ACHTUNG ZEPPELIN II: We All Float Up Here

Peter Strasser, Airship Enthusiast.

Last time, we ended on Peter Strasser, the new Commander of airships. In the year since his appointment, Strasser had worked hard, launching a crash training program for new airship crews. Using airships from DELAG and personnel from the Zeppelin company, he had managed to restart the training process that the L1 and L2 disasters had interrupted. He had also done quite a lot building up the Navy airship base at Nordholz. Still, he had quite a headwind when war was declared in August 1914. The Navy had precisely one airship in operation, L 3, and the Imperial army was using its political clout to take airship-related resources originally going to Strasser's force. While Strasser had one airship in service, the army had now eleven.

That headwind, however, was about to become a tailwind, and Strasser was soon to float over almost more resources than he knew what to do with. As to why this happened, we must return to the other point I left off with: the Kaiser's Navy was doomed to passivity.

(If you are just here for all the “Captain Strasser and the Sky-Masters of Nuremberg” stuff you can feel free to skip this next bit. It's a lot more, well...)

Captain Strasser and the Sky-Masters of Nuremberg Attend Meetings and Write Memos to Each Other

The reason why the Navy found itself rudderless now that war was declared is the fault of this man:

Caution: not as competent as he looks

The Kaiser many years ago had embarked Germany on a costly arms race with Britain, building a mighty surface fleet to challenge the Royal Navy. This, historians agree, was a terrible idea, as you don't fight the enemy where they most want to be fought. By the time World War One arrived, the Germans had a fleet of battleships and dreadnoughts second to none – except the Royal Navy, who still greatly outnumbered them. To make matters worse, no one in the Naval high command had any idea what to do if war actually happened between Britain and Germany. This was also the Kaiser's fault. The head of both the Army and the Navy, the Kaiser was content to let the Army's brilliant set of staff officers do the real planning. With the Navy; in contrast, the Kaiser continually reserved all important decisions for himself, despite the fact that he didn't really have the intellect or the time to give them his full attention. The result was a service that was very well equipped, but one utterly without direction as to what to do if the storm-clouds over Europe actually broke into war.

Shortly after war was declared, the Kaiser set all things right by decreeing:

1. We should not risk our very valuable battleships.
2. We should send out small amounts of our less valuable ships to attack small patrols of the British navy, slowly wearing them down. We should also do a lot of mining.
3. Because both of these require lots of scouting, this means we need more airships. 

Somebody had evidently noticed that a cruiser took around 2 years to complete, while a Zeppelin only took six weeks. This meant that this new demand for scouting was to be met with airships. So, about a month into the conflict the airship building projects suddenly became a top national priority. This building project was also necessary because the Army had managed to burn through all but one of its Zeppelins in that month. They had been used for scouting, bombing, and (hang onto your hats, A-10 Warthog fans) close infantry support, which I think we all can agree is the worst conceivable use for a hydrogen airship. At any rate, all were destroyed or seriously damaged, save one.

A high officer on the Naval staff, Konteradmiral Behncke, had also launched a campaign to use the Zeppelins as a bomber against Britain. He met significant resistance from the Kaiser, of all people:
first on the basis that the war would be over presently anyway (to be strictly fair to die Kaiser, this was a belief held by everyone on both sides in the first month of so of war) and later, well, for less sound reasons. (Back to that in a minute.) As the war past the first month mark, the German Army retreated to the positions that would become the western front. The mood changed in Germany from euphoria to anxiety, both with the German public and with high command. Much Ire was directed at the British, who's forces were insturmental at defeating Germany at the battle of the Marne, and the idea of 'punishing that nation of shopkeepers' with airships suddenly became a popular cause in newspapers. This in turn made the Navy take the idea seriously. Weirdly, nether the Zeppelin company nor most of high command seem to have considered this idea before, even though the British had been demonstrating a keen anxiety about it for years. Still, some people were ontop of things: when the Navy requested from Strasser an assessment about the feasibility of the idea and potential targets, Strasser sent back a highly detailed report that same afternoon.

 Strasser also understood the politics of such a decision: whoever demonstrated the best ability to bomb Britain would gain enormous prestige, and consequently, most of the Zeppelin resources. The Army too, could see this, and immediately began breaking ground on two Zeppelin bases in occupied Belgium. If anybody was going to have control of this new technology, it would be the Imperial Army.

