In October 1915 Peter Strasser, commander of the Naval Airship Division, had hoped to launch his Zeppelins against Liverpool but bad weather prevented bringing the plan to fruition. The city, however, remained a tempting target, acting as a major port for American goods transported across the Atlantic into Britain. An effective raid here on the west coast would send a clear message to Britain, that no part of the country was safe from attack by Germany’s seemingly untouchable raiders.
At the beginning of 1916, Vizeadmiral Reinhard Scheer, the newly appointed commander of Germany’s High Seas Fleet, gave approval for a raid targeting ‘England Middle’, an area including Liverpool within its boundaries. On 31 January the moon cycle was right and the weather conditions appeared good. The attack was on and orders quickly followed: ‘Attack England middle or south, if at all possible Liverpool.’1 From bases at Nordholz, Hage and Tondern, nine Zeppelins prepared for action. Hydrogen, petrol, oil, water ballast was all checked, engines tested and each loaded bombs weighing about two tons (2,120kgs), the exact combination of HE and incendiary bombs selected by their commanders. Around lunchtime all was ready and the airships took to the skies. Alert listeners at the British wireless stations on the east coast picked up the ‘H.V.B’ signals as the Zeppelins departed, confirming that a raid on England was under way.2 Keen as ever to take part, Peter Strasser assigned himself to L 11. In previous raids in which he had taken part, mechanical failures or bad weather had often prevented his chosen Zeppelin from completing its mission; privately many of the men considered him a ‘Jonah’. This time, for L 11, it was to be no different.
Contrary to the promising weather forecast, the conditions encountered over the North Sea were very different. On board L 11, Oberleutnant-zur-See Freiherr Treusch von Buttlar Brandenfels (von Buttlar), like all the others, struggled through thick fog, rain clouds and snow, which caused ice to form on the airship’s outer covering – the envelope. L 11 accumulated about 2 tons of excess weight, preventing her from climbing above 6,700 feet.3 With navigation difficult many commanders called for wireless bearings to determine their position over Britain, but the narrow angle of triangulation from the transmitting stations meant the returned locations were generally unreliable. When the raiders returned and filed their reports they claimed successful attacks on Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Goole, Yarmouth and Immingham.4 In fact not one of these places was bombed.
British observers reported L 11 over The Wash and crossing the Lincolnshire coast near Sutton Bridge at about 7.10pm. Although now clear of the snow and rain, mist and fog continued to hinder progress as von Buttlar and Strasser peered blindly into the gloom searching for a hint of a landmark. Eventually they calculated that they had reached the west coast but as they could see nothing below Strasser authorised L 11 to return, taking the full bomb load with them. British trackers surmised that the furthest west attained by L 11 was just to the east of Macclesfield, over the lonely expanses of the Peak District, some 40 miles short of Liverpool.
L 11, however, was not the only raider to have little to show for her night’s work.
Kapitänleutnant Herbert Ehrlich had a miserable crossing in L 17, his battle against the weather compounded by engine problems. On reaching England he considered it unwise to undertake the long journey to the west coast and sought closer targets. He believed he was near the River Humber but thick cloud obscured the ground. When a searchlight tried to break through and a diffused glow softly illuminated the gloom below, Ehrlich concluded he was over the industrial area of Immingham on the Humber’s south bank and prepared to drop his bombs. Ehrlich, however, was wrong.5
L 17 came inland at about 6.40pm, west of Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast, about 65 miles south-east of the Humber. The searchlight that lit the clouds was operating from RNAS Holt, an air station between the market town of Holt and the sea. Reacting to the light, Ehrlich dropped 20 HE bombs. Ten fell about 200 yards from the RNAS station, the others further away. A newspaper summed up the futility of the raid: ‘Most of the bombs fell into a ploughed field and no one was injured. Several sheep were maimed, and a number of birds, most of them sparrows, were killed.’6 Moments later five more HE bombs and an incendiary dropped near Bayfield Lodge Farm, where presumably lights were showing, wrecking a couple of outbuildings, but although the occupiers were deeply shocked, no one was hurt. Ehrlich then released 14 incendiary bombs over Bayfield Hall but all missed the target before a final bomb smashed a few windows at the village of Letheringsett. From there Ehrlich headed across Norfolk, back to the coast and out to sea near Great Yarmouth. Four Zeppelins had set out on the raid from Nordholz; L 17 was the first to return.
