ATARA warning was issued at 10.51pm, alerting Area 42 (covering Essex) that Zeppelins were over Britain. Three pilots of No.39 (Home Defence) Squadron allocated night patrol duty were standing by when HQ at Woodford Green relayed the order to the airfields at North Weald Bassett, Sutton’s Farm and Hainault Farm on the eastern approaches to London. Standing orders required a pilot from each airfield to spiral up to 10,000 feet then follow a set patrol line for two hours looking for Zeppelins before commencing his descent. Two hours after the despatch of the first patrols a second patrol would ascend to take over from those descending. Once in the air they were on their own, there were no radios to guide them to a target.
‘A’ flight at North Weald Bassett patrolled between there and Hainault Farm from where ‘C’ flight continued the line to Sutton’s Farm. ‘B’ flight flew the most southerly leg from Sutton’s Farm to Joyce Green airfield on the south bank of the Thames near Dartford. The patrol lines extended for about 18 miles. At the three airfields, aircraft engines spluttered into life as ground crew and pilots rushed to complete final checks. Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson, commanding ‘B’ flight, was first to get his BE2c airborne at 11.08pm. Three minutes later a BE12 piloted by Lieutenant Clifford Ross took off from North Weald and only another minute passed before Alfred de Bathe Brandon bounced along the grass runway and coaxed his BE2c up into the air from Hainault Farm.
Designed before the war as a two-seater reconnaissance aircraft, the BE2c saw service on the Western Front in 1915 where, although this extremely steady aircraft was ideally suited for its role, it became an easy target for nimble German fighters. In a Home Defence role, however, its steady reliability proved ideal for pilots embarking on the challenge of night flying. Flown as a single seater, the pilot occupied the rear seat with the front cockpit covered over to reduce drag. Although now armed with a Lewis machine gun, British engineers were still working on an efficient interrupter gear to allow the gun to fire through the propeller, so the gun fired upwards at an angle of 45 degrees through a cut-out at the rear of the upper wing. To make a successful attack the pilot had either to fly under the target Zeppelin or tilt over while flying alongside, not an easy feat while avoiding ‘friendly’ anti-aircraft shells and enemy machine gun fire. The BE12 flown by Lieutenant Ross was in essence a single-seat version of the BE2c with a more powerful engine.
William Leefe Robinson was born in India in 1895, where his father owned a coffee estate, and was educated in India and England. He did well in his school’s Officer Training Corps and in August 1914 entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. On 16 December 1914 he was posted with the rank of second lieutenant to the 5th (Reserve) Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment in Cornwall where the boredom and drudgery of training recruits quickly wore Robinson down and he looked for a way out to ‘do his bit’. In March 1915 his application for transfer to the Royal Flying Corps received approval and by the end of the month he was in France as an Observer with No.4 Squadron where he fell in love with flying. On 8 May, however, a wound in his right arm saw him return to England for a month’s recuperation during which time he applied for flying training. After gaining his ‘wings’ and completing a military flying course, he joined No.19 Squadron forming at Castle Bromwich in September 1915. Having shown an aptitude for night flying, Robinson had a number of ‘loan’ postings to assist in the defence of London until he arrived at Sutton’s Farm at the beginning of February 1916 to join No.19 Reserve Aeroplane Squadron, which in turn became No.39 (Home Defence) Squadron.1
When Robinson took off from Sutton’s Farm it took him 53 minutes to climb to his patrol height of 10,000 feet, emphasising the importance of the early warning system. Once at the required height he headed south and began patrolling back and forwards between Sutton’s Farm and Joyce Green, all the time scanning the darkness for raiding airships. Lieutenant Ross completed his patrol having seen nothing of the enemy and crashed when landing back at North Weald but was unhurt. Brandon also had no luck in his search, returning to Hainault Farm at 1.38am.
