While Zeppelins L 11, L 13, L 14 and L 21, had been at loose over the industrial Midlands and L 16 and L 17 had threatened the rural landscape of East Anglia, Zeppelin L 20 had also made a dramatic journey over the Midlands leaving terror and destruction in her wake. And behind her came L 15 and L 19.
Kapitänleutnant Franz Stabbert, a 34-year-old naval officer, had command of L 20, another of the new ‘q-class’ Zeppelins. Stabbert came inland over The Wash at around 7pm, also battling the worst of the weather and engine problems. Undeterred, he pushed on, dropping a single HE bomb at 7.45pm in a field at Uffington in Lincolnshire, which broke a few windows. Heading west, L 20 blindly passed the darkened town of Leicester but at Loughborough, 10 miles to the north, it was a different story. Lights there were shining brightly and Stabbert attacked, claiming to have dropped four bombs to silence a battery, but there were no guns protecting the town, or any other towns in the Midlands that night. Stabbert’s bombs fell amongst the population of Loughborough, the first at 8.05pm.
It exploded 100 yards from the gas works, at the rear of the Crown and Cushion Inn2 on Ashby Square, ‘bursting with a terrific report’, wrecking outbuildings and smashing ‘every window for a hundred yards around’.3 Adjacent to the Inn, the glass roof of the town’s Technical Institute crashed in on those attending evening classes but miraculously there were no serious injuries. Martha Shipman, however, was not so lucky. A fragment of the bomb dug deeply into her leg as she stood at the back door of her home at 5 Orchard Street. She staggered inside, slumping into an armchair in shock. Her husband was away with the army; alone, and with blood streaming from her wound, she died.
Many people were walking along The Rushes, a busy thoroughfare about 150 yards from the Crown and Cushion. Among them were newly-weds Anne and Joseph Adkin; Anne had gone to meet her husband on his way home from work. Friends Ethel Higgs and Elizabeth Askew were also heading home from Caldwell’s hosiery factory where they worked, happy to have had the chance of some overtime. At 13 The Rushes, the home and shop of Billy and Annie Adcock, Billy had gone out to visit a friend while Annie was at home with their two children. Many others were in the street too when the peace of the evening was shattered by the explosion of the first bomb; panic set in and as people began to scatter in all directions, the second bomb exploded in The Rushes.
The scene just after the explosion was one of unforgettable confusion and horror... Telegraph and telephone wires lay in tangles across the pavements, and everywhere the ground was littered with broken glass. People were running in and out of their houses in terror, not daring to stay indoors, yet fearing to come out.4
Joseph and Anne Adkin had reached the north end of The Rushes when the first bomb exploded. Bewildered, they ran back, straight into the blast of the second and were killed. The bomb also cut down Ethel Higgs and Elizabeth Askew. Ethel died in hospital that evening while Elizabeth, who had ‘a horrific wound just below the knee’, managed to limp home the 700 yards to Paget Street. She remained in hospital for several months but she survived.5
At 13 The Rushes, Annie Adcock went outside when she heard the first explosion. As she did so the second bomb wrecked the front of the shop. When Billy got home a few minutes later he found a crowd gathered and his wife lying dead in the doorway. Upstairs his terrified children were in bed covered in glass from a smashed window.
L 20 now headed slowly towards the eastern edge of Loughborough, where the Empress Works, a large engineering establishment, was in production. Stabbert dropped two more bombs. The first exploded in a small orchard at the south end of Thomas Street but inflicted little damage of note. The sound of bombs, however, had alarmed local people. Mary Page left her house at 87 Empress Road with her children, Joseph, aged 18 and Elsie, 16. Across the road at the Empress Works, Arthur Turnill, opened a door to see what was happening.
After Thomas Street the next bomb exploded outside 85 Empress Road. Bomb fragments and other lethal debris shot out in all directions. The Page family stood no chance. They had just reached a newsagent’s shop on the corner of Judges Street when the bomb exploded right behind them. The shop’s owner was a couple of streets away and had been cut by the Thomas Street bomb but, realizing his wife was alone in the shop, he ran home where...