    The airship builders were caught off guard by this sudden demand. While new designs  for a million cubic-foot-plus still on the drawing boards, and the new factories and hangers still incomplete, it was agreed that ships of the L 2 and L 3 type (called the 'M' class) were an acceptable stopgap. While these new ships were being built, there was one more obstacle to deal with. The Kaiser still opposed the idea, even after the general staff came to agree on it. He was  reluctant to go along not on any legal or humanitarian grounds, of course. He was worried that Zeppelins might end up bombing historical landmarks or one of the many houses of his extended family; after all, Queen Victoria had been his grandmother. His worry about the personal property of his cousins meant that for awhile odd restrictions were placed on the Zeppelin crews. First, they could attack east of London, but not London itself. Then, they could attack  London, but only east of the Tower of London. Then, finally in June 1915,  bowing to public pressure, attacks on London generally were approved, though “royal palaces and monuments, such as St. Paul's Cathedral, were not to be attacked.”

"because god forbid my relations be harmed in this war that will kill millions."

The first raid happened shortly after the Kaiser gave his permission for attacks in general, on January 9th, 1915. The Navy airship division had been reinforced with 4 new M class ships: the L 4 to L 8 now scouted the German Bight. These ships were substantially similar to the L 2 and 3, with some refinements. They still featured open gondolas (save a windscreen for the pilot), so for the bridge- crew it was like sailing the skies of the North Sea  in an aluminum fishing dory. They were armed with machine guns to fend off aircraft both in the gondolas, in a position on top of the ship, and often in the stern as well. (These positions must have given spectacular views, at the cost of being miserably cold.) The cruising speed was about 65 km/h, and they flew mostly between 3 and 6 thousand feet. Their endurance was already quite spectacular: they were capable of staying aloft nearly 30 hours at a stretch, which gave even these early Zeppelins the legs to fly from Nordholz, Germany to Britain and back again. Missions to attack Britain generally were staged during the 'attack phase' of the moon (8 days before and after the new moon) and interestingly, winter weather was preferable to summer. In addition to the extra darkness, cold air provides more lift than warm air, being more dense.

Rear observers position.

 

Upper Machine gun nest near the bow.

 

Airships going for a raid would generally leave around ten or eleven in the morning, which would give them all day to make the flight to Britain and arrive as it was getting dark. After darkness fell, the ship would then drop its bombs on anything that looked valuable, and then returned home, usually arriving at base in time for breakfast the next day. You may notice that 'anything that looked valuable' is pretty vague for a bombing mission, and that's because navigation was the greatest difficulty. Airships found that dead reckoning was useless over the North Sea, as the wind could push a Zeppelin far off course without the crew noticing. The ship's compass was held in a mixture of alcohol and water, but still frequently froze. Even sextants were often useless, as you need both a clear sky and a clear horizon line (or at least one with a very flat cloud band) two conditions that were difficult to obtain over the North Sea and Britain. Captains would intend to go to this or that general area, but the success or failure of this was determined by vagaries in weather, not to mention luck.

The static lift generated by the Hydrogen varied on temperature, barometric pressure, and (slightly) on humidity. To deal with this variance, airships were first 'weighed-off' before flight, IE put in a condition of neutral buoyancy. This was done by figuring the weight of everything onboard – including, presumably, weighing the men and all their supplies – and then balanced between the lift and the weight. Even with first world war technology, this was done so precisely that a man forward and a man aft could easily lift the entire airship when it was weighed off. As the Zeppelin flew, it grew lighter as fuel and bombs were used. Ballast was carried in rubberized canvas sacks along the keel that could be emptied if a ship needed extra lift. The engines could generate some lift as well, and adjusting   the ballast could give a Zeppelin a positive or negative angle while flying, depending on need.  In the final stages of the flight, Zeppelins could also vent gas to decrease lift. When getting back to the hanger, the weighing off process was repeated, to make manhandling the ship back into the hanger easier.

On a wing and a prayer

    Anyway: January 13th 1915. The first raid.

    Well, the first attempted raid: the entire fleet of 4 ships was dispatched, and the entire fleet immediately ran into a winter storm full of snow and freezing rain. Strasser threw in the towel at 2 PM and ordered the squadron back. On January 19th, the Navy tried again, sending L 3 and L 4 to raid the Humber, and sending L 6 to raid the Thames. Strasser himself rode in the L 6, but a engine crankshaft broke three hours in, and the decision was made to turn back. The other ships made it to England, and while it might have started a nice day in Germany, it was a dirty ol' winter night on the coast of England, filled with rain and snow. L 4 crossed a coastline, and the captain assumed he was at the mouth of the Humber river. Searching in the murk for the Humber industrial area, he descended to 800 feet, and in several separate incidents found himself fired upon. Dropping bombs in retaliation, he realized that he was not where he thought he was: the Captain guessed he was somewhere north of the Humber. Coming across a large lit town, and once again believing himself under fire, L 4 dropped the rest of her bombs, and then escaped out to sea, but not before radioing “Successfully bombed fortified places between the Tyne and the Humber.”

