After a three-month hiatus due to the short summer nights, the Naval Airship Division had anticipated striking a heavy blow against Britain when it resumed raiding at the end of July 1916. Strasser now commanded a fleet of 11 Zeppelins able to take the war right to the doorsteps of the British people, yet those raids failed to deliver the desired results. Between 28 July and 9 August, airships raided Britain on four occasions. The 29 individual missions1 resulted in at least 436 bombs falling on Britain but their effect was negligible with material damage estimated at just £14,388.2 Considering that the cost of building an early wartime Zeppelin was about £50,000, rising to £150,000 for later models, and then factoring in the great cost of building the sheds to house them, the poor return is clear.
So far the first of the new ‘r-class’ Zeppelins had failed to demonstrate any significant improvement over the earlier models and it seems noticeable that the increasing effectiveness of both guns and searchlights was affecting the determination of the Zeppelin commanders to press home attacks over well-defended locations. Home Defence aircraft, however, were still having little impact, but all the time Britain’s defences were improving.
On 8 August, Strasser took delivery of L 32, a third ‘Super Zeppelin’, taking his fleet to 12 airships. Command of the new vessel went to Oberleutnant-zur-See Werner Peterson, who had commanded L 16 until 31 May.
With an eye to the next new moon period and increasing the pressure on Britain, Strasser had two Schütte-Lanz airships transferred from the Baltic: SL 8 and SL 9. They arrived at Nordholz on 18 August. Now with 14 airships available, Strasser still wanted more, suggesting 22 as the ideal number to Admiral Scheer, commander of the High Seas Fleet, insisting optimistically that ‘airships offer a certain means of victoriously ending the war’. The sanguine reports submitted by his subordinates convinced Strasser of the effectiveness of the raids, as he outlined to Scheer on 10 August.
The performance of the big airships has reinforced my conviction that England can be overcome by means of airships, inasmuch as the country will be deprived of the means of existence through increasingly extensive destruction of cities, factory complexes, dockyards, harbour works with war and merchant ships lying therein, railways, etc.3
Scheer, however, remained unconvinced.
Yet despite Strasser’s confidence, after the raid on 8/9 August, one of his commanders, Heinrich Mathy, admitted that he was finding command difficult.
The raids of July 31-August 1, August 2-3, and today’s show that it is dangerous to fly for long periods at night over solid cloud ceilings, because winds that cannot be estimated and which are often very strong can produce significant and even serious drift errors unless wireless bearings are used freely.4
Yet wireless bearings produced their own problems. British listening stations could intercept the signals, giving away the Zeppelin’s position. Keeping requests for bearings to a minimum meant Zeppelin commanders were often quite literally in the dark as to where they were over Britain.
While the Zeppelin crews waited for the moon cycle to favour their next series of attacks, a pilot of Marine Landflieger Abteilung 1 mounted a stinging hit-and-run attack on Dover. The explosion of a bomb near a shed on the RNAS Guston Road airfield at 12.27pm announced the arrival of a single aircraft flown by Walter Ilges. Within a very short time ten aircraft had taken off but it was already too late as Ilges only dropped four bombs before departing.
He passed over the military camp on Northfell Meadow on the eastern side of Dover Castle and released his second bomb. The camp housed the 5th (Reserve) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers. Five months earlier a bomb there had caused 15 casualties, this time Ilges’ bomb injured six more.5 The third bomb struck the cliff face behind a public house, The Prince Alfred, at 55 East Cliff, sending a shower of stones flying in all directions; one injured Private Bowden of the 61st Protection Company, Royal Defence Corps, who was chopping wood. The final bomb landed in the sea in front of East Cliff. Such had been the speed of the attack that many people were still enjoying the beach when this last bomb exploded. Considering the frequency of attacks on Dover, the choice of the town for a summer holiday seems odd, but the Toope family from Worcester were unconcerned and their 12-year-old son was paddling in the sea when the bomb fell.
Immediately on contact with the sea, it exploded with terrific force, throwing up a large volume of water and covering him with spray. His relatives moved further along the beach, fearing that further bombs might be dropped, but by this time the hostile airman had made away.6
***
Before the Naval Zeppelins resumed raiding, eight were out scouting for the High Seas Fleet on 19 August, which almost resulted in the loss of von Buttlar’s L 30 after a surprise encounter with the armed trawler Ramexo. As von Buttlar observed, ‘Heavens, it was a close shave!’