... a ghastly sight met his gaze, for on the pavement in front of his shop, in three pools of blood; lay a mother, her young son, and her daughter... The newsagent entered his shop after passing the dead people, remarking: ‘Oh poor things!’ His wife was in the shop, the front of which was blown in but she too had escaped without serious injury.6
On the opposite corner to the newsagent was a shop owned by Josiah Gilbert. Josiah and his 14-year-old son were talking to a travelling salesman. When the bomb exploded in Thomas Street, Josiah shouted, ‘It’s bombs, bombs!’ and pulled his son away from the doorway. Seconds later the Empress Road bomb exploded and a jagged metal fragment slammed into his chest. Sarah, Josiah’s wife, tried to pull him to safety but he stopped her saying, ‘It’s no use; I’ve been struck in the breast’. He died 15 minutes later.7
Directly opposite where the bomb exploded, Arthur Turnill, who had emerged from the Empress Works, also lay on the ground, badly injured by falling glass from the Works’ shattered roof. Turnill, aged 51, a fitter, had eleven children from two marriages. He died from his injuries a few hours later. Inside the Works there was panic. Vicious shards of jagged glass slashed down from the roof and at least five of the workforce required treatment for their injuries. But not all lost their cool. Beatrice Smith, a crane driver, ensured the electricity was turned off, working with electrician, Ernest Stubley, who remained on the premises the whole night. Later both received the British Empire Medal.8
As L 20 departed Loughborough a fifth bomb landed in a field about a mile outside the town but it failed to detonate. That night the population of the town mourned the deaths of ten of their fellow citizens and felt sympathy for the 12 who bore the scars of that night of terror, but in the morning Loughborough became alive as huge numbers flocked to see the damage. At the Crown and Cushion, so many came to look that the landlord, William Oram, erected collection boxes in aid of the hospital; in two days he collected almost £19 (about £1,600 today).9
Leaving Loughborough behind, the crew of L 20 failed to notice the darkened town of Nottingham, but when Stabbert sighted a sprawl of lights to the west he believed he had found the industrial centre of Sheffield and abandoned his attempt on Liverpool. The first lights he saw, however, were shining from the Stanton Ironworks at Ilkeston, 30 miles south of Sheffield. As he neared Trowell, Stabbert dropped seven bombs. Little damage resulted although one exploded within 40 yards of the impressive Bennerley Viaduct, which carried the railway over the Erewash Valley, with another on the north side of the viaduct, bursting close to where the Midland Railway ran underneath it. All railway traffic in this area had halted but a signalman left his signal box to tell the driver of a stationary train to extinguish his lamps. While he was away a bomb exploded just five yards from the signal box.
The front... was hammered in by the force of the explosion, many panes of glass were shattered to glittering fragments, the block instruments were knocked out of order, the telephone and telephone wires were brought down, while the rails and the permanent way were torn up.10
The Stanton Ironworks, at Hallam Fields, now lay directly ahead. Lights in Ilkeston were off but that was not the case at the ironworks on the south side of the town. About 8.30pm the Zeppelin loomed over the industrial complex and dropped 15 bombs as L 20 circled the area. There were great explosions close to the moulding and blacksmith’s shops and a stable, but the main ironworks escaped relatively unscathed.
An unofficial warning reached the ironworks about 15 minutes before the attack and a group of four men heard sounds that one described as ‘bumps’ – the bombs near the viaduct. After a number of ‘bumps’ there was an explosion 20 or 30 yards from the group. One was hit on the arm and under the chin as he ran. He believed his workmates had all escaped too but an hour later, while receiving treatment, he heard that one of them – assistant furnace keeper James Hall – was dead. When he later saw James’ body ‘the head had been blown off’.11
The other victim, 41-year-old furnace loader Walter Wilson, and two other men had left the ironworks in a hurry. As L 20 loomed above them they ran towards the tram terminus outside St Bartholomew’s Church. Bombs dropped in front and behind them. One exploded 20 yards from Walter by the boundary wall of the church, wrecking the adjacent parish room. The bomb ripped open a three-inch gash on the right side of his back through which his intestines now protruded. Although operated on, Walter did not recover and died the following day.12
Stabbert now headed south-west towards the next block of lights, which he felt marked southern Sheffield and the surrounding area. It was, however, Burton-upon-Trent, the famed brewery town. Following L 20’s lead, over the next hour two more Zeppelins bombed the town and it is not possible to assign individual bombs to specific raiders; there were 15 HE and between 24 and 29 incendiary bombs of which about 10 failed to ignite.
