In the early months of 1916 the War Office began to focus on the problems of defence against aerial attack. They initially looked to provide anti-aircraft guns for the protection for munitions and explosives factories as well as magazines where munitions were stored. These they grouped into eight main areas: Scotland, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Birmingham, London and the Thames, and Portsmouth. Other munitions and explosives factories outside these main areas also received guns as did ports and ‘certain populous districts specially exposed to attack’.1
The War Office adopted the plan for the defence of London prepared by Admiral Sir Percy Scott in the autumn of 1915, with guns defending the central area and two further gun circles, five miles and nine miles out. The outlying centres of Woolwich, with the all-important Arsenal, and Waltham Abbey, home to extensive explosives production, were included within the London defences. By the end of March there were nine guns defending Woolwich where previously there had been just one. London also benefitted from an outer searchlight ring. Previously most searchlights worked in conjunction with the guns. These new lights, known as ‘Aeroplane Lights’, were assigned to locate and hold targets for the aircraft defending London. There were 18 in position by 6 March with 29 more locations under construction.
Attention also turned to a warning system to alert critical industries and authorities of potential raids. Field Marshal Lord French handed the task to a staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Maud, who realised that any efficient system must rely on the telephone network. His plan divided England, Wales and part of Scotland into eight Warning Controls, each under a Warning Controller. He was responsible for a receiving and passing on information and warnings within his area. These eight Warning Controls were sub-divided into 54 numbered districts (see Map 2), with each of these roughly 30 to 35 miles square. At a generous presumed speed of 60mph, a Zeppelin would take about 30 minutes to cross a district, allowing those in the path to receive timely alerts ensuring work could continue until a raid seemed inevitable. Observers positioned to cover all approaches telephoned information directly to the Warning Controller for the region. He also received information from GHQ, Home Forces, anti-aircraft gun stations and adjoining Warning Controllers, as well as the police, railway officials and any military commands in his area.
A Warning Controller had four distinct messages he could send: ‘Field Marshal’s Warning Order Only’, then three others prefixed with Field Marshal’s Order; ‘Take Air Raid Action’, ‘Resume Normal Conditions’ and ‘All Clear’. The ‘Warning Order Only’ message advised those on a ‘Warning List’ when enemy aircraft were 50 or 60 miles away. ‘Take Air Raid Action’, or TARA, followed when raiders were 15 to 20 miles away and ‘Resume Normal Conditions’ was issued when immediate danger was over but defences were to remain alert. The ‘All Clear’ message signified defences could stand down.2
To alleviate confusion when information began to flood in over the telephone, individual Zeppelins received names. The first Zeppelin picked up had a name beginning with A, the second B, and so on. Navy Zeppelins received girls’ names, with boys’ names reserved for Army Zeppelins. As the pressure of a raid mounted this simple idea seemed to help, as the official history recorded: ‘Into this atmosphere of tension, the recurrence of the familiar English Christian names brought a touch of the commonplace, even of humour.’3 An interim arrangement with three Warning Controls was in place by 14 February with all eight in operation by 25 May.
In March, plans to create ten Home Defence Squadrons received approval but this would take time. Then, just a few months later, increasing demands on the Western Front saw this reduced to six. On 18 March the first two designated Home Defence Squadrons, No.33 and No.36, became fully operational in the north and north-east of England respectively. But neither of them saw action when the Zeppelins returned on the 31 March at the start of an unprecedented period of Zeppelin activity with raids launched on five consecutive nights.
On that first night the Naval Airship Division despatched seven Zeppelins to ‘attack in the south, main target London’.4 New instructions to the commanders instructed them to cease sending their standard departure wireless messages, Strasser finally aware that they were liable to interception by British listening stations. Of the seven raiders, L 9 and L 11 turned back early. L 9 narrowly escaped disaster when a bracing wire from an engine gondola detached and became entangled in a propeller. Only expert work by the crew prevented disaster. She limped back to Germany and was out of service for 10 days. The remaining five reached England: L 13, L 14, L 15, L 16 and L 22.