A terrible concussion threw us all to the floor, the whole car shook, and smoke rose up on all sides. Scarcely thirty feet below the control car a high-explosive shell must have burst. When I came to my senses again... I cast my eyes quickly round. The engines were working, thank God! No one was hurt. And when I looked at the body of the ship I could see nothing wrong. We had escaped death by a hair’s breadth!7
Army Zeppelins had been absent from Britain for four months when LZ 97 set out on 23 August from the base at Namur with London as its target. Her commander, Oberleutnant Helmuth Weidling, had taken command from Erich Linnarz in June.
News of an approaching Zeppelin reached the Harwich garrison at 11.33pm; 25 minutes later LZ 97 was off the mouth of the River Debden. Rather than pushing on for London, Weidling dropped all his bombs over the countryside between the Debden and Felixstowe.
Initially appearing to head for Felixstowe, Weidling dropped his first two bombs in fields, one north of the village of Old Felixstowe and the other at Cow Pasture Farm, 600 yards north of the church at Walton. Moments later, over Blofield Hall, Weidling changed direction and heading north dropped five HE bombs between the Hall and Trimley Station, followed by an incendiary bomb which narrowly missed the station buildings. From the station, LZ 97 passed over Trimley St Mary, dropping four incendiary bombs as it headed towards neighbouring Trimley St Martin. There Weidling released 11 more incendiaries: one fell at Street Farm and ten in the grounds of three large houses. At one of them, The Limes, a bomb broke through the roof of an outbuilding and fell into a bath of water. This was the only damage recorded during the raid. The residents of the village, aided by the rain, soon put out any other fires. ‘The Zepp had come and gone,’ one farmer said, ‘and the whole thing was over before you could dress and get downstairs.’8
Heading off to the east, LZ 97 dropped a single HE bomb over Mill Farm on the edge of Trimley St Martin then, just after midnight, Weidling dropped a line of 11 more across waterlogged fields and marshes between Hill House and a stretch of water known as King’s Fleet. So saturated was the ground that the exploding bombs made little sound when they detonated. Heading up the coast, LZ 97 departed near Orford Ness. A press release succinctly summed up the effectiveness of the raid: ‘No damage and no casualties have been reported.’
Peter Strasser would no doubt have dismissed the efforts of a single army Zeppelin as a waste of time, because the following day, 24 August, he committed 13 of his 14 airships to attack ‘England South’, which meant London if possible. However, matters beyond his control meant that only four battled through to reach England: L 16, L 21, L31 and L 32 with Strasser on board. Having intercepted radio messages, the British concluded a raid was underway and a number of Royal Navy ships put to sea hoping to intercept them. High winds and rain hindered some of the raiders while at least six reported coming under fire from the navy ships and one, L 13, had an extraordinary escape when a shell passed right through one of her gas cells only to explode when above the fortunate vessel.
Erich Sommerfeldt brought L 16 over the coast of Suffolk at Aldeburgh at 11.05pm but struggled with navigation as low cloud blanketed much of the countryside. He only released his first bomb at midnight, an incendiary at Woodbridge, before dropping a HE bomb at Martlesham followed by six more and three incendiaries at Kesgrave as L 16 headed towards Ipswich. Broken telephone and telegraph wires, smashed windows at Bracken Hall to the north of the Woodbridge-Ipswich road and cratered fields marked Sommerfeldt’s progress.9
Although hindered by low cloud, the crews of two searchlights north-east of Ipswich switched on their lights shortly after midnight searching for the source of the clearly audible engine noise. Seeing the lights Sommerfeldt turned away from Ipswich and prepared to attack them. At about 12.15am he released nine bombs as L 16 approached one of the lights near the twin villages of Great and Little Bealings.10 One exploded just 20 yards from the searchlight and another severed the telephone line linking it to an anti-aircraft gun. After this incident Sommerfeldt terminated the raid, returning to the coast at Aldeburgh at 12.30am.
About 45 minutes after L 16 had begun its homeward journey, L 21 was off Harwich and heading south. Oberleutnant-zur-See Kurt Frankenburg, previously the executive officer on L 14, had taken command of L 21 just ten days earlier.