Harry Hawkes, driving a shunting engine from Leicester Junction on the south side of the town, watched the bombs fall. One of the first serious fires broke out at the Ind Coope brewery’s malting sheds while another fire, which lasted several hours, burnt out the hop room at Worthington’s brewery. As Hawkes approached Wellington Street Junction a signalman, Tony Mycock, hailed him. He was a little unnerved by what he saw.
He’d got a great incendiary bomb... He says, ‘This here’s hit the signal box and it’s bounced in front of here,’ and he went and picked it up and brought it into the signal box. So I says ‘That’s an incendiary bomb, Tony,’ I says, ‘you want to get shot of that bugger.’13
The large fires in the town now served as a beacon, drawing other roaming Zeppelins to the flames as Stabbert turned L 20 back to Germany. She crossed the country with no further incidents and exited the north coast of Norfolk at about 11.45pm.
Kapitänleutnant Joachim Breithaupt had also experienced a difficult journey over the North Sea in L 15. Two of her engines were out of action for about two hours. Those responsible for plotting the tracks of the nine incoming Zeppelins understandably struggled and their conclusion that L 15 dropped its bombs over the fens close to the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire border is impossible to reconcile with Breithaupt’s belief that he had reached Liverpool.14
At [8.30pm] the ship was over the west coast; a large city complex, divided in two parts by a broad sheet of water running north and south, joined by a lighted bridge, was recognized as Liverpool and Birkenhead... From [8,300] feet 1,400kg of explosive and 300kg of incendiaries were dropped in four crossings of the city mostly along the waterfront.15
An analysis after the war concluded that Breithaupt was describing an attack on Burton where the River Trent runs along the east side of the town and links to Winshill by a bridge that crosses the river and flood plain. Railways, canals and the extensive industrial buildings of the numerous breweries may have further convinced Breithaupt that he had found Liverpool.
It appears likely that Breithaupt made his runs over the town shortly after Stabbert had departed. Again the breweries suffered. Bombs blasted the roof off Worthington’s four-storey malthouse, wrecked Allsop’s sawmill and partly demolished an engine house at Bass. Others exploded at Charrington’s and Robinson’s breweries but in both cases they failed to damage buildings. There were no casualties at any of the breweries; however, that was not the case elsewhere in the town.
At a point where a railway track crossed High Street, about 50 people filled the Black Cat billiard hall. An eyewitness described the hall ‘ablaze with light’ when the bomb struck.16 It exploded on the tracks just nine feet from the wall of the Black Cat, smashing a section of it and blasting away part of the roof.17 While panic and confusion reigned inside the billiard hall, one person lay motionless alongside a rubble covered table; a large piece of metal had struck 16-year-old George Stephens’ head and killed him.18
Another lethal bomb landed in Bond Street, close to the junction with Lichfield Street. At a school there the alert headmaster had just led his family down to the cellar and switched off the gas supply when ‘a bomb glanced off the roof of his house, blew out a gable end, exposing to view the bedroom and smashing the drawing room and blowing the piano to fragments.’ The headmaster was untouched but outside in the street it was different.19
When he heard the sound of the Zeppelin’s engines, with commendable awareness, 13-year-old Bertie Geary climbed a lamppost to put out a streetlight. At the same time 15-year-old Lucy Simnett was walking by with her mother. Lethal metal fragments from the bomb cut down and killed Lucy; about 20 yards behind another mother and child were lucky to escape unhurt when a piece of the bomb cut through the woman’s hat. Blown from the lamppost, young Bertie now lay on the ground ‘with a wound in the back and perforation of the abdomen’. Another young boy tripped over him in the dark. Bertie was still alive but he told the boy he was going to die; his prediction came true the following day.20
The most casualties that night occurred at the Christ Church mission room on the corner of Uxbridge and Moor streets, where about 200 people had gathered. With Bible in hand, Mary Rose Morris was addressing the meeting when ‘there was a blinding flash, and then all was darkness’. The bomb detonated on soft ground between the church and the mission room, opening up a crater 12 feet across. The wooden building was shattered and inside all was carnage.
