Zeppelin Raid on London

O n May 31, 1915, the enormous dark shadow of the German airship LZ–38 sailed over the clouds in London. It was the size of the oceangoing liner. It loomed through the sky at a steady 50 miles an hour. The deafening drone of four powerful engines made any conversation between my crew and myself, impossible.

Through gaps in the clouds, the city could be clearly seen. London citizens were not expecting any kind of attack. In the West End, lights of the streets and playhouses blazed brightly below. I’m sure the inhabitants of the capital felt completely safe.

The Western Front was far away. German warships usually attacked British coastal towns, because they lacked the range to hit this far inland. I looked around and felt pleased with myself. There wasn’t a searchlight or anti-aircraft gun aimed at us before the first bomb was dropped.

I gave a curt nod to the bombardier close by in the control cabin, and we dropped over a hundred bombs on the city below. We watched from our lofty perch and observed the bombs exploding. It was an exhilarating display. Fires broke out and buildings collapsed. In all, over 42 people died or were seriously wounded that night—and there was worse to come.

We attacked in a zeppelin. A huge airship named after the German inventor, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin. He'd been flying these massive hydrogen field behemoths since 1897. They were the perfect weapon. Although they did little actual damage, the disruption that harmed morale was formidable. Whatever we raided, traffic ground to a halt. People stared with fear into the sky, and all-electric lights were extinguished.

When the bombs began to drop, people crouched in alleyways and cellars. They whispered in dread, in case their voices carried up to betray them. They were even afraid to strike a match to light a cigarette, in case the flare caught the attention of our zeppelin. Despite our huge size, we were invulnerable to the fighter plane. It couldn’t fly high enough to attack us.

Even when improvements in aircraft design allowed fighters to reach an altitude of the zeppelin, they couldn't climb very quickly. We’d be long gone by the time any fighters got there. When we began our attack, twenty-six batteries of anti-aircraft guns were placed around London, and searchlights lit up the sky with their bright, rapier beams.

These guns were a new invention. The science of hitting flying machines, even ones as big as zeppelins, was complex. Hitting a moving target at that range and priming a shell to explode at a particular height, was still a deadly art yet to be perfected.

When war first broke out, the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II wouldn’t allow zeppelins to be used over England. He was closely related to the British Royal family, and he knew that bombing from the air would bring civilian casualties and severe family disapproval. It became apparent that the war wouldn’t be over quickly. It turned into a dreary stalemate with no end in sight. The Kaiser's own generals persuaded him it was his duty to use every advantage Germany had.

In early January 1915, the first zeppelins appeared over the East Coast of Britain, and we brought massive disruption and anxiety. Even in this early stage of the war, the only threat the zeppelin crew faced was the weather. Something so large would be vulnerable to a strong wind. Zeppelins crashed in storms.

Nothing the enemy threw at us had any effect. The British had to rely on the network of human spotters placed along the coast. It was nearly the same as they had done for the arrival of the Spanish Armada during the time of Queen Elizabeth I. But zeppelin spotters had an advantage of being able to report their sightings by telephone rather than a chain of bonfires.

They also use the cumbersome device called the orthophone—a huge, trumpet-like listening apparatus that was designed to detect the distant drone of the zeppelin's engines. As the war dragged on, the design of fighter aircraft and antiaircraft guns advanced

In 1914, The rickety biplanes could barely fly across the English Channel. But by 1916, the British had developed anti-aircraft guns capable of hitting our vast slow-moving zeppelins. They armed the aircraft with incendiary bullets, fired from machine guns mounted above the plane's cockpit. These projectiles glowed white-hot when discharged and were intended to set fire to our highly flammable zeppelins .

Our zeppelin crews carried no parachutes. We only had a certain amount of weight that these huge machines could lift into the air. Fuel and bombs were always given priority over our crew safety. If our zeppelin ever caught fire, we had no chance of escape. But these weapons endangered the British pilots as well, often exploding when used.

Other zeppelin crews reported near misses and lucky escapes from anti-aircraft fire. It was decided that night attacks would be safer. As it turned out, they were also tremendously harmful. It was the threat of attack more than any actual damage done, that caused the most harm.

If zeppelins were detected in the night sky, they’d extinguish the lights below. It was a blackout, and it caused a massive disruption and inconvenience for factories and other local industries. Our zeppelins sent out huge powerful flares, we hoped to find our way by briefly illuminating the land below. Still, when we launched these flares, we gave our position away to night fighter pilots and vigilant anti-aircraft batteries.