At 12.01am, at exactly the same time that Robinson reached 10,000 feet over Sutton’s Farm, Ernst Lehmann brought Zeppelin LZ 98 inland over the Kent coast between Dymchurch and Dungeness. He made steady progress north-west and at 1.09am neared the village of Hartley, five miles south-west of Gravesend, from where a searchlight found him. Searchlights from Southfleet and Dartford also located the intruder and guns burst into action from both places. At 1.20am LZ 98 escaped the grip of the lights and the guns fell silent.2 Lehmann had handled his airship skilfully.
Finding several single clouds floating about two miles high, I decided to use them in escaping the searchlights.... It had taken us about an hour... to come up to the position best suited for the attack. Again the cloud and haze made it exceedingly difficult to spot definitely the surface objectives, but finally we recognised the familiar bends of the Thames.
We went in from the south, taking a zig-zag course and jumping from one cloud to another until LZ 98 was over the docks. There we dropped our bombs. Three times before this the ship had been picked up by the lights and on each occasion they had lost her as we entered cloud.3
While Lehmann’s skilful use of cloud cover and his identification of the Thames is not disputed, his bombs did not fall on the London Docks. Most of his bombs fell as he approached Gravesend, aimed loosely at the searchlights at Hartley and Southfleet. His first six bombs, incendiaries, fell in a field west of Longfield, then 12 more landed in fields either side of the road from Westwood to Southfleet, setting fire to a stack of wheat, before three HE bombs descended near the Southfleet searchlight. One failed to detonate, another smashed windows in Church Street and at Cook’s Cottages in the neighbouring hamlet of Red Street, and the third exploded on a brick-built outhouse at Northfleet Green Farm where the farmer had a fortunate escape.
The farmer was looking out of a window overlooking the outhouse, and there was a horse in the stable: the former was driven backwards from the window uninjured and not even thrown down as he hung on to the sill, the horse was quite uninjured. The whole force of the explosion appears to have expended itself forward through the door giving on to the lane, and vertically upwards. The house and stable are very little damaged.4
About a mile on, LZ 98 dropped two more bombs while skirting Gravesend; both fell on the golf course. Across the Thames, searchlights on the Essex side of the river now picked up LZ 98 and at 1.20am the 12-pdr gun at Tilbury opened fire, causing Lehmann to climb rapidly to 14,000 feet and head north-east with a strong tailwind aiding his escape. In a report on the action the officer commanding the Woolwich area guns concluded: ‘The Zeppelin was not seen to be attacked by our aircraft.’ A dangerous hunter, however, had been stalking LZ 98.
As William Leefe Robinson neared the end of his patrol, like Ross and Brandon he had seen no sign of Zeppelin activity. At 1.07am Second Lieutenant Frederick Sowrey took off from Sutton’s Farm to take over Robinson’s patrol but three minutes later, when he should have commenced his descent, Robinson saw a Zeppelin held by searchlights; it was LZ 98 at Southfleet. Robinson made his move.
The clouds had collected in this quarter, and the searchlights had some difficulty in keeping on the aircraft.
By this time I had managed to climb to 12,900 feet and I made in the direction of the Zeppelin which was being fired on by a few anti-aircraft guns... I very slowly gained on it for about 10 minutes – I judged it to be about 800 feet below me, and I sacrificed my speed in order to keep the height. It went behind some clouds, avoided the searchlights and I lost sight of it. After 15 minutes fruitless search I returned to my patrol.5
Lehmann had evaded the hunter he never saw.
LZ 98 dropped 15 bombs as Lehmann flew across Essex and Suffolk. The first two fell at Corringham at 1.30am, then two at Fobbing, eight at Vange and one at Great Waltham before the last two fell at Rushmere and Playford near Ipswich at 2.10am. None of these caused any damage. LZ 98 passed Saxmundham at 2.21am and just a few minutes later, as she neared the coast, her crew saw that unmistakeable ‘bright ball of fire’ far behind them that denoted a terrible fate had befallen another airship. It could so easily have been them.
Frustrated after his failed encounter, Robinson searched for the Sutton’s Farm landing flares in the blackness of the Essex countryside and located them at 1.50am. Frederick Sowrey had orders to shift his patrol south of the Thames, along a line from Joyce Green to Farningham, reacting to reports of the progress of LZ 98, but he returned to his airfield at 1.20am following engine failure. The pilot flying the second patrol from Hainault Farm, Second Lieutenant Basil Hunt, took off in a BE2c at 1.22am, also receiving orders to patrol south of the Thames. The only pilot now operating north of the river was James Mackay. He took off from North Weald Bassett at 1.08pm to cover the whole line to Joyce Green.
Robinson was also still flying north of the Thames but he was already long overdue back at Sutton’s Farm. However, at the same time that he spotted his airfield’s landing flares, he also noticed a red glow in the sky north of London. Forsaking the beckoning flares, Robinson turned to investigate and at 2.05am, as he headed towards the glow, he saw another Zeppelin held by searchlights. Mackay, who was near Joyce Green at the time, saw it too and in his own words ‘gave chase’. Five minutes later Hunt joined the pursuit of a Zeppelin that appeared to be threatening the capital. In fact the airship was not a Zeppelin, it was the army’s wooden-framed Schütte-Lanz, SL 11, but the finer points of airship design meant little to those now in pursuit.
SL 11 had crossed the Essex coast at Foulness at 10.40pm. Commanding her was 30-year-old Hauptmann Wilhelm Schramm. He joined the army in 1905 but in 1910, gripped by the wave of enthusiasm sweeping the country, he transferred to airships. Surprisingly, Wilhelm Schramm had been born in London. His father was a director of the German engineering firm Siemens and Wilhelm’s parents lived in Victoria Road, Charlton, when Wilhelm was born in December 1885. Before his fifth birthday, however, Wilhelm’s father suffered a stroke and the family returned to Germany. Perhaps even more surprising, Schramm had come close to bombing the house he had once lived in. A year earlier, on 7 September 1915, when serving as executive officer on SL II,6 that airship bombed south-east London with one bomb exploding on Fossdene Fields in Charlton. It smashed windows in 40 houses on Victoria Road but Schramm’s old home was untouched. Since then Schramm had spent time on the Eastern Front but more recently had attacked Harwich on the night of 25 April in command of LZ 93 and was over Kent the following night.
In August 1916 he and his crew transferred to the new SL 11, one of eight airships of the ‘E class’ (SL 8 to SL 15). Although Peter Strasser did not have a high opinion of Schütte-Lanz airships, the ‘E class’ compared favourably with both the ‘p’ and ‘q-class’ Zeppelins. Alongside Schramm on board SL 11 were his executive officer, Oberleutnant der Reserve Wilhelm Vohdin, and 14 other members of the crew. Taking off from their home base at Spich, about 12 miles south-east of Cologne, it was the first flight to England for this new airship.
After coming inland SL 11 made a wide sweep across Essex and Suffolk, around the capital’s defences, towards Hertfordshire. Schramm reached Royston at 12.30am, 23 miles north of North Weald Bassett, far beyond No.39 Squadron’s patrol lines. After careful manoeuvring Schramm was near St Albans at 1.10am and well positioned to launch his attack on the capital from the north-west. Ten minutes later he released 10 bombs, probably to gain height before approaching London. Six fell in fields south of the village of London Colney and four north of South Mimms, two of those close to Ridge Hall Farm and two by the edge of Mimmshall Wood.
The anti-aircraft guns defending London formed a number of geographical Sub-Commands. North-West Sub-Command HQ at Wembley received a message at 1.23am that a Zeppelin was approaching from the north, helpfully adding, ‘exact whereabouts unknown’. Their report highlights some of the problems encountered that night.
The weather was very foggy, and the lights were very bad. From 1.30 to 2.00, various guns on the Eastern side of the Sub-Command reported that the sounds of a Zepp. could be heard, apparently within range, and asked for their lights to be uncovered. This was done, and in each case a report was received that the lights did not penetrate the heavy mist, and they were therefore covered again.7
One of those lights was at the village of Little Heath, just north of Potter’s Bar. The beam failed to penetrate the mist but the effect of the diffused light drew the attention of SL 11 and at 1.28am three bombs dropped. Two incendiaries fell north of the village at Bolton Park and a bomb that exploded in Heath Road smashed a water main and damaged roofs. A minute later another exploded in the grounds of Northaw House. Turning on to a more easterly course, SL 11 headed towards the Enfield Branch of the Great Northern Railway from where its continued course resembled a reversed letter ‘S’. About this time the Temple House searchlight (Waltham Abbey Sub-Command) tried to come into action but things did not go according to plan.
At 1.27 sounds of aircraft were reported West of Temple House Gun and Light Station. Three minutes later. orders were given to the light to train on the sound. In doing so the back of the projector came away in the hands of the operator.
A bomb was then dropped about a mile West of the Gun Station followed by another about three quarters of a mile South of the first.
It took a few minutes to rectify the problem but by then the airship was heading south and out of range. The two reported explosions were those at Northaw House and another to the south of the position, dropped after SL 11 had crossed the railway at Crews Hill Station. Schramm had dropped an incendiary bomb on a golf course west of the tracks, and five more and the HE bomb on the east side at the Glasgow Stud Farm. An ensuing fire in a stable block killed three racehorses. Having circled around, SL 11 followed the railway south for about a mile before dropping another incendiary in a field next to The Chantry, a large house on The Ridgeway. A mile on and another incendiary fell in Bell’s Field on the east side of World’s End Lane and just north-east of the Enfield Isolation Hospital. Then, commencing one of the curves of the ‘S’, three more burning bombs fell in a field on Oak Lodge Farm at Southgate. Now heading north-west, after about two and a half miles, Schramm dropped two more in fields on Greenwood Farm at Hadley Wood, close to where the main line of the Great Northern Railway emerges from a tunnel to head towards London. Having crossed the railway SL 11 made another change of direction around to the south-east, once more on course for the capital. The time was now about 1.50am. It was at that moment that William Leefe Robinson observed a red glow to the north of London, that glow the result of the fires ignited by SL 11’s incendiary bombs.
As SL 11 approached the outer suburbs, those men operating the searchlights of the North-Eastern Sub-Command could plainly hear the sound of engines but the fog and mist made observation extremely difficult. Lieutenant W.H. Moffatt commanding the 3-inch, 20cwt gun in Finsbury Park thought the sound was coming towards him. At 1. 53am he ordered the searchlight switched on but a minute later he cancelled the order as the diffused light was ‘clearly illuminating the Gun Station and giving our position away’. The sound of the engines became louder and more distinct until, at a time precisely recorded by Moffatt as ‘1.58M½’, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the airship as it passed a gap in the clouds. At 2am Moffatt’s searchlight caught SL 11 as it passed west of Finsbury Park and his gun blasted into action as two more searchlights – from Victoria Park and Clapton – locked-on, then more followed.
The three pilots, Robinson, Mackay and Hunt, saw the lights converging and headed towards them. Then came the gunfire. By 2.05am guns at Victoria Park, Clapton, West Ham and Deptford Park had joined Finsbury Park. Within another two minutes the guns at Wanstead, Beckton, Paddington, Green Park, King’s Cross, Honourable Artillery Company grounds, Meath Gardens and Tower Bridge were also thundering across the city, with Regent’s Park joining in at 2.08am. At this point SL 11 became visible at the Waltham Abbey Sub-Command, but for now their guns waited in silence. For Schramm the situation had suddenly deteriorated and, when south-east of Finsbury Park, he turned east and away from central London. At about this time the crew working the Clapton gun felt sure one of their shells had damaged SL 11. An officer observing for the Clapton gun agreed.
I can only say for certain that Clapton got one shell into her. It burst so close that it illuminated the envelope and seemed to burst absolutely on it. The ship gave a very decided tilt and rocking motion for some seconds afterwards.8
An officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps based at the German Internment camp at Alexandra Palace, Captain R.N. Moffatt, appears to confirm this observation.
[The airship] appeared to be stationary for a few seconds and one or two shells seemed to burst rather near it. It then tilted its nose a little and turned to a more northern direction after which it put out smoke of its own, and it entered a thicker belt of clouds for it disappeared from view.9
The ‘smoke’ Moffatt reported was a cloud of water ballast released by SL 11 as Schramm tried to climb rapidly away from the guns.
A shell may have detonated close to SL 11 and caused consternation to those on board but it did not interfere with her progress. However, the rising cacophony of gunfire over the capital did have an extraordinary effect on the population of London. No German airship had disturbed central London for almost a year but when the London guns burst into action in the early hours of Sunday 3 September it created a tumult impossible to sleep through. From bedroom windows and gardens across the capital, Londoners stared up into the sky and saw one of the hated airships pierced by light beams and bombarded with bursting shells. They watched spellbound, seeming to recognise that this powerful response was very different from anything that had happened in the past and that they were witnesses to a great event. Many parents dragged sleepy children from their beds to share the moment. Some estimates say hundreds of thousands were watching, all desperately willing the guns to find the target and for a raging inferno to illuminate the sky.
Having turned away from central London, Schramm was heading north keeping the great reservoirs of the Lea Valley on his starboard side, passing Stamford Hill, Tottenham Hale and Northumberland Park, towards Edmonton. As he did so SL 11 began to break free from the searchlights and the gunfire had ceased by 2.13am.
But the reduction in fire was only momentary because the searchlights of the Waltham Abbey Sub-Command now uncovered and the guns opened fire at 2.15am from Enfield Lock, Temple House and Warlies Park as SL 11 drifted in and out of view through the mist and fog. Three minutes earlier Schramm had released six bombs over Edmonton, the first since Hadley Wood. One landed at Eley’s Cartridge Works in Angel Road, which produced rifle ammunition, but it failed to explode. One did explode at the North London Ballast Works but without causing damage, while it was a similar result for three at a sewage works between Montagu Road and the Great Eastern Railway line. The final bomb in Edmonton landed on allotments on the west side of Montagu Road but, like the first, failed to detonate. Two minutes later SL 11 reached Ponders End where two bombs exploded in the High Street. The first damaged seven houses but the second, which exploded by the junction with Southbury Road, broke a water main as well as tram and telephone wires, smashed windows and tore roof tiles off 56 homes. Two more bombs fell close by, on allotments and at Rochford’s Nursery near Durant’s Park. The area was home to a large number of horticultural nurseries and inevitably the explosion of a bomb so close ravaged the great commercial greenhouses. Then in Green Street, just to the north of Durant’s Park, another broke apart as it hit the ground and failed to explode.
From Green Street, Schramm travelled another half a mile before releasing three more bombs. One shattered more greenhouses at Smith’s Nurseries on Hertford Road, another damaged an old coach-house in Old Road along with 14 other houses, and the third caused a little damage at Rainer’s brickfield. Edging north-west, SL 11 passed within a mile of the Enfield Lock gun and at 2.17am dropped about a dozen bombs between the settlements of Turkey Street and Bull’s Cross. Two or three at Turkey Street damaged the backs of three houses and eight more fell amongst the lettuces and potatoes on a market garden on Bullsmoor Lane, Bull’s Cross, with the last landing in a river. Relieved of the weight of the bombs, SL 11 climbed again as Schramm distanced himself from the gun at Enfield Lock but was now heading towards the Temple House gun; the guns were two and a half miles apart.
It is surprising that Schramm did not turn north-east at this point, using the tailwind to speed him between the two guns, away from London and back towards the coast. Instead he headed north-west, passing within 350 yards of the Temple House gun. But could he have thought he was heading north-east?
All German airships carried a compass, relying on the liquid magnetic type as they weighed less than a gyro compass. Although the liquid element contained alcohol as an anti-freeze, these compasses could still freeze due to the long hours spent at sub-zero temperatures. If the compass on SL 11 had frozen, Schramm would have relied on observation of landmarks to ascertain his course, but the weather was foggy and misty, restricting close scrutiny. After the first guns opened fire, did Schramm catch a glimpse of large body of water and, presuming it to be the Thames, steer towards it and, keeping it on his starboard bow prepare to drop his bombs on what he presumed was central London? That body of water he may have seen, however, was not the Thames, it was a line of great reservoirs running up the Lea Valley from Edmonton in the south to Enfield Lock in the north. This was not a mistake without precedent; the commander of Zeppelin L 10 had made exactly the same error just over a year earlier on the night of 17/18 August 1915.10 Schramm’s bombs never fell more than a mile west of the reservoirs; if it had been the Thames, then these bombs would have hit the heart of London. It is impossible to know what Schramm believed but if that north-west turn at Turkey Street was made while alongside the Thames, SL 11 would have been heading across East London, out into Essex and home. Schramm may have believed he had succeeded in bombing central London but the reality of the situation saw SL 11 heading deeper into danger.
The 3-inch, 20cwt anti-aircraft gun at Temple House stood on the north side of South Osiers Wood with the searchlight about a quarter of a mile away on the west side of Home Wood. The commander, Lieutenant C.M. Brown, had been following SL 11 in the searchlights for eight minutes before he came into action.11 The gun’s fifth round came close; Gunner A.J. Hoare reported that the airship ‘quivered but did not otherwise seem affected’. At about the same time, Lieutenant Brown heard machine-gun fire. Some of the crew thought the twelfth round burst close to the tail but Gunner Hoare disagreed, reporting that it exploded ‘rather low without apparent effect’. Continuing on its north-west course, SL 11 dropped three bombs at Burnt Farm, Goff’s Oak, but as their nineteenth round arced across the sky the gun crew unanimously agreed that it hit the rear of the airship and shortly afterwards she began to burn.12 There is strong evidence that a shell fragment damaged the rear engine but that shell did not destroy SL 11. Lost to onlookers in the darkness, others had closed in for the kill.
As soon as the pilots Robinson, Mackay and Hunt had seen SL 11 in the searchlights they headed towards it with all speed, each unaware of the others. Mackay had closed to within a mile of SL 11 when it began to burn, slowly at first but then the flames took hold of the stricken airship. Hunt was even closer; he was just about to engage when fire engulfed SL 11, the helpless wreck passing within 200 yards of him as the intense glare briefly blinded him. They had both been close to earning enduring fame as the first man to shoot down a German airship over Britain, but that honour went to 21-year-old Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson.
After his earlier unsuccessful attempt to close with LZ 98, Robinson changed his tactics.
Remembering my last failure I sacrificed height (I was still 12,900 feet) for speed and made nose down in the direction of the Zeppelin. I saw shells bursting and night tracer shells flying around it. When I drew closer I noticed that the antiaircraft aim was too high or too low; also a good many some 800 feet behind – a few tracers went right over.13
Having overtaken SL 11, Robinson turned back and flew directly towards the airship, his tiny BE2c dwarfed by the overpowering bulk of the great aerial monster. ‘I flew about 800 feet below it from bow to stern,’ he explained, ‘and distributed one drum along it (alternate, New Brock and Pomeroy).’14 With some frustration he added: ‘it seemed to have no effect.’ Undaunted, he loaded a second drum of mixed ammunition and tried again. This time he tilted his aircraft over so his upward-firing machine gun could rake the flank of SL 11, but he was to be disappointed again, the new bullets the RFC had put much faith in were hitting the target ‘without apparent effect’. Robinson loaded a third drum and noted that the anti-aircraft guns had fallen silent as he moved into position. By trial and error he had found the most effective method of attack.
I then got behind it (by this time I was very close – 500 feet or less below) and concentrated one drum at one part (underneath rear). I was then at a height of 11,500 feet when attacking Zeppelin.
I hardly finished the drum before I saw the part fired at glow.
In a few seconds the whole rear part was blazing.
Above him the uncontrollably burning airship began to fall as Robinson squirmed out of its path then in his excitement he ‘fired off a few red Very’s lights and dropped a parachute flare’. In a letter to his parents he described his feelings.
I hardly know how I felt as I watched the huge mass gradually turn on end and – as it seemed to me – slowly sink, one glowing blazing mass. I gradually realised what I had done and grew wild with excitement.15
In a more candid moment Robinson admitted: ‘I was so pleased that in my excitement I pulled the ‘joystick’ and looped the loop several times.’16 That would certainly have met with disapproval had it appeared in his official report.
One of those manning the Temple House searchlight thought SL 11 was over Soper’s Farm when fire broke out. The farm stood just over half a mile south of the village of Cuffley in Hertfordshire.
In the great flare of light Basil Hunt caught a glimpse of another Zeppelin but, dazzled by the glare, he quickly lost sight of it. It was L 16 at Essendon, about four miles away.
Numerous eyewitness accounts of the last moments of SL 11 filled the nation’s newspapers. A particularly descriptive one published by the Morning Post appeared in a number of provincial papers later in the week.
We watched fascinated, the terrible death of the Zeppelin. The blazing airship swung around for an instant, broadside on, as though unmanageable; then the burning end dipped, the flames ran up the whole structure as her petrol tanks one after another caught fire. In another second or two the Zeppelin, now perpendicular, was falling headlong to earth from a height not much short of a couple of miles, a mass of roaring flame. So tremendous was the blaze and so intense the light that she seemed to be an immense incandescent mantle at white heat and enveloped in flame, falling, and illuminating the country for miles around. With ever-increasing momentum she sped down until at last she struck the earth with a crash that could be heard for miles. A dull red glow brightened the heavens for a few seconds, and a distant mass of still burning wreckage was all that was left of the Zeppelin. The people watched the attack on the Zeppelin in silence, but when she was seen to be on fire cheer upon cheer was raised and repeated again and again.17
Those countless onlookers across London and in the surrounding counties had indeed watched in silence, but when she fell from the sky the cheers grew reaching a peak as SL 11 hit the ground. A brief pause and then realisation set in that after 25 months of war one of the feared and hated ‘Baby-killers’ had been destroyed before their eyes. This was different to the destruction of previous airships far out to sea or over Europe, this was a moment in history witnessed by the masses.
The Zeppelin took quite two minutes dropping to earth, but during those two minutes mad, deafening cheers rose out of the night on all sides. Hooters from works and from vessels in the Thames and railways shrieked and whistled and screeched, all joining in the general pandemonium of joy. For a full half-hour the cheering continued, echoing and re-echoing from all sides.18
Despite the hour – SL 11 hit the ground shortly after 2.25am – vast crowds congregated to celebrate, seemingly oblivious to the fact that many were only ‘half dressed’. But while people joyously caroused, few gave a thought to where the burning wreckage had fallen or to the damage it might have caused.
Mr Grow, who lived on Cuffley Hill, had woken to the booming of the guns and was looking out of his bedroom window when SL 11 began to burn.
The flaming mass was so near me that I thought it was going to drop on an old hostelry [The Plough] only a few score yards away, but it glided on and fell with a fearful crash on to a field about 150 to 200 yards from that house. I had watched the whole spectacle, enthralled with the magnificent sight. Immediately the flaming mass crashed to earth I ran across the field to witness the final scene. The only other person there at the time, so far as I could see, was a special constable, and together we watched the wonderful and historic spectacle.19
When Special Constable Moore and Mr Grow arrived at the field on Castle Farm, Cuffley, the heat from the burning wreckage was so intense that it prevented them from getting too close, as did the machine gun bullets ‘popping-off’ in the fire. Eventually, when others arrived, they organised a chain of buckets to douse the now smouldering remains with water.
The crews of the four Zeppelins nearest to London could not mistake what they had just witnessed. (See Map 6). Sommerfeldt, commanding L 16 over Essendon, watched in horror as ‘it caught fire at the stern, burned with an enormous flame and fell’.20 With the wind behind him Sommerfeldt moved quickly. He dropped just two incendiary bombs on his way back to the coast, one at the village of Aston, eight miles north of Essendon, and another at West Stow, north of Bury St Edmunds, before crossing the coast near Great Yarmouth at about 4.20am.