Martin Dietrich, commanding L 22, encountered strong crosswinds and the ubiquitous engine problems as he crossed the North Sea.5 He abandoned hopes of striking London and selected the Humber as an alternative target. With the docks and harbour facilities at Hull and Grimsby so close to the coast, Zeppelin commanders considered the Humber one of the easier listed targets to find. At 12.15am a lightship anchored off the south Lincolnshire coast sent news of an approaching Zeppelin. Unfortunately the telephone lines were down in Area 25 of the new Warning District map just when needed. As a result, army motorcyclists carried the TARA order to the police for further transmission.6 At 1.20am, L 22 crossed the coast just south of the mouth of the Humber and headed towards Grimsby. Fifteen minutes later, when passing the village of Humberston, a searchlight on the southern edge of Cleethorpes found her and the 1-pdr ‘pom-pom’ at Waltham opened fire. Dietrich reacted to the light by releasing 26 bombs, which fell ‘with fierce intensity’ in fields around Humberston, but only smashed windows at a farm and killed a sheep.7
Flying north, L 22 passed unknowingly over the blackened town of Cleethorpes. As she passed out over the Humber, Dietrich released a parachute flare and, in its intense light, streets and buildings appeared from where moments earlier there had been only darkness. Believing it was Grimsby, he turned over the river before crossing back over the town.
The 3rd (Reserve) Battalion, Manchester Regiment had been associated with Cleethorpes since early in the war. On 30 March, 70 men of ‘E’ company arrived by train and occupied a temporary billet in the Baptist Chapel in Alexandra Road. In empty neighbouring shops 14 men of ‘A’ company bedded down for the night. Four of the men in the Chapel sneaked down to the basement to play cards while elsewhere all was quiet. That all changed at 1.35am when the sound of gunfire and bombs woke the men, as Leonard Newsham recalled.
I heard a gun firing and it woke the lot of us up... then I heard the crash come. There was a flash like blue lightning and down went the lot. I knew nothing more until they put me on a stretcher.8
At 1.48am, as the soldiers talked in hushed voices, a bomb hit the slate roof of the hall and exploded. The blast ripped away half of the roof, much of which crashed down on the exposed soldiers below. The upper wall collapsed, sending great sections of brick and stone cascading down to crush the roofs of the shops housing the men of ‘A’ company. The casualty toll was horrendous. The only men to escape injury were those playing cards in the basement.
Before anyone could react, L 22 dropped two more bombs. One struck a wing of the Town Hall in Cambridge Street, seriously damaging council offices, and the other exploded on the pavement in Sea View Street, smashing numerous windows in houses and shops, but there were no more casualties. Three final bombs exploded in fields just to the south of the town.
Back in Cleethorpes all available medical people rushed to the Chapel. Amy Amelia Ellis, who ran the local Red Cross as well as St Aiden’s Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) Hospital, was one of them and wrote breathlessly in her diary.
Manchester Regiment asking for all available help – bomb dropped on soldiers’ billet...proceed to Cleethorpes with what kit we can carry...try to get taxi...too long – proceed. Zeppelin overhead, very cheering. Make way to Yarra House (used as an emergency dressing station) – Dante’s Inferno – 3 room floors covered with bodies, dead, dying, and suffering, and hardly any light. Proceed to do what we can – first man I got to was dead.9
A woman living in Yarra Road heard the pitiful sounds emanating from the Chapel.
It was like a distant fairground – a jumble of shouts, screams and moans. Myself and other women... were sent to help the wounded. I remember the police and soldiers were trying to match together odd arms, legs and bodies.10
Rescuers pulled 27 dead soldiers from the wreckage and another 53 with injuries of all descriptions. Four more died over the next few days. The last of those who died, Private Thomas Stott, hung on to life for nine weeks before he too succumbed to his injuries on 2 June.11
Reports of L 22’s movements after the attack on Cleethorpes are confusing but it appears she circled around again before heading back out to sea after coming under fire from an armed minesweeper in the Humber.
The other four Zeppelins came inland much further south. One of the first was Heinrich Mathy’s L 13. The crew had experienced a torrid time during their last raid and hoped for better luck this time, but it was not to be. Having crossed the coast near Leiston in Suffolk at 8pm, atmospheric conditions prevented Mathy gaining the height he needed before striking London, so he decided to attack the explosives works at Stowmarket en route. Lightened after dropping those bombs, he hoped to gain height and continue towards the capital.