From Hage, about 55 miles west of Nordholz, three Zeppelins were participating in the raid. The first of these to return home was L 16, commanded by Oberleutnant-zur-See Werner Peterson.
Peterson’s North Sea crossing was similar to Ehrlich’s, including engine problems; he also abandoned the mission and switched to local targets. He recognised he had crossed the coastline of north Norfolk so decided make an attack on Great Yarmouth but, with cloud and fog limiting visibility, he believed he was much further east than he was. Flying south he anticipated reaching the coastal town, whereas when he dropped his first two bombs at Swaffham he was about 45 miles inland. A HE bomb landed near the police station but failed to detonate and an incendiary ignited harmlessly in a field holding horses at a camp of the 2/1st Nottinghamshire Yeomanry (Sherwood Rangers).7 Peterson continued on his course, believing he unleashed the rest of his bombs on Great Yarmouth. According to reports in the German press, ‘a factory and various industrial areas were bombed, good effects being observed’.8 This, however, was wrong. After leaving Swaffham, Peterson continued south until he reached a point close to the border between Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and unloaded 62 bombs (47 HE and 15 incendiaries) near Mildenhall, many falling on West Row Fen and Isleham Fen. In this rural landscape the only recorded damage was to a chicken house, where 16 birds died.9 Having released his bombs, Peterson headed back to Germany. At the same time the remaining six Zeppelins were tentatively feeling their way westwards through the clouds, fog and mist. And now the killing began.
The commander of Zeppelin L 21, Kapitänleutnant der Reserve Max Dietrich, had only taken command of this new ‘q-class’ airship twelve days earlier. This class was an interim design between the existing ‘p-class’ models and the awaited ‘r-class’. It was a lengthened ‘p-class’ which boosted hydrogen capacity and allowed for an increase in bombload of about 15 per cent.
It was the first time over England for both. Dietrich had previously commanded L 7 from June to September 1915, before taking over a new ship, L 18, on 6 November 1915. It was a brief command, eleven days later an accidental fire destroyed her at her Tondern base.10 Aged 45, prior to the war Dietrich had served as a captain in the German merchant navy and had once had Count Zeppelin on board his ship. Dietrich must have been impressed with the Count because when the war started he joined the naval airship division. Back in Germany, Dietrich had a 14-year-old niece, Marie Magdalene; she later became better known as the actress Marlene Dietrich.
L 21 was one of the first to cross the British coast on 31 January, doing so at about 4.50pm near Mundesley in Norfolk. Dietrich’s initial navigation was good, but when he reached a position north of Derby he believed he had found Manchester so altered course to the south-west to seek Liverpool. At about 7.50pm he believed he had found his target.
... the lights of two cities which from dead reckoning and from their position were taken to be Liverpool and Birkenhead... Docks, harbour works, and factories of both cities were attacked with thirty five 50kg and twenty incendiary bombs. Explosion of all bombs and good results seen from on board.11
Dietrich, however, had miscalculated his position and was about 70 miles south-east of Liverpool at the time; it seems that his ‘Birkenhead’ was actually Tipton in the West Midlands and ‘Liverpool’ the area encompassing Wednesbury and Walsall. Tipton was a heavily industrialised town with a network of canals, supporting locks and basins. From his position in the command gondola the reflections of those canals appear to have taken on the appearance of a large body of water – the ‘River Mersey’ flowing between Birkenhead and Liverpool. Although the nearby major centres of Wolverhampton and Birmingham were in darkness, the lights were on in Tipton.