L 21 came inland about seven miles south of Harwich at 1.43am. Once he crossed the coast Frankenburg turned north, passing over Walton-on-the-Naze, and at about 1.55am crossed Hamford Water, flying over the low-lying uninhabited Pewit Island, completely unaware that he was little more than a thousand yards from the Great Oakley Explosive Works on neighbouring Bramble Island. Crossing a small channel to the mainland, Frankenburg released seven bombs most of which landed between 500 and 1,000 yards from Little Oakley Hall although one fell in the grounds. Frankenburg released his next six bombs as L 21 passed south of Little Oakley and towards Foulton Hall. Explosions smashed windows in Little Oakley and seriously damaged a granary and a cow shed at the Hall’s farm. At 2am a searchlight at Dovercourt located L 21 and guns at Great Oakley and Ramsey opened fire, soon joined by others at Dovercourt, Shotley, Landguard Fort and Felixstowe Golf Club. Seeking safety, Frankenburg returned to the coast, dropping five more explosive bombs in fields and a single incendiary on the mud flats at Crabknowe Spit. Now heading north up the coast, L 21 ran the gauntlet of fire from the Harwich Garrison and Royal Navy ships in the harbour before turning out to sea off the mouth of the River Debden at 2.15am. Back at Nordholz, L 21 made a bad landing, the damage to her hull and gondolas requiring six days to repair.
The two other Zeppelins to reach England, L 31 and L 32, were two of Strasser’s newest airships. They followed an overland route via Belgium but both experienced delays while making in-flight repairs. Heinrich Mathy and L 31 made good progress after the delay and began to cross the English Channel at about 10.15pm. Werner Peterson in L 32, however, encountered unfavourable winds at a higher altitude, which delayed him further, and it was 2am when the sound of L 32’s engines was first heard off the Kent coast. Too late for London, Peterson came inland at Folkestone but immediately came under fire from two 6-pdr Hotchkiss guns at the village of Capel-le-Ferne, which fired 70 rounds. Peterson headed back out to sea, but as he followed the coast northwards, seven guns of the Dover Garrison bombarded him with 205 rounds. It is hard not to imagine that this proved uncomfortable for Peterson. A year earlier, anti-aircraft fire from Dover had damaged his L 12 after which the Zeppelin came down in the English Channel and was towed into Ostend harbour. Peterson released three or four bombs at 2.20am as he pulled away from Dover. ‘The bombs were very heavy ones,’ a newspaper reported, ‘and as they burst in the sea with a crash masses of flame sprang up, followed by cascades of water.’11
Peterson continued on his northward course keeping about two miles off the coast. Just before 3am a searchlight at Deal located L 32 and an anti-aircraft gun fired 11 rounds. Peterson reacted by dropping 18 bombs on shipping and, although he claimed that ‘a square hit on one ship caused a devastating explosion’, none were hit.12 A few minutes later a searchlight and gun at Ramsgate joined in but Peterson turned away from the coast and the searchlight lost him.
At the same time two BE2c pilots of No.50 (Home Defence) Squadron were stalking the raider. They took off from Dover about 2.15am and immediately had L 32 in their sights as they began their slow climb; the BE2c could take 40 minutes to reach 10,000 feet. Both pilots entered cloud at 4,000 feet but when they emerged only one, Captain John Woodhouse, still had L 32 in sight. He got into a position below his target, still 2,000 feet from it, when he fired a drum and a half of the new Pomeroy explosive ammunition, but when the searchlight lost L 32 so did Woodhouse. As became clear later, 2,000 feet was too great a distance for the new bullets to carry a serious threat and on board L 32 the attack had passed unnoticed by the crew.
Shortly after 3am, when north-east of Ramsgate, L 32 fell in with her sister ship L 31. Mathy’s L 31 was also on its way home after completing its mission. This time there was no doubt as to where she had been – this time it really was London. A Zeppelin had reached the capital for the first time in ten months.