Mary Rose Morris died instantly, as did Ada Brittain (aged 15), schoolmistress Margaret Anderson (60) and Rachel Wait (78). Elizabeth Smith and her husband lost each other in the panic and it was half an hour before he found her lying badly injured in an adjoining house. Mr Smith took his wife home and laid her on the settee. Their daughter Gladys looked on: ‘She’d got a white blouse on, and you couldn’t tell. It was bright red. Soaked in blood.’21 Elizabeth died in hospital a few days later.
The bomb also fatally wounded 16-year-old Flora Warden. She had gone to the meeting with her friend Sybil, who escaped unscathed. They had just swapped seats because a woman was blocking Sybil’s view of the speaker.22 Inevitably in such a big crowd many were injured.
At the Midland Railway goods shed on Derby Road, just north of the main station, six men had just finished work when they heard the sound of bombs. They dived for cover under a loading dock just as one exploded in the shed. Three were injured but one, John Finney, a 53-year-old railway labourer, caught the full force of the blast and died.
At 34 Wellington Street, just to the west of the main railway station, Charles Gilson heard an explosion and went into the garden followed by his 15-year-old son, George. As he did so a bomb streaked down and exploded with tremendous force just a few yards away. Charles Gilson slumped to the ground, blood pouring from his head. The blast forced his watch into his body, stopping it at 8.45pm. His son was down too and covered in blood. George picked himself up: ‘I felt something was wrong when I touched my arm. Dad was lying there and I tried to pick him up and I couldn’t.’ He ran into the house to find his mother and blurted out: ‘They have killed my daddy, and look what they have done to me.’ His left arm ‘was severed as though cut through with a knife’.23 At hospital they amputated what remained. George was lucky in that he survived the horrendous injury but he was unsuccessful in seeking compensation.
A solicitor came from Manchester, and I had to lose half a day from work. He wasn’t in the house two seconds. Just asked me to stand up. Showed him my wound. ‘Oh, a big fine strapping chap you are. You might get eighteen pence a week and you might get nothing’. And he’s gone through the door. Never heard from that day to this.24
The bomb that killed Charles Gilson also damaged other houses in Wellington Street, and next door at No.32, 10-year-old Edith Measham died the following day. Her nine brothers and sisters were all injured.
Elsewhere in Burton a bomb exploded in Shobnall Street. At No.108, 23-year-old Florence Jane Wilson was visiting her friend, Mrs Warrington, who had three children, one just a baby. Florence was just about to leave when the bomb smashed the house, reducing it to rubble and shattering others nearby. Mr Warrington returned home shortly after 9pm and joined those desperately searching through the wreckage for any survivors. As he called for his wife, rescuers heard her reply and then a baby’s cry. Clawing away at the debris the rescuers pulled them both out alive. But as they continued to dig they discovered the crushed body of Florence, and then, near the fireplace, the couple’s other two children, Mary, aged 11, and six-year-old George. Both were dead.
As Breithaupt turned for home he seemed pleased with the result of his raid on ‘Liverpool’.
All explosive bombs burst but fires were not seen to result. On the other hand, the incendiaries worked very well in my opinion... A huge glow of fire was seen over the city from a great distance.25
As L 15 left Burton many of the town’s terrified population were hiding in their cellars waiting and wondering if they would be next. From her cellar in Grange Street, parallel with Shobnall Street, one woman listened fearfully to the boom of the bombs and the drone of the Zeppelin’s engines.
All we are thankful for is that God listened and took care of us. We were huddled up in the cellar, us and several of our neighbours, waiting as it were for death. Oh it was terrible, and I hope please God it may never come our way again.26
Burton, however, still had one more visit to come, for drawn by the glowing fires, Zeppelin L 19 was now heading towards the town.
