Date:	Sunday 1 December 1907
Time:	morning
Type:	Lebaudy Frères Patrie Airship
Owner/operator:	French Army
Registration:	Unregistered
MSN:	N/K
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 0
Other fatalities:	0
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed
Location:	Atlantic Ocean, off Hebrides, Scotland -   United Kingdom
Phase:	En route
Nature:	Military
Departure airport:	Les Souhesmes-Rampont, Meuse department in Grand Est in north-eastern France
Destination airport:	Atlantic Ocean off Hebrides, Scoltand

Narrative:
The Lebaudy Patrie was a semi-rigid airship built for the French army in Moisson, France, by sugar producers Lebaudy Frères. Designed by Henri Julliot, Lebaudy's chief engineer, the Patrie was completed and first flew on 16 November 1906 and handed over to the French army the following month. The Patrie bears the distinction of being the first airship built specifically for military service.

In 1907, from her base at Chalais-Meudon near Paris, a successful series of military manoeuvres was conducted with the airship by the military command, which included a visit by France's President of the Council Georges Clemenceau. Following the successful completion of these operations, in November 1907 the Patrie was transferred under her own power to her operational base at Verdun, near the German border.

While based at Verdun, the Patrie was stranded on Friday, 29 November 1907, at nearby Souhesmes due to a mechanical problem caused by the clothing of one of the mechanics becoming caught in the distributor drive gear. On-the-spot repairs were made but the lack of a spare magneto on board meant that the motor could not be used for the return flight. The decision was made not to drag the airship back to Verdun but to tether her overnight in the open at Souhesmes.

During that night, a storm blew up and approximately 200 soldiers were assigned to the task of restraining the airship in the gale-force winds. On Saturday morning, the wind was strong enough to pull some of the iron pickets anchoring the airship out of the ground so that she swung broadside to the wind, causing her to tip on her side, which in turn caused sacks of ballast to be released. Even then the Patrie could have been saved; had the release cord been attached to the gas-bag, a single tug on the cord would have been enough to release the hydrogen and save the ship. An oversight led to this not being done. Thus, the troops were unable to keep control of her, and could not continue to hold her down in the storm.

Relieved of her ballast of 750 kilograms (1,650 lb) and without a crew, she shot up to a great height (calculated by the constructor to have been some 2,000 metres (6,600 ft)), and was carried away in a north-westerly direction. Two days later there was still no news. In 2007, the French newspaper Journal l'Alsace / Le Pays reprinted a news item from 5 December 1907, which spoke of the "anxiety" caused in Paris by this "disaster". It was feared that the Patrie could have risen into an eastward air current, crossed the nearby Franco-German border and fallen into "Prussian" hands, so news reports of her whereabouts were eagerly awaited:

"All that I can say to you is that, knowing how the hermetic valves work, as a consequence of the enormous pressure which they maintain, I am convinced that the airship will only deflate bit by bit, very slowly. She could therefore float about for a relatively long time. In any case, I consider that she is lost and that there is now no longer any hope of recovering her".

Finally, reported sightings of the runaway airship filtered back to France and spread around Europe and the United States. As was printed in The New York Times the following day, the Patrie had been observed on the morning of Sunday, 1 December 1907, over Cardigan (Wales). On the afternoon of the same day, she made landfall at Ballysallagh, near Holywood, County Down in northern Ireland, where a propeller and bevel gear assembly were broken off. With the loss of this weight the Patrie once more ascended and was spotted by a Lloyd's signal station at Torr Head on the Antrim coast. The next sighting came soon after, over islands in St. Patrick's Channel, between Ireland and Scotland.

The Lebaudy Frères Patrie Airship continued to drift northwards, where the last reported sighting of the dirigible was by Captain Buchanan of the steamship 'Olivine' at latitude 58°N 16 W, near the Hebrides, after which she was never seen again. Therefore, the airship was consider to be "mising, presumed destroyed"

It should be made clear that no lives were lost, as the Lebaudy Frères Patrie Airship had no one on board when it broke free of its moorings

1. New York Times 2 December 1907
2. Daily Mail, several editions 2 to 4 December 1907
3. https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?230947
4. https://www.hanesabergwaun.org.uk/topics/military/world-war-i/la-patrie-airship-llongawyr
5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrie_(airship)
6. Popular Mechanics, Chicago, Illinois March 1908 pp.175–176.
7. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_military_aircraft_before_1925
8. https://www.hanesabergwaun.org.uk/topics/military/world-war-i/la-patrie-airship-llongawyr
9. https://airminded.org/2012/04/19/the-last-flight-of-the-patrie/
10. https://www.liquisearch.com/lebaudy_patrie
11. https://www.zeppelinhistory.com/zeppelin-facts/airship-accidents/
12. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Patrie

Lebaudy Patrie shown leaving its hanger in Verdun, France on 29 November 1907. The French dirigible/airship Patrie", (first flight 16 November 1906, last flight 30 November 1907) Propeller and gear assembly knocked off Patrie during temporary landfall in Ballysallagh, Ireland on 1 December 1907

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
20-Dec-2024 08:25	Dr. John Smith	Added