The works manager at Stowmarket’s New Explosives Company, F.W. Wharton, had switched off all outside lights as normal but had received no warning of a possible raid because phone lines were down. At 8.20pm the police delivered the ‘Field Marshal’s Warning Order Only’ message by hand, which meant he should commence preliminary precautions, but five minutes later a friend arrived and told Wharton that a Zeppelin had been seen two miles away at Needham Market. Concerned, Wharton went outside and was amazed to ‘see a bright light hovering in the sky, which illuminated the whole district’.
As Mathy approached the area he had released a parachute flare – Wharton’s ‘bright light’. Although those on the ground reported it lighting up the district, it did not illuminate the explosive works just over a mile away. It did, however, alert the defences; two badly positioned 6-pdr Nordenfelt guns, just 20 yards from the works’ boundary fence. Zeppelins often retaliated against guns and searchlights and any bombs aimed at these might easily strike the works. Now under fire, L 13 turned towards the guns and at 8.45pm attacked. The first four HE bombs steaked down in a line extending towards the searchlight, standing 80 yards in front of the guns. As the bombs came closer the searchlight crew scattered. Wharton believed that if L 13 had continued, its bombs would have hit the nitro-glycerine plant, but Mathy turned away, skirting the northern edge of the works before following the railway line alongside it. He dropped three more bombs over the railway, all within 25 yards of the boundary fence and 100 yards from important buildings in the works. One man, Private Loker of No.2 Supernumerary Company, 1st Battalion, Cambridgeshire Regiment, suffered a bruised arm and torn jacket. Turning away from the railway, Mathy’s last five bombs fell about 400 yards south of the works in ploughed fields on Clamp Farm at Creeting St Peter.
Flying in a wide circle, Mathy returned 30 minutes later. The gunners, who fired five more rounds, thought they had hit the target but L 13 appeared unaffected. On board, however, things were very different as engine mechanic Pitt Klein recalled.
All of a sudden the ship started to descend with worrying speed; the elevator helmsman could barely hold it... What had happened? It didn’t take long to find the cause.12
Shell fragments had holed two gas cells and L 13 started losing precious hydrogen. With London now out of the question, Mathy set a course back to Germany while the crew worked feverishly to repair the damage.
At 8.10pm, three mobile 1-pdr ‘pom-poms’ and a searchlight of the Eastern Mobile Brigade of the Royal Naval Anti-aircraft Service (RNAAS) at Lowestoft received information that a Zeppelin had crossed the coast to the south of their position – L 13 on its inward course. The four vehicles headed south and after about 12 miles, as they approached the village of Wangford, the wounded Zeppelin appeared. At the same time Mathy’s crew saw the headlights of the vehicles. The guns pulled up and prepared for action as L 13 began to drop bombs. The gun crews estimated that L 13 was flying at between 4,000 and 5,000 feet, demonstrating the effects of the hydrogen loss, but only managed to get off a few rounds before L 13 passed out of range. In the same time 16 bombs dropped in fields around the guns but inflicted no damage.
At 9.55pm, a BE2c flown by Flight sub-Lieutenant Edward Pulling took off from Covehithe, on the coast between Lowestoft and Southwold. The burning flares on the landing field now attracted L 13 and 27 bombs peppered the area (seven HE and 20 incendiaries). Looking down, they appeared to be effective. ‘One after the other the bombs exploded,’ Pitt Klein enthused, ‘causing terrific blasts. Huge columns of garish flames shot skywards.’13 These ‘terrific blasts’, however, merely smashed a few windows. A local policeman expressed surprise that a Zeppelin should target such a peaceful spot: ‘All I know is... I heard one, two, three, four, five, six bombs drop, and I said to myself, “Well, they are simply shovelling them out.”’14 Pulling had no luck in finding L 13 before she disappeared, but there would be other Zeppelin encounters for Pulling before the year was out.
A chance find of a piece of paper the following morning quickly dispelled any doubts as to whether the gunners had found their target; it was a copy of a radio message sent by Mathy and blown overboard: ‘10 p.m. Have bombarded battery near Stowmarket with success. Am hit; have turned back. Will land at Hage about 4 a.m. L 13.’15
Both L 13 and the explosives works at Stowmarket had fortunate escapes, but in other towns across Suffolk and Essex that night they would not be so lucky.