The sound of L 31’s engines was earlier heard off the north-east corner of Kent at 11.17pm but her progress along the county’s north coast was slow at first, as though she was waiting for the delayed L 32. At 12.30am, however, Mathy crossed the Thames from the Isle of Sheppey to the Essex shore and followed the river towards London. The ‘TARA’ order had alerted the guns and searchlights defending the capital but mist and heavy clouds prevented them locating L 31. Keeping close to the Thames, L 31 passed between the impotent searchlights at Beckton and North Woolwich before reaching Blackwall from where Mathy saw enough through the clouds to know he had reached the unmistakeable great horseshoe bend of the river around the Isle of Dogs. Below lay two of London’s great shipping destinations, the West India Docks and Millwall Docks. Mathy turned south and dropped his first bombs at 1.30am.
Following the line of the West Ferry Road, L 31 had already passed the West India Docks when his bombs detonated just south of the entrance to Millwall Dock. Two HE bombs and an incendiary struck the Cyclops Works of tube makers Edward Le Bas & Co. on land between West Ferry Road and the river. The bombs wrought severe damage to half the premises with the rest of the industrial site requiring the fire brigade’s hoses to bring the inferno under control. Damage extended to Winkley’s Wharf alongside the river and to the rear of homes and shops along the west side of West Ferry Road from Nos.134 to 186.
At the same time another bomb exploded on the other side of West Ferry Road inflicting some significant damage.
[The bomb] fell into some gardens at the rear of a row of workmen’s cottages. It dug a hole about ten feet deep, smashed the brick walls of two or three gardens, blew in one of the side walls of an institute [St Mildred’s House] a few yards away, and damaged somewhat the rear walls of several of the cottages. The concussion shattered the majority of the windows of the cottages over an area of about 200 yards, and also some of the wire-protected windows of [St Paul’s] Presbyterian church.
Some of the debris was flung into the rooms of a number of cottages, in three of which, let in two floors, some twenty-five children were sleeping. Pictures and furniture were scattered about indoors, some of the pieces falling on the children’s beds, but not a single child, so far as can be ascertained, was injured.13
The damaged houses included all those between Nos. 237 and 303 West Ferry Road and others in Claude Street and Crew Street.
A single incendiary then crashed through the roof of the Providence Iron Works at 192 West Ferry Road but damage there was negligible, and another landed on a barge lying at Ferguson’s Wharf as L 31 crossed over the Thames. The London Fire Brigade estimated the damage at the Cyclops Works at £55,000, significantly more than the previous eight Zeppelin raids combined.
Three bombs fell in the Thames before Mathy reached the Deptford side of the river. There the Army Service Corps’ No. 1 Supply Reserve Depot occupied 27 acres of the former Foreign Cattle Market site. A bomb smashed into ‘G’ store and exploded amongst 8,000 sacks of flour each weighing about 140lbs (63.5kgs) and boxes of tea. A second bomb detonated in a garden behind the office of the Divisional Officer, Royal Engineers, causing considerable structural damage and injury to an officer. Assessors estimated the losses here at £9,524. Damage extended beyond the depot to Watergate Street and Butchers’ Row. Another bomb, in Deptford Green alongside Deptford Dry Dock, demolished or severely damaged workshops, offices and stores with the effects of the blast spreading to six neighbouring streets. Here estimates valued the damage at £17,528.
Between Deptford Dry Dock and Deptford Creek, the London Electric Supply Corporation had a large generating station at Stowage Wharf. The assistant foreman engineer lived on site and awoke to the sound of exploding bombs. As he went outside there was a terrific explosion. A few minutes later a bloodied, limping figure appeared.
We met [Richard Turner] coming along, his face covered with blood. He put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘I have copped the lot.’ His face was badly lacerated in several places, and he had a nasty scalp wound over the left ear. I bathed his face and put on a dressing, and asked if he was prepared to walk to the hospital, and he replied, ‘No, I am too bad.’ So I said, ‘Don’t worry; we will put you on the ambulance.’14
Turner, aged 34, worked as an electrical switchboard attendant at the generating station and had been close to the bomb when it exploded. He died in hospital a few hours later leaving a wife and two very young children.15 A doctor attributed his death to ‘shock and haemorrhage’. Estimates of damage at the electricity station reached £16,643.
The last bomb in Deptford, an incendiary, fell on a barge at Wood Wharf but caused no damage. Still shielded from the searchlights by the low clouds, Mathy turned away from the river to commence laying a trail of destruction across south-east London from Greenwich to Plumstead.