The Zeppelin furthest to the west was Peterson’s L 32 at Tring. He looked on helplessly as, ‘A great fire... lit up the surroundings within a large radius and then fell to the ground slowly’.21 From his claimed position over Kensington, Peterson reported heading east towards the City of London dropping his bombs as he went. But from Tring as he headed east his ‘London’ bombs fell near Hertford at 2.54am. At the village of Hertford Heath 16 bombs resulted in the deaths of two horses and the 24 that rained down around the neighbouring village of Great Amwell managed to kill a pony and smash the windows in three houses. L 32‘s final two bombs exploded in countryside east of Ware causing no damage. Peterson reached the Suffolk coast near Lowestoft at about 4.15am.
Kuno Manger was just south of Thaxted when he saw the flames and immediately turned away from London. On his journey to the coast the military authorities attributed 18 bombs to L 14. Two dropped almost immediately at Little Bardfield and Finchingfield, then no more for 18 miles until L 14 reached Lavenham. From there to the village of Haughley, about 10 miles away, Manger promiscuously dropped 16 more bombs across Suffolk: two at Lavenham, single bombs near Thorpe Morieux and Brettenham, two at Drinkstone, five near Buxhall and five more around Haughley. The only damage was to some crops at Buxhall. Manger reached the coast at Bacton at 4.05am.
The last of the raiders approaching London when SL 11 burst into flames was Kurt Frankenberg’s L 21. Although at Hitchin, 18 miles from Cuffley, Frankenberg saw two aeroplanes attacking SL 11 through binoculars and turned away from London without hesitation. In the next hour L 21 released eight bombs: two incendiaries at Dunton near Biggleswade, one at Huntley Park near Gamlingay, an incendiary and two HE bombs on the Cambridgeshire fens south of Chatteris, which damaged a few crops, and two bombs at Tilney St Lawrence, about seven miles south-west of King’s Lynn. In his report Frankenberg planned to attack Norwich on this return journey but struggled to find the darkened city. He dropped bombs to try to force a reaction from the city’s defences. He was in fact 50 miles west of Norwich when, at 3.40am, he dropped two bombs as he passed to the west of King’s Lynn, which shattered greenhouses at a horticultural nursery and windows in a house, followed by two incendiaries north of the town. These did elicit a response and Frankenberg believed like others that night that he had finally found Norwich. But the gun that opened fire was a 75mm mobile gun protecting the Royal Estate at Sandringham. As the gun boomed into action, Frankenberg dropped an incendiary bomb over the village of Wolferton, to the west of Sandringham, followed at 3.47am by nine bombs around Dersingham to the north of the Royal Estate. The exploding bombs shook the unsuspecting villagers from their slumbers and the Norfolk police reported serious damage to six houses and other damage to eight more.
The words ‘serious damage’ do not adequately relay the cost to one family. George Dunger and his wife, Violet Ellen, lived at the hamlet of Doddshill, on the east side of Dersingham. The couple were awake but their three daughters slept on. At the inquest Mr Dunger explained that he and his wife ‘were standing outside their cottage door, when he saw a Zeppelin in the sky lit up by two searchlights’.22 An explosion threw them to the ground and sliced off the gable end of their cottage. Although Mr Dunger sustained an injury to his thigh, his wife had suffered far worse, although the children were unharmed even though their bedroom now lay exposed to the night air. Unfortunately Mrs Dunger never recovered from her injuries and died in hospital on 21 September.23
Continuing his attack on ‘Norwich’, Frankenberg dropped seven bombs around Snettisham and ten at Sedgeford, none of which caused any damage, then a final incendiary bomb landed at Thornham before L 21 passed out over the coast at 4am. The mobile gun at Sandringham claimed a hit on L 21 but she showed no reaction and, although struggling with engine problems on the journey back to Germany, reaching Nordholz after a mission lasting almost 27 hours, there is no suggestion that this was the cause. But unknown to the crew of L 21 and in a strange twist, as far as the British public was concerned they were dead, their charred and broken bodies lying amongst the smouldering wreckage in a farmer’s field at Cuffley.