Werner Peterson brought L 16 inland at 10.10pm near Winterton on the Norfolk coast. He headed for London but as he approached darkened Bury St Edmunds at about 11pm, the Chief Constable, Major E.P. Prest, reported that she appeared to hover for some time in the proximity of Cattishall Farm, which lay close to the Great Eastern Railway line running from Bury to Haughley. It was around this time that Peterson picked-up a worrying radio message sent by L 15 to Germany requesting assistance between the Thames and Ostend; there had also been an earlier one at 10.25pm.16 At 11.35pm, as Prest looked on, L 16 was on the move again, heading west on a course that would have taken her north of the town, but then two mobile ‘pom-poms’ of the RNAAS which had taken up a position on the Stowmarket Road, about a mile outside the town, burst into action and Peterson reacted.
Within a very few seconds – it whipped round & came straight for the guns ‘showering bombs’, the guns continuing to fire, but how many rounds I could not say as the noise was somewhat deafening.17
The first five HE bombs fell in a line just to the east of the railway junction outside Northgate Station before Peterson commenced an evasive zig-zag course, dropping two bombs in a field and five near Eastgate Station. Two more dropped near Layhill Covert, then three in a direct line to the guns, but they fell short. Peterson now became aware of the town and as he passed over the guns he turned west and headed straight towards it.
The sound of exploding bombs woke many of those already in bed and memories of a previous raid in April 1915 came flooding back. In Raingate Street, Henry Adams, an employee of the Town Corporation, became concerned for the welfare of the horses under his charge and set out for the stables taking three of his sons with him: 15-year-old twins, George and Ernest, and their younger brother, Willy, aged 13. In Mill Road, 44-year-old Harry Frost went out into the garden while his wife and children remained inside. Herbert Hardiment, a private of 1/4th Cambridgeshire Regiment, was asleep in his billet in Beaconsfield Terrace on Chalk Lane, undisturbed by the noise, but his frightened landlady hammered on his door and woke him. Similar stories played out across the town.
Approaching the south-east corner of the town at 11.45pm, L 16 prepared to release 16 bombs (nine HE and seven incendiary). The first of these, an incendiary, fell on soft ground in Raingate Street then a second flared up in the garden of St Mary’s Vicarage, terrifying Henry Adams and his sons as they walked up Prussia Lane alongside the garden. They had little time to react, however, because at that moment a bomb exploded in Prussia Lane. Ernest threw himself down beside the wall and escaped injury while Willy survived with just a shrapnel wound to his leg, but their father and George were dead, killed instantly by the lethal explosion.18 Damage extended to Raingate Street, the King of Prussia pub on the corner of Prussia Lane and to Southgate Street. Having crossed the town, Peterson turned his airship over Tayfen Meadows and made a second run over Bury St Edmunds. Two bombs fell harmlessly between the Suffolk Regiment barracks and Spring Lane, followed by three more on Spring Lane from where the blast seared across open ground to damage 13 cottages in Cornfield Road and eight villas in Springfield Road, while a horse in a wrecked stable had to be shot due to its injuries.
In Beaconsfield Terrace 19-year-old Private Hardiment, woken by his landlady, told her, ‘Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll go down and see what has happened’. As he reached the back door a bomb exploded in the garden. While rescuers helped the landlady and her children escape through a bedroom window, another ventured inside the house and found the decapitated body of Hubert Hardiment buried under the rubble.
In the garden of 74 Mill Road, Harry Frost was searching the sky for the Zeppelin. When he saw it he called excitedly to his wife Florence just as two bombs crashed down, one smashing into No.75 and the other into Frost’s house. With her husband serving in the army, Annie Dureall was alone at No.75, peering through the window while her five children were all in bed. Evelyn, aged six, James, five, and Kathleen, four, all shared one bed, while baby Eileen slept in her cot in the same room. The fifth child, eight-year-old Thomas, was alone in another bedroom. The bomb smashed through the roof and down through the bedroom where four of the five children lay, carrying their bed through the floor as beams, rubble and debris crashed down. Annie and two of her children, James and Kathleen, died instantly. Evelyn survived, although she remained in hospital for nine months. Rescuers pulled baby Eileen alive from her cot where a fallen beam narrowly missed crushing her and Thomas escaped though badly shaken.19 A newspaper reporting on the tragedy wrote: ‘Nothing remains of the house except a heaped mass of bricks, in which are entangled furniture, bed clothing and odds and ends.’
