ACHTUNG ZEPPELIN! III: ACHTUNGIER

BTW these bullets are coming at you in a muddy hellscape

British Zeppelin Defenses: Gentlemen with Carbines

If you've read up until this point, you may find it a bit strange that the British have been entirely ineffective against giant flying bags of explosive gas. There's a few reasons for this. This was, of course, the first time anybody had considered how to defend an entire nation against an aerial attacker, so everything was new and unknown. Also, as in WW2, home defense was the last priority for resources, and thus the early defenders often had little training and obsolete equipment. I thought I'd touch on the British defenders, both for story's sake, and because a lot of the early efforts definitely could be described as aeronautical insanity.

The British were sufficiently concerned with Zeppelins pre-war that the Committee of Imperial Defense had a high level conference meeting in 1908. Here are the conclusions of that meeting:

1. It is possible that further airship developments could lead to Zeppelins capable of bombing the British Isles.

2. “There appears to be no necessity for the Government to continue experiments with aeroplanes.”

3. The use of airships as a way to land troops, contrary to hysterical newspaper reports of the time, is silly.

4. Because bombing of vital facilities is a threat, we should develop our own rigid airships to intercept enemy airships.

While the committee grasped the basic facts, it's analysis about what to do about Zeppelin was a bit off.

Fast forward to the declaration of war. Because the British Army was entirely engaged on the continent, air defense of Britain fell to the Royal Navy. The initial resources for home front defense were...not great. A handful of aircraft not wanted at the front line - the best of which was the Vickers Gunbus, (a name for some reason not considered for the Eurofighter,) and equipment left over from the Boer war: pom-pom guns and acetylene spotlights. After the first Zeppelin Raid in 1915, trucks with Maxim guns patrolled the countryside. Most of this activity was as much for soothing the worries of the public as much as any sort of effective military action. The first Sea Lord, one Winston Churchill, would find himself repeating this tactic in 1940.

A weird wrinkle in British thinking was to hold back defenses. The British knew that Zeppelins would not be set alight with conventional ammo. At the same time, they thought incendiary machine gun bullets (which didn't exist at the time) would also be ineffective. They assumed that the Germans would surround the lifting cells with an inert gas, one that would extinguish any flame. (Not a bad idea, really, if only the Germans could find some Helium.) Thus, the only way for a airplane to kill a Zeppelin would be to climb above the airship and drop bombs upon it. Because Zeppelins were always better at climbing compared to airplanes of the day, that meant intercepting aircraft found it almost impossible to get into position.While resources were few at the start of the war, some attempt was made to come up with better Zeppelin-killing ideas. Something called the 'flaming grapnel' was deployed, a grappling hook on the end of a long rope packed with explosives, which would presumably hook onto the fuselage of an attacking airship. London was initially defended by airplanes with pilots armed with Boer war era breech loading carbines, which fired .45 incendiary ammo. Presumably they drank with Sir Winston, who could possibly explain why these guys were being used when machine gun incendiaries were supposed to be hopeless.

The most effective defense against airship raids throughout the war were policy decisions. In addition to the information blackout, mentioned last time, a literal blackout was coordinated wherever intelligence got warning that the Zeppelins were flying. Since this denied Zeppelins the only easy navigation fix in the black of night, this was to lead to some very lost Zeppelin crews. The British intelligence services also helped. Zeppelins when off raiding would radio HQ that they were scouting “far west, with only the merchant marine codebook.” The British had quite a bit of luck breaking German naval codes, and this signal was a clear a warning as any that the airships were a'raidin'. Mr. Churchill also organized many a offensive raid against the Zeppelins. Several times a naval force either attempted to attack the sheds at Nordholz itself, or tried to lure Zeppelins into the air to shoot them down with either float planes or sea planes. These were all failures. At the critical moment the sea was too rough, or mechanical problems rendered the airplanes useless. The last time this happened it soured the Navy entirely on airplanes for a year or so, and these sorts of raids only started again in 1917.

