In 1915 the previously unthinkable had happened. British civilians had been subject to aerial bombing by German aircraft, in particular by airships – the dreaded Zeppelins. Always approaching under the cover of darkness, these aerial monsters had roamed over British towns and countryside largely unopposed, while Home Defence forces struggled to come to grips with this new form of warfare. In that first full calendar year of the war over 200 men, women and children, had died in air raids, with over 500 injured.
The Admiralty had assumed the mantle of mounting Britain’s aerial defence at the beginning of the war while the Army’s Royal Flying Corps (RFC) supported the British Expeditionary Force in Europe. It was planned as a temporary arrangement, but at the end of 1915 it remained in place, although an end was in sight with the Army preparing to take back responsibility in February 1916. It had been an uneasy role for the Admiralty, a make-do arrangement in which they lacked the weapons and organisation to make a significant impact, but they had made the best of a bad job. In October 1915, under pressure from the top, the Army added some weight to the aerial defence of London in what proved to be the last raid of the year. Even so, one Zeppelin reached central London and dropped a string of bombs across the city.
The effect of these raids on the people very much depended on how close they were to the bombs when they exploded. Given that Zeppelins tended to follow a direct course over a target, it became possible for those on the ground to get a reasonable idea if they were in the line of fire.
For those finding themselves outside the Zeppelin’s path the experience could become a fascinating must-see spectacle, provided you had taken the necessary precautions. Hallie Miles, who lived with her husband Eustace and their staff in a large London flat, was very organised, as she wrote in summer 1915.
I am putting up beds in our downstairs flat which we use as offices, so that if a bomb crashed through the roof of this flat, which is near the top of the building, we should sleep downstairs. The Zeppelin pile of emergency clothes and bags, etc., ready at our bedroom door for the fatal raid (if it comes) has grown bigger! Eustace now has a little pile all of his own by his bedside, including a pair of trousers and overcoat, and I have added a soft little hat to my clothes, to pull down over my hair... I am going to have a ‘dress rehearsal’ to see how quickly we can ‘escape’ and get into our garments.1
Hallie and Eustace Miles followed their routine nightly, as she wrote again two months later.
I still go on making my solemn preparations every night before we go to bed. Eustace now always has a pair of trousers by his bedside ready to jump into if necessary. We call them the ‘Zeppelin trousers’!2
The couple were at home when that last Zeppelin raid of October 1915 struck London.
We, at our flat, were given a timely warning by our porter. It was only a little past 9 p.m., so we were dressed this time. We collected our bags, etc., and the same procession again walked solemnly down the stairs to the basement, to the music of the guns and bombs... It was rather amusing that, as the bombs were further away this time, most of the people collected at the open front door and watched the Zeppelin, and the shrapnel from our guns exploding all round it, but alas, not hitting it. Even I, after depositing our possessions in the basement... crept cautiously upstairs, and peeped, with frightened eyes, out of the open front door and up at the sky. I did not see the Zeppelin, but I saw the shrapnel bursting into flame in the sky, as if a star had suddenly exploded. It was very beautiful, but awful too. The sounds were so ghastly and the knowledge that each thud of a bomb falling to earth carried death and destruction with it added to the horror of it all.3
It was, however, those living in the houses and streets where the bombs fell that faced the full horror of an air raid. Their traumatic experience was one of terror, shock, bewilderment and devastation, as their homes fell around them and loved ones’ helpless bodies were mutilated, burned or torn apart before their eyes.
A study comparing the effects of injuries from high-explosive (HE) bombs with those caused by bullets summarized the findings as follows.
Shell fragments, shrapnel, etc., have no fixed weight or shape. They have lower initial velocity, which is lost more rapidly. They are haphazard in action, often cause multiple injuries, and depend less upon velocity than on the size and shape of the fragments. They have a lower power of penetration and often lodge in the body. They frequently carry clothing and gross dirt into the tissues. Explosive exit wounds are rare. The effect of the explosive is as destructive as the fragmentation.4
When a HE bomb detonates, first there is enormous expansion of gas, variously referred to as an explosive wave or, more commonly, blast. After the initial blast there follows a second wave, a sudden inrush of air. This could manifest itself by window glass blown out into the street and walls falling inwards, while lethal fragments of jagged hot metal flew in all directions, cutting and ripping into soft flesh.
By far the greatest number of casualties resulting from detonation of heavy HE shells and bombs is caused by flying fragments of shell, brick, stones and debris, which are impelled at great velocity and may cause death hundreds of feet from the exploded bomb or shell. A considerable percentage of the casualties are caused by crushing, by burying, and by asphyxiation from the collapse of buildings, entrances to cellars, etc.5
As well as HE bombs, German airships also dropped incendiaries. They came in two designs, a cylindrical-shape used by Navy Zeppelins and a conical version favoured by the Army vessels, but both worked in the same way, utilizing a process developed by a German chemist, Hans Goldschmidt. Incendiary bombs did not explode, they ignited and burned fiercely.
