William Le Queux 
Zeppelin Destroyer: Being Some Chapters of Secret History 

It is 1915 and England is under attack by German Zeppelins who are bombing the country with impunity. Claude Munro, his friend Teddy Ashton and Munro’s girl, Roseye Lethmere are all intrepid flyers. They are engaged upon a series of inventions, designed to halt the Zeppelin air superiority. They finally manage to invent a means of transmitting an electrical impulse that will blast the airships out of the sky. After several abortive attempts by German secret agents to sabotage this invention and to kill Claude, they kidnap Roseye and subject her to various unspecified tortures.