Kapitänleutnant Odo Loewe was an experienced Zeppelin commander. Aged 32, he made his first raid on Britain commanding L 9 in August 1915 when he bombed Goole and on another occasion had attacked the Skinningrove Ironworks on the North Yorkshire coast. He took command of the Navy’s last ‘p-class’ Zeppelin, L 19, in November 1915.
After crossing the North Sea from Tondern in Schleswig-Holstein, L 19 made landfall near Sheringham on the Norfolk coast at 6.20pm, but the Maybach HSLu engines were causing problems. This slowed progress and there are reports of L 19 circling while the crew made repairs. At 9.45pm Loewe radioed that he had reached the west coast but weather conditions were such that he could see nothing: ‘Orientation and attack there impossible due to thick fog; dropped incendiaries.’ Far from the west coast, those two incendiaries dropped on Burton. There is no report that they caused any damage. For Burton the night of terror was finally over. In the shattered houses and damaged streets 15 people lay dead and another 70 were receiving treatment for their injuries.
From Burton, Loewe took L 19 to the south-west, hoping to confirm his supposed position on the west coast. But at about 10.30pm, when south-west of Birmingham, engine problems struck again forcing L 19 to circle for about an hour.
With engines throbbing back to life once more, Loewe headed north, towards Wednesbury where fires still burned from the earlier attack. About midnight he dropped a single bomb less than half a mile west of the Crown Tube Works where bombs had caused such terror almost four hours earlier. It smashed the roof and damaged machinery at the works of the Patent Shaft and Axeltree Company. Between Wednesbury and Tipton, Loewe released five more bombs as he passed over Ocker Hill Colliery, but their impact was minimal. Then, at 12.10am, Police Chief Superintendent Speke reported that L 19 attacked Dudley.
Fourteen incendiary and four explosive bombs were dropped in fields at Netherton [just south of Dudley], in close proximity to M & W Grazebrook’s blast furnaces. Incendiary bombs were also dropped in the Dudley Castle Grounds, the fields adjoining the same and at the Grain Shed at the Great Western Railway Station. The only damage done was at the shed in question, which amounts to about £5.27
For those living nearby it came as quite a shock.
Everybody was running around the house, getting the kiddies up & we saw flashes and heard the bombs our house shook & poor little George trembled from head to foot. People running home from Dudley to their homes couldn’t tell us anything further – than the Zeps had come!... a Zep came over our house, across the public [house] at the back (Jolly Collier) and across those fields and dropped a bomb not very far from our house but that one fortunately for us did not explode.28
From Dudley, L 19 turned towards Tipton, where four hours earlier L 21’s bombs had killed 14 people. Two bombs hurtled down towards Park Lane West. One landed in the open but the other exploded just five feet from the front of the Bush Inn. It smashed every window, tore the doors from their hinges and caused the collapse of the roof. Pinned in their bedroom, the landlord and his wife only escaped when their frantic son managed to break down the door. The pub clock stopped at 12.20am.29 More bombs fell along the railway from Tipton Station to Blomfield before L 19 headed towards Walsall where the town was also still reeling from the earlier attack. This time bombs fell over the western districts of Pleck and Birchills.
Frederick Bromley, a dairyman living with his family at 18 Dora Street, heard the sound of distant explosions and woke his 10-year-old son, sending him out to climb and extinguish a streetlight. Outside in the cold night air the boy saw the Zeppelin and ran back into the house just as ‘there was a crash, bang and then two more’. The first ‘crash’ was a bomb making a breach in the wall that divided the gardens on that side of the street from the field behind. The ‘bang’ was the second bomb destroying Frederick Bromley’s stable at the back of his house killing some of his pigs, many chickens and his carthorse.30 Seconds later a third bomb exploded on open ground east of Scarborough Road, smashing numerous windows. Now following Pleck Road, L 19 failed to bomb any of the iron or tube works it passed over, instead Loewe’s final bomb smashed onto a bowling green between St Andrew’s Church and a partly-built vicarage. The roofs of both buildings suffered and many of the stained glass windows on the south side of the church were smashed. The explosion also demolished part of the premises of carriage builder, John Barton, while shattered window glass frosted the streets, crunching under the feet of the curious and inquisitive as they gradually began to emerge from shelter to view the damage.