After calling his wife, Harry Frost turned to go inside just as the second bomb exploded a split second after the first. Much of the back of the house collapsed, burying Harry under three feet of rubble, but his groans told rescuers he was alive. They dug him out but he died in hospital two days later. His eight-year-old daughter Vera received cuts from flying glass but two other children were physically unharmed; their aunt, Grace Barnett, lost an eye. At No.73 the Daniels family all escaped with minor cuts but the bomb had wrecked their home too. It also smashed windows and doors as well as damaging ceilings and roofs across an extensive area.
After dropping four more incendiaries on Bury St Edmunds, L 16 headed towards Lowestoft on the coast where, around 1am, it unleashed one final bomb. This exploded within 30 yards of the Tramway Department headquarters on Rotterdam Road. Damage extended across a wide area but no one was hurt. The seven guns defending Lowestoft engaged the departing L 16 as she quickly climbed away and disappeared out to sea at 1.05am.
The radio operator on L 14 also intercepted the worrying request for help transmitted by L 15 to Germany. The commander of L 14, Alois Böcker, brought his airship inland at 8.15pm over Sea Palling on the Norfolk coast and set off purposefully towards London. At 10.30pm, about five minutes after L 15 sent out her first message, L 14 approached the small market town of Sudbury where soldiers of the 2/6th (City of London) Battalion had billets. On board L 14 for this mission was Peter Strasser. Burning limekilns or lights at the Victoria Works on the east side of the town may have attracted L 14 because the first of the recorded bombs fell in Constitution Hill, a road that ran alongside.20 Rifleman Robert Wilson was at his billet when the bomb exploded outside in Constitution Hill sending lethal shards of glass slashing into his room. The owner of the house found him lying on the floor with blood oozing from two chest wounds. He died of his injuries on 2 April.
About 100 yards further on, another bomb exploded in East Street, close to the junction with Constitution Hill. John Edward Smith, a 50-year-old silk weaver, had just left a pub, the Horse and Groom, and was crossing East Street to his house at No.58 when fragments of the bomb killed him. At Nos.34 and 35 both houses collapsed. At No.34, Ellen Wheeler, a 64-year-old widow, was dead, as were her neighbours at No.35, Thomas Ambrose and his wife, Ellen. The last recorded bomb, an incendiary, smashed down on Orford House at 22 Melford Road, another billet accommodating soldiers of the 2/6th Battalion. With the building on fire, flames trapped Rifleman Bond inside. Showing great bravery Sergeant J.C. ‘Charlie’ May entered the fiercely burning building and rescued Bond. May received the Military Medal for his actions, the first awarded for gallantry on British soil. Besides the houses demolished in East Street, the explosion also smashed windows in around 200 others.21
From Sudbury, L 14 resumed its south-west course and at 11.05pm reached Braintree in Essex. Doris Carter, aged six, was asleep in Cressing Road, sharing a room with her sister Margaret. Disturbed by a neighbour’s dog, their mother was already awake when she heard ‘a steadily increasing roar overhead’.
Whether it was for comfort or out of curiosity I never knew but she shook Maggie and me awake to look out of the window, which faced across the allotments towards Crittall’s [Manor Works] factory... Eventually, dimly outlined against the stars, we became aware of a long black shape way up in the sky passing from left to right. Almost immediately we saw a flash of light followed by a loud bang which came from the factory direction.22
That first bomb had a devastating impact on Coronation Avenue. All 36 houses in the street suffered some damage but at two of them the impact was tragic. The bomb struck No.19 and demolished it, killing the occupant, 70-year-old Ann Herbert. The force of the explosion also partially wrecked No.21 and badly damaged three others. Lying dead under the rubble were Alfred Dennington, aged 31, his wife, Annie, 32, and her three-year-old niece, Ella Hammond. Amongst the rescuers was the chairman of the town council who owned the block of houses. He picked his way carefully through the ruins of No.21 to the bedroom.
Groping his way, the dead bodies were reached. By the aid of a flashlight the husband was seen lying face downwards on the pillow; the wife on her right side in a position of crouching from fear, and the little baby peacefully lying between the two. The Chairman was so overwrought by this pathetic discovery that he fainted, and had to be assisted by a doctor.23
About four miles south-west of Braintree, the Reverend Andrew Clark, rector at the village of Great Leighs, had retired to bed early but awoke with a start.