From Union Street, 45-year-old Thomas Morris had gone to the Tivoli Picture House. Morris was a labourer and married with six children. His wife, Sarah-Jane, had taken two of the children, Martin (11) and Nellie (eight), to her parents – William and Mary Greenshill – who lived almost next door at 1 Court, 8 Union Street. The remaining four children, Thomas (16), Rose (14), Ivy (12) and five-year-old May stayed at home. Sarah-Jane and her family were sitting around the fire when Dietrich dropped his first three bombs shortly after 8.00pm. They landed close together in Union Street and Waterloo Street. One smashed into the Greenshill’s house. It ‘collapsed like a pack of cards’ as the bomb ‘fell on the footpath of the narrow thoroughfare, smashing in the front of the house. The occupants... were terribly mangled beneath the ruins’.12 Sarah-Jane, her parents and the two children were all dead. Her distraught and traumatised husband rushed home and helped to recover the shattered and mutilated bodies of his family from the wreckage.
The bombs in Union Street demolished two houses, damaged many others and smashed a gas main running under the road. They also cut down Benjamin Goldie, aged 43, who ran a business making iron fenders, while 26-year-old shoemaker Arthur Edwards died in his shop when a bomb fragment pierced his chest; his wife, Eliza, lost a leg. Edwards’ mother was sitting in the back kitchen and ran outside when the bomb exploded. When she returned at about 8.30pm she found her son lying dead in a pool of blood in the wreckage of the shop.13 The bombs also killed blacksmith Daniel Whitehouse, aged 34, and Thomas Henry Church, a 57-year-old estate agent. He was on his way from the Post Office to the Conservative Club when the bomb blast cut him down. Taken into a house, he died a few moments later.
The body of a soldier’s wife, Elizabeth Cartwright, was found slumped in the road near a large crater14 and two boys, George Henry Onions, aged 12, and Frederick Norman Yates, nine, were also victims. George died in the street and Frederick in a doctor’s surgery. Annie Wilkinson perished inside her home at 16 Union Street, where the blast also injured her husband, Thomas. A fireman, Albert Batten of the Tipton Fire Brigade, later received the British Empire Medal in recognition of his efforts to extinguish the burning gas main in the street and rescuing the injured. The final victim was in Waterloo Street where a bomb claimed the life of a 30-year-old nurse, Louisa York.
The following morning hordes of sightseers flocked to the shattered streets of Tipton.
So Gertie & I & Georgie went to Tipton & you cannot imagine the sight – awful. 5 killed in one house. Holes in the streets. Windows, slates, chairs, doors & glass everywhere. She took me through the Conservative Club. I can’t describe it, it was a wreck. Roof slates – not a glass left whole, door posts, everything in confusion & 13 children in cellar wouldn’t come up...Thousands of people & motors & crowds waiting at the Guest Hospital waiting for the news. My knees tremble under me, bodies picked up in pieces.15
Other bombs fell near Tipton Station followed by six incendiaries, three in gardens at Barnfield and Bloomfield roads and three at the Bloomfield Brickworks, although all but one failed to ignite. Now twisting to the north-east, Dietrich headed towards Lower Bradley, south of Bilston, where there were three canal-side ironworks. Walking along the towpath were a courting couple who shared the same surname, William Fellows, a 23-year-old furnace stoker, and Maud Fellows, aged 24, a domestic servant. The couple sought shelter by the wall of the Bradley Pumping Station but to no avail. L 21 dropped five bombs along a 500-yard stretch of the canal, from the Pumping Station to Pothouse Bridge. One exploded on the towing path just eight feet from where the terrified couple were sheltering. Arnold Wolverson went to assist them but found a shocking sight. The blast had almost severed William’s head from his body, there were burns, open wounds and his right leg was shattered. Maud had suffered numerous injuries but she was still alive and, with help, Wolverson carried her to a nearby pub where a doctor attended her but she died of septicaemia in hospital twelve days later.
After the bombs at Lower Bradley, Dietrich took L 21 eastwards, over land that had formerly seen much coalmining activity. There were very few lights below, perhaps creating in Dietrich’s mind the idea that he was now crossing the River Mersey towards Liverpool. Rather than Liverpool, however, the lights directly ahead were shining from Wednesbury where the huge Crown Tube Works industrial site was located, bordered on its western side by King Street and with the main thoroughfare of High Bullen running down the eastern side. The bombs – 12 HE and eight incendiaries – dropped in two concentrations, the first around the tube works. The impact was devastating.