L 19’s bombs claimed no lives directly although there had been some narrow escapes. One person however, did die. William Henry Haycock, a 50-year-old former policeman, now bedridden with chronic rheumatic fever, had been unsettled during the earlier raid when a bomb exploded 600 yards away. Despite his nervousness he insisted his wife went out to check on a patient she was nursing. She had not returned when the second raid commenced. When he heard the bombs, Haycock, ‘impulsively’ jumped out of bed. His wife returned home to find him lying dead on the floor. A doctor pronounced death due to ‘shock caused by the explosion of bombs’.
Loewe now turned for home, but the engine problems that had plagued him earlier returned. The flight back to the coast – a distance of 155 miles – took five hours to complete. When she passed out to sea over Norfolk at 5.25am on 1 February L 19 had been overland and vulnerable for almost 11 hours.
The statistics of the raid compiled by GHQ, Home Forces showed that 379 bombs with a combined weight of just over 12 tons (12,500kgs), caused material damage estimated at £53,832, while killing 70 people and injuring another 113. For those in authority these were sobering figures.
Hailed in the German press, the idealistic reports filed by the returning Zeppelin commanders fuelled a wild delight, as illustrated in an article in the Hamburger Nachrichten.
In England the people were living happily and free from care in the midst of war... Then the Zeppelin came out of the night and taught haughty people that the war can overtake them everywhere, and that it is bloody, terrible, and serious.
England’s industry to a considerable extent lies in ruins. England’s own soil has been ploughed by the mighty explosive shells of the German air squadrons.31
It was a wildly optimistic view of the effect of the bombs and a version of events seized on with glee by the British satirical magazine Punch.
The Germans claim that as the result of the Zeppelin raid ‘England’s industry to a considerable extent lies in ruins,’ is probably based on the fact that three breweries were bombed. To the Teuton mind such a catastrophe might well seem overwhelming.32
There was, however, no denying that it had been a traumatic night for many of those on the ground caught up in the raids. But what of those who ventured up into the air to oppose them?
* * *
While the nine raiding Zeppelins had prowled over East Anglia and criss-crossed the Midlands, they had at no point encountered any British aircraft. Although the poor weather played its part in limiting the response, the night’s efforts have been labelled one of the biggest fiascos in British air defence history.33
First in the path of the Zeppelins’ approach were the RNAS stations on the Norfolk coast. When the first two raiders came inland at about 4.50pm, word immediately reached Great Yarmouth and within 20 minutes two pilots were in the air, but the atrocious weather conditions forced them down within the hour. At 5.15pm a third pilot, Flight Lieutenant C.E. Wood, went up but after losing his bearings he made an eventful forced landing in the dark.
He glided down till his altimeter said 0 – and waited developments. Suddenly there was a rending crash – both wings of his machine crumpled up – and he sat down with a bang on the lawn of an old house [in Spixworth, north of Norwich] occupied by two old maiden ladies. He had apparently glided down an avenue of trees, shorn off both wings and sat down just beyond them, absolutely unscratched.34
A fourth pilot ascended from Great Yarmouth at 7pm but he saw nothing.
When Zeppelins first appeared their target was unknown so warnings were widely issued, including to London. The RNAS maintained two air stations for the defence of the capital, at Chingford and Hendon. Between 7.55 and 8.30pm a pilot from each station went up searching for an enemy that was not there. Both damaged their aircraft on landing. A misfiring engine forced another RNAS pilot from Rochford to make a sticky landing in the mud of the Thames estuary.
It had clearly not been a great night for the RNAS, but for the RFC it proved a disastrous one.
At the ten RFC airfields around London, 19 BE2c aircraft were standing by when the patrol order came through, advising that Zeppelins could reach London by 8.10pm. At 7.35pm the squadron commander of No.10 Reserve Aeroplane Squadron (RAS), Major Ernest Unwin, took off from Joyce Green through fog and mist to assess flying conditions. Fifteen minutes later he smashed into trees on Erith Marshes. He died of his injuries seven weeks later. A second pilot, Second Lieutenant Claude Ridley, went up but, disorientated in the clouds, he crashed and wrecked his aircraft near Reigate. A third pilot of the squadron, flying from Farningham at 7.45pm, also crashed but, like Ridley, Second Lieutenant W. Guilfoyle walked away from the wreckage of his BE2c.