About 150 yards south of Wood Wharf, two incendiary bombs set fire to a coal merchant’s offices in Norway Street, and another struck a house in Straightsmouth. Then three HE bombs and an incendiary fell in the space of 100 yards. The first of this group exploded outside Greenwich Station causing a significant amount of damage and wrecking a public house, The Prince of Orange.16 The following day a journalist met the stationmaster, Edward Huish, who bore a ‘wonderful black eye’.
‘I was looking out of the window of my house over there,’ he told me, ‘when a bomb struck the street just in front. Up came a shower of stone and shell fragments, and one chip caught me under the eye, while minute particles struck me all over the face and made these.’ He pointed to scores of minute cuts about his face.
The front wall of the station was pitted with holes, while at other places the glass and stonework had been shattered, evidently by jagged fragments of shell.17
The second of the three bombs fell in a garden behind the Queen Elizabeth’s College Almshouses.
The old couples were pitifully scared. They had had warning. and had gone into one another’s houses to sit waiting in the dark. Some more infirm had to wait in their beds. Then came the crash outside. In flew windows and doors. Apart from a few cuts, none of them is actually injured very badly, but some received such a shock that they are now quite ill.18
The third of this group exploded at the top of South Street, the roadway lined with shops and homes.
A carter on his way to market with a van and two horses had pulled up at a coffee-stall in the street, and was talking with the keeper of the stall when the bomb burst with terrific uproar not many yards away.19 When the men recovered their senses they found themselves lying amid the ruins of the stall and its crockery, but only slightly hurt. The two horses were killed. On every side was a scene of wreckage.20
Properties between 15 and 23 South Street took the full force of the blast with doors and windows smashed and the walls pockmarked by bomb fragments. Inside five people sustained injuries.
Switching to incendiary bombs, Mathy passed over a mainly residential area of Greenwich where fires broke out at 86 King George Street, 52 Croom’s Hill and at Hillside House on Croom’s Hill. Another burned itself out in the roadway as L 31 approached Blackheath and dropped an explosive bomb at the rear of 8 The Grove21 shattering numerous windows.
Next in the path of L 31 was a large encampment at the north-west corner of Blackheath where the Army Service Corps had established No.2 Reserve Horse Transport Depot. At least three bombs exploded at the camp.
One bomb fell at a point between one hut and some other fenced in huts in which some soldiers were sleeping. ‘Down went the fence,’ said an eyewitness, ‘as though a hurricane had hit it. In went windows and side like – well, the place might have been put in a big nutcracker.’22
The bombs injured 15 soldiers, smashed wooden huts, wrecked corrugated iron storerooms, damaged four ammunition wagons and destroyed a large YMCA recreation room.
As L 31 crossed the open space of Blackheath, Mathy’s next bomb blasted a crater in Eliot Place, smashing windows in 24 homes. Seconds later, just off the inappropriately named Tranquil Vale, another crashed through the roof of 32 Southvale Road. Elizabeth Emma Vane, aged 70, was asleep at the top of the house when a sister-in-law and her daughter on the ground floor awoke to the sound of loud booms.
I said to my daughter, ‘There are the guns!’ My daughter said, ‘Nonsense!’ but she jumped out of bed. Then the crash came, and I was surrounded by bricks and debris, but was not touched in any way.
My daughter and myself crawled over the bricks, but when we went to go to the assistance of my sister-in-law upstairs we found that the staircase had gone.23
The explosion sent Elizabeth Vane crashing down to the drawing room where a fallen beam pinned her in her bed. When firemen reached her, although terribly injured, she managed to gasp, ‘Thank God you have come’.24 It took an hour to extricate Elizabeth from the wreckage of her home but she died of her injuries in hospital. The houses either side, 31 Southvale Road and 51 Tranquil Vale, both suffered severely and the crash of shattered windows sounded in both roads and in Camden Row, Royal Parade and Collins Street.
From Blackheath, Mathy dropped two bombs along Manor Way in Lee then no more fell for a mile and a half until L 31 reached the Progress Estate in Eltham, built in 1915 to house skilled workers employed at Woolwich’s Royal Arsenal.