At 12 King’s Place, a small court off King Street, Susan Howells was alone while her husband Edward had ventured out for a walk. Adjacent to King’s Place stood 13 King Street, home to Edward Shilton and his wife Betsy, and at 14 King Street, Joseph Smith and his wife Jemima were with her mother, Mary Evans, who had walked around from High Bullen; two of their children, Nellie (13) and Thomas (11) were also there. Their third child, seven-year-old Ina, was in the street playing with her friend Matilda Birt, aged 10. When Jemima Smith heard the sound of explosions (probably those from Lower Bradley) her curiosity led her outside. The rest of the family followed but she left them to go to collect her little nephew. She turned back when she heard the first booming explosion. A bomb had landed directly on the Shilton’s house at No.13 killing the couple instantly. As the house collapsed the avalanche of rubble swallowed up and killed Joseph Smith, his children Nellie and Thomas, and his mother-in-law. Ina Smith’s friend, Matilda Birt, was dead in the street, but of Ina there was no sign. To her distraught mother she had simply disappeared without trace. In fact the force of the blast had thrown the little girl through a window 15 feet up in the outer wall of the Crown Tube Works. There searchers found Ina some 15 hours later, her tormented body hanging grotesquely from a rafter.16
The same bomb that shattered 13 King Street also destroyed 12 King’s Place and inflicted serious damage to other homes in the court. Edward Howells rushed back from his walk to find his wife Susan’s maimed body blown out of the house into the street. There were others too. At 4 King Street widowed Mary Ann Lee was visiting her younger sister, Rachel Higgs; they both died. And at No.28 a bomb fragment killed shopkeeper Rebecca Sutton.
Harry Doige, a boatswain in the Royal Navy, was passing the end of King Street when the bombs fell and was blown off his feet. Having picked himself up, he started up the road.
On the left side of the street on the footpath I found a human body. I struck a match to look, but it was so mutilated I could not say what sex it was. A few yards further, on the opposite side, I found another body — nothing but a trunk. I saw that about three or four houses had been destroyed. I assisted to remove four bodies from the debris of the houses.17
More bombs landed on the Crown Tube Works, a major industrial site in the town employing a workforce of about 1,300. Fortunately an industrial dispute broke out earlier in the day and few workers had appeared for the night shift. The police reported on the damage.
The roof over a larger Workshop was very considerably damaged and the walls in places shattered, much glass was broken, and Steam Pipes, Water Mains, and Gas Mains damaged. Some of the offices, brass stores, receiving shop, brass shop, and some of the warehouses were more or less damaged.18
After the raid the workforce abandoned their dispute but one of the workers failed to return – 16-year-old Samuel Whitehouse. Samuel was one of the few working that night. At his inquest the jury heard details of the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
[The bomb] blew all the lights out, and threw the workmen down, some of them being injured by flying metal. A portion of the roof fell in, and for some time nothing could be seen through the cloud of dust. The youth [Whitehouse] was discovered calling for help, and was removed to hospital, where he died soon after midnight from shock following extensive burns on the back.19
The final group of bombs from this first salvo fell from High Bullen, across Upper High Street to Earp’s Lane. In High Bullen, ‘almost without exception the shop windows... were shattered and the pavement strewn with broken glass’. In Upper High Street patrons left a theatre when the sound of exploding bombs stopped the show, as did others streaming out from two cinemas close by. Incendiary bombs started a handful of small fires. Behind High Bullen bombs also damaged property belonging to the Hickman & Pullen Brewery, and in a chicken house at the back of the Crown & Cushion pub the occupants were ‘roasted and completely stripped of their feathers’ by the bombs.20
The second concentration of bombs – eight HE – fell about three-quarters of a mile away at Mesty Croft, from Brunswick Park Road, across the London & North Western Railway, to Oldbury Street. Some damage occurred on the railway embankment and at Mesty Croft Goods Yard, with two bombs exploding between the railway and Oldbury Street. Albert Madeley had finished work and was walking along Oldbury Street on his way to visit his fiancée when a jagged fragment from one of the bombs sliced across him, ripping open his stomach. The 21-year-old died in hospital three days later.21
Leaving the population of Wednesbury to deal with the tragedy that had befallen their town, Dietrich saw more lights two miles away to the north-east – Walsall.
