The raid on the night of 24 September had heralded the beginning of the most concentrated period of bombing throughout the war. After mounting further attacks on 25, 28 and 29 September, Rudolf Kleine’s crews were now exhausted, but he ordered them back into action on the night of Sunday, 30 September as the Harvest Moon Offensive continued.
In London, attitudes to the raids were changing. On the first night about 100,000 Londoners sought shelter in the depths of the Underground railway. But that increased each night with the number officially given as 300,000 by the end of the week.1 The system had not been designed for this and people came with or without a raid warning; they greatly valued the protection provided by the tunnels and platforms deep below the ground.
People took up their places as soon as darkness set in, or even before, prepared to camp out until all possibility of danger had passed. They blocked the stairs and the platforms, and the majority of them, it was said did not prove amenable to the efforts of the railway officials to distribute them to the best advantage.2
So packed did the stations become that in many cases it proved impossible for passengers to alight from trains or exit stations, while sanitary arrangements were makeshift, often just a bucket on the platform shielded by a curtain. An official who saw the reality of the situation for himself had this to say.
The crowds mostly consisted of women and children. Rugs and shawls were carried in evident preparation for a long stay. Several had baskets of food and bottles, but from many quarters I heard plaintive enquiries where they could get water. The babel of talk was like a parrot house. The people seemed of the poorest class.
There was no rowdyism, but a number of boys were larking (where there was room) and it was noticeable how many of the younger ones were smoking cigarettes.
The atmosphere was heavy and unpleasant. Streams of urine were trickling from where the little children sat or lay on the floors. The railway staff told me that these have to be washed with disinfectant every morning.3
Kleine allocated 11 Gothas for the raid of 30 September, accompanied by one of Kagohl 3’s two-seater C-type aeroplanes, carrying eight small 12kg bombs, but no R-type Giants took part this time. Inevitably one of the Gothas turned back early with engine problems and, once again, the night attack confused the British trackers who initially thought 30 aircraft were involved, but later downgraded that figure to ‘not more than 25’, still slightly over double those taking part. Although London remained the main target, some crews, perhaps the less experienced ones, made for Margate, while the C-type ventured no further than Dover.
30 September 1917, 7.00pm: Margate
The first attack on Margate commenced at 7.00pm when two incendiary bombs fell in Byron Road (now Byron Avenue) and Clifton Street but failed to make an impact. Heavy anti-aircraft fire greeted every incursion over the town.
The general impression given by this two hours of spasmodic sound and fury was that of stray invaders – singularly purposeless and undirected, wandering in a maze and being peppered whenever they gave a chance, rather than that of a determined and well controlled attack.4
At 7.45pm bombs caused significant damage in Helena Avenue and at 36 Buckingham Road, vacated just minutes before by the occupants; one smashed through the roof before exploding inside, creating havoc there and next door, where seven people sheltering in the cellar had to be rescued. The blast also seared across the road killing Alice Coleman who, with her husband, had gone to visit friends; his legs were fractured by the blast. The explosion also fatally wounded William Walker.
About 30 minutes later another Gotha appeared, dropping three explosive bombs on Elmwood Farm, 700 yards west of the North Foreland lighthouse, killing a cow and injuring three others, before four more fell on the open space of Dane Park. Another explosive bomb and seven incendiaries dropped as it passed over Northdown and headed back to the coast. A final incendiary crashed through the roof and landed on a bed at a house in Percy Avenue, Kingsgate, but failed to ignite.
The final intrusion over Margate took place at about 9.10pm with bombs in Trinity Square, Cliffe Terrace, Edgar Road, St Paul’s Road and Sweyn Road. Living above her greengrocer’s shop at 82 Trinity Square, Annie Emptage and her mother, Eliza, were at home with neighbours, Thomas Parker and his wife. Annie had opened the front door to look out just as the bomb exploded. At the same time a soldier, Driver William Hollins of the Army Service Corps passed by. The explosion shattered the shop front and wrecked her home. Annie Emptage and William Hollins both died, while inside Eliza and the Parkers were badly hurt; all were recovered from the ruins but Eliza and Thomas Parker later succumbed to their injuries.
The bomb that exploded in Cliffe Terrace, alongside a row of shops with homes above, ‘shockingly mutilated’ three soldiers: Thomas Armstrong, John McGratty and Frank Williams. They were friends serving together in the Royal Engineers’ Inland Waterways and Docks section. They had missed the last train back to camp at Richborough and were on their way to report to the local military headquarters. The explosion, ‘wrecked all the shops, and blew in the windows of the upper rooms, tearing down ceilings and displacing furniture’. In one of them, Jane Lee and her husband were at home with her elderly parents. Standing close to the window, Jane died instantly when glass slashed into the room. Her badly injured husband and parents were taken away to stay with friends.5
Bombs in Edgar Road and St Paul’s Road damaged ‘forty of fifty houses’ and claimed another victim, Private Benjamin Farnhill of the Yorkshire Regiment. He had sought shelter in a doorway in St Paul’s Road but a bomb exploded close by and killed him. The attack on Margate resulted in 11 deaths and left 11 injured, as well as demolishing two houses, seriously damaging 25 shops, houses or business premises and smashing windows in about 450 properties.
The C-type aeroplane, flown by Leutnant der Reserve Immanuel Braun6, whose Gotha suffered damage in a previous raid, came inland at Deal at 7.50pm, evading the anti-aircraft guns in the Dover area which had been in action intermittently for about an hour. Five minutes later three bombs fell at Guston, north of Dover. One, a few yards from the hospital at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, only broke windows, and two others dropped into a field 200 yards from the airfield at RNAS Dover. Once over Dover, the crew released three small explosive bombs. The first damaged the roof of an engineering works in Bridge Street, followed by one that wrecked 59 Peter Street, injuring a man out in the road. The third dug itself into an allotment on Castle Avenue before a final bomb fell in the sea.7
Other bombs in Kent struck the western part of the county, mainly near Chatham. At about 8.00pm three landed near the village of Borstal, another near Cuxton and, half an hour later, one hit Chatham cemetery and another exploded in a turnip field at Walderslade. Later, at 9.15pm, two more fell just east of Borstal with a final bomb dropping in the sea north of the village of Graveney. The only damage – three broken telegraph wires.
The sound of aeroplane engines also reverberated in the sky over Essex, but only three bombs fell, all at Thorpe Bay, setting fire to a house at about 9.15pm.
30 September 1917, 7.45pm: London
In London, determined policemen toured the streets warning of approaching raiders; it had the desired effect.
London anticipated the visit, and when the warning was issued there was no consternation, but a hastening to places of safety or shelter. Traffic continued until the gunfire came close at hand and shrapnel was whizzing through the air. About 7.30 the first metropolitan guns began to bark, and through the preliminary firing omnibuses and taxi-cabs scurried to and fro. When the formidable barrage fire commenced, however, discretion became the better part of valour, and the drivers and conductors took shelter. None too soon in many cases, for dozens of shells were soon hurtling through the air and bombs were heard exploding.8
A railway line separated the East London cemetery at Plaistow from a large expanse of railway sidings, works and depots of the Midland Railway. At 7.45pm the first London bomb exploded in the cemetery, followed by three more at the railway complex. Following the railway line to the east, another exploded at a goods siding at Plaistow Station. These bombs damaged three locomotives and the roof of a cleaning shed as well as impacting on 170 other properties. A final bomb in this area, an incendiary, fell in Queen’s Road, running alongside the railway between Plaistow and Upton Park stations.9
A second Gotha appeared about 15 minutes later, this time over north London. It appeared to target the railway at Hornsey Station where a bomb ripped up a section of track at a coal siding. Heading south-west for about 1.5 miles, the next bomb exploded in the grounds of St Aloysius College on Hornsey Lane, smashing windows there and in 28 other houses. Crossing Highgate Hill, another exploded dramatically in the grounds of St Pancras Infirmary on Dartmouth Park Hill.
A bomb dropped just outside the lodge, and a little girl was struck by a piece of glass. The bomb was heard whistling through the air, and the explosion was preceded by a bright red flash. The lodge was completely wrecked and every window in the infirmary shattered, but only one person was cut… The lodgekeepers were having supper when the guns began. Hearing a machine overhead, they decided to rush for the infirmary. As they were running along the gravel path the bomb fell, knocking them over. Though suffering from the effects of the concussion, they got up and ran to the building and escaped injury. A man named Green, who was standing near the lodge, was blown through a door, which was forced off its hinges. He escaped with bruises.10
Besides smashing infirmary windows and wrecking the porter’s lodge, the blast also smashed down a section of wall and damaged iron railings. Two bombs on Swain’s Lane ruptured a gas main and shattered windows in 32 homes before the Gotha ended its bombing run over Parliament Hill, an area of parkland and part of Hampstead Heath, where three bombs exploded on a cricket pitch, causing an eruption of the precious turf up into the air.
Although this appeared to be developing into a serious attack, none of the raiders penetrated to central area of the capital. The next Gotha reached east London at 8.15pm. ‘In a narrow thoroughfare of two-storeyed residences,’ a newspaper reported, ‘a bomb fell squarely on a house.’ The ill-fated house stood at 3 Fairfoot Road in Bow.
The whole of the upper storey was cut clean away as though by a knife, nothing being left except a chest of drawers protruding from the debris and two pictures facing each other on the walls. Furniture was blown into the street and scattered in all directions. The road was littered with broken glass and remains of chairs, tables, and miscellaneous furniture… Many people living in the street had taken refuge in some arches nearby and escaped.11
However, others did not fare so well. The explosion injured five and 79-year-old former carpenter, William Simmons, died from a ‘violent fracture of the skull’. Remarkably, only Simmons’ death that night could be attributed to the bombs, but two others – Walter Douch in Southwark and Thomas Ransom in Stratford – died when struck by falling anti-aircraft shells.
A bomb in Weston Street, about 500 yards south of Fairfoot Road, caused no damage, before two fell close together in Poplar. They injured nine people in Southill Street, wrecked a dairy in Kerbey Street while also damaging over 150 properties. The final bomb is this area landed in Newby Place, about 300 yards south of the previous pair, smashing windows at a rectory and at Poplar Police Station.
Another Gotha came in north of London, dropping an explosive bomb on the playing fields of Pymmes Park in Edmonton at 8.36pm, smashing windows in surrounding houses. Heading south-east for 5 miles, a bomb exploded in front of a house at 16 Cambridge Park, Wanstead, injuring two people. Three incendiary bombs followed, one in Fords Park Road, Canning Town, and two that straddled Victoria Dock, but all burnt out harmlessly.
Having crossed the Thames, the Gotha approached the western edge of Woolwich at about 9.00pm, dropping another incendiary close to Siemans Electrical Works on Bowater Road. A following explosive bomb struck the adjoining road, Trinity Street, damaging the roof of the GPO’s Submarine Cable Depot in Woolwich’s Royal Dockyard as well as several outbuildings and nearby properties. An incendiary inside the Dockyard burnt out before the flames could spread, with the final bomb in Woolwich exploding with great force on railway tracks running between George Street and Prospect Row. The line reopened a few hours later once the rubble and debris were cleared away.
At 9.00pm, just as those bombs were falling in Woolwich, the night’s final attack commenced east of London, but only eight incendiary bombs were recorded. These fell in Lichfield Road, East Ham, two at the East Ham Isolation Hospital on Roman Road, in King Edward Street and Howards Road, Barking and three in a field alongside Movers Lane, also in Barking. Other than a little damage to the hospital roof, the effects of the attack were negligible.
The police accounted for 26 explosive bombs and 17 incendiaries in the London area. They also calculated that around 200 anti-aircraft shells, or large fragments, fell on the capital, reinforcing the government’s message to stay indoors during raids. Across London and south-east England, the LADA guns fired 14,000 rounds, but many of the pilots flying that night’s 37 sorties reported that the shells were bursting too low to threaten the raiders.
Without hesitation, Kleine ordered another raid the next day, 1 October, despatching 18 Gothas, however it appears only 11 reached south-east England, supported by a Giant. From 6.46pm aeroplane engines were detected from the Kent coast and one of those manning the North Foreland lighthouse reported: ‘All machines coming in… as soon as within range were subject to very heavy gunfire all round… the guns keeping regular barrage of fire all round them as they disappeared in the direction of London.’12 The stream of incoming Gothas spread over a period of two hours.
1 October 1917, 7.19pm: Kent
The first bomb, an incendiary, dropped at 7.19pm, landing harmlessly about 200 yards from Sandwich Station. Two explosive bombs immediately followed, apparently aimed at an anti-aircraft gun at Richborough, but they failed to find their target. About 10 minutes later two concentrations of bombs fell north of Broadstairs. One group of 12 incendiary bombs at Kingsgate, between Percy Avenue and Fitzroy Avenue, caused no damage in an area largely undeveloped at the time. Of the second group of seven bombs, two exploded in fields on Elmwood Farm, also bombed the previous evening, an incendiary landed on Kingsgate golf course and two bombs that exploded close by in Convent Road smashed open a water main. The most damage occurred at the unoccupied Victoria Convalescent Home on Stone Road. A fire started by an incendiary bomb gutted the upper floor but the determined efforts of the fire brigade, willing soldiers and civilians prevented the flames spreading to the rest of the building.
Other bombs in Kent fell at Herne Bay on the north coast at 7.57pm, along 1.5-mile line from west of Hampton Pier to Eddington. Most either fell in mud on the foreshore or in fields. Of the rest, one exploded on a building plot 100 yards from the sewage works pumping station, another 150 yards west of Herne Bay’s gasworks, with the final bomb damaging a shed at Eddington.13
1 October 1917, 8.04pm: London
Those bombers not offloading their cargoes over Kent made for the capital.
It was shortly after 7 o’clock when the first warning was circulated, and within a few minutes the streets were deserted. The approach of the raiders was heralded by the distant booming of the guns in a northern direction at about 7.45, and within a short space of time a strong barrage fire was sent up.
The demeanour of the people was again remarkably calm, not the slightest sign of panic being seen. There is evidently a growing confidence in the ability of the anti-aircraft guns to keep the raiders at bay.14
In London the bombs fell in three main concentrations: in the southwest, the north and north-east. The ‘distant booming’ came in response to the appearance of the first Gotha to reach the city, which dropped a bomb close to gasworks on Dysons Road in Edmonton. This Gotha then continued for 8 miles on a south-west course across the capital until it reached Hyde Park where at 8.04pm a bomb exploded in the Serpentine lake, the concussion reportedly killing all the fish. Otherwise, only park railings and gas lamps were affected. The Gotha then turned to the south-east, heading towards the Thames, dropping four bombs on Belgravia and Pimlico.
The first exploded in South Eaton Place, creating a great crater and damaging a gas main. Two people were taken to hospital. The next struck the rear of 11 Little Ebury Street, severely damaging the property and affecting others in the area. Then, in Sutherland Street, an explosion on the roof of the St George’s Row School caused severe damage, as a newspaper described.
A bomb fell on a L.C.C. [London County Council] school, wrecking the roof, which was of reinforced concrete. Usually on Monday nights there are continuation classes held there, but these had been discontinued, and no injury to life or limb was sustained. The front of the building was sagging dangerously early yesterday morning owing to tons of masonry being suspended over it.15
The final bomb of this group exploded with shocking effect in Glamorgan Street. A group of teenage friends, members of a football team, were talking outside a house in the road where one of them, 17-year-old kitchen porter Frederick Hanton, lived with his parents. When they heard the preceding explosions, they moved inside.
Mrs Hanton said… they all crowded into the passage. Her son said, ‘Mother, if we are to go we will all go together.’ The bomb fell on the house opposite and the street seemed full of flames.16
The force of the blast smashed open the door behind which the friends were sheltering and vicious jagged bomb fragments found easy targets in the confined space. Frederick Hanton died, along with three of his friends: Henry Greenway (17), a fitter’s mate, and two munition’s workers, George Fennemore (17) and Leo Fitzgerald (18). Seven others in the house sustained injuries.
As the Gotha made off, rescuers appeared as ‘ambulances, motorcars, and fire engines made their way over a prickly carpet of broken plate glass’. Of the 198 properties affected by the bomb, which included many shops, 15 were demolished or seriously damaged.17 The raid here ended by 8.10pm, just as bombs began to fall in north London.
The first of these bombs, probably the dud that dropped on 31 Melton Street, narrowly missed Euston Station. The next, about 2 miles to the north-east, smashed into the pavement outside 38 Highbury Hill, resulting in numerous shattered windows. About half a mile further on another exploded with terrific force outside 38 Canning Road where a man stood in the doorway with 78-year-old Harriet Sears and a child.
I heard the bomb coming, and thought it was a falling aeroplane. The noise was terrific. I saw a fearful flash a few yards away. I pushed a little girl into the open door, but the woman was knocked down and received terrible injuries, her head nearly being blown off.18
Miraculously the man escaped with just a scratch to his face.
The next bomb dropped 500 yards further on, in Digby Road, killing a woman and injuring another, before the last struck a garage at 208 Green Lanes, Stoke Newington.
The sky above London now remained quiet until the final concentration of 19 bombs descended at 9.58pm in north-east London, along a half-mile line from Haggerston to Hoxton.19 In an area of poor-quality houses many of the occupiers, very aware of the scanty protection their homes offered, had sought shelter elsewhere.
The first three bombs dropped at Haggerston Wharf on the Grand Union Canal, at Laburnum Street and in Mansfield Street.20 Damage spread over a wide area, striking industrial property at the wharf, a school, and a great number of homes, shops and two pubs. Keeping on the east side of the North London Railway, four connecting roads, Shap Street, How’s Street, Pearson Street and Ormsby Street, were pounded by seven explosions.
In How’s Street a bomb shattered neighbouring houses. In one the occupiers had stayed at home. The building collapsed burying them under an avalanche of bricks, plaster and rubble. William and Amelia Singleton, Charles Hollington and Emily Harper were all together in one room when the bomb hit; there they died. A direct hit on this type of housing could be devastating: ‘All that is left,’ one witness commented, ‘is a heap of bricks and woodwork a few feet high.’ These seven bombs damaged over 200 buildings, with some demolished and others partially so, but as so many of the occupants had sought alternative shelter, beyond the four deaths, only four others were injured.
Another group of three bombs dropped as the raider approached Cremer Street, which crossed the railway. Damage affected homes in St Nichol Square and ten houses in Maria Street, as well as businesses located in railway arches, while also wrecking a section of railway track. As many as 85 properties were affected and nine people injured. In Caesar Street, running alongside the railway, bombs reduced at least three houses to rubble, wrecking many others and leaving six people injured.
The final bombs demolished a house at 15 Union Walk, wrecking the property next door and damaging 52 houses on Long Street, struck a factory at 70/72 Kingsland Road and damaged Hoxton House school, between Hoxton Street and Kingsland Road. Countless other buildings experienced lower levels of damage.
London had been under attack for about two hours but now, at 10.00pm, the raid ended as the last bomber departed. The sound of the guns provided Londoners with a constant reassurance that something was being done – but that came at a price. The guns in London fired 4,900 rounds but there are reports of at least 225 incidents of property damage from falling anti-aircraft shells and the death of 43-year-old Ada Parker. She lived with her parents in East Dulwich in south-east London, far from any of the bombs. The three were sitting together in a room at the back of the house when Ada went to another room to look out of a window.
A shell-case came through the top bay window of the bedroom, penetrated the floor, and struck her, fracturing her skull. Hearing the crash [her father] went into the room and found his daughter lying on the floor dead. A doctor said the right side of the skull was fractured, and there was a laceration of the brain.21
About 20 minutes before the last bombs fell on London, an attack had developed off Felixstowe on the Suffolk coast, probably made by a couple of Gothas returning or turned away from the capital. At 9.40pm the Harwich and Felixstowe guns burst into action when bombs exploded at sea. The combination of barrage fire and searchlights drove the Gothas away but about 12 minutes later seven bombs fell near Stone Point, to the north of Walton-on-the-Naze, either in the sea or on the salt marshes.
The raid on the 1 October proved to be the last of the Harvest Moon Offensive. The weather had turned during the raid, with banks of mist hampering the defence aircraft, and brought an end to the intense period of aerial attacks. It had certainly proved a testing time for the anti-aircraft gunners as Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Rawlinson recalled.
Several of our guns on [30 September] fired over 500 rounds apiece during the two hours the ‘action’ lasted. In many instances the guns were red-hot, and ‘fire’ had to be temporarily ‘ceased’ to allow them to cool, in spite of the constant streams of water which were poured over them. Everything breakable in gun-stations quickly succumbed to the constant concussion; the men, in many instances, were temporarily ‘blinded’ by the flashes of the guns, and ‘deafened’ by the incessant concussions, until they became entirely bewildered and practically useless.22
As well as the gunners exhausted by their nightly exertions, the same could be said for the guns. The estimated life of a 3-inch, 20cwt gun stood at around 1,500 rounds and intense firing during the recent raids had determined that ‘some guns were already useless’. In response, the Minister of Munitions, Winston Churchill, undertook to re-line twenty gun barrels per month and increase their dangerously depleted stocks of ammunition. In addition, guns were transferred from the Admiralty to Home Defence to bolster numbers, reversing an earlier decision to move them in the opposite direction.23
An interesting technical development also took place during this period. On 1 October, for the first time during the war, there is a report of the use of a sound mirror. Following earlier experiments, in 1917 the Munitions Invention Department had a 15ft diameter acoustic dish carved into the chalk cliff at Fan Bay (also known as Fan Hole) near Dover. Rendered with concrete to provide a smooth reflective surface and fitted with a 3ft pivoted trumpet connected to a stethoscope, a trained operator could pick up reflected aeroplane engine sounds and gauge their bearing and direction, earlier than with the naked ear. After the raid on 1 October the anti-aircraft gun commander at Dover reported: ‘An experimental sound detector has been erected at Fan Hole… this post promises to be of great value in obtaining information.’24
***
The Harvest Moon Offensive had drawn to a close. Six raids in eight days being the most intense period of aerial attacks on Britain throughout the war. Even so, the results from a German point of view – if they had known the truth – were disappointing. These raids inflicted total damage estimated at the time at £137,547 (83 per cent of that in London), with 69 people killed (71 per cent in London) and 260 injured (88 per cent London).
There were, however, other effects that were meeting the German strategy. Munitions production at Woolwich Arsenal suffered significantly during the raids. Taking .303-inch rifle ammunition as an example, each shift – day and night – targeted production of 850,000 rounds. On the night of 24/25 September, the first night of the offensive, production plummeted to 140,000, while the following day-shift produced 640,000, and the night shift on 25/26 September resulted in a reduction to 283,000 rounds.25
All this information remained secret and none of the detail reached Germany. There the effectiveness of the raids could only be estimated, usually extremely optimistically. On 4 October, Rudolf Kleine received Germany’s highest military order from Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Pour le Mérite, in recognition of his outstanding leadership of Kagohl 3 and the six recent raids on England.
The weather that had begun to turn during that last raid heralded a period of difficult conditions, preventing any further attempts by the Englandgeschwader until the end of October. Peter Strasser, commanding the naval Zeppelins, however, saw an opportunity to strike a heavy blow against Britain’s industrial output and ordered a strike against the Midlands and North of England to coincide with the new moon on 16 October. His decision resulted in the greatest disaster suffered by the Naval Airship Division during the war.