“On 8 September 1915, L 13, commanded by Heinrich Mathy, was the first Zeppelin to bomb central London, setting fire to textile warehouses to the north of St Paul’s Cathedral and causing over half a million pounds worth of damage, around one sixth of all material damage caused by the bombing of Britain during the war.”

I have long been fascinated by airships—in my days as a cub reporter, I even got to ride in the Goodyear Blimp!—and for my latest box diorama, I decided to depict the gondola of one of the German dirigibles over London, preferably early in the war, when Britain had not perfected its anti-aircraft defenses, and its fighters could not yet reach zeppelin-cruising heights; this way, I could illuminate the gondola without anyone raising the question, “Wouldn’t they have turned out the lights to help avoid attack?” The L 13’s raid was the natural choice, and I could show the very recognizable St. Paul’s below the ship to make clear it was flying over London. But the research certainly proved a challenge!

Along with pictures collected by my pals and fellow modelers, including Michael Scarborough, Per Olav Lund, Mark Matz, and Bart Muller, I got most of what I needed from the fantastic books by WWI aviation expert Ray Rimmel (who was also kind enough to send me a diagram of the L class zeppelins from one of his titles no longer in print), and the diagram below (which, Ray pointed out, is not entirely accurate, but is somewhat helpful nonetheless). There’s a most unlikely “steampunk”/Jules Verne look to these machines, but that’s fact, not fantasy, and visible even in the few existing photos of the real interiors, most of them captured after the zeppelins were downed later in the war.

I’ve done some scratchbuilding of vehicles in the past, and lots of scenery, of course, but this was by far my most ambitious piece of ordnance. I’d scaled out the size based on Ray’s diagram, and went just a foot or two (in real size) smaller, so the beast wouldn’t make my box too big. (Because the size of the gondola was set, and I wanted to show all of it, the dimensions were set by the vehicle, unlike the usual process in my mock-ups.) A discarded hull from a Japanese amphibious tank was just about the right size, and provided a useful starting point for all of the white Evergreen and Plastruct styrene sheets and strips to come.

I obviously couldn’t show the entire zeppelin above the gondola (and certainly didn’t want to!), but I needed to give a sense of the massive structure and airbag above, which was accomplished with a balsa-foam base covered in white styrene.

Airbag in place, and gondola exterior completed (leaving the windows and roof removable), it was time to move on to detailing the interior, testing the fit of the clear windows (the most troublesome task by far), and converting the rather sizable crew. My research indicated that zeppelin crews (which could number up to 18 manning the control gondola, the rear gondola, and the machine gun posts atop the airbag) dressed much like Gotha bomber crews later in the war, with a very bulky lined jumpsuits that helped ward off the cold temperatures. The last photo below shows me playing with angles of the zeppelin over the 3D-printed St. Paul’s from my pal and this site’s co-editor Barry Biediger.

The rest of my “London” is comprised of a lot of small plastic bits of varying size surrounding the print of St. Paul’s, based on overhead maps of the city in that period.

Wiring the gondola for the three overhead lights and map table light. Three of the suspension posts got long bolts glued in, so they could be fed through the balsa-foam and plastic “air bag” and secured on top. The third brought my wiring to the top of the scene.

The ambient blue “night” lights were mounted on the reveal, and as with the warm white gondola lighting controlled by dimmers at the back of the box. You can see my wiring in the shots below.

Finally, another shot of the finished diorama, and the frame and exterior of the box. This was a fun project, once again made all the more fulfilling by the contributions of friends, so thanks, all of you!