At 11 p.m., just as my wife had come up, there were two tremendous explosions... which shook the house, and caused her to call out, involuntarily Oh! Oh! The second call woke me, and I got up to find my daughters disturbed by the great bangs, and the dogs roused and barking.24
After the bomb on Coronation Avenue, Böcker’s second and third bombs fell close together, no more than 150 yards further on, between Coronation Avenue and London Road.
One... descended on the edge of the meadow, making a circular hole four feet deep and ten in diameter. The second... was 25 yards further in a garden... Some workshops ten yards away were shattered, and a conservatory was wrecked. The back door of the house was blown in, and all the glass at the rear broken.25 ... A Sunday School at the rear of a large chapel had about 100 panes of glass broken. The windows of the chapel and a skylight in the vestry were also smashed.26
As L 14 moved away, Reverend Clark was scanning the sky for a glimpse of her.
At 11.10 p.m. I was dressing-gowned and out... By this time the Zeppelin was roaring like a railway train somewhere near by... I tried every way to locate it against the stars, but did not succeed... I went round to the other side of the house, and listened... as it passed over Great Waltham, and so towards London.27
Böcker passed Great Waltham at about 11.15pm and then Chelmsford. At 11.35pm, however, as L 14 flew over Doddinghurst, a 1-pdr ‘pom-pom’ gun at Kelvedon Hatch opened fire. Piqued by this audacity, Böcker circled back and released 11 bombs at the gun, but all missed the target, two falling in fields north of Doddinghurst followed by nine within the parish of Blackmore. The Reverend Reeve at the village of Stondon Massey reported that his rectory windows ‘were violently shaken and considerable alarm was naturally caused’.28
At 12.10am Böcker returned to Braintree finally rewarding the Reverend Clark with a view of the Zeppelin.
Just as clock struck midnight, sound was heard of one Zeppelin coming back...it hesitated; hovered about (as if uncertain how to proceed) over N.W. corner of the house, and over the Stokes’s cottage opposite the Rectory Gate. It was now distinctly seen – a long, black thing against the stars. About the same time, a window was heard to open in the Stokes’ cottage, and Miss Stokes’ voice call out shrilly to her mother (who is rather deaf) – ‘I can hear the sound, but can’t see anything.’ Little wonder, since the Zep. was then directly over the cottage.29
As in other towns there was a great desire to see the damage caused by these air raids. The bombs on Braintree came late on a Friday night and by Sunday great crowds were on the move. The Reverend Clark noted in his diary, with some irony, that while ‘All Braintree had gone to Sudbury (to see the damage there). All Essex came to Braintree’. A case of another man’s bomb crater is invariably more interesting than your own.
L 14 continued on an uncertain course, first north then back south. At 12.55am Böcker dropped a single HE bomb in a field at Springfield Tyrells on the outskirts of Chelmsford as he appeared to be heading for London again, but at 1.12am, as he reached Brentwood, L 14 made another change of direction. Turning away from the capital, L 14 now headed south-eastwards; Böcker and Strasser had decided to attack the vast oil storage facilities at Thames Haven, about 25 miles downstream from London.
At 1.25am L 14 released a single incendiary bomb over Stanford-le-Hope then, as she approached the target, six 6-pdrs and a 1-pdr gun at Thames Haven, Pitsea and Kynochtown burst into action. They fired 81 rounds but had no appreciable effect as L 14 released two HE bombs and 12 incendiaries, hoping to set the oil tanks burning. In that they failed. Bomb fragments pierced two empty oil tanks, a small fire broke out on a pier and two oil barrels were damaged. Perhaps concerned by the firepower concentrated on the Thames Estuary, Böcker chose not to make his way home along the river, instead he took a north-east course, passing Colchester, Ipswich and Saxmundham before crossing the Suffolk coast near Dunwich at about 3.00am.
There may also have been another reason why Böcker and Strasser chose an overland route for the start of their homeward journey. Those distress messages sent at 10.25 and 11.00pm from Zeppelin L 15, requesting naval assistance, came from the Thames Estuary where clearly she was in trouble. The overland choice was a pragmatic one. But what had happened to L 15?