In early January, 1916 Admiral von Pohl was dying of cancer, and had to give up command of the German Navy. The man who took over was a Adm. Reinhardt Scheer, who was considered one of the leading 'activists' of high command (activists here meaning he believed 'we should actually use our navy to go out and do things instead of hanging around in port all the time'). Scheer's plan for victory was to do to Britain what Britain was already doing to Germany: force them to their knees via a naval blockade. The twist was Scheer was going to accomplish this through unrestricted submarine warfare. Unfortunately, there was high level resistance to this idea for most of the year; so while Scheer fought the diplomatic battle in Germany, he planned to use existing naval resources as effectively as possible. Because he had the numerically inferior force, Scheer planned to use airships for screening his forces and, of course, to attack Britain.
And as it happened, Strasser, Commander of Airships, and Scheer, commander of the Kaiser's Navy, got along with each other quite well. In fact, in their first official meeting the dynamic duo drew up new, ambitious plans for attacking the whole of Britain via airship. Raids were now going to be coordinated with the army, with ideally squadron attacks against individual cities. To support Scheer's still distant goal of a naval blockade, it was decided that Liverpool would be the first target.
During the lull between October 1915 and January 1916, the airships L15 and greater had their Maybach 210 hp C-X engines replaced with the new, 240 hp lightweight HSLu airship motor. Unfortunately, these engines had been rushed into production too quickly, and frequently broke down, breaking crankshafts, snapping connecting rods, and melting crank bearings. This went on for a few months, until Strasser put his foot down and took all ships so equipped out of service until factory technicians could permanently fix the problem. This the technicians did, but not before some airship crews paid with their lives. Another, more successful innovation was the new Q-class Zeppelin. The Q-Class was a P-class with an extra 55,000 cubic feet of displacement in the middle. This displacement boost improved the Zeppelin's ceiling by several thousand feet, and gave more lifting capability. The Q-class, like the M-class before it, was a stopgap solution till the highly anticipated R-class could be deployed.
Raids on the Midlands and Scotland
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| This is actually a photo taken on the very first raid on London, but let's pretend it's actually a photo of the start of the first midlands raid. |
The night of January 31st, 1916, nine Zeppelins took off to raid England, with Strasser himself aboard L11. His orders were “Attack England, middle or south, if at all possible Liverpool.” The resulting raid saw none of the airships reach Liverpool, and even with access to both sets of historical records, it's sometimes difficult to tell what exactly was going on. About the most positive thing I can say is that a raid on the Midlands caught the British defenders completely by surprise. While London and southern England was finally developing defenses, the Midlands didn't have a single gun. Had the Zeppelins stayed together and managed to find something valuable to attack, they could have leisurely flown 500 ft over the target, bombing at will.
That didn't happen, of course. The reason for all this confusion was simple: the weather. While the night was cold, and the air was calm, the airships were flying through layers of cloud and snow to discover thick mists blanketed Britain, so thick that even parachute flares were swallowed by the gloom. At best, the airship had starlight; more often, another cloud layer overhead blocked out even that small illumination. So, as your airship was sandwiched between two cloud layers, you peered into the dark with your binoculars, trying to penetrate the dark cloud below to the usually blacked out countryside. Sometimes, mist would deny you even that little information, and it was like the ship flew through a dark and cold limbo.
All captains tried to rely on the radio beacons, which, as discussed before, gave inaccurate readings. As a result, finding were you were in British airspace, let alone finding Liverpool, was impossible. British observers on the ground tried to keep track of where the Zeppelins were going, but sometimes found them doubling back on the same path, sometimes crossing over each other, till the observers were just as confused as the Zeppelin crews.
The Squadron encountered fogs and snow over the North Sea, and were often denied visual landfall. L 13 with Mathy and L 21 managed to stay together over the coast, the promise of a clear sunset dashed by fog and clouds. L 13 attacked what was thought to be a blast furnace (it was actually the lit-up town of Stoak-Upon-Trent.) Parachute flares revealed nothing, and with a radio fix that said he was somewhere near Manchester, Mathy set a course for the Humber. A chance break in the clouds revealed a steel works, which L 13 slightly damaged with the rest of her bombs. L 21 claimed to attack Liverpool, but actually attacked the suburbs of Birmingham, 75 miles southeast. L 11 had Strasser on board, and true to form, had bad luck. Coming over the coast carrying some 2 tons of snow and ice, L 11 saw several lit cities, but wanted to save her bombs for Liverpool. Another brightly lit target was spotted – likely a German POW camp – and then L 11 found itself lost in an especially dark fog. After Captain Von Buttlar consulted with Strasser, and the reluctant decision was made to return home. Bocker in L 14 similarly held onto his bombs, waiting for Liverpool, but similarly got lost in middle England, and after an hour or two of searching, gave up and turned back. L 14 happened across some factories on the way, bombing them and causing considerable damage to a railway maintenance shop and a lamp works.
And these were the more successful ships. The rest of the squadron suffered mechanical problems of greater or lesser severity. L 16 burnt out a bearing before reaching the coast, and decided to attack Great Yarmouth instead, (the bombs falling on empty fields.) L 17 similarly had an engine rebuilt over the North Sea only to have it break again, and dropped her bombs near a Naval Air Station. L 20 had one engine gone and another engine quite tappity, but this didn't stop her Captain from flying lower, hoping defenses would revel themselves. On the basis of his not great mechanical condition, he decided to attack Sheffield, dropping most of his bombs on it. The town attacked was in fact Burton-on-Trent. L 15 had two engines fail on her, but that didn't stop L 15 from attacking Liverpool...in her Captain's mind. The town attacked was, in fact, Burton-on-Trent again.
L 19 somewhat later that night also bombed Burton-on-Trent, which really paid the price that night for not blacking out. The Captain of L 19, Lowe, was determined to find Liverpool, and headed west toward Birmingham. British records show that L 19 got around there, only to make a somewhat eccentric course to the east, going out to sea at 6 am. L 19 radioed Nordholz for a bearing at 3:53 AM and again at 6:30, also reporting the attack on “Sheffield”, having been the second Zeppelin that night to make that mistake. Then, nothing. Three destroyer flotillas were raising steam to go look for L 19 at 4 PM the next day, when L 19 signaled that she was having both radio and engine problems, and was near Borkum Island, near the Dutch coast. The destroyers were recalled, only to be sent out again at midnight when nothing further was heard. The next morning, February 2nd, a destroyer found one of L 19's fuel tanks just north of Borkum Island.
While the loss of L 19 was just settling in at Nordholz, fleet command discovered that an hour after her last message, L 19 had appeared over the Dutch Coast, where sentries, despite guessing she was in difficulties and lost, attacked her till she vanished into the mists. The next day, the story took another turn. An English trawler had seen the wreck of L 19, had sailed up to her and exchanged words with her crew, and then sailed off again, leaving the crew to die. The captain was a target of rage for this in the German Press, and was just as soon forgotten for a new target of rage: the Bishop of London publicly condoning the abandoning of the “baby-killers” to drown. The new outrage target selected, the German press ranted for a week against the bishop who “acted less as an apostle of Christian charity and more as a jingoistic hatemonger.”
As a sad coda to all this, some six months later Capt. Lowe's last report washed ashore in a bottle.
With 15 men on the top platform and backbone girder of the L 19, floating without gondolas in approx. 3 deg. East longitude. I am attempting to send a last report. Engine trouble three times repeated, a light head wind on the return journey delayed our return and, in the mist, carried us over Holland where I was received with rifle fire; the ship became heavy and simultaneously three engines failed.
February 2, 1916, towards 1 PM, will apparently be our last hour.
Lowe
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The fact that the Zeppelin raiders had once again been flying around beyond the reach of all defenses was not lost on the British, who began to reorganize defenses in the midlands as they had in London. The biggest development was the establishment of several new fighter squadrons who's sole purpose was night flying; they would fly patrol whenever Zeppelins were believed to be approaching. Unfortunately for the defenders, to climb to the BE2's ceiling of 13,000 feet took over an hour, and the 1916 Zeppelins were already climbing above that.
Back at Nordholz, the Army was complaining to Strasser. "It's stupid to wait until the dark of the moon for attacking England! Didn't the Navy know the Army had done tests last year that showed Zeppelins were invisible from the ground, even during a full moon?" Strasser didn't accept these results, despite being pressured to go along. He arranged his own nighttime test, with L 16 flying above the Hague and the defense fighters of the city playing at interceptor. Once the fighters spotted L 16, nothing L 16 did could shake the fighters, as the airship showed up either as a dark or silvery smudge, regardless of where it was. More disturbingly, nobody on the Zeppelin could see the fighters, despite the fact that the fighters was releasing flares. Strasser's findings were confirmed when in the opening hours of the Verdun offensive, an Army airship bombing the French fortress was shot down in flames in the bright moonlight.
This might have produced pause among the Zeppelinauts, but the skyship armada was entering into a period of intense activity. With his superior wanting more action, on March 2nd three airships took off to attack the Firth of Fourth. Unfortunately, weather was once again going to be against the Zeppelins, this time in the form of storms and winds. Over the Heligoland bight, the winds freshened and the attacking force was coated in slush and snow. Around 7 PM all the ships gave up on reaching the Firth of Fourth, and tried to attack the midlands instead.
This didn't go especially well, either. L 11 made landfall some 70 miles south of where the captain expected, just on the basis of wind. Fighting the headwind, L 11 plowed through snow squalls, -20 C temperatures, and St. Elmo's fire blazing on the gondola struts. After several hours of this, the sky cleared to reveal L 11 had been immobile all this time, and was still over the coast, despite her exertions. Seeing Hull was nearby and was being attacked by another Zeppelin, L 11 steered for that. Now navigation was easy, at least, as the dark water and the snow's contrast to it made things as clear as a map. Bombing Hull, the Caption, Schutze, thought tremendous damage was done. So did the other attacking airship, the L 14, who like L 11 fought 55 mph winds for several hours before giving it up as hopeless. Bombs destroyed houses, broke water mains, and knocked a ship under construction off of its chocks. For the second time in Hull, the bombing also caused a riot, though this time the target was the Royal Flying Corps. A RFC vehicle was stoned, and a officer was mobbed in a nearby town.
Capt. Mathy in L 13 experienced even worse weather. Over the coast, L 13 ran into a continuous series of snow clouds. Finally making his way out of these, Mathy began seeing towns, and thought he was near the Scottish border. Mathy was wrong: the winds, blowing at twice what L 13 estimated, had pushed the airship some 150 miles south of that. This came abruptly clear to Mathy around 2 AM when the weather abated, and he realized that the river L 13 was over was not the Humber, but the Thames. Here suddenly spotlights came on, and L 13 was fired upon by warships. Having already had some engine troubles, L 13 turned for home, barely making it to Namur in Belgium after multiple storms and engine problems.
The first “Blitz”
On March 31st, the moon was nearing new, and the raids began again. This time Strasser sent airships to raid Britain nightly for almost a week, raiding everywhere from the south of England to Scotland.
The first night 7 Zeppelins set course for London. Strasser had apparently figured out the British were listening to his wireless signals, and forbade routine take off messages. On the way to England, L 9 was sidelined by a in-flight accident. One of the bracing wires of the forward engine Gondola broke, and streamed into the propeller. The wire wrapped around the prop shaft, and the entire rear of the gondola was instantly jerked into the hull. The 18 ft wooden propeller scythed through the keel, severing wires and snapping girders before shattering, sending sharp wood splinters into the gas cells. With the forward gas cells all leaking, the airship quickly became heavy by the nose, and angled downward, while the engines were still at full throttle. Oh, and all the control lines had been severed by that scything prop, so L 9 was now plunging, at full throttle, into the North Sea! L 9 saved at the last moment by the shutting down of all engines manually and the shifting of ballast forward to regain an even keel. The crew managed to rig temporary controls, and L 9 made it back to base for extensive repairs.
L 13 with Mathy in Command also had bad luck. Carrying 5,300 lbs of bombs, L 13 encountered warm weather. This lowered her ceiling to the point where Mathy considered it unsafe to attack London fully loaded, so he began looking for a nearby explosive works. By dropping parachute flares he alerted a battery of guns to L 13's presence. After several rounds of the guns firing and Mathy counter attacking with bombs, a shell hit home and shredded a lifting cell. Jettisoning all his bombs, Mathy immediately turned for home. The situation was so serious that Mathy actually wrote a hasty status report on a message blank, and dropped it out the window, just in case L 13 vanished on the return journey. The crew worked feverishly sewing closed the holes in the lifting cells (which must have been a hell of a work environment, what with the deadly exploding gas making you all lightheaded in the dark) but L 13 just managed to make the Hague the next morning.
The rest of the ships also didn't reach London, and bombed minor targets, save one: L 15 did reach London, but didn't return.
L 15 also found the same warm weather, but Capt. Breitaupt decided to risk it, approaching the blacked out city at 8,500 feet. Over the suburbs, L 15 was picked up by a searchlight and battery, who managed to put a shell amidships. It was what also happened to L 13 that night, but then, things got worse: L 15 came under attack from an RFC aircraft. Lt. A. de B Brandon in a had been following L 15 for nearly an hour, and the airship's about face allowed him to close the distance for an attack. Suddenly dangerously heavy, L 15 couldn't climb away from her attacker, and opened up with her machine guns. Ignoring the fire, Brandon dived on L 15, but misjudged his speed, and flew past the wounded airship as he was arming his incendiary bombs. (Oh, and when I say 'arm' I mean he was physically taking the 20lb bombs and arming them in the cockpit, so he could feed them into the "launch tube".) As the RFC pilot tried to come around again, L 15 hobbled its way into a cloud bank. Amazingly, Brandon had only 30 hours of total flight time before nearly setting L 15 alight.
Breitaupt, free of the problem of immediate destruction, was free to relax, and take in the problem of his imminent destruction. The AA shell had damaged many of L 15's lifting cells, rendering 2 of them completely empty, and Breitaupt's only shot was to fly down the Thames and make Belgium before sunrise. Jettisoning bombs, guns, and the wireless set, L 15 still sank lower .At the mouth of the Thames, just 500 ft above the water, the ship's hull could no longer take the strain, and snapped. Slowly crashing into the sea, the stricken crew of the L 15 found themselves surrounded by armed trawlers, one of whom sporadically opened fire on L 15 till a Royal Navy destroyer made the scene. The destroyer captain rescued the crew, but enforced two conditions: only three survivors to a boat, and all airship crew must strip naked before getting into said boat. Captain Breitaupt later received the British press in this state. After badgering his captors, Breitaupt got his clothes back (and after some further badgering his buttons and medals which had been swiped as souvenirs) and spent the rest of the war as a POW. The wrecked L 15 was taken under tow, but a British officer had slashed the remaining lifting cells before getting under way, and the hull shortly broke up and sank.
The “big week” never really recovered it's momentum from the loss of the L 15, though L 14 became the first Zeppelin to bomb Scotland, managing to burn down a whiskey warehouse. The raids managed to kill 84, wound 227 and do some 126,000 pounds worth of damage (the whiskey warehouse being a third of that damage cost, and the proportion of killed and wounded being military were fairly good; one of those minor targets that were bombed on the last raid being a church filled with sleeping soldiers.) The damage was not great, but the airship crews looked back on this time fondly, as a high-water mark in their careers.
They also found themselves engaged in more and more straight reconnaissance for the Imperial Navy, as the surface fleet becoming more and more active in the run-up to the battle of Jutland, which is where we will start next time.
But we must end as we started, with fog and confusion. Clearly the bombing campaign, while being of great propaganda value to the Germans, and a persistent morale problem to the British, was not going to burn London or bring all of England to her knees. The history makes this obvious, as do the reports of the airship commanders themselves. While often optimistic, the mistakes Zeppelin crews made about how much damage they were doing were usually innocent and understandable. But, like certain World War 2 commanders, Peter Strasser had become completely convinced that strategic Zeppelin bombing could end the war successfully for Germany, or at least knock Britain out of it. So, he did nothing to correct, and even added to, the gross exaggerations and lies that was circulating in Germany, both with the public and with the high command. Die Kaiser himself was told that the Mar.31st - Apr. 1st raid:
“At Grimsby, in addition to the post office and several other houses, a battleship in the roadstead was heavily damaged by a bomb, and had to be beached. At Kensington an airplane hanger was wrecked, and north of the Tower a bomb fell on George Street only 100 meters away from two anti-aircraft guns. It was reported that a big fire had broken out at the West India docks, and that at Tibury Docks a munitions ship exploded (400 killed.) Specially serious explosions occurred at the Surry Commercial Docks and at a factory, close to the Lower Road, at which shells were filled with explosives. A railroad train already loaded with these shells was stated to be completely wrecked.”
So as some Airship commanders wistfully thought they had attacked Liverpool, the Kaiser and his top advisers wistfully thought that the Zeppelin raids did enormous damage. Wishful thinking was not new to any side in the First World War, but as the Battle of Verdun raged, wishful thinking was now beginning to increasingly affect Germany's leaders.
The BE2. A somewhat controversial aircraft. Designed in 1912, it was a frontline aircraft of the RFC in the early part of the war, where it was completely outclassed by the Fokker Eindecker. (According to Wikipedia, German pilots nicknamed this aircraft "cold meat".) In fact, casualties for the RFC were so great that it produced a political scandal in Britain, where Parliament investigated if the factory was actually selling faulty goods.
The plane did have its good points: it was extremely stable and easy to fly, so much so that it later saw service as a basic trainer. It served as a night fighter on the home front, later mounting a machine gun at a .45 degree angle to attack things from below.
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