    The best luck of the night was had by the L 3, who not coincidentally also was the only ship to get a positive navigational fix. Descending through the clouds over the coast, L 3 let off several parachute flares, which allowed the Capetian to identify a particular lighthouse. The L 3 was just north of Great Yarmouth, a minor naval port and once of the places mentioned on Strasser's probable target list. Finding the town around 9:30, L 3 lit off another flare, and in the middle of a driving rain proceeded to attack the town. Even though the speed of L 3 was, ah, slow - and she was only at 3000 feet - L 3 didn't have any sort of bomb aiming device. Several likely targets were spotted (the town gas works and a drill square for reservists) but all were missed by L 3's bombs. L 3 then headed out over the sea. Both L 3 and 4 got back the next morning without further incident, despite the fact that during the night the freezing rain caused some 4400 pounds of ice to form on L 3's cover and outer rigging.

Clearly, the results were not earthshaking. But news of the raid was met with wild enthusiasm from the German public. Like the Doolittle raid, it didn't do much in practical terms, but was a hell of a morale booster.  Here's a newspaper editorial that I think conveys what people were saying.

“German warships have already bombarded English seaports, German airmen have dropped bombs on Dover and other places, and now the first Zeppelins have appeared in England and has extended its fiery greeting to the enemy. It has come to pass, that which the English have long feared and repeatedly contemplated with terror. The most modern air weapon, a triumph of German inventiveness and the sole possession of the German Army, has shown itself capable of crossing the sea and carrying the war to the soil of old England! […] An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, only in this way can we treat with England. This is the best way to shorten the war, and thereby in the end the most humane. Today we congratulate Count Zeppelin, that he has lived to see this day, and offer him the thanks of the nation, for having placed it in possession of so wonderful a weapon.”

The mood was somewhat different in Naval Headquarters, as admirals read British accounts, and discovered that the raid had succeeded in attacking only civilian targets. L 4 had been nearly eighty miles south-east of the Humber, and the 'fortified' positions turned out to be tiny villages, the substantial town turning out to be King's Lynn. Rather pointed memos also made mention that attacking defenseless civilians made Germany look bad in neutral countries, particularly the Netherlands and America.

    The German army production of the first raid was a bit different. If the Navy raid was a comedic satire about men groping in darkness and striking at enemies they didn't see clearly, the Army production was more Keystone Cops. On March rth, 1915, Kapitanleutnant Helmut Beelitz found his ship, the L 8, (a M class ship first earmarked for the Navy) in one of the army's forward sheds in Belgium. He had been ordered to return to the base in Dusseldorf, and Beelitz thought he could get there after raiding Britain. Loading up with incendiary devices, the L 8 set off to raid Mersea Island, south of Essex. L 8, thanks to a think overcast, had to descend occasionally to check where she was. The first time she did this she was over Bruges, the second, just west of Ostend. Also just west of Ostend was where the Belgian front lines came down to the sea, so when the L 8 descended below 1000 feet and fired recognition signals, she was riddled with rifle and machine gun fire.

    By dumping all bombs, ballast, and most of L 8's fuel, Beelitz managed to get the now badly leaking L 8 back into the clouds. Bypassing the Belgian bases, L 8 made for Dusseldorf, but 85 miles short her last bit of luck finally ran out. The port engine overheated due to lack of water, and the starboard engine broke down. With two of three engines gone, L 8 now lacked the thrust to to keep her (formerly) lighter than air frame aloft, and she slid stern first toward the ground. First, her stern got entangled in trees, and then L 8's bow swung sideways, hitting the same grove with enough force to throw the entire bridge crew out of the forward gondola. Between the trees and the wind, L 8 was reduced to scrap and cloth in about half an hour.

This set the tone for some time for Army Zeppelin operations. The Army attempted to raid England again on March 17th with three airships, but couldn't find England thanks to heavy mist. Z XII then used her cloud car to find and bomb Calais, but made a hard landing at base and was out for 2 weeks. On March 20th, three Army ships raided Paris but had one ship destroyed on the return journey. Once again, the Army was managing to burn through its hydrogen skyship supply rather quickly.

On April 14th, the Navy struck again. Captain Mathy took the new L 9 to scout the North Sea. Finding himself within 100 miles of Flamborough Head without sighting anything, he radioed for permission to raid England. Since the weather seemed unusually good, Strasser gave him liberty of action, and L 9 trawled off the coast, waiting for darkness to fall. Mathy, by the way, is a somewhat important character. Before a captain of a Destroyer, Mathy transferred to the airship service and became a close confidant of Strasser, as well as the most successful airship captain of the war. Think of him as the Otto Preminger of the late Victorian Zeppelin set.

Also, it must be said: one handsome son of a bitch.

 With Mathy made landfall at 8:45 PM, quite pleased with himself with making Tynemouth. Actually, he was passing over Blyth, 9 miles to the south, and this mistake was to through Mathy's navigation out of whack. (It must be said that Mathy later would demonstrate an uncanny knack for finding his position, part of why he was so successful as an airship commander.) Mathy had also interrupted an open air recruitment drive in Blyth. The Times reported one of the speakers “had just been describing the barbarities which would follow a German invasion when the drone of an airship engines was heard. 'Here they come,' he exclaimed.” Mathy, having done his bit for English recruiting, and thinking he was over the shipyards on the Tyne river, dropped several bombs on the apparent industry. He was actually dropping bombs on mining villages north of the Tyne, but fortunately damage was limited to a scorched barn roof.  (Mathy assumed the lack of lights below was due to a blackout.) He actually reached the industrial town of Wallsend, but was low on bombs by then. Damage was limited to slight injuries and a damaged house.

L 6, who's tail is already close to what would become standard.

There were several minor raids in the following weeks, and Strasser came along for the ride twice. The first time, another engine failure caused an early return, and the second, unyielding winds immobilized the ship for several hours, till it turned for home. (This was to give Strasser the reputation of being a 'Jonah' among airship crews: taking Strasser along was seen as a sure way to have mechanical failure or immobilizing headwinds.) L 5 managed to burn down a lumber yard, (3000 feet up in the open gondolas L 5's crew could clearly hear the wail of the responding firetrucks) but several other raids suffered from mechanical failures or, for the first time, searchlight and antiaircraft fire, and didn't accomplish anything. The last mission saw L 5 saved by only the barest of margins, cutting across neutral Holland and just making German soil before running out of fuel. This convinced Strasser that the M class ships were fundamentally unsuited for long distance raiding, and that further expeditions to the green and pleasant land should wait until the next generation airships were available.

LZ 38, the first P class to see service. Features include enclosed gondolas and the keel buried in the hull.

Meanwhile the Army Zeppelins started to get its act together. A fresh infusion of modern airships in May included the first million cubic foot plus model: the 536 ft. long LZ 38. With a capacity for nearly 3 tons of bombs, the new 'P' class also featured four new Maybach MC-X engines with a combined output of 850 horsepower. That made for a cruising speed of 96 km/h and a service ceiling of 4000m (12,000 ft.) Gondolas were now the fully enclosed cabins we now think of, and the triangular keel of the airship was now enclosed in the hull. The man in command of LZ 38 was a Major Erich Linnarz, who flew many small raids in LZ 38, apparently to learn the way to London. He attacked Bury St. Edmunds, Southend, and Ramsgate. LZ 38 was twice approached by British fighter planes, but both times simply out-climbed the would-be interceptors. In the last days of May the Kaiser finally gave permission for London to be bombed east of the tower, and the night of 31st of May - 1st of June, the Major was off.

Taking off at dusk from the base at Namur, just north of Brussels, LZ 38 flew for London. At 22:55 the Metro police were warned of an incoming airship, and while still absorbing that bit of unexpected news, LZ 38 started to drop bombs. Considering that most of the targets were residential, Maj. Linnarz seems to have taken the view that dropping bombs anywhere in London was good enough. His flight across the capital took over 20 minutes, and at no time did searchlights or AA guns attack LZ 38. The actual damage done was not great: 41 fires set, a distillery and a cabinetmaker’s yard burned down and 7 people killed, though the raids also set off a series small anti-German riots. The total cost of the raid was estimated to be around 18,000 pounds, but unlike earlier raids, LZ 38's crosstown fandango was seen as deeply troubling to British authorities. After all, the Zeppelin had bypassed both the British Army and Navy, dropped explosives on the capital as it pleased them, and then flew off without so much as a by-your-leave.

    Taking the Zeppelin raids seriously prompted the British to make a small but crucial change. The British Government placed a strict gag order on all newspapers regarding Zeppelin raids: hereafter, only the official Admiralty statement could be printed. This statement was carefully stripped of any useful geographic information, only describing targets and casualties in the vaguest of terms. This was a quite intelligent move, as now Zeppelin crews couldn't check their navigation against British reports (and as a consequence remained in the dark as to how badly they were getting it wrong.) On the other hand, now that claims of grandiose damage and destruction were being responded to with essentially silence, it confirmed the truth of such claims to German ears, both in the military and with the public.