Two bombs exploded with terrific force in Dickson Road. One landed squarely on No.33, severely damaging the house and its contents as well as smashing roofs and windows in 19 other houses in the street and more in neighbouring Sandby Green and Phineas Pett Road. The second detonated in the street, bursting a gas main and damaging houses from Nos.4 to 20 on one side of Dickson Road and Nos.5 to 27 on the other. Bomb fragments injured seven people who were outside looking for the Zeppelin but only one required hospital treatment.25 Roofs and windows in Cobbett Road also felt the impact of the bomb.
Seconds later a bomb tore through a house at 210 Well Hall Road, where engineer Frederick Thomas Allen lived with his family.26 The house collapsed, killing Frederick, his wife Ann, their daughter Gladys, aged 11, and Ellen Funnell, the wife of a corporal in the Life Guards who lived with them.
At 2.45am a corporal in charge of a lorry from the 2nd London Division Demolition Section, Royal Engineers, received orders to go to Well Hall Road.
I set my squad to work clearing away the wreckage, lifting the heavier portions of the debris with our tackle. I called upon some members of the Police and Special Constables to assist.
Several bodies were extricated and on recovering the last body I received instructions from the London Fire Brigade at 5.20am to return to Headquarters.27
Newspapers reported the findings of the inquest in gory detail.
The medical evidence showed in the case of the man [Frederick Allen] both legs and the right arm were fractured, and the spinal column broken. The lower jaw was smashed, and there was a large wound on the body and another on the chest. The woman [Ann Allen] was practically cut in two, and all her limbs were fractured.
In the case of the child [Gladys Allen] both legs were severed below the knee, the left thigh was broken, the right arm was cut off, and the head was smashed.
The younger woman [Ellen Funnell] had a broken nose, contusions about the mouth, and evidence of pressure by a heavy body on the forehead and parts of the limbs.28
From the shattered neighbouring houses, where ‘furniture was left hanging in all kinds of ungainly and curious attitudes,’ everyone escaped without injury.29
There are reports that the family’s dog followed the ambulance carrying Frederick’s body to the mortuary and then returned to lie forlornly on the pile of debris that had previously been its home. About a thousand mourners attended the Allen’s funeral.
Another 220 yards and the next bomb crashed down on No.1 Brome Road where by good fortune the family were away on holiday. The houses from Nos.1 to 9 suffered as did six more in Lovelace Gardens, with minor damage extending to Arsenal Road and Prince Rupert Road. The final bomb of this group exploded just beyond the Progress Estate, at 215 Grangehill Road. It demolished the house, more or less wrecked those on either side and damaged others all along the road and in both Granby Road and Westmount Road. Incredibly there were no reported injuries.
L 31 now approached the high ground of Shooter’s Hill, where Special Constables on duty at Severndroog Castle had a close shave. The castle, not a castle at all, rather an 18th century folly in the form of a triangular tower, offered uninterrupted views across London and was one of the best points south of the Thames for observing hostile aircraft on their way to and from the capital. L 31 appeared to be heading straight towards the tower and as it drew closer two bombs streaked down to explode in woods on either side.
No great damage was done, and there was no break in the service. The Special Constables stuck to their work, and continued faithfully to telephone the results of their scrutiny to the Central Observation Station at Spring Gardens.30
From Severndroog Castle, Mathy’s course took him towards Plumstead and now, at last, the first searchlight located the lone Zeppelin. About two and a half miles to the east, the light at Danson Park had a clear view of L 31 and others soon joined it but the low cloud layer holding at 1,000 to 1,200 feet ‘rendered the view of the Zeppelin intermittent and hazy’. Six guns of the Woolwich Sub-Command of London’s gun defences opened fire joined by the North Woolwich gun across the Thames; they fired 119 rounds in four and a half minutes before L 31 was lost to view. All the shells appeared to fall short of the target.
While under fire, L 31 passed a mile and a half south-east of Woolwich Arsenal and approached Plumstead where two bombs exploded in Swingate Lane, digging up allotments and smashing a great number of windows there and in Kirkham Street. Two bombs in Kingsdale Road partly demolished two houses with the inevitable accompanying broken windows there and in Melling Street, Bassant Road and Heathfield Terrace. Four more wrecked plant nurseries, a house and cottages on the eastern side of Plumstead Common while others caused damage around King’s Highway, at Woolwich Cemetery and at many other properties in the area. Mathy was now heading north towards the point where Plumstead High Street joined Bostall Hill.