The central core of the bomb consisted of thermite, which burned at extreme heat in the region of 2000° centigrade. Around this core the bomb contained a quantity of benzol (motor fuel) while tarred rope covered the exterior. When an incendiary bomb smashed through the roof of a building an inertia fuse ignited the thermite causing an intense fire, setting alight any combustible material in its proximity. In addition, the benzol would flow from the bomb and ignite other surfaces, with the burning liquid also dripping between floorboards spreading the conflagration throughout the property. The tarred rope helped to keep the bomb burning after the initial chemical reaction had died down. In Britain these were considered further evidence of German schrecklichkeit – frightfulness – as indeed was the whole concept of bombing the civilian population.6 British records estimated that in 1915, German airships dropped bombs on England with a combined weight of 35 tons, although the total was in all probability higher.
Those who experienced the bombing first-hand often made demands for retaliation while others chose to debate the matter in newspapers. In January 1916, The Times published a series of letters, the first by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, under the heading ‘A preventative of air raids’. Sir Arthur argued that as the current defences appeared unable to deal effectively with Zeppelin raiders then perhaps retaliation would make Germany reconsider its approach, and to do that he proposed a great British centre of aviation at Nancy in France.
Without any delay we should establish such an aviation centre, defend it with numbers of the best aircraft guns against the persistent attempts which will be made to destroy it, and announce to the German Government through the American Embassy at Berlin that we can tolerate no more outrages upon our civilian population, and that any further raids will be followed by immediate reprisals.
If such a policy were at once put in force it might act as a preventative – which is better than vengeance. But if it must be vengeance, then the blood is on the head of those who with their eyes open have provoked it... For the sake of our own women and children the time has come when these murders must be stopped.7
Sir Arthur’s views received complete support from another letter writer, M.W. Mitchell, who advocated that Britain take steps immediately.
We can no longer plead ignorance of his intentions or of the approval with which the whole German nation regards such monstrous barbarities. What right have we to expose our own non-combatants to such dangers without making any and every effort to counteract them?8
An officer serving in France with the Royal Field Artillery, however, took exception to this, but not on moral grounds.
Surely it is not asking too much of the inhabitants of London to take their chance of a few dozen bombs at very long intervals without squealing for reprisals which can have no military result. By what right do you in London demand that we in France should drop bombs on anything except the German Army and its communications? Merely to make you a little safer than you are – and God knows the risk to each one of you is not very great.9
Alfred E. Turner joined in the debate, supporting Sir Arthur’s stance, with a jingoistic response.
These raids serve no military purpose; they are the outcome of pure blood lust and venomous hatred of us. The Germans say they are for the purpose of hurting us and frightening us; and so shortening the war; they do hurt us, because through them women and children are murdered; but far from frightening us, they only increase our intense hatred of Germany and steel our hearts to exact punishment to the last jot and tittle.
Another letter writer, Charles Bright, tried to refocus the discussion on matters of defence and suggested a very British response.
But surely what we really have to consider in this matter is the best steps to take to safeguard our arsenals, munition and other factories, docks, &c., against the ravages of Zeppelins.
In view of the wide diversity of opinions, and perhaps lack of adequate action, is it not time that a committee was appointed – independent of any special and possibly conflicting departmental interests – to investigate exhaustively and report on the best means of guarding against seriously destructive air raids?
The question of retaliation resurfaced regularly after major raids in the coming year and although raids into Germany did commence in summer 1916, they were on a strategic, not retaliatory, basis.
In 1915, while German airship crews were gaining experience operating over Britain, other than for attacks on London they rarely ventured far inland, preferring to keep close to the coast. With London being successfully targeted in September and October 1915, there was a confidence, particularly at the top of the Naval Airship Division, that the time had come to penetrate deeper into Britain, to the areas of heavy industry in the Midlands and North of England and up to the Naval dockyards on the Firth of Forth in Scotland. New ‘p-class’ Zeppelins were being delivered, as were an upgrade, the ‘q-class’, while designs for a new type, the ‘r-class’ were coming off the drawing board. These would be able to fly higher, faster and carry a greater bombload than those that had gone before and Peter Strasser, commander of Germany’s Naval Airship Division, firmly believed they would give him a decisive edge in the coming campaign.