To get back to were we left off, in June 1915, one more thing Churchill did was dispatch a motley collection of fliers to Dunkirk, with orders to harass the Zeppelins if possible, but at any rate deny the enemy airspace. Despite the ad hoc nature of the enterprise, it was not long before this particular improvisation found success. On June 6th, (to get back to a thread from last time) there was a raid on England involving three Army and one Naval Zeppelin. The Navy airship bombed Hull, while All three Army ships (LZ 37-39) found bad weather over England, and returned to Belgium. That Night, the Dunkirk squadron struck. They bombed LZ 38, the first London raider in her shed, destroying her. A Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warneford encountered LZ 37 the same night as she was returning to base. Making a break for home, LZ 37 engaged Warneford with machine gun fire. Despite this, Warneford managed to get above her and drop his bombs. LZ 37 burst into flames (unfortunately crashing on a convent), the first Zeppelin to be shot down by airplane. Warneford was decorated with the Victoria Cross for this, and became an instant Hero. Sadly, he didn't have much time to savor the attention, as he was killed in a airplane crash just 10 days later. This incident was slightly unfortunate, too, for the British, for it seemed to strengthen the whole “the only way to kill them is to bomb them” argument. This also saw the end of the (recently completed) Belgian sheds being used for anything but emergencies by airship crews.

These twin victories over the Zeppelins were welcomed by the military and the public alike, and did something to assuage the anger the public felt over the raids. Ever since they started, the public reacted to them not as an act of war but as something like we'd view a terrorist attack today.

 Squadron Attacks on London

So while defenses were being worked on, the British had yet to put much real effort into it. The Airship men, however, were not complacent. They were building up a fleet of P class airships, so that when the time came to return to London, they could do so in numbers. They did return to try and attack London several times, but to make a long story short, these initial raids did nothing. On the first of these failed raids on August 10th, L 12 was passing over Dover out to sea when an anti-aircraft gunner placed a shot right in L 12's posterior. Several gas cells developed leaks, and it was not long before some of them were entirely empty. The airship began to sink by the stern. Overboard went ballast, spare parts, machine guns, provisions, and eventually the ship's radio, when it became clear that they couldn't even make Belgium. L 12's stern then settled on the foggy waters of the channel. At daybreak, L 12 was found by a German torpedo boat, and towed into the port of Zeebrugge. There the L 12 was dismantled, but not before the plucky Brits in Dunkirk tried to destroy the airship twice. These raids failed, mainly because of stiff AA defenses. The other story worth sharing from this early series of bombing turnip fields is the hair-raising return flight of L 11 from one of these raids. Just before midnight L 11 was still far out at sea, and the captain, Von Buttlar could see several severe thunderstorms. One was around Amsterdam to the south, and the other was due East. Altering course north to avoid them, he then realized that both storms were moving out to sea, and not inland. Around 2 AM, L 11 was engulfed by both these storms coming together over the Dogger Bank. Through the boiling clouds and torrential rain, L 11 was tossed violently up and down, sometimes only 1000 feet off of the water, sometimes approaching her pressure height of 6000 feet. Lightning flashed constantly between the clouds, charging the air with electricity. Von Buttlar sent his executive officer to the top platform to help conn the ship, who reported St. Elmo's fire 'a foot long' burned on the machine gun sights, and the heads of the lookouts were sheathed in ghostly blue flame, the fire being attracted to the wires in the caps. In the control car, Von Buttlar could summon bluish flame from his fingertips by holding his hand out the window. These are unsettling things to observe when being held aloft by a million cubic feet of hydrogen. L 11 fortunately made it back to base by not exceeding her pressure height.

A few weeks later, L 10 would be destroyed in the same circumstances, though not before becoming the first Naval Airship to bomb London. On August 17th, L10 under a Captain Wenke made landfall where the captain had been aiming for, and by following the clues left by lighted villages and towns, managed to find the capital. Dropping his bombs on the northeast suburbs of Leyton and Wanstead Flats, Wenke thought he was over the center of the city, for reasons that remain mysterious. The total damage was 10 dead, 47 injured, with a railway station partially wrecked. Two weeks later, L 10 encountered a thunderstorm near Nordholz and fell burning into the sea. Ground crew in Nordholz awaiting her return saw the flash of the fatal explosion. A postmortem revealed that her pressure valves were open, possibly due to a sudden low-pressure zone. L 10's crew and her captain, Kptlt. Hirsch, were the first Naval airship crew to perish during the war.

A German postcard inaccurately depicting L 10's raid.