PC Joseph Burrell was on duty in Wednesbury Road, which led into the centre of Walsall. He had already heard the disconcerting sound of explosions from the direction of Wednesbury when L 21 appeared high in the sky coming towards him. Seconds later a bomb struck the imposing Wednesbury Road Congregational Church – it was about 8.25pm. Debris of all kinds rained down and one piece struck Burrell a fierce blow. The church suffered badly.
[The bomb] struck as nearly as possible in the centre... Half the roof had disappeared..., rafters and beams were scattered about in all directions, the wood of the pews was splintered, the flooring was torn up, and most of the windows were blown out... Two gaps had been made in the gallery on either side of the church, and a great beam had fallen across the pulpit and the steps leading up to it. In the grounds around the church portions of the stonework, bricks, slates, and glass, were scattered everywhere.22
The church was empty at the time but the unfortunate Thomas Merrylees happened to be at the junction of Wednesbury Road and Glebe Road when the bomb exploded. A piece of debris struck him with such force that it ripped off the back of his head as his body crumpled into the gutter. But the death toll could have been much worse. In the Sunday School building attached to the church a class of 15 children were studying. Their teacher, Miss Winifred Clark, remembered a piece of the ceiling falling in ‘then a blinding blue flash more vivid and fearsome than any lightning’, but other than minor cuts and scratches all the children emerged unharmed from their terrifying experience.23
PC Burrell, having regained his wits, saw flames rising from the Walsall & District Hospital where an incendiary bomb had struck the roof of one of the wards. At the entrance Burrell found ‘the nurses excited and unable to move’. He pushed his way through to the bomb. With nothing else to hand, he grabbed a length of wood and, on his hands and knees to gain a little protection from the worst of the intense heat, began to nudge the bomb away from the danger area. As a mark of their gratitude the hospital committee awarded him a gratuity of a guinea (about £100 today) and a medal. Sadly, failing eyesight, caused he believed by his exposure to the heat of the burning bomb, forced his retirement from the police force in 1923 and the following year he became blind. He eventually learnt to read and write using Braille.24
Dietrich dropped a brace of bombs as L 21 passed over Mountrath Street, digging craters, blowing down a wall and smashing windows, but only inflicted cuts and scratches on those nearby.25 About 200 yards further on was Bradford Place, a triangular ornamental garden around which the traffic flowed. A grand Victorian edifice, the Institute of Science and Art, overlooked the area where inside evening classes were underway.
A student attending a chemistry class, A.L. Stephens, heard odd sounds outside and as he looked through the windows overlooking Bradford Place a bomb exploded.
All the apparatus on the table disappeared and the lab was in confusion, everything was blown to smithereens. It was pandemonium, but no panic. We made a dash for the stairway and on the way down someone shouted ‘Hey, look – he’s been hurt’. So I turned round and this woman was covered in blood but a man grabbed me and said ‘No, it’s you.’26
Stephens lost a lot of blood but at hospital his injuries were stitched, ‘a very painful process’ he recalled, before he was helped home. Other students suffered minor injuries.
Just seconds before the bomb exploded a No.16 tram arrived in Bradford Place. The passengers had heard explosions as they approached. Amongst those on board were two friends from Wednesbury, Frank Linney and Charles Cope, on their regular Monday night out in Walsall.27 When the tram stopped the two men alighted but as they crossed the road the bomb exploded just yards from them, smashing windows at the Institute, on the tram and in all the shops and buildings around Bradford Place. Linney sustained severe injuries to his legs and, although taken to hospital, died there later that evening. Cope was also down; he remembered the flash of the bomb and a heavy blow on his back. Helpers took him to the Hospital, where the staff were still recovering from the excitement caused by the incendiary bomb. Cope seemed to be on the road to recovery but then took a turn for the worse and died on 3 February.