But there was frustration too for Strasser. Zeppelins restricted their raiding to a limited period around the new moon, the eight days either side offering the darkest skies each month, which provided valuable protection for the Zeppelins. But within this limited window of opportunity the weather had to be right too – the increased likelihood of encountering snow, ice and heavy rain during the winter months further restricted options for attack. Despite Strasser’s desire to keep the pressure on Britain, after that raid in October 1915, the weather prevented any further attacks that year, or in the opening weeks of the next. Throughout the war new, improved Zeppelin designs appeared but all needed the weather and the phase of the moon to be in their favour for a successful mission. In January 1915, at the time of the first Zeppelin raid on Britain, the Navy operated six Zeppelins but a year later, in mid-January 1916, they had 12 Zeppelins and one Schütte-Lanz in service, although one, Zeppelin L 6, was reserved for training purposes. The Army’s strength had grown too in the same period, from six Zeppelins and a Schütte-Lanz to ten and one respectively, although four of their Zeppelins were serving on the Eastern Front.
As the year turned from 1915 to 1916, responsibility for aerial defence still lay with the Admiralty but, with the knowledge that it would soon pass to the War Office, special arrangements made by them to assist the Admiralty in defending London during the last Zeppelin raid in October 1915 were extended. By the end of December there were ten RFC airfields encircling London. At each airfield two night-flying trained pilots and a pair of BE2c aircraft stood by waiting to be called into action. However co-ordination remained haphazard with the ten airfields occupied by four separate squadrons. No.10 Reserve Aeroplane Squadron (RAS) flew from Joyce Green and Farningham, No.17 RAS from Chingford, Croydon, Hainault Farm, Hendon, Sutton’s Farm and Wimbledon Common (Chingford and Hendon were shared with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS)), while No.11 RAS operated from Northolt. No.24 squadron at Hounslow took on Home Defence duties while awaiting transfer to France. Even so, there was little attempt to provide an effective aerial defence away from London and the aircraft that did defend Britain lacked effective weapons with which to seek and destroy enemy airships.
As 1916 dawned both sides waited for the next move. The new moon in January rose on the fifth but bad weather prevented the Zeppelins emerging from winter hibernation. The next moon would rise on 3 February so Strasser looked to that and hoped for a change in the weather. The phase of the moon, however, had far less impact on the German aeroplanes and seaplanes based in Belgium, who aimed their hit-and-run raids on Kent coastal towns. On the night of 22/23 January 1916, it was they who dropped the first bombs of the year on England.
A single Friedrichshafen FF 33b floatplane of Seeflieger Abteilung 1 (SFA 1) took off from Zeebrugge with the town of Dover as its target. It was the first time an aeroplane had attacked at night and over Dover a brilliant moon shone down on the town. Unseen on his approach, shortly before 1.00am the pilot announced his presence by dropping three HE bombs close to a memorial erected by the 60th Rifles to commemorate their participation in the Indian Mutiny. It stood just a few yards from the seafront at the junction of Waterloo Crescent, Cambridge Road and Camden Crescent.10 Windows shattered in houses in each of the roads, doors were blown in, brick coping tumbled into the streets, bomb fragments marked walls and one chipped out a fist-sized chunk from the Rifles monument. About five seconds later a bomb smashed through the roof of a ‘common lodging house’ upstairs at the Red Lion public house on the corner of St. James’s Street where it joined St. James’s Lane.
The bomb exploded in a room where four men were sleeping, killing 43-year-old barman Harry Sladden When a doctor arrived he found Sladden lying on a bed covered with debris. Both his femur and tibia in the right leg were broken but the critical injury came from a bomb fragment that sliced open his stomach from where his intestines protruded. The other three men in the room all suffered injuries but survived. Just a couple of seconds more and another bomb struck a malting at the Phoenix Brewery on Dolphin Lane. After crashing through the roof tiles, a fire started in the rafters but workers at the brewery, supported by a number of police officers who rushed to help, dealt with the flames, the only loss being a quantity of barley damaged by the water used to extinguish the fire.
The bombs continued to fall in rapid succession. The next landed in the roadway in Russell Street. It dug a hole in the road outside the gas company’s offices, landing just beyond a large gasometer, smashing more windows and scarring the walls of the building. Moments later another struck a wall between Castle Street and St James’s Street at the back of 10 Golden Cross Cottages. Fragments of the bomb flew into the house where they injured three children. Another fragment shot through an upper floor window at 2 Golden Cross Place, injuring 71-year-old Julia Philpott as she lay in bed. In Victoria Park a bomb exploded in soft earth behind a retaining wall close to the junction of Castle Hill and Laureston Place before the final bomb burst in the garden of 9 Victoria Park where the blast broke a number of windows.
Although the damage appeared relatively light, the raid caused consternation down by the harbour where Lieutenant Commander Stanley W. Coxon, RNVR, was on duty.