As our zeppelins became more vulnerable to attack, we adopted other methods of defending ourselves. We mounted machine guns on top of our hulls. It took a special kind of courage and stamina to man them. We would tether a gunner to this precarious position and expose him to both the machine guns of attacking fighter planes and the freezing high-altitude temperatures. If our gunner was injured or overcome by either, it was impossible to rescue him.

We created an ingenious device to protect our crew called the cloud car. It was shaped like a fairground rocket ride. The car and its single passenger would be lowered from the interior of the zeppelin by a long cable that dangled its load half a mile below. The zeppelin would lurk inside the thick cloud, safely concealed from the air and aircraft attack. While the cloud car dangled in the clear air beneath, too small to be seen in the vastness of the sky.

It's passenger, would be in communication with the zeppelin via a telephone line, and then direct the ship towards its target.

It was a dangerous job. One cloud car passenger was smashed to death on the cliff when the zeppelin flew too low over the coast. If the cable snapped or jammed, the cloud car passenger was at the mercy of any enemy warplane that spotted him. He could also be hit by bombs dropped from his own zeppelin. But, despite these additional dangers, there is no shortage of volunteers for cloud car duty. This was mainly because the passenger was allowed to smoke. Smoking was forbidden in the zeppelin because it’s highly flammable and has a hydrogen packaged fuselage.

For 2 years, our zeppelins roamed at will over Britain. Our greatest enemy was the weather or occasional structural failure. But on September 2, 1916, everything changed. That evening the crew German airship SL–11 and Lieut. William Robinson, a pilot of the 39th squadron of the home defense wing of the Royal Flying Corps, was about to earn their place in history.

I t was a wet and dreary day. There were nineteen airships from the German Navy and Army services that took to the air and began the long journey through the darkening skies over the North Sea. This was the largest fleet of airships so far assembled by the Germans, and their target was the British military headquarters in London.

Not all were zeppelins. Half the fleet had been manufactured by rival airship firm made from wooden, rather than light metal frames. These airships were equally formidable. The SL–11 was 570 feet long and 70 feet high and could carry a similar number of bombs.

We now had a new anti-zeppelin weapon in our arsenal. We’d been using incendiary bullets against airships for as long as we’d been trying to shoot them down. These bullets have proved themselves ineffective. New, more powerful incendiaries had been developed, and the results have been disastrous. These new types of bullets were prone to explode in the weapon firing it, and we’d lost nearly a dozen British warplanes while trying to use it.

As night fell, radio operators at listening stations picked up a noticeable increase in German wireless communications. This suggested a massive raid was in progress. The spotters along the coast scanned the skies for any incoming airships. By 10 o'clock that evening, the airship fleet had been detected approaching the Norfolk coast. The massive sound of its combined engines hinted at the size of the attack.

London's antiaircraft gun batteries and airfields were alerted. Over on the Suttons farm airfield 20 miles southwest of London, I prepared my biplane for takeoff. These lumbering two-seater planes were typically used as reconnaissance aircraft. Their broad wings and powerful engines enabled them to fly higher than many of the faster and more maneuverable fighters in the Royal Flying Corps. The BE2s mission was to intercept zeppelins. They usually only carried one crew member rather than two; the lack of extra weight allowed the plane to climb higher. I flew off into the moonless sky just after 7:30. That night I was one of six pilots to try my luck in the dangerous skies of London.

It took an entire hour for my BE2 to reach 10,000 feet altitude. I peered through the velvet sky, hoping to spot a looming black hole, but I saw nothing. I even switched off the engine, hoping to hear the approaching airships.

It was just after one in the morning, and I spotted this zeppelin, it was the LZ-98. I turned to attack and fired a hail of bullets into the vast body of the airship. Nothing happened. As soon as the crew realized they were under attack, they executed the standard zeppelin procedure. The LZ–98 rose swiftly, out of reach. Just as I was about to give up and turn away, I saw something else lurking in the clouds below. The searchlight had illuminated another airship.

It was the SL–11, on its way to return home after dropping its bombs on the northern suburbs of London. Half an hour earlier, this airship had been the focus of most of the anti-aircraft guns in central London. They’d failed, but the volume of gunfire bursting around as SL–11 convinced its Captain to turn the giant ship around and head north.

I turned to face my enemy, the SL–11 vanished into a bank of clouds and twenty minutes passed. I contemplated returning home before my fuel ran out. The airship appeared again. Anti-aircraft guns were firing at it and searchlights occasionally caught the huge hole in their beam. I turned my BE2 to face the shadow. This time I would not let him slip away. I prepared to fire my machine gun. My plane rocked. I felt the heat from an explosion beneath me.