At Northolt the commander of No.11 RAS, Major Leslie da Costa Penn-Gaskell, also went up first to check flying conditions. Moments later his aircraft hit a tree at the far end of the airfield and caught fire. Penn-Gaskell died four days later.
While there were no more deaths to report, the pilots of No.17 RAS also had a night to forget. Both pilots from Hainault Farm crashed on the airfield, while the pilot from Sutton’s Farm hit a fence when landing. Second Lieutenant Hugh Tomlinson took off from Wimbledon Common but seconds later hit a tree and then a house; he just managed to scramble clear before two of his bombs exploded. The two pilots who ascended from Croydon both cut short their patrols due to poor visibility and the single pilot from Hendon lost his way before spotting flares and gratefully landing at Hainault Farm. Of the 13 patrols flown by the RFC around London, two pilots were fatally injured, two had minor injuries, with five aircraft wrecked and two damaged. Yet not one Zeppelin threatened London at any time during the raid.
The situation over the Midlands was no better. Despite this being the largest raid of the war to date, no aircraft in the region opposed the attack. The inadequacies of Britain’s aerial defence were fully exposed: an ineffective warning system, a lack of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, and aircraft without effective weapons with which to threaten the Zeppelins. There had been little progress since the raids of 1915, but the green shoots of change would begin to appear in the spring of 1916.
Although it had proved a disastrous night for Britain’s airborne defenders, their problems were over for now. For the crew of Zeppelin L 19, however, their problems had only just begun.
Zeppelin L 19 had left the British coast at 5.25am on 1 February, the last of the nine raiders to depart. By 1pm all the others were back in Germany and concerns for the whereabouts of L 19 grew. At 4.05pm the navy despatched three destroyer flotillas to commence a search but as they did so, Nordholz received a radio message from the missing Zeppelin. Although experiencing difficulties, she was nearing Germany: ‘Radio equipment at times out of order, three engines out of order. Approximate position Borkum Island. Wind is favourable.’35
Borkum, one of Germany’s East Frisian Islands, would have been good news for Loewe but unfortunately his navigation was out. He was at the time about 45 miles to the west of his supposed position and 22 miles north of the Dutch island of Ameland. The radio centre at Nordholz tried to advise Loewe of his real position but received no reply. However, as L 19 was less than 70 miles from the nearest Zeppelin base at Hage, the navy recalled the destroyers. Eight hours later, however, there was still no sign of L 19 and at midnight the ships set out again. On the morning of 2 February, 12 miles north of Borkum, they recovered one of L 19’s discarded fuel tanks but of the airship there was no sign. Fog and strong winds prevented any Zeppelins joining the search.
After transmitting the message to Nordholz on the afternoon of 1 February, Loewe flew towards Ameland, believing it was the German island of Borkum, but as she came in low over the sand dunes the Dutch coastguard at the village of Hollum opened rifle fire. Although the Netherlands was neutral in the war, she vigorously defended her territory against any encroachments. The bullets found an easy target in the looming body of L 19 and pierced her gasbags. Realising his error, Loewe turned away, heading back out over the North Sea where engine problems struck again, compounding the crew’s difficulties as gradual hydrogen loss from the tiny bullet holes meant the airship became heavier as the wind carried L 19 westwards and away from Germany.
At some point during the night of 1 February, the loss of hydrogen added unforgiving stresses to the duralumin structure and L 19 broke her back, collapsing into the sea. The floundering Zeppelin was now almost in the middle of the North Sea, about half way between Ameland and Spurn Head, the prominent sand spit marking the entrance to the River Humber about 110 miles to the west. Unless someone came to their rescue they were doomed.
In the early morning of 2 February a Grimsby trawler, the King Stephen, was out in the North Sea. Her mate, George Denny was on watch and saw a twinkling light in the far distance. After altering course and steaming for 10 miles, Denny realised what they had found, a half-submerged Zeppelin.36
The skipper, William Martin, and the seven other members of the crew joined Denny. Martin took in the scene.
I could see about 15 men in the top hamper... others in a ring with their heads through the companion way... I shouted, ‘What is the matter?’ ‘Send us a boat and I will give you £5,’ answered one, and he took off his coat... I knew him at once for a naval officer and the captain of the ship. When one or two of his crew who spoke English tried to butt in he shut them up pretty smart. He was a gentleman and behaved as one. He was nice and polite, and spoke good English too.
Denny, on the other hand, was not so well disposed to Loewe.
His manner was suave and oily. He said that if we would put off in our small boat and take them off he would reward us with gold. He repeated his offer of money so insistently that it irritated us.
The crew now faced a dilemma as Denny explained: ‘For us it was not a question of money or humanity, but one of prudence.’
There were 16 men aboard L 19, although those on the King Stephen thought there were about 20 and, reasonably, presumed them to have weapons. The unarmed crew of the fishing boat numbered just nine. Martin made up his mind and told Loewe his decision.
‘Well, if there weren’t so many of you I would take you off, but there’s too many.’ The officer straightened himself up and said there was nothing in that. I thought again, and I said, ‘But supposing we take you and you sling us overboard and navigate the trawler to Germany. That will be another decoration for you, but it won’t be much for us.’ He said, ‘I pledge you my word that we will not do anything of the kind’. He took his dying oath that he would not interfere with us, and that I could have plenty of money if I saved them.
Martin again considered his position but came to the same conclusion – the risks to his crew were too great.
If there had been another ship standing by to help me I could have chanced it, but there was nothing in sight. Besides, I remembered what the Huns have done, and what they might do again.
Since the beginning of the war British newspapers had reported stories of German brutality with gusto, and raids by Zeppelins – termed ‘Baby-killers’ – had been ongoing for a year while their bombs had claimed numerous lives in Hull, not far from Grimsby, the fishing boat’s home port. His mind made up, Martin sailed away at 9.30 on the morning of 2 February.
Some of the German crew at first shouted, ‘Mercy, mercy, save us,’ and then shook their fists at us as they saw it was of no use ... I went away to find a gunboat or a patrol vessel better provided than we for looking after an enemy crew.
George Denny added: ‘As the trawler steamed away they shook their fists and one of them climbed on the rails and shouted ‘Gott strafe England’.
During the day a rising wind brought a weather change and by 10.30pm Martin reported ‘it was blowing hard’. Battling through rough seas, with waves crashing over the deck of the King Stephen, William Martin encountered no ships on the way back to Grimsby and he had no radio. Off the mouth of the Humber he reported all that had happened to a tug37 and the navy despatched two destroyers to search for the downed Zeppelin.38 That same morning – Thursday 3 February – a French vessel docked at Hull and also reported a Zeppelin down in the North Sea on Wednesday morning, but she had not approached it.39
Once the King Stephen disappeared from sight, the crew of L 19, were alone on their makeshift island in the vastness of the North Sea. As the morning passed the weather deteriorated. The desperate men, soaked to the skin and frozen, contemplated the end. They wrote final messages to their families and threw them overboard in bottles. Three weeks later the yacht Stella, sailing off the coast of Gothenburg, Sweden, picked up one. Six months later a fisherman at Marstrand, an island just north of Gothenburg, retrieved another. It contained Loewe’s final bleak report written on 2 February.
With 15 men on the platform of L 19. Longitude 3° East. The envelope is floating without any car. I am trying to send the last report. We had three engine breakdowns. A very high headwind on the homeward flight hampered progress and drove us in fog over Holland when we came under rifle-fire. Three engines failed simultaneously. Our position became increasingly difficult. Now, about one o’clock in the afternoon, our last hour is approaching. Loewe.40
The two British destroyers found no sign of the Zeppelin. Five months later, on 21 June, the body of one of the crew, Georg Baumann, washed ashore on the Danish coast near Tranum. Two days later the headless corpse of another, identified as Zugmann, beached at Løkken, also on the Danish coast, and in July a third body, that of Heinrich Specht, came ashore at Sonderho on the Danish island of Fanö.41 The short life of Zeppelin L 19 was over, but the controversy over William Martin’s actions would run and run.