The house at 3 Bostall Hill was home to two families. On the top floor munitions worker Walter Pearce lived with his wife Ellen and their two children, Winnie, aged four and 22-month-old Elsie. Earlier that evening the family had gone to a party on the ground floor at the home of the Allam family to celebrate the 70th birthday of Mrs Allam’s mother. In the house next door everyone was asleep except six-year-old Eva. A ‘buzzing noise in the sky’ woke her and she whispered to her brother, ‘The “Zepps” are coming’. Hearing a bomb explode in the distance he woke their parents and the whole family trooped down to the basement as three bombs exploded.
The place seemed to be struck like an earthquake. The roof and upper floor crashed in, pictures and ornaments fell, and even in the basement the refugees were shaken. The light went out but all were alive. Not one was harmed.31
Next door at No.3, however, the story was very different. Ellen Pearce was up very late when she heard the sound of exploding bombs. Carrying baby Elsie she decided to go downstairs to warn the Allams. Just as she reached the second flight of stairs a bomb smashed into the house.32 A police sergeant found it practically demolished: ‘Only the side wall and centre partition between the front and back rooms on the ground floor remained.’ Picking his way through tons of rubble he found the bodies of Walter, Ellen and Elsie.33
A police surgeon described their injuries.
The dead man had very many scalp wounds and injuries to both legs but his death was due to asphyxia from being crushed by debris and also to shock.
Witness next described terrible injuries to the child, which included a bad fracture of the skull, a wound in the left leg, fracture of the left thigh, two wounds on the left arm, and one on the right arm. A severe fracture of the skull would probably cause instantaneous death.
Later he saw the body of the women, who had a large wound on the body, which was the cause of death.34
Buried under an accumulation of furniture and beams the Pearce’s other daughter, four-year-old Winnie, was alive.
When the firemen came they saw her imprisoned. ‘Now you be a good girl and keep quite still till we get to you,’ said one worker, ‘and you will be alright.’ ‘I’ve got dust in my eyes,’ said the child, beginning to cry. ‘Well,’ said the tender-hearted fireman, ‘you be good and I’ll buy you a nice dolly.’ Soon they led her off to the infirmary, where she received kindly treatment. But she did not realise that her father, mother and baby sister had gone.35
The other family in the house, the Allam’s, all survived. Mrs Allam’s mother was unhurt, ‘but her daughter, who was pinned by both legs amidst the debris, refused to be assisted until the rescuers were able to assure her that her mother was safe’.36
Two more bombs had fallen at almost the same moment. One behind 3 Bostall Hill demolished the back of 78 Cordite Street37, with resulting damage to many others homes, but the other landed on an allotment. There were no more casualties.
Mathy now crossed back over the Thames, dropping a single bomb at Rainham at about 1.45am where it smashed a few cottage windows. Benefitting from a tail wind L 31 reached the Essex coast near Shoeburyness about 2.15am and rendezvoused at the north-east corner of Kent with Peterson and L 32 a little after 3am. Together they headed back to Germany. For Mathy, however, the journey did not end well. Carrying excess weight through an accumulation of rain on the envelope and having used all the water ballast, L 31 hit the ground hard, the impact inflicting significant damage. She was out of action for a month, but the 43 bombs (35 HE and eight incendiary) she dropped on London inflicted damage estimated at £130,000, the second highest amount by a single Zeppelin in the war.38
Although Woodhouse of No.50 (Home Defence) Squadron had tried to engage L 32 off the Kent coast, no other pilots had any luck. Seven RNAS aircraft were searching fruitlessly for Zeppelins as were five from the RFC’s No. 39 (Home Defence) Squadron. Their flight based at Hounslow had recently transferred to a new airfield at North Weald Bassett, concentrating the squadron’s three flights in Essex on the eastern approaches to London. One of its pilots, Second Lieutenant James Mackay caught a glimpse of L 31 but another, Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson, patrolling from Sutton’s Farm failed to see L 31, which must have passed close by when Mathy crossed the Thames to Rainham. But Robinson’s day of destiny was fast approaching.