Inside the tram all was chaos and confusion. The explosion smashed the lights and in darkness the passengers rushed for the two exits. Amongst them was 55-year-old Mary Julia Slater, the Lady Mayoress of Walsall, travelling with her sister and sister-in-law. Mary staggered out of the wrecked tram before collapsing on the pavement. Her horrific injuries were clear to all.
She was bleeding freely... There was a lacerated wound on the left breast, three inches long and 1½ inches in diameter, another wound on the left side which had torn away a portion of the ribs and had opened her chest and abdomen, and there was another wound lower down which had penetrated the bone.28
Despite constant medical attention Mary Slater eventually succumbed to her injuries and died in hospital on 20 February.29
At the Walsall Workhouse another death occurred. John Powell, an inmate, was suffering from pneumonia. After the raid a nurse found him dead in his bed. When questioned at the inquest she stated that the raid had hastened his death.
Dietrich now turned for home. Taking an easterly course, after passing Kettering he observed a strong light ahead, offering him a final tempting target. It proved to be the blast furnaces of the Islip Ironworks near Thrapston in Northamptonshire. He released his last bombs – six incendiaries.
About 500 yards to the north-west of the furnaces stood two cottages, the homes of Ernest and Jane Curtis and their neighbours George Ward and his wife. Both couples were preparing for bed at about 9.15pm when they heard a strange sound. One of the women described it as ‘a report, slightly louder than a gun being fired’. Through their windows the startled couples saw two distinct fires that continued to burn with light blue flames until about 10.00pm. Two other fires also started in a ploughed field in front of the cottages but, buried deeply in the soil, the flames soon died out.
The following morning the remains of five of the burnt out bombs were taken to Thrapston Police Station. Enquiries eventually revealed the location of the missing sixth bomb; a soldier had taken it away as a souvenir.30
With no further distractions, Dietrich took L 21 back out to sea just south of Lowestoft at about 11.35pm. When he safely reached Nordholz, L 21’s mission had lasted 23 hours and 32 minutes.31
Heinrich Mathy, the commander of Zeppelin L 13, came inland at about 4.50pm near Mundesley on the coast of Norfolk with Dietrich’s L 21. Heading west, Mathy passed the darkened towns of Nottingham and Derby but saw lights as he approached the industrial centre of Stoke-on-Trent. The police reported that bombs dropped at 8.15pm. Six fell in a 70 yard radius of Great Fenton Colliery but there were no casualties. According to the colliery manager, ‘Two fell in a field, 3 on shraff heaps [waste tips], and the sixth struck the top side of an ammonia tank and lifted the top off and a few windows were broken by concussion.’ Unsure of his position and having circled the area for about 30 minutes, Mathy called for wireless bearings. As often was the case, the position he received back was inaccurate, placing him near Manchester, which stood about 50 miles to the north.
Having set a course back to the east, at 10.50pm through a break in the clouds, Mathy observed ‘blast furnaces and other extensive installations’ which he concluded were at Goole on the River Ouse. He had in fact already passed south of Goole and was approaching Scunthorpe with its extensive ironworks.
