by Neil Storey
It seemed a miracle that we ever emerged from the tumult. The firing got weaker and at length ceased. The searchlights were extinguished. Night embraced us again and covered also the land with its opaque blanket. Only dull-red glowing spots far behind us marked the points where our bombs had started conflagrations.
It was half past two and from our altitude the pale glow of England’s midsummer dawn was already visible. So it was high time to get back over the open sea, for one there our principle danger would be over. But our frozen compass was our undoing. Instead of steering to the east, we inadvertently headed towards the north and before we discovered our error we had lost valuable time. Added to that, our forward motor also failed us, so that our speed was sensibly diminished.
I had just returned to my station after dispatching a radiogram reporting the success of our raid and was talking with Captain Sch—, when a bright light flooded our gondola, as if another searchlight had picked us up. Assuming that we were over the sea, I imagined for an instant that it must come from an enemy war-vessel but when I glanced up from my position, six or eight feet below the body of the ship, I saw that she was on fire. Almost instantly our six hundred feet of hydrogen were ablaze. Dancing, lambent flames licked ravenously at her quickly bared skeleton, which seemed to grin jeeringly at us from the sea of light. So it was all over. I could hardly credit it for an instant. I threw off my overcoat and shouted to Captain Sch— to do the same, thinking that if we fell into the sea we might save ourselves swimming. It was a silly idea, of course, for we had no chance of surviving. Captain Sch— realised this. Standing calm and motionless, he fixed his eyes for a moment upon the flames above, staring death steadfastly in the face. Then, as if bidding me farewell he turned and said ‘It’s all over.’
After that, absolute silence reigned in the gondola. Only the roar of the flames was audible. Not a man had left his post. Everyone stood waiting for the great experience – the end. This lasted several seconds. The vessel kept an even keel. We had time to think over our situation. The quickest death would be the best; to be burned alive was horrible. So I sprang to one of the side windows of the gondola to jump out. Just at that moment a frightful shudder shot through the burning skeleton and the ship gave a convulsion like the bound of a horse when shot. The gondola struts broke with a snap and the skeleton collapsed with a series of crashes like the smashing of a huge window. As our gondola swung over we fell backward and somewhat away from the flames. I found myself projected into a corner with others on top of me. The gondola was now grinding against the skeleton, which had assumed a vertical position and was falling like a projectile toward the earth. Flames and gas poured over us as we lay there in a heap. It grew fearfully hot. I felt flames against my face and heard groans. I wrapped my arms around my head to protect it from the scorching flames, hoping the end would come quickly. That was the last I remember.
Our vessel fell perpendicularly, descending like a mighty column of fire through the darkness and striking stern first. There was a tremendous concussion when we hit the earth. It must have shocked me back to consciousness for a moment for I remember a thrill of horror as I opened my eyes and saw myself surrounded by a sea of flames and red hot metal beams and braces that seemed about to crush me. Then I lost consciousness a second time and did not recover until the sun was already high in the heavens.
Gradually I collected my thoughts. How did I get here in these strange surroundings on this litter? It was like a dream. I half raised myself painfully and saw that my legs were wound in thick, bloody bandages. I could hardly move them, for they were broken. Then I made a new discovery, my head and legs were covered in burns, my hands were lacerated and when I breathed I felt as if a knife were thrust into me. I thought to myself ‘Am I dreaming or awake?’ Just then a human voice interrupted my groping thoughts: ‘Do you want a cigarette?’ And a Tommy stuck a cigarette case under my nose with a friendly grin. So it was no dream. I was a prisoner.
I now learned what had happened. An English aviator had crept up on us unobserved and had managed to fire our ship. We fell in an open field near Ipswich. All our crew were killed except myself and two subordinate officers, one of whom died later from his wounds. The other was in one of the side gondolas, which chanced to be out of reach of the flames and though he became unconscious for a moment he was not injured. The moment we struck ground he clambered out and ran away as if the Furies were after him but a person must be excused for losing his head under such circumstances. I have never been able to understand just how I personally escaped. Probably my comrades who fell on top of me when the ship settled aft shielded me from the flames, for I was not seriously, even though painfully, burned. When we struck, stern foremost, the light skeleton of the long vessel telescoped and this broke my fall and the prow stood upright above the debris, so that I was not hit by flying beams.
When I asked how my English captors found me, they said they heard me groaning and were able to pull me out of the flames before it was too late. I soon recovered from my shock and wounds, survived my long imprisonment and have even become accustomed to having everyone who meets me, who knows of my experience inquire solicitously, ‘ Do you feel any bad effects?’
German propaganda postcard showing a Zeppelin squadron attack, proclaims: ‘Towards England!’
21/22 August 1917
Eight naval Zeppelins left their north German sheds on 21 August, with Zeppelin chief Strasser aboard L-46. The whole squadron kept together more than had usually been the case, but its action was more than usually indecisive.
L-42, under the command of Kapitänleutnant Dietrich, approached Hull and tried to bomb the city. Dietrich was a man of determination, and it had been he who had attacked Ramsgate on 16/17 June and achieved there one of the very few successes of real military importance that can be credited to the Zeppelin raids, when he blew up a naval ammunition store. On this occasion near Hull, he only succeeded in blowing up a Methodist chapel.
L-42 came in over the coast at 1.03 a.m. near Tunstall, going south-west. At 12.12 a.m. she passed 2 miles north by east of Halsham Camp, and then seems to have gone north-east. At about 12.20 a.m. L-42 dropped an incendiary bomb at Elstronwick, which ignited but did no damage. It was thrown in order to ascertain whether the Zeppelin was overland or not. This point settled, the Zeppelin went south-west towards Hull.
At 12.30 a.m. she was hovering with engines shut off between Ryhill and Paull. The searchlight at the latter place was exposed and the Zeppelin tried to dodge the beam, at the same time approaching from the south-east and beginning to drop bombs slowly. At 12.48 a.m. the searchlight picked up the target, and two minutes later the gun opened fire. The raider then made directly for the gun at 50mph, dropping bombs as she came, but at 12.53 a.m., when immediately above it, turned suddenly off north-east, disappeared behind a cloud and shut off her engines, then drifted.
The lights and guns at Marfleet and Chase Hill Farm had also both opened on her at 12.50 a.m., and her commander evidently considered discretion the better part of valour in view of the possibility of aeroplane attack while so brightly illuminated. Marfleet held the target until 12.55 a.m., when it finally disappeared to the north-east. Seven bombs had been dropped, which caused no casualties and did no damage, beyond breaking the gun telephone lines to the flank observer.
At 1 a.m. the Zeppelin appeared over Hedon and dropped five HE bombs in the Baxtergate and on the south side of the Hull Road. A Primitive Methodist chapel was wrecked, and the doors and windows of eleven cottages and a Roman Catholic chapel in Baxtergate blown in. A YMCA hut on the Burstwick Road was also seriously damaged. One bomb fell on a grass field 400 yards due south of the church.
Going in the same north-easterly direction, L-42 next dropped two HE and twelve incendiary bombs 1 mile east of Preston, followed by a third HE bomb ½ mile further on in a wheat field. No damage was done. The Zeppelin then turned to the south, and at 1.10 a.m. was again picked up by Marfleet light, going southward very unsteadily
and steering as much as possible behind small clouds. At 1.15 a.m. she dropped a single HE bomb at Thorngumbald, which did no damage, and at the same time she was fired on by Marfleet and Paull guns, both of which continued firing for five minutes.
Kapitänleutnant Martin Dietrich, commander of L-42.
She was now retiring in a south-easterly direction, going out over the Humber towards Immingham where, at 1.19 a.m. she was picked up by the Immingham Halt light and gun, followed a minute later by those at Killingholme Marsh and Chase Hill Farm. Caught in the beams of these lights she stopped, and was seen from two of the guns to turn round in her own length. She travelled south-west toward Killingholme for a short distance and then, apparently daunted by the gunfire, or fearing aeroplane attack, rose ‘almost vertically’ to a great height (estimated at 18,000ft by the Marfleet gun), and went off abruptly north-east. At 1.22 a.m. the gun at Sutton opened on her at extreme range, and at 1.24 a.m. the New Holland gun also got off one round at her. At 1.25 a.m. she was lost by all the lights, having apparently gone behind a dark cloud.
L-42 was chased out to sea by an aeroplane, piloted by Lieutenant Hubert Solomon of No. 33 HD Squadron. When in the neighbourhood of Beverley, at a height of 15,000ft, he saw the Zeppelin but could not keep pace with it, and at the same time keep climbing. He followed her, however, out to sea for 20 miles, firing three bursts from his Vickers gun at long range, on the off-chance of hitting her. As he could get no nearer, he returned, landing at Elsham at 2.20 a.m.
Another pilot of the same squadron, Lieutenant Walbank, while west of Hessle, saw the Zeppelin momentarily in the searchlight beams.
In all, nineteen aeroplanes took off, two of which crashed on landing (both were BE-2e aircraft, one piloted by Lieutenant J.A. Dales, who was seriously injured, and the other by Lieutenant E.D. Hall, who was uninjured). The RNAS sent up a Large America seaplane from Killingholme at dawn, which returned at midday without having sighted the enemy.
L-44, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Franz Stabbert, cruised northwards along the coast and was reported off Scarborough at 2.30 a.m.
The rest appeared to have done nothing. Strasser and the rest of the fleet simply hung about off the coast and went off home about an hour before L-42.
‘Mythical’ Zeppelins were reported approaching the Kent and Suffolk coasts, others (by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway) inland in Yorkshire as far as Featherstone and Pontefract, and actually in Lancashire, at Rochdale. Mythical bombs were reported from Doncaster. The origin of those rumours in the south of England was hard to explain, it was certain though, that no Zeppelins came up anywhere near that part of the coast.
Aftermath
An elaborate communiqué from the German Admiralty was more than usually absurd. It claimed that the squadron ‘under the proved leadership of Fregattenkapitän Strasser’ bombed Hull, warships in the Humber and industrial establishments, which were observed collapsing.
THE PIGEON THAT SAVED SIX LIVES
On 5 September 1917, Squadron Commander Vincent Nicholl was flying a DH-4 aircraft with Flight Lieutenant Trewin from RNAS Great Yarmouth, on an anti-Zeppelin patrol, when its engine seized and the aircraft came down in a rough North Sea and soon sank.
Bob Leckie, who was piloting flying boat 866, spotted their predicament, and went to their rescue. His crew managed to haul the two nearly drowned airmen out of the water. There were now six men on the flying boat, and all Leckie’s attempts to get her off the sea failed, so he was faced with the task of taxiing back in an overloaded boat, with a heavy following sea. They decided to launch four pigeons carrying messages of their location and situation. Eventually both engines ran out of petrol. Their situation was desperate, the men were very ill with sea-sickness, but they just had to keep bailing the plane out otherwise it would have sunk.
At 11.30 a.m. on 8 September, the message Nicholl had sent three days earlier was delivered to RNAS Great Yarmouth. Pigeon NURP/17/F16331 had been found dead with exhaustion on a beach a few miles away, by locally based soldiers. The bird and the message were taken to the War Signalling Station and the message was telephoned through. The search, which had been abandoned with all hope lost, was immediately resumed and all six crew were rescued in the nick of time. The pigeon was stuffed and displayed in a case in the mess; upon the case was fixed a brass plaque bearing the inscription ‘A very gallