While the British public remained alert to the Zeppelin threat, the threat itself had much diminished. So far in 1918 there had been just three Zeppelin raids, all aimed at the Midlands and North of England. In Germany too, some realised that despite the great promise offered by these massive airships, their achievements had failed to live up to expectations.
Werner Dietsch, the executive officer on Herbert Ehrlich’s L 61, noted that times had changed. Many of Ehrlich’s crew had been together since the commissioning of Zeppelin L 5 in July 1915, before serving on L 17, L 35 and, since December 1917, on L 61. But in June 1918 the crew stepped down from front-line service, returning to their old ship, L 35, now a hub of experimentation. The crew were not saddened by the decision, as Dietsch recalled.
The golden age of airships as weapons of war had passed. It came as no great disappointment to be reassigned, as the second oldest surviving airship crew, to the Trials Unit and our old friend the L 35. Given our long experience we felt we would be in a unique position to assist the future improvement and development of front line airships.1
But the clock that marked the hours for the Naval Airship Division had begun to run down, and persistent bad weather in June and July prevented any thought of raiding Britain that summer. In Britain, however, a plan evolved to keep pressure on the Zeppelins by carrying the war to their bases, reminiscent of similar raids in late 1914.2 The navy had used seaplane carriers previously, transporting aircraft to their deployment area before lowering them over the side prior to take-off. But HMS Furious, modified during construction, had a flight deck fitted in place of the forward gun turret, converting the battlecruiser to an aircraft carrier. On 19 July, supported by a cruiser squadron and a flotilla of destroyers, HMS Furious, carrying seven 2F.1 naval variants of the Sopwith Camel, moved to a position about 80 miles north-west of the Zeppelin base at Tondern in Schleswig-Holstein.3 Shortly after 3.00am the Camels took off, each carrying two 50lb bombs, but one developed engine problems and turned back. Despite encountering thick cloud, the Camels found the target with bombs striking Toska,4 the large double shed, and other buildings. Berthed inside Toska were Zeppelins L 54 and L 60.
Kapitänleutnant Treusch Freiherr von Buttlar Brandenfels, the long-serving but exceptionally cautious commander of L 54, lived with his wife ‘in the dreary streets of the town of Tondern’. He awoke to the ‘whiz and whirr’ of a propeller.
I jumped up and rushed to the window… Suddenly a shadow passed over our house, a few yards above the roof, absurdly low… A British aeroplane!
In a moment the anti-aircraft batteries began to bark… There was more buzzing overhead and… another shadow passed, a second aeroplane! By that time the first was over the shed… My heart was in my mouth. In a terrible straight column, lit up with flames, the smoke rose skyward from the shed. Gruesomely beautiful it was, this giant flame of sacrifice in which our L 54 and L 60 perished.5
The flames of burning hydrogen engulfed both Zeppelins in the giant double shed, a captive balloon in another caught fire and, some distance off, a bomb struck an extended munitions store. But the raiders did not all get away. Three of the pilots calculated that increasing wind and low cloud restricted their chances of finding their way back to the ships before their fuel supply ran out, so they crossed into nearby Denmark and landed in the neutral country. Sadly, another pilot, Lieutenant Walter Yeulett, came down in the sea, his body washing ashore on the Danish coast nine days later. The other two pilots, captains William Dickson and Bernard Smart,6 made it safely back to the fleet, completing the first successful mission launched from an aircraft carrier. Since 3 May, the Naval Airship Division had now lost three operational Zeppelins without any success to report. But Strasser, as always, remained outwardly confident and, on 8 July, 11 days before the Tondern raid, he had received a boost with the arrival at Nordholz of the latest Zeppelin of a new design, L 70.7
Although based on the ‘v-class’, first introduced with L 53, her length had extended by 50ft to 694ft to incorporate an additional gas cell. The new ship offered everything Strasser wanted. With hydrogen capacity increased to over 2 million cubic feet and powered by seven Maybach high-altitude engines, she attained a speed of 81mph in trials and climbed to 23,000ft. However, command of this impressive new Zeppelin did not pass to one of Strasser’s long-serving, experienced commanders, instead it went to his 29-year-old adjutant and protégé, Kapitänleutnant Johannes von Lossnitzer.
Von Lossnitzer had previously had command of an old ‘r-class’ Zeppelin, LZ 120, one of those transferred from the army in summer 1917. Von Lossnitzer and LZ 120 operated in the relative backwater of the Baltic where the Russians had offered little aerial threat, and a shortage of hydrogen and troublesome winds limited activity. Later, after a period on the advanced training ship, L 41, Strasser appointed von Lossnitzer as his adjutant. Like Strasser, von Lossnitzer voiced an unshakeable belief in the advantages Zeppelins offered Germany.
Neither now, nor in the foreseeable future, will our Fleet be able to do so without airships, not only because of our limited number of cruisers, but also because in the Zeppelin airship we have a scouting weapon that the enemy dreads, since he has nothing equivalent to oppose to it. It is our responsibility to develop this weapon to its utmost.8
Strasser had found a kindred spirit in this young officer. Another who knew him described von Lossnitzer glowingly: ‘A splendid fellow, incomparable in his determination, a rarely capable person and a good comrade, to whom Strasser was particularly attached.’9 Although relatively inexperienced, on 8 July, Strasser gave von Lossnitzer command of L 70, the largest, most advanced Zeppelin to see service in the war.
On 1 August, von Lossnitzer and two other Zeppelins took part in a routine North Sea patrol; the first active service flight of L 70. Also at sea were the light cruisers and destroyers of the Royal Navy’s Harwich Force, intending to launch a coastal motor boat raid. Alerted to their presence by a wireless message, von Lossnitzer steered for their location. Observing a light cruiser and a group of destroyers through gaps in the clouds he made an attack, dropping four 100kg bombs, but came under a heavy return fire. The navy noted the skilful approach of the Zeppelin, utilising cloud cover before it dropped its bombs and retreated when the guns opened fire. But this injudicious act by von Lossnitzer did not pass unnoticed. ‘It seemed that the Zeppelin commanders were losing their sense of caution,’ noted the navy, ‘and that it would be worthwhile, next time, to take a fighting aeroplane in company.’10
On 5 August, 17 days after the Tondern raid, and four days after von Lossnitzer’s encounter with the Harwich Force, good weather offered Strasser a rare opportunity to raid Britain. Elsewhere, the German army had lost its momentum, the early successes of the spring offensive had ground to a halt, but Strasser remained focused, determined to continue his attacks despite the losses his command had suffered since January. With the weather and the phase of the moon in his favour, everything seemed aligned for a successful mission. Strasser announced he would accompany the raid onboard L 70, to observe his majestic new ship in action – and he had not entirely given up on London as his orders make clear: ‘Attack on south or middle (London only at order of Leader of Airships)… Participants: L 53, L 56, L 63, L 65, L 70… Preserve careful wireless discipline.’11
At 8.10pm (British time) three Zeppelins – L 53, L 65 and L 70 – were observed in the distance from the Leman Tail lightship, anchored about 30 miles from the Norfolk coast. They remained in sight for over an hour and then from the Happisburgh lightship too. The British report on the raid makes an important observation: ‘No previous airship raid had been attempted with so low a barometer, which had its effect on the rising power of the airships.’12 This low air pressure over the North Sea prevented the Zeppelins climbing beyond the reach of British aircraft.
The crews on the lightships telephoned news of the sighting ashore. At 9.00pm Strasser sent a wireless message authorising the raid to commence. The other pair of Zeppelins, L 56 and L63, were about 30 miles to the south of Strasser’s group of three.
A message recalling him to RNAS Yarmouth air station found Major Egbert Cadbury at a concert in the town. Making all speed, he focused on securing a DH4, the best aeroplane on the base for the task in hand.
I roared down to the station in an ever-ready Ford, seized a scarf, goggles and helmet, tore off my streamline coat, and, semi-clothed, with a disreputable jacket under my arm, sprinted as hard as ever Nature would let me, and took a running jump into the pilot’s seat. I beat my most strenuous competitor [Captain C.B. Sproat] by one-fifth of a second….
I saw [the Zeppelins] as I left the aerodrome, and gave immediate chase… I had as my observer ‘Bob’ Leckie, D.S.O., D.S.C., who has had a good many scraps with Zeppelins and has destroyed one… Thus I had an expert in the back seat.13
Cadbury failed to mention that he too had shot down a Zeppelin back in November 1916. Fully focused on the three Zeppelins about 40 miles away, Cadbury failed to notice L 56 and L 63 closer at hand. A DH9, also from Yarmouth, flown by Captain C.S. Iron with Lieutenant H.G. Owen as observer/gunner, joined the chase, as Iron later recalled.
Curbing our impatience we continued to climb, with painful slowness, up through the thousand-foot gap which separated us from our target, when, suddenly a startling metamorphosis took place before our astonished gaze. A small ball of fire had appeared at the after end of our Zeppelin; with amazing rapidity this grew into a blaze; a few seconds later we could see that the whole of the Zeppelin’s tail was well alight.14
L 70, the ultimate Zeppelin, Strasser’s pride, was now on fire.
Just 3,000 metres away, Kapitänleutnant Walter Dose looked out from the command gondola of L 65.
Suddenly we saw a small light on the otherwise quite dark ship which rapidly spread, and shortly afterwards the whole ship was in flames. She started to fall with running engines, then faster and faster, and was broken to pieces shortly before she entered the… cloud screen.15
Major Cadbury had made the attack, finding L 70 flying at 17,000ft.
At 22.20 we had climbed to 16,400 feet and I attacked the Zeppelin ahead slightly to port… My observer trained his gun on the bow of the airship and the fire was seen to concentrate on a [spot]… under the Zeppelin, three-quarters way aft.
The ‘Z.P.T.’ [Pomeroy explosive bullet] was seen to blow a great hole in the fabric and a fire started which quickly ran along the length of the Zeppelin. The Zeppelin raised her bows as if in an effort to escape, then plunged seaward, a blazing mass. The airship was completely consumed in about three-quarters of a minute.16
Zeppelin L 70 plummeted into the sea about 8 miles north of Wells-next-the-Sea on the Norfolk coast. There were no survivors – Fregattenkapitän Peter Strasser, Führer der Luftschiffe, the father of the Naval Airship Division was dead.
The other two Zeppelins that had accompanied L 70 immediately turned away but Cadbury pursued one of them, L 65.
I again attacked bow on and my observer opened fire, when within 500 feet of airship. Fire immediately broke out in the midships gondola. At this point my observer’s gun jammed… which in the darkness could not be cleared. The fire on the Zeppelin became extinguished. I maintained contact with Zeppelin for approximately five minutes while my observer attempted to clear jam, but without success. I was unable to use my front gun as I had reached my ceiling.17
Cadbury failed to mention in his report that his observer, Bob Leckie, had forgotten his gloves in the mad scramble to get airborne and now had frost-bite in two of his fingers making it impossible to clear the stoppage. Cadbury also made an error when reporting a fire in the gondola. Walter Dose, commander of L 65, later explained that an engineer had briefly pulled a black curtain aside, revealing the lighted interior of an engine gondola. ‘This event,’ Dose explained, ‘has probably induced Major Cadbury to believe that he set fire to the gondola.’18
L 65 got back in one piece – just – having also survived an attack by a second British aeroplane, which peppered the gas cells with over 300 holes. Throughout the raid, wireless bearings relayed to the Zeppelins were inaccurate and, with low cloud blocking out the ground, the returning commanders reported bombing King’s Lynn, Boston, the Humber defences and Norwich, but all bombs dropped some distance out to sea. Only one Zeppelin, L 56, briefly came inland, her commander unaware he had passed over Lowestoft.
A determined effort to locate the wreckage of L 70 proved successful when two days later searchers found it resting on a sandbank at a depth of 48ft. Admiralty trawlers dragged the area for around three weeks, bringing up most of the wreckage as well as five bodies. Among the recovered bodies they found that of Peter Strasser, ‘completely untouched’ and adding that ‘his death was due either to drowning or to the shock of the impact with the water… he showed no disfigurement or burns or injuries of any kind’.19 After a careful search for papers the bodies were buried at sea. Others washed ashore on the Lincolnshire coast but, when people objected to their burial in the local churchyard, they too were taken out again and committed to the sea. The salvage operation recovered the gondolas, engines and framework of this very latest Zeppelin design, while valuable documents revealed much more. Just a month after L 70 joined the Naval Airship Division, the British knew its secrets.
Inevitably in Germany they felt Peter Strasser’s loss deeply. Ernst Lehmann, himself an experienced Zeppelin commander, highlighted the respect many felt for him.
The death of Captain Strasser was a severe blow to the naval air service. He had been its guiding genius. Throughout Germany officials and civilians alike mourned the loss of the leader who had courageously declined to send ships or subordinates on any mission that he himself dared not undertake.20
Admiral Scheer, commander-in-chief of the High Seas Fleet, and about to become Chief of Naval Staff, had been a great supporter of Strasser. Following the confirmation of his death, he telegraphed the Naval Airship Division.
The airship, which was created by the inventive genius and stubborn perseverance of Count Zeppelin, was developed by Peter Strasser, as Leader of Airships, with untiring zeal, and in spite of every obstacle, into a formidable weapon of attack. The spirit with which he succeeded in inspiring his particular arm on many an air raid he has crowned by his heroic death over England. As Count Zeppelin will live forever in the grateful memory of the German people, so will Captain Strasser.21
But Strasser, normally so meticulous in his planning, made basic errors in his final raid. He had arrived off the coast of Britain before darkness set in, and remained there within range of British aircraft without being able to climb beyond their ceiling. For these mistakes he paid the ultimate price.
The final word goes to Kapitänleutnant von Buttlar. He had served under Strasser since he flew as executive officer on L 3 in May 1914, and had operated under his orders longer than any other commander. Unsurprisingly he felt the loss greatly.
We were overcome with grief. There was not one among us, whether he was an officer, a petty officer, or an able seaman, who did not feel that Strasser’s death left a yawning gulf that nothing could fill. We no longer took the same interest in flying; for the spark which Peter had kindled in our breasts had been extinguished.22
The man given the unenviable task of replacing Strasser, Korvettenkapitän Paul Werther, at the time commanded airship-handling ground troops and the airship school. No reconnaissance patrols took place for four days before they resumed on 10 August. The following day Eduard Prölss and L 53 were ordered out to perform the scouting role. His deployment coincided with the appearance of a another new development in Britain’s anti-Zeppelin arsenal.
After von Lossnitzer’s rather reckless attack on ships of the Harwich Force on 1 August, the Navy decided that they would take a ‘fighting aeroplane’ out with them on the next patrol. Experiments launching a Sopwith Camel from a lighter towed into the wind by a destroyer had ultimately proved successful when Lieutenant Stuart Culley successfully got airborne on 31 July. On 10 August, HMS Redoubt towed Culley’s Camel on the lighter out with the Harwich Force towards the island of Terschelling, as part of a plan to launch another coastal motor boat attack. The following day observers spotted a Zeppelin – L 53 – at great height. The Harwich Force began making smoke, hoping to lure the Zeppelin into following them. Prölss obliged.
Culley took off from the lighter at 8.58am, climbing rapidly and keeping the sun behind him, ensuring his tiny Sopwith Camel 2F.1 remained unseen in the vast open sky. About 30 minutes later Culley reached 18,000ft, about 1,000ft below L 53. By 9.58am he had pushed his aircraft to its limits but it plateaued still 200ft below the Zeppelin. Heading straight for the bow, the pilot pulled the control stick back hard, pushing his nose up and, as the engine stalled, he opened fire with the twin Lewis guns fixed on the Camel’s upper wing. He wrote a report, brief and to the point: ‘Fired 7 rounds from No. 1 gun, which jammed, and a double charge from No. 2. Zeppelin burst into flames and was destroyed.’23 A ‘double charge’ signified a 97-round ammunition drum.
As Culley dived away, his engine picked up and he snatched a quick glance over his shoulder. He saw exactly what he hoped for; flickers of flame were taking hold. Moments later those flickers transformed into a furious fire as the hydrogen gas cells inside L 53 ignited one after the other until fire consumed the Zeppelin and it rushed down towards the sea. Culley looked on, transfixed by the spectacle as a man with his clothes on fire threw himself overboard. Zeppelin L 53 broke up as it fell and had burnt out before the wreckage hit the sea, the smoke trail assuming the shape of a huge question mark. After a somewhat desperate search, Culley relocated the Harwich Force and put down in the sea alongside HMS Redoubt; both he and his aircraft were safely hoisted aboard.24
Although L 70’s sister ship, L 71, joined the Naval Airship Division on 10 August she never saw active service; the death of Strasser and the loss of two Zeppelins in the space of six days brought the final curtain down on the already waning Zeppelin campaign against Britain. The Zeppelin menace, significantly enervated since the autumn of 1916, had come to an end.
And what of the Gothas and the Giants?
After the attack on London on the night of 19/20 May, the crews of Bogohl 3 and Rfa 501 resumed bombing raids behind the Allied lines on the Western Front. Although Brandenburg and von Bentivegni hoped to return to England in July, both attempts were cancelled by Army High Command before they got underway. But behind the scenes Germany had developed a new weapon, the B-1E (Brandbombe 1kg Elektron), the Elektron incendiary bomb. Disappointed by the performance of previous incendiary bombs, German scientists had created a small, lightweight bomb that threatened to create the devastating firestorms in London and Paris that Germany had long intended. These bombs, weighing just 1kg, had a magnesium alloy casing, which itself would ignite when the thermite contents began to burn at extraordinary high temperatures, between 2,000 and 3,000 degrees Celsius. And water could not extinguish them, the burning magnesium of the casing converting the oxygen in the water into fuel, thus spreading the fire even further. They were similar to those dropped on Britain by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War and, due to their weight, could be carried in great numbers; at full strength Bogohl 3 could unload over 14,000 of these bombs in a single raid. Now Germany had a genuine chance to unleash an overwhelming firestorm in London. The bombs were stockpiled during August, but two dates earmarked for the raid, in August and early September, were reached and passed without the order forthcoming. Not until 23 September, when a near full moon coincided with a predicted period of settled weather, were orders finally issued authorising the raid and final briefings took place. Bogohl 3 – Der Englandgeschwader – and Rfa 501 would target London, while other squadrons would deliver the firestorm to Paris. All crews knew they were about to embark on a testing mission, the air defences of both cities regularly turned the bombers back before they could reach their target, and fighter aircraft always lay in wait for a chance to pounce. And this time, to capitalise on the good weather, as soon as the crews returned to base, their aircraft were to be refuelled, re-armed and sent back with another load. It became clear to the men that many of them would not survive.
But even as final details were being checked, senior figures, both military and political, doubted the wisdom of the enterprise. On 8 August the Allies launched a major offensive on the Western Front. By early September the German line had been pushed back to a position not far from where it had launched its own offensive six months earlier. Allied strength now built up in preparation for a push of its own in late September. The morale of the German Army was failing, that of the civilian population too; it appeared unlikely that air raids on London and Paris could now change the course of the war. And all the time Allied aircraft were dropping bombs on Germany.
Even so, the Elektron bomb raids on London and Paris were to go ahead. The Gothas ordered to bomb Paris were loaded and on the runway, Bogohl 3’s raid due to follow an hour later. As the Paris bombers awaited the order to depart, a car sped onto the airfield while another headed to the headquarters of Bogohl 3. Staff officers stepped from the cars and handed over new orders; there would be no firestorm raid. Erster Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff explained his thinking.
Our position was now so serious that General Headquarters could not hope that air-raids on London and Paris would force the enemy to make peace. Permission was therefore refused for the use of a particularly effective incendiary bomb, expressly designed for attacks on the two capitals… The great amount of damage that they were expected to cause would no longer have affected the course of the war, and sheer destructiveness had never been permitted. [German Chancellor] Count von Hertling, had requested General Headquarters not to use these new incendiary bombs on account of the reprisals on our own towns that would follow. My views of the general military situation, however, were the real ground for the decision.25
Germany knew it could no longer win the war; persevering with air raids failed to serve any useful purpose, and the act of dropping more bombs left Germany open to devastating reprisals. Germany’s threat to Britain from the air was at an end.
***
What did the raids achieve?
The raids of 1917 and 1918 continued the course that began way back at Christmas 1914. But whereas most raids in 1915 and 1916 were made by airships, supported by floatplanes making coastal attacks, from 1917 to the end of the war airships took on a secondary role, the main threat now coming from the Gotha, augmented by the R-type bombers – the Giants – of Rfa 501.
As far back as 1914, before any nation had ever undertaken a sustained, strategic bombing campaign against an enemy country, Germany could only estimate the effect it would have. Yet a belief that an aerial assault on a city like London had the potential to break the morale of its civilian population prove attractive as Germany contemplated total war, that belief given voice in August 1914 by Konteradmiral Paul Behncke, Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff. He recognised the importance of bombing the capital, its docks and, as a naval man, the Admiralty building in Whitehall. He expected these attacks, ‘whether they involve London or the neighbourhood of London, to cause panic in the population which may possibly render it doubtful that the war can be continued’.26 Behncke also highlighted the importance of striking against the Dover and Portsmouth naval bases and included among suggested targets the Humber and Tyne as well as Plymouth, Glasgow and the Firth of Forth. ‘Air attacks … particularly with airships,’ he concluded, ‘promise considerable material and moral results.’ Of these places, London and its docks were targeted, as were Dover, the rivers Humber, Tyne and the Firth of Forth, and Portsmouth, just once. Plymouth and Glasgow, however, were never troubled. But any idea that a Zeppelin could identify a single building in a city, such as the Admiralty, while assaulted by searchlights, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft, demonstrated a certain naivety on Behncke’s part. But that is understandable when contemplating something completely new and untried. Perhaps it would have been possible in 1914 when London’s air defences were negligible, but by 1915, when the raids began, the defensive situation had improved.
The Zeppelin raids that followed, on London and across Britain, from Portsmouth in the south to the Highlands of Scotland in the north, never led to widespread panic. The reaction of ordinary people to this threat from the sky is interesting. Although raids were often undertaken by large numbers of airships, due to the vagaries of the wind and weather, rarely did more than one appear over a target at a time. This made an attack by a Zeppelin a rare and thrilling sight for many of the population who often left their beds in the hours of darkness to catch a glimpse of one of these futuristic aerial raiders, and some felt cheated if they never saw one! Of course, for those who found themselves directly in the path of a Zeppelin attack, as bombs whistled down, edging ever nearer, to explode near you or destroy your home, the experience became a very different one. The horror of indiscriminate bombing devastated families and communities as they tried to come to terms with this previously unthinkable way of making war.
The reaction of the population to the Gotha raids differed. A Zeppelin could be seen and followed in the sky, particularly if lit by searchlights. At a height of 2 or 3 miles, a Zeppelin flying at up to 60mph appeared from the ground to be moving very slowly and it became abundantly clear if you were in the path of danger or not. Unlike the Zeppelins, which only attacked at night, the Gothas initially carried out their raids in daylight, arriving as a squadron and sweeping across the sky, leaving no one feeling safe from attack. When a switch to night bombing followed in September 1917, although heard from the ground, the bombers were extremely difficult to see unless a searchlight managed to hold one in its beam. An unseen danger in the dark did lead to a nervousness in London in particular, resulting at times to panics in the rush for shelter.
The great belief held by the German people in the technical ability of airships to effectively take the war to Britain held firm, constantly fuelled by inaccurate and optimistic press releases describing effective raids on Britain. But the need for Zeppelins to operate at ever greater heights, after losses sustained in the autumn of 1916, meant it became increasingly difficult to locate targets and bomb them with any pretence of accuracy. The six Zeppelin raids in 1917, inflicted total damage estimated at £87,749 (one raid, 19/20 October, accounting for 62 per cent of the total), while the three raids in 1918 inflicted damage estimated at £29,427.27 Across 1917-1918, these Zeppelin raids claimed 56 lives and injured 134.28 During this same period, Germany lost 23 Zeppelins, shot down, destroyed in accidents, or wrecked in difficult landings. It has been estimated that the later Zeppelin types each cost in the region of £150,000 to build.29 The total damage inflicted by Zeppelins in 1917-1918 equated to less than the cost of constructing a single airship. From a financial perspective, the cost of the Zeppelin campaign to Germany far exceeded the value of the damage it wrought in Britain. Yet the fanciful reporting of apparently successful raids by individual Zeppelin commanders fuelled the belief in Germany that they were having a significant impact, which in turn allowed Peter Strasser to demand and receive continuing support for the campaign.
The main threat in the last two years of the war, however, came from aeroplanes, with the arrival of the G-type bombers – the Gothas – in May 1917, which changed the nature of the air raids, later further enhanced by the R-type Giants. At full strength, Bogohl 3 fielded 36 aircraft while Rfa 501 mustered six Giants, yet Bogohl 3 only managed to despatch a full-strength squadron on one occasion (19/20 May 1918). Likewise, Rfa 501 only once managed to attack with all six Giants (7/8 March 1918).
German aeroplanes appeared over London and south-east England on 32 occasions between January 1917 and May 1918, inflicting damage estimated at £1,423,019, claiming the lives of 837 people and injuring another 1,991. The total achievements of the Zeppelin campaign across 1917 and 1918 were surpassed by the first daylight Gotha raid on London in June 1917 when, taking the population completely by surprise, the Gothas caused damage estimated £129,498, with 162 killed and 432 injured.30 But the Gothas also suffered significant losses during the war, with at least 19 brought down by Britain’s defences, and around 38 crashing when returning from raids. Clearly Bogohl 3 needed a constant stream of replacement aircraft to remain viable. The Giants lost no aircraft at the hands of Britain’s defences, but at least six were wrecked or seriously damaged when landing; Rfa 501 could only muster three for the final raid in May 1918.
Those infrequent Zeppelin raids, however, did have an impact on Britain’s defence resources, and at the end of the war five RAF squadrons31 remained in Scotland, the North of England and the Midlands. Other than No. 36 Squadron, however, who were flying Bristol Fighters, the rest had second rate aircraft, mainly the Avro 504K. Even so, the specialist manpower allocated to these squadrons would have been extremely useful at the Front. This also applies to the anti-aircraft guns, searchlights and those manning them in these rarely-troubled regions. A snapshot of the Northern air defences in June 1918 shows 173 anti-aircraft guns and 259 searchlights in position. At the same time LADA manned 278 guns and 355 searchlights.32
The air raids on Britain also affected the production of war materiel. When air raids threatened, many munitions workers sought shelter, often leaving the work place and not returning after the raid’s conclusion. Figures are available for small arms ammunition production at Woolwich Arsenal for the first two nights of the Harvest Moon Offensive in September 1917. Winston Churchill, then Minister of Munitions, stated that the figures were ‘typical of what was taking place over a wide area’.33
On 24 September, the first night of this offensive, guns around Woolwich were in action shortly after 8.00pm. Only 27 per cent of night-shift workers producing .303-inch rifle ammunition remained at their posts, with normal shift production dropping from 850,000 bullets to 140,000. Although no aerial attack threatened during the following day-shift, output still dropped to 75 per cent of normal delivery.
Gothas returned to London the following night and bombs again fell in south-east London. Although 64 per cent of the .303-inch ammunition workforce continued through the raid, production reached only 33 per cent of normal output. The raids clearly had an impact on war production, but they were not frequent enough for this to have a significant effect overall.
By the end of the war, Britain had been under the real threat of air attack from December 1914 to May 1918, a period of 1,244 days. But German aircraft, both airships and aeroplanes, raided on just 101 of those days. In this earliest of sustained aerial campaigns, the unreliability of aero engines and the impossibility for Germany’s meteorologists to predict adverse weather patterns approaching the British Isles from the Atlantic Ocean, both key factors in the campaign, restricted the raiders’ options. While engine development did make significant advancements during the war, the ability to forecast approaching weather systems did not. Although at the beginning of the war Germany anticipated its airships regularly threatening London, these problems, combined with an increasing effective aerial defence system, resulted in just 12.5 per cent of total bomb tonnage dropped by airships landing in the wider London area. Aeroplanes attained a much higher figure, 42.8 per cent, the capital being the extent of the Gothas’ range and the enduring target of their missions.
Of the total weight of bombs dropped on Britain, airships were responsible for about 73 per cent, but these inflicted only about 51 per cent of the recorded damage. This being in part due to the increasing height airships operated at as the war progressed. It meant accurate navigation over areas of the country where most towns eventually had an effective black-out in operation proved extremely difficult. This resulted in many bombs falling wastefully in the open rural landscape where lights were often still showing, many in these regions feeling less need to adopt the black-out, considering they had nothing there of value to the war effort worth bombing – unaware of the navigation and observation difficulties the raiders faced.
Britain’s defence system had grown considerably since the beginning of the war, when the country had just a handful of effective guns in an anti-aircraft role and an eclectic mix of naval aeroplanes as the Admiralty took on the aerial defence role as a temporary measure. Improvements were slow initially, but a more organised approach followed the eventual transfer of responsibility to the War Office in February 1916. By June 1918, shortly after the final German air raid, there were 451 anti-aircraft guns positioned across the country and 16 RAF squadrons, combining to form a defensive barrier the length of Britain. The War Office had also recognised the need for an efficient warning system, and by May 1916 had divided Britain into 54 numbered districts linked to eight Warning Control centres, using the telephone network to advise when raids threatened specific areas. Later, in the LADA area, under the watchful eye of Edward Ashmore, the monitoring system tracked incoming bombers from the coast all the way to the capital. Forged in adversity, this effective and ground-breaking system utilised techniques and equipment that would be resurrected when German bombers returned in the summer of 1940.
The rapidly changing nature of the war in Europe in the autumn of 1918 brought an end to this first sustained, strategic bombing campaign in history. First airships – both Zeppelin and Schütte-Lanz – and then G-type and R-type bombers, attempted to destabilise the population’s morale, debilitate its industrial output and disrupt the supply system, but they failed to make a significant impact. Yet this campaign marked a change in the way future wars would be fought; air power, largely unheard of before the war, would have a vital part to play in all future wars. Dwarfed by the enormity of air wars yet to come, this first Blitz has become largely forgotten. But those who took part, those who fought these first aerial duels, those whose lives were taken as their homes were reduced to dust and rubble around them, those who continued to fly when technical advances made their journeys almost suicide missions, they all deserve to be remembered. It should not be the Forgotten Blitz.
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Peace
The end for the men of Bogohl 3 came quickly. As the Allied advance drew closer to Ghent, in October 1918 the squadron relocated about 30 miles to the south-east, to the former Zeppelin base at Evere, near Brussels. The Elektron bombs were dumped in the River Scheldt. The signing of the Armistice required Bogohl 3, like other bomber squadrons, to surrender their aircraft within 48 hours; this they did, handing them over to a commission of British officers. Brandenburg and the men of Der Englandgeschwader clambered aboard lorries and left Evere, to make a dispiriting eight-day journey back through a defeated Germany, ravaged by food shortages and with revolution in the air. Bogohl 3 demobilised at the end of November.
For the German Navy the war ended in serious unrest. A plan for one last, inevitably futile attempt to engage the Royal Navy, was thwarted by a sailors’ mutiny at the end of October, leading to a revolution which spread rapidly across the country. During this period of turmoil, however, many of the Zeppelin flight crews remained loyal to their organisation. On 9 November, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. On that same day the crews demobilised the Zeppelin fleet. They deflated the hydrogen gas bags and hung the Zeppelins’ empty carcasses in their sheds, supported on trestles. And there they remained while the Allies considered how best to distribute these prizes. The navy’s ships were in a similar situation.
After November 1918, 74 ships of Germany’s High Seas Fleet lay at Scapa Flow, the Royal Navy’s base in the Orkney Islands, pending a decision on their future. Discussions dragged on and, on 21 June 1919, after seven months of waiting, their skeleton crews took matters into their own hands and succeeded in scuttling 52 ships, preventing them being handed over to the Allies.
Two days later the loyal Zeppelin crews followed this defiant action, entering the sheds at Nordholz, Wittmundhafen and Ahlhorn planning to destroy those Zeppelins inside. At Ahlhorn the plan failed, but at Nordholz and Wittmundhafen the conspirators were unchallenged and, having removed supporting cables and trestles, seven dormant Zeppelins crashed to the ground, crushing themselves under their own weight. Having carried death and destruction to the population of Britain, all that remained of these once majestic airships were chaotic piles of twisted metal scrap.34