The next successful raid on London was the Army. LZ 74 and the rebuilt SL 2 scattered explosives and incendiaries all over the city. While 18 were killed and 28 injured, damage was minor, despite that SL 2 started bombing over the docklands (when they actually were docklands.) Strasser, not to be outdone, sent a force of four Zeppelins against Britain the next night. L 11, L 13, and L 14 were to bomb London, but only L 13 actually made it. L 9 was given a special assignment: bomb the benzol works at Skinningrove in North Yorkshire. (Since first publishing this, somebody has kindly told me what benzol is: because Germany and Britain had little in the way of oil supplies, both nations refined coal tar into benzol to stretch those resources further. It was also a way to manufacture TNT.) Captain Lowe made a painstaking search of the general area, correctly identifying three nearby towns, but couldn't see the plant itself. In desperation, he laid a string of bombs down where he thought the plant should be. Though Lowe didn't realize it, he had been right on target, and only by sheer dumb luck that he didn't see the entire plant destroyed:

 “One incendiary bomb made a direct hit on the benzol house, but it failed to penetrate the concrete. Another, a high explosive bomb, fell within ten feet of it...but failed to damage the benzol house. Had the bomb hit this or the tanks, which held 45,000 gallons of benzol, not much of the plant would have survived. The works had another extraordinary escape, as a bomb which made a direct hit on the T.N.T. store failed to explode.” [Emphasis mine.]

 L 13 that night was commanded by Mathy, and he had better luck. Navigating by brightly lit towns and canals, he found London lit up as in peacetime. Approaching from the NW at 8,500 ft, the night was clear enough that Mathy could navigate to the center of the city based on his memories visiting London in Pre-war times with his wife. L 13 carried one 660 lb bomb, which was dropped on Bartholomew close leaving a crater 8 ft deep and impressing Mathy far above: “The explosive effect of the 300 kg bomb must have been very great, since a whole cluster of lights vanished around the crater.” Bombs were scattered elsewhere over London, but Mathy had a very specific target in mind for the main effort. 

North of St. Paul's cathedral was London's soft goods quarter, and it's here where L 13 unloaded most of her bombs and incendiaries. This started an enormous fire which did great damage. AA guns around London were all firing on L 13 at this point, but as the official statement records with some restraint: “ideas both to the height and size of the airship appear to be somewhat wild.” The Pom poms in particular did more harm then good, as the shells only exploded on impact, and thus ended up exploding on London. Mathy was also tracked off and on by about 20 searchlights, which he evaded by climbing to 11, 200 feet. The toll at the end of the night was 26 killed, 94 injured, with a staggering 534,287 pounds of damage done. This was almost entirely the soft goods fire. It was not only the single most destructive raid of the war; L 13 in one night did 1/6th of all the damage done (in monetary terms) in raids on Britain during World War 1.

The experience from the street of this raid was all the more galling to the average Londoner, as L 13 was visible for almost the entire raid. “As seen from below, the airship gave an impression of absolute calm and absence of hurry” one witness reported. With the public, the press, and now the politicians agitating for new action, one Sir Percy Scott was recalled from retirement to coordinate London defenses. He began training gun crews professionally, ordered new, much larger guns from France, established new airfields outside London, and established a network of aircraft observers, linked to the war ministry by telephone. Fortunately, it would be a month before the Zeppelins would visit again, so this work had a good start by the time airships returned.

On the Kraut end of the stick, the raid was met by jubilation by Germany, and especially by the Navy, who really needed something to be proud about. The navy was understandably eager to follow up the success, and directed Strasser to next bomb Liverpool, to interrupt delivery of munitions from the USA. As it turned out, conditions were against this, so on October 13, London was raided again. About this time a new navigation aid for airships came online: a radio beacon system. Two transmitters, (one in Belgium, the other in Germany) could be radioed from the airship. The transmitters would then check the apparent angle of the transmission, and then radio back the track of the transmission. Then, a lost airship could triangulate their position...at least that was the idea. In practice, thanks to the 'airplane effect' and 'night effect' hitherto unknown, the directions given by the station were often contradictory, or wildly inaccurate.

Anyway, the night of the 13th: Five ships started out, (L 11, L 13, L 14, L 15, and L 16) and five ships for the first time made it to England. L 13 to 16 were within sight of each other off the coast, and Mathy, in L 13 ordered all ships to attack from the east and escape to the northwest to keep collision dangers down. Only L 11 was to miss the first combined raid; lagging somewhat behind, Von Buttlar got extremely lost, bombed some villages he found, and then returned home. The ship that shone that night was L 15. Captain Breithaupt was on his first raid over Britain, but manged to find London with little trouble. On his approach he was fired upon by a mobile gun. He released some explosives in retaliation, and manged to knock the gun-crew over with his counter-fire, wrecking the truck they were firing from. After this, he dropped all ballast, rose to 8000 ft, and went all ahead flank toward the center of London. As it happened, Parliament was up late, debating an emergency taxation measure. When the raid started, the commons adjourned to watch the air attack:

“For a few minutes the airship, crossing the Thames on a northeasterly course and passing almost directly over New Palace Yard, was then played upon by two searchlights, and in their radiance she looked a thing of silvery beauty sailing serenely through the night, indifferent to the big gun roaring at her from the Green Park, who's shells seemed to burst just below her.”

 Up above, the view was not bad either. Breithaupt was to report:

 “The picture we saw was indescribably beautiful – shrapnel bursting all around (though rather uncomfortably near us), our own bombs bursting, and the flashes from the anti-aircraft batteries below. On either hand the other airships, which, like us, were caught in the rays of searchlights, were clearly recognizable. And over us the starlit sky!”

L 15 held her bombs until the really good targets could be aimed for. The first bombs were aimed at the Bank of England and the newspaper district, but fell on the theater district a few blocks over. The theater district was busy that night, and the attack caused considerable panic. In addition Grey's Inn was hit, and the national Mint just escaped damage. While this attack was happening, unbeknownst to L 15, a truck was racing below to get to a good firing position. Mounted on this truck's bed was a 75mm French AA auto-cannon, the first of the artillery Sir Scott had ordered. It's first shot misjudged L 15's height, but the resulting burst was close enough to alert Breithaupt that something new was firing at him. At the same time, lookouts reported aircraft at 3500 ft, easily making them out through the searchlights and the smokey trails they left behind. Departing the scene by climbing, L 15 was seen only by one of the pilots as she slipped heavenward. 18 years old at the time, it was the first notable event in the career of Sir John Slessor, who retired in 1952 chief of the air defense staff. (Given the spread between “chasing Zeppelins” and “new atomic jet bombers” you can kind of understand why people in the fifties predicted by 1975 we'd all be flying supersonic airliners.)

The rest of the raiders had mixed luck. Mathy had decided to bomb the water works at Hampton, got lost, and bombed some private houses. He then successfully bombed the Woolrich arsenal, which sounds like a cracking good thing to bomb, but did no damage. The other Zeppelins bombed residential suburbs in London, but one did manage to attack an Army camp overlooking the Thames. The first squadron raid only did a fraction of the monetary damage of the previous raid, but was the deadliest thus far: 71 killed and 128 injured.

This was a terrible toll, yet a squadron raid on London was not to be repeated for another year. If nothing else, the Airship raids were a morale embarrassment to the British, and now that a good stock of P class ships had been laid in, the Imperial Navy was determined to take the bombing Zeppelin show on tour. Striking at distant targets such as Manchester and Liverpool would, it was felt, would be the most devastating blow to British morale. And while it was an increasingly acute embarrassment to the war effort and the Government, the British people were not quaking in fear of Zeppelin attacks. Instead, (as it would twenty years later for both Britain and Germany) attacks on civilians bred anger, not fear. If anything, it increased resolve and strengthened solidarity with the people and government to continue the war. And the British were improving: for the first time, the airship raiders commented on the stiffened defenses that actually seemed to be threatening.

So the squadron raids, after an interesting start, were abandoned, at least on London. The rest of the UK was next.

A famous image of the L 15 on her London raid on October 13th. Later it was adapted for the Logo of the British Imperial War Museum.

The Zeppelins in World War One made something like 1000 naval Scouting missions, but I'm giving it the short shift. Naval reconnaissance by aircraft is pretty interesting in some ways, but in practice it's a lot of "flew over ocean; saw nothing" which is hard to work into a narrative. So...have this picture instead.

The Rotating shed at Nordholz. Like the floating hanger, it could be rotated into the wind to make herding a airship in and out of its hanger easier. Weighting some 4000 tons, the hanger could make a complete rotation in an hour.

L 12 under tow.

 

LZ 74 taking off - the people below give a good idea of scale.