The anti-aircraft guns fired at the airship—the shells exploded at the height they guessed the target was flying. They had no idea my plane was up here also. Pilots didn't have radios to alert comrades below, but there was a procedure for these kinds of emergencies. I could fire off a flare, but this would also warn the airship crew that was stalking him. I pressed on and hoped my plane would not get hit.

I approached my target from below and swooped over to the front of the hull. As the vast shadow loomed over me, I fired my incendiary bullets into the great gas-filled body of the ship.

I flew nose down in the direction of the zeppelin. I saw shells bursting and night tracers flying around it. When I drew closer, I noticed that the anti-aircraft aim was aiming too low, and a good 800 feet behind. I flew below it from bow to stern and fired one full drum of ammunition along it. It seemed to have no effect.

I loaded a magazine into my machine gun—tricky process—trying to fly at the same time. The airship machine gun opened up on me. I weaved into the black night and then turned in for a second attempt. I emptied my entire ammunition drum again—and still, nothing happened.

After that run, I flew close to the crew control and saw the silhouettes of the men inside. They were aware I was attacking them. After all, they were involved in the bombing of the territory below. The roar of their own engines would have prevented them from hearing my tiny plane. I was getting angry. The incendiary bullets posed far more danger to the pilot firing them than the airship they were aimed at. But risking an attack from the guns of the Germans and my side, I flew in for a third time.

I got close behind it and concentrated one drum on one part. I barely finished the drum before I saw the part I fired at glow. When the third drum was fired, there were no searchlights on the zeppelin. No anti-aircraft was firing. I got out of the way of the following zeppelin. I was shaking with excitement and fired off two red flares and dropped a parachute flare.

Something remarkable happened inside the body the airship. The gas bag where I concentrated my fire ignited, lighting up the inside of the hull like a magic lantern.

The stern of the airship opened in an immense explosion and tossed my tiny plane like a paper dart in a gust of wind. The fire quickly spread along the entire body of the ship. I watched many of the crew throw themselves out of the zeppelin to avoid being burned to death.

I let off the rest of my flares, I was determined to let the anti-aircraft guns below know it was me that had downed the airship and not them. I turned my plane to return to the airbase. I noted the SL–11 had already crashed into the ground. It was so bright; I could make out the shapes of houses all along the outer rim of Northeast London.

I proved it was possible to down these huge machines. Despite the early hour, all over London people rushed down the streets to sing and dance. The church bells rang, sirens wailed, ships’ horns and motors tooted. The airships had caused such a terror for so long. But now we had gotten back at them.

Any other German airship crews most certainly would have seen the huge blaze lighting up the night sky in the far distance. The airships were not indestructible after all. The demise of the SL-11 affected their performance because the raid on London that night was far from a success. While the airships dropped a huge number of bombs between them, only four people were killed and another twelve injured. Sixteen crewmen on board and SL-11 lost their lives as the SL-11 fell to earth behind the Plough Inn pub, next to the village of Cuffley, Hertfordshire.

The next day, the village was besieged by sightseers. The country lanes nearby were clogged with cars, bicycles, carts, and pedestrians. The burned-out frame of tangled steel and wire, broken gondolas and smashed engines was a startling sight. On the side of the wreckage, a green tarp was laid out to hide the charred remains of crew that didn’t leap to their deaths. Other bodies were found scattered over the countryside on SL-11's last, doomed flight.

My method of attack. A concentrated burst of incendiary fire at one concentrated spot was immediately passed on to all the fighter pilots that were likely to encounter a German airship. I was presented with the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery that can be given to members of the British armed forces.

But my fortunes declined, and I was shot down over Germany in occupied France only eight months later. I spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, where I was mistreated because it was known I shot down the SL–11. At the end of the war, I became one of the many millions of victims of a massive flu epidemic that swept through the world and died on New Year's Eve, 1918.

My victory had an impact far beyond the simple destruction of one airship. The swaggering confidence that airship crews had displayed in their mess halls and barracks were gone. Nights away from flying duty were haunted by dreams of burning airships. They were invulnerable no longer, like the gods of ancient Rome and Greece, casting death and destruction down from the skies. They were only flesh and blood. When death came, as it did with increasing regularity, the entire crew would perish.

It was from then on, that the zeppelin raids grew less frequent and more costly. From the spring of 1917, German bombers were sent over London instead. They were faster, flew higher and could defend themselves from fighter planes more effectively. Still, the Germans nursed high hopes for their magnificent airships.

By the end of the war, the latest model zeppelins were being prepared for a raid on New York. Luckily for the Americans, the war ended before such an attack was mounted.