So the Army had grabbed the prize: they bombed London first. This deeply worried the Navy, who instructed Strasser to use the newly delivered L 10 to make a Naval London raid, post-haste. The L 10 was the Navy's first P class airship, and like LZ 38 was considerably more capable than the old M class. On June 4th L 10, captained by Kptlt. Klauss Hirsch was dispatched with SL 3 to raid London and the mouth of the Humber, respectively. Hirsch got lost, and fighting a stiff headwind, decided he couldn't make London before dawn. L 3 instead attacked what Hirsch thought was a Naval base, with “the bright lights of Ipswich providing excellent illumination.” Those bright lights were in fact those of London, and the bombs fell on the Gravesend Yacht club, which was burned to the ground. (To be fair, it was serving as a naval hospital, so it was sort of a military target.) SL 3 attacked a railway station that didn't exist, and as it was already getting somewhat light, she then returned to base.

L 9.

Two days later,  the Navy and the Army tried to raid London again. On the Navy side, L 9 under Captain Mathy got to Britain without much trouble, but the high temperatures and shortness of the night convinced Mathy to attack his alternate target, “a coastal town according to choice.” A cloak of mist covered everything, so L 9 used parachute flares in a painstaking 2 hour search for a positive navigation fix. Persistence paid off, and Mathy got his fix, and then set a course for Hull. Reaching Hull by 1 AM, L 9 hovered over the same area and released her entire payload, and avoided a 'light battery without searchlights' by ascending to 6,500 ft. (The light battery was a small scout cruiser in dry-dock, Hull's only defense.) This was the most effective raid of the war up until this time, causing some 44,000 pounds worth of damage, and causing considerably more damage due to the riot it caused. Angry Mobs sacked German or supposedly German shops throughout the city.

    The Army Zeppelins that night fared...worse, though I'm saving that tale for next time. One more raid, though, I will cover: the Navy raid of June 15th,  the last of the 'early' raids.. L 10 and the new L 11 were dispatched to England but L 11 almost immediately broke a crankshaft, leaving L 10 to shadow the British coast at nightfall. Captained once again by Hirsch, L 10 came inland, and could make out many blast furnaces along a riverbank industrial area. Heavy batteries started to fire at L 10, and since he was over an industrial area, L 10's captain decided to release all his bombs. On Hirsch's account, the results were spectacular: whole buildings collapsed, explosions in blast furnaces, and the start of many fires. The glow of the aftermath was visible, Hirsch said, some 80 km out to sea. But he had no idea where L 10 bombed or what. Thanks to the press blackout, this would remain a mystery to the Germans for the rest of the war.

For once, the actual damage done lines up with the account of the captain. L 10 made landfall at Blyth, and was taken south by a wind so fast that no warning had been given to the South Shields industrial area, who were caught with their lights (and furnaces) on. The center of all this activity was Palmer's shipyard, which had been constructing the super-Dreadnought Resolution. L 10's first bombs damaged the Marine Engineering works to the tune of 30,000 pounds and then bombs fell on the engine construction department of the shipyard itself, doing severe damage. Seventeen shipyard workers were killed and seventy-two were injured. Also damaged was a chemical plant, and several nearby coal mines. For once, at least, a Zeppelin bombed targets of great military value.

L 11 from another P class airship, 1915.

After this, there was a lull in raiding activity. Hirsch warned Strasser that despite his successful raid, June and July were bad times to raid Britain, as the warm air lessened lift, and Britain was sufficiently north enough to not get entirely dark during the summer solstice. By this time, the Imperial Navy was well happy with its airship fleet. In addition to the prestigious raiding of Britain, the Zeppelins had become effective scouts and mine spotters; truth be told, the Zeppelins had become a security blanket to the risk-averse surface fleet. The leaving of port by virtually any naval vessels had become impossible without a Zeppelin scouting mission first. The airship construction program had its resources and funding institutionalized.

As for the Army, that summer saw the end of their interest in raiding Britain. The Army had many commitments on the western and eastern fronts, so Zeppelin forces were dispersed widely. Also, now that the prestige of raiding London had been collected, so to speak, the main Army interest had been satisfied. The Navy, by contrast, could concentrate all its airships in one area, where they could be used for scouting or raiding, as circumstances warranted. As the surface fleet of the Imperial Navy would often only leave port, as one Commander put it “when it was positive that the enemy would not be met” this meant quite an excess of capacity that could be used for attacking the United Kingdom. So, for the rest of the summer, airship activities were dedicated to their original mission: naval reconnaissance. When the Airship Squadrons returned to Britain the fall, it would be for a systematic assault on London.