As the Zeppelin offensive against the United Kingdom began to lose its momentum, the High Command of the German armed forces decided to attach greater importance to the operations of the Imperial German Air Service. General Ernst von Hoeppner was appointed commander of this vastly expanded arm, with Colonel Hermann Thomsen as his Chief of Staff. From the outset, Hoeppner was more aggressive in his choice of primary targets, which would include the Houses of Parliamernt, Whitehall, Downing Street, the Admiralty, the War Office, the Bank of England and the newspaper production district of Fleet Street, the intention being to prove that no one in the British political, armed forces, financial or press establishments should feel any safer than the average citizen. Some raids would be delivered in daylight, the result being to further damage British morale.
As luck would have it, a suitable unit was stationed near Ostend on the Belgian coast, oddly named for security reasons as the Ostend Brieftauben Abteiling, that is, the Ostend Carrier Pigeon Battalion. This was to be equipped with Gotha heavy bombers, which had already entered production, and the Giant super bomber, which was approaching its production phase. The twin-engined Gotha bi-planes were considered to be huge in their day and could initially reach a height of 15,000 feet, which was well beyond the capacity of contemporary British fighters. With a maximum speed of 87mph, they possessed a range of 500 miles and were capable of carrying a bomb load of 1,100-lbs. Defensive armament consisted of two machine guns. Depending upon mark, the Giants were powered by two to five engines and could also reach a height of 15,000 feet and had a maximum speed of approximately 85 mph. In addition to carrying a respectable bomb load, they possessed a formidable defensive armament of nose, dorsal, ventral and two upper wing machine guns.
Officially, the ‘Ostend Carrier Pigeons,’ commanded by Captain Ernst Brandenburger, were known as the Englandgeschwerder, or England Squadron. Nominally, this was subdivided into six flights each of six aircraft. Hoeppner’s view was that a small, specialist bomber unit such as this could achieve far better results than the Zeppelins. He pointed out, for example, that 18 Gothas carrying the same bomb load as three Zeppelins, were capable of arriving over London simultaneously, a feat never achieved by three Zeppelins, and thus represented far better value for money. The activities of the Englandgeschwerder were given the codename of Operation Turk’s Cross.
At first glance, Hoeppner’s ideas were entirely reasonable. There were, however, several factors that he had failed to take into account. The route of the raiders, having crossed the North Sea, was entirely predictable. They would overfly Essex to reach London then, having dropped their bombs, would turn left and leave England via the Kent coast. This meant that they would not only face the dense anti-aircraft belt already set up to counter the Zeppelin raids, but also be vulnerable to interception by the RFC and RNAS fighter squadrons based around Dunkirk. Again, their operational radius was far shorter than that of the Zeppelins, so that their potential target area was limited to London and a small segment of south-eastern England, leaving the rest of the country virtually untroubled. Furthermore, the civil population had become accustomed to air attacks and learned to live with them. Again, while there was something faintly other-worldly about Zeppelins, biplanes were familiar sights, even if these were far larger than usual. The element of shock had been replaced by stoicism.
The first Gotha raid, involving 21 aircraft, took place against Folkstone and Shorncliffe Camp on 25 May 1917. Ninety-five people were killed and 195 were injured, while damage caused was valued at £19,405. One Gotha was lost over the English Channel, precise cause unknown, while another crashed on landing. The second raid, by 22 Gothas, against Sheerness and Shoeburyness, took place on 5 June but produced disappointing results at the cost of one aircraft shot down. On 13 June the Englandgeschwerder’s third raid, involving 18 Gothas, was directed at London and Margate, killed 162, injured 432 and caused £129,498 worth of damage as well as one British aircraft forced down. And so it continued with several raids per month by day or night, reaching a maximum number of seven raids in September 1917, then trailing away to end in May 1918. The results achieved were mixed, varying between £238,816 worth of damage inflicted during a night raid on London and Margate on 18/19 December 1917 to just £129 on the night of 28/29 September when 23 Gothas and two Giants struck at London and the coasts of Suffolk, Essex and Kent. This attack was something of a disaster for the Englandgeschwerder as only three Gothas and the Giants reached their respective target areas. Three Gothas were shot down and six more crashed on landing, the cost being just one British fighter damaged on landing. This was also the first occasion on which the Giants were committed to action.
The following list of German losses gives some idea of how efficient the British air defences had become:
The last raid listed above was a night attack directed at London, Faversham and Dover. As planned, it involved 38 Gothas, three Giants and two reconnaissance aircraft, but only 28 of the Gothas, the Giants and the reconnaissance aircraft reached their targets. The raid was something of a swan song in every sense of the word. Indeed, despite all the casualties caused and the damage inflicted, as a strategic offensive the operations carried out by the heavy bombers had been no more successful than those of the Zeppelins. During the last months of the war, responsibility for air attacks on the United Kingdom was handed back to the Navy’s Zeppelins which, as described in the last chapter, were only capable of conducting a kind of broken-backed warfare that achieved nothing.
A generation later, many of the lessons learned defending the United Kingdom against attack by Count Zeppelin’s airships and General Hoeppner’s heavy bombers were put to good use against Hitler’s Luftwaffe.