At the time I was engaged decoding a cipher telegram. Suddenly, in the stillness of the night, there occurred what I, on the spur of the moment, concluded was a short and sharp bombardment by an enemy submarine which had entered the harbour and was engaging our ships. We all rushed out, the orderly, the operator and myself, and practically before we were out it was over and there was silence again. What was it? Then in the town there arose a big sheet of flame from a burning house, and I knew at once that it must have been an enemy aircraft dropping bombs. Only one remark was made, and it was by Witt... and to the point: ‘Oh, be God! it’s the brewery.’ And the brewery it was.11
Completely taken unawares by the raid, no aircraft took off in response and no guns opened fire. When daylight arrived on Sunday morning, great crowds flocked into the town to see the damage.
Those same people were still milling about when two German seaplanes, a Friedrichshafen FF 33b and a Hansa-Brandenburg NW, approached the town from the west in the middle of the day. Having crossed the coast unobserved between Folkestone and Dover, they appeared over the town at 12.52pm. The raiders attracted immediate fire from the Dover anti-aircraft guns and from ships moored in the harbour as both passed out to sea. One circled around and appeared over the town again at 1.10pm, greeted once more by the guns.
Lieutenant Commander Coxon had just arrived for duty on the pier.
No sooner was I on the spot than they dropped a bomb within about fifty yards of me, fortunately a ‘dud’, and in the water. A second one fell immediately after, just short of a hospital ship lying alongside... I then ascended our look-out platform and had a beautiful view of the attack and the defence. From one-pounder pom-poms up to three-inch and even seven-inch, both from the ships and the forts, they were all blazing away for all they were worth...
During the raid I noticed the Chief Officer of the [Hospital Ship] Dieppe, one Mahoney by name, busily engaged lowering and manning one of his lifeboats, and when the show was all over I called him up and inquired what the brain wave was, and whether if we had brought a Hun down it was his intention to take his boat to rescue the occupants? His reply was quite to my liking: ‘No, divil a bit, sir,’ he said. ‘I was just making ready, in case I saw any of them floating around, to go out and slit their bloody gullets!’12
There is no doubt that the barrage fired by the Dover anti-aircraft guns was an intense one. The post-engagement report states that the 6-pdr at Drop Redoubt fired 71 rounds, the three 1-pdrs at Dover Castle 381 rounds, the 1-pdr at Langdon Battery another 118 and that battery’s 3-inch, 20 cwt gun 30 rounds. It appears, however, that all fell short of the target.
While that seaplane passed over Dover for a second time, the other re-crossed the coast near Folkestone to make an attack on the RNAS base at Capel-le-Ferne, which housed small, non-rigid airships used for anti-submarine patrols. At 1.23pm the raider dropped five bombs but all missed the airship sheds. Four aircraft took off from RFC Dover, joined by an RNAS FBA flying boat, which unfortunately attracted fire from the anti-aircraft gunners after it became airborne at 1.30pm, although no damage was done and the raiders escaped.
Back in London, Hallie Miles welcomed the January full moon as she would the return of a trusted friend and protector. For the previous few weeks, memories of the autumn 1915 Zeppelin raids had kept her and her husband at home in the evenings but Londoners had learnt by experience that Zeppelins favoured the darker nights of the new moon.
It will be the first time that I have had courage to go out in the evening since the cruel raids. But as there is a moon I am venturing. I don’t think any of us loved the moon as we do now. She seems like a protecting angel shining down upon us from the sky; when she disappears, the horrible dangers seem to begin again.13
Hallie, like many others, made the most of the full moon as she knew it would not be long before the dark nights returned, bringing with them a mood of apprehension. On 31 January, eight days after the raid on Dover and Capel-le-Ferne, Hallie Miles became aware of rumours of an imminent Zeppelin raid. When she got back to her London flat the porter added more fuel to the fire with wild tales of Zeppelins having reached Southend and heading for London.
So we gathered up the precious bags and started off to the basement. I tried to get our old servants to come, but they said it would be time enough when the guns began to thunder forth; so we left them to their fate...
Oh! the grim horror of it all, and the chilly feeling on entering the basement, not knowing what was in store for us. I lit the little lamp and got all our warm rugs and blankets, and we sat with them spread on our laps as if we were in a railway carriage... We sat shivering and expectant; every door that shut with a bang we thought was a bomb. We were down there an hour, and then the news was brought us that the Zeppelins had been turned back, and we might go upstairs again. How gladly we all left our ‘dug-outs’ and how beautiful our flat looked when we entered it again! The old servants were gloating with triumph that they had stayed upstairs by the warm fire, whilst we were shivering below. The wicked Zeppelins wended their way to the Midlands instead, and did frightful havoc there.14
While Hallie Miles could breathe a sigh of relief that London had been spared, the night of ‘frightful havoc’ experienced by those in the Midlands was a result of the largest raid of the war so far. After a three-month hiatus, the Zeppelin terror had returned, and with nine Zeppelins roaming at will over the country, that terror was greater and more deadly than ever before.