L37 (LZ75) which was a "Super Zeppelin" of the L30 or "R" class and the first ship assembled at the Zeppelin Company's satellite facility located at Berlin-Staaken.

As the first new ship from Staaken, L37 was overdue and overweight and was the ONLY L30-class ship that was never sent to raid England. Following a brief stint in North Sea "Front" service, L37 was transferred to the Baltic (along with L30) and flew in several operations in this secondary theatre. It never received the twin-engine rear gondola modification and finished its career being laid up at Seddin-bei-Stolp in late 1917 after about one year of flying.

Japan had no real interest in the ship and had her broken up in the summer of 1920, taking posession of the gas valves, instruments, a few of the engines and some other parts that they deemed important enough to study.

The large 787 foot hangar at Juterbog, near Berlin, was dismantled and erected at the Japanese Naval Air Station at Kisamagaura, near Tokyo, where it housed the LZ127 Graf Zeppelin on her 1929 flight around the world.

For a time, Japan had a determination to develop a Naval Airship Service, one of the more notable pilots being Takijuro Onishi who was trained in England after World War One and who went on to conceive the idea and tactics for the kamakaze planes of World War II. He committed sepuku on announcement of the Japanese surrender.

[email protected] 24 Feb 2003

LCdr. Onishi, who later originated the "Divine Wind" suicide plane scheme of World War Two, took LTA training with USN personnel at Howden in 1920 and the Japanese Naval observer aboard the GRAF ZEPPELIN's 1929 "world flight" LCdr. Fuiyoshi  told Rosendahl during the flight of having one ship lose control, the crew jumped out and it hit a cliff and exploded.  (Years later Rosendahl would learn that Fuiyoshi had been involved in the Pearl Harbor planning phase and had survived the war and, through a Japanese gardner/landscaper living in the Toms River, NJ area was able to contact his old friend and draw conclusions for a Pearl Harbor book Rosendahl wrote but that ultimately no publisher would touch...Title was apparently "SNAFU" or some sort and it was apparently intended to give FDR and the State Department a good pasting, while voiciferously lamenting the lack of rigid airships at Pearl Harbor to prevent the attack.)

Most Japanese airships of the immediate WW1/postwar period were British or Italian designs, while the fate of the Kasumigaura shed (originally German, located at Juterbog near Berlin) is something I've never been able to nail down (though I doubt it survived much into World War II.)

JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE JAPANESE COPYING EVERYTHING