People in the town heard the sound of engines ‘and immediately afterwards there was a heavy explosion, a bomb having fallen in close proximity to a large building without hitting it’.32 A number of incendiary bombs also landed but had little effect.33 In Ravendale Street a bomb practically ripped off the backs of four worker’s homes but failed to injure the occupiers; an unfortunate pig, however, ‘had its head completely chopped off’.34 At Trent Cottages an incendiary bomb smashed through the roof of 86-year-old widow Sabina Markham’s home. A neighbour rushed to her assistance but the doughty Mrs Markham had already doused the bomb with water.35 The town’s iron and steel works were now in Mathy’s sights. His first bombs overshot the North Lincolnshire Iron Works, landing instead at the Redbourn Hill Iron Works, which was in darkness. One bomb there wrecked a water pump, damaged a locomotive shed and killed two men: Cyril J. Wright, a 24-year-old laboratory assistant, and Thomas William Danson, an engine tender, who died of his injuries later that night. Danson, aged 29, was a well-known local footballer, playing in goal for Scunthorpe and Lindsey United.36
L 13 now circled, lured by lights at the Frodingham Iron and Steel Works, but Mathy’s bomb missed the target by 100 yards, exploding in a railway goods yard with the blast ‘injuring four civilians, but an engine driver sat calmly looking on from his engine’.37 Damage, however, was light: ‘some of the bullets from one of the bombs embedded themselves deeply in a railway wagon. One struck a buffer and entered to the depth of a few inches, and another cut through a steel rail on the line as though passing through a piece of cheese.’38
Passing over the old Lindsey Iron Works, Mathy headed towards the Trent Iron Works, dropping more bombs as he went. One of those, exploding in Dawes Lane, claimed the life of steelworker Ernest Benson, aged 31, and injured others.
Mathy had dropped 16 HE bombs and 48 incendiaries in the eight or nine minutes he had been over Scunthorpe, killing three men and injuring seven other people. At about 11.35pm, as L 13 approached Humberston, she came under an ineffective burst of fire from the 1-pdr ‘pom-pom’ gun at the Waltham wireless station. It was the only gun to open fire that night. Untroubled, Mathy and L 13 headed out to sea.
When word about a possible Zeppelin raid spread earlier that evening, those towns that had plans in place to reduce or switch off lighting began to do so. At about 7.20pm a great cacophony burst forth in Derby.
Every hive of industry that boasted the possession of a hooter of any kind let loose... The din was terrific. There were shrill shrieking whistles, there were loud whistles. There were buzzers of varying volume and sound, and there were also a few bells, and above all rose the deep base of the great ‘Bull’ at the Midland [Locomotive Works]... for all the world as though it were the voice of fate.
Lights went off at the factories and works, in people’s homes and in the streets. The trams came to a standstill and the railways ceased work; industrial sites began to close down their operations. The effort was effective as from 8pm onwards a number of Zeppelins passed the town without attacking. One of those was L 14 commanded by Kapitänleutnant der Reserve Alois Böcker. A captain of the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line before the war, Böcker had held command of L 14 since August 1915. He passed Derby once, but he found it again later.
Böcker brought L 14 inland at about 6.15pm over the coast of Norfolk north of Holkham and headed inland. At 8pm he dropped a bomb near the village of Knipton, about six miles south-west of Grantham. Although local reports dismiss its impact, Thomas Charity, a local schoolboy might disagree. Excited that a bomb had landed nearby, nine-year-old Thomas played truant from school the next morning. He found the still smouldering depression and took a jagged bomb fragment as a souvenir, one he kept for the rest of his life. There was, however, a high price to pay for this memento – when he arrived at school after lunch, ‘he was soundly thrashed by the Headmaster for missing the morning session’.39
L 14 passed south of Nottingham and Derby and into thickening cloud that obscured any sight of land. Circling between Shrewsbury and Stafford, Böcker believed he had reached the west coast but finding no point of reference below he gave up and turned south-east. At 11.35pm Böcker reached Tamworth and, attracted by distant lights, changed course again, reaching Ashby Woulds fifteen minutes later where L 14 dropped six bombs over an industrial sanitary pipe works. One HE and an incendiary bomb landed on a large cinder heap near a furnace at the works but four other HE bombs overshot and fell at Overseal, one in a canal and three in fields. Then three more dropped at Swadlincote resulting in a few smashed windows. The time was now just before midnight and, about ten miles to the north-east, lights began to appear in a previously darkened area. The crew believed it was Nottingham, but the lights were going back on in Derby.
The sound of distant exploding bombs had reached Derby earlier in the evening but it had been quiet since 9pm. People remained cautious for some time but eventually the lights began to return.
Sometime before midnight... the lighting at the Midland Station was restored and shortly afterwards permission was given to the trams to proceed to their depots. When the witching hour struck most people came to the conclusion that the danger was past... Then, at ten minutes past twelve, the town was shaken by a bomb that exploded in the Osmaston area.40
From the command gondola of L 14, Böcker observed ‘big factories and blast furnaces’ below. With the engines slowed he prepared to attack.
Approaching the town from the south-west the first target was a highly prestigious one – the Rolls-Royce works, which was heavily engaged in war work. Six bombs streaked down. The first two exploded on open land west of the complex, and just one exploded inside the works perimeter, gouging out a crater on the testing track and smashing around 400 windows in nearby works buildings.41 The other three struck the Metalite Lamp Works, 200 yards away in Gresham Road, where they caused considerable damage but there were no injuries.42 Now approaching the Midland Railway Carriage and Wagon Works on Osmaston Road, L 14 dropped five HE bombs. They damaged carriage and wagon building facilities, a blacksmith shop, railway siding tracks and a railway truck loaded with pig iron.43 Seven incendiary bombs followed. The first three fell in the yard of W & T Fletcher’s lace factory on Osmaston Road where they burnt out without causing any injury, but the other four fell in neighbouring Horton Street, where one caused a significant house fire.
L 14’s course had taken her across the Osmaston Road so Böcker swung her back towards a vast target east of the London Road — the Midland Railway Locomotive Works. A bomb landed in the garden of Litchurch Villa, at the junction with Bateman Street, blasting a great hole.44 In Rose Hill Street, 450 yards away, a well-known schoolmistress died. Sarah Constantine, aged 71, had been under the care of doctors for some time but ‘the explosion of the bombs produced heart failure’.45 The huge Midland Railway complex now lay directly ahead and Böcker ordered the release of ten bombs.
The first three ripped up sections of railway line sending chunks of track flying for great distances in all directions, while smashing an electric main and two water mains buried underground.46 The next five bombs all exploded within the space of 80 yards, four of them digging into the asphalt and sending debris flying all around, but one exploded with deadly effect.
Although there had been no official notification that the blackout had ended, when other parts of Derby returned to normal, the Locomotive Works followed suit. Charles Coxon, the Foreman at No.3 Running Shed, noticed the lights were on again at another department and, presuming they had received ‘proper authority’, he switched the lights back on in the shed for those working the night shift.47 When the first bombs were heard exploding at the Rolls-Royce Works, Coxon plunged the huge engine shed back into darkness. But by then it was too late, Böcker had already seen all he needed to.
As the sound of explosions edged closer, those men working inside the shed ran for cover just as a bomb smashed through the roof and exploded about six feet from the outer wall. A rather dispassionate report noted: ‘Inside the shed were very few marks of bits of bomb and no appreciable downward effect.’48 Those men inside, however, had a rather different experience. Five workmates scattered; the blast struck one down but he luckily escaped injury, while the other four dived into an inspection pit beneath an engine tender, which seemed to offer the best protection. The bomb exploded six or seven yards from the pit with horrific results.49 The bodies of two engine drivers, Harry Hithersay (23) and James Gibbs Hardy (55), and assistant fitter William Bancroft (32), ‘were terribly mangled and beyond all recognition’. Another man who sought shelter, Sidney Baines, a 21-year-old engine fireman, had both legs shattered by the blast, and died in hospital on 4 February, the cause of death, ‘haemorrhage and shock’.50
The last two bombs thrown at the Midland Railway Locomotive Works exploded on No.18 Boiler Shop but, expending most of their energy on the roof, inflicted only limited damage inside. Passing over the Litchurch Gas Works, which bordered the Locomotive Works, L 14 released two final bombs.51 They were both incendiaries; one burnt out a few feet from a gasometer and the other, which fell on a large heap of coal, failed to ignite. Both were narrow escapes. Böcker now took L 14 away from Derby and at 12.30am passed south of Nottingham then onwards to the coast, eventually passing out to sea over Lincolnshire.
The shocked populations of Tipton, Wednesbury and Walsall could be forgiven for thinking their night of terror was over, but they were mistaken. Other Zeppelins were roaming the Midlands and all three towns would hear the dull drone of Zeppelin engines again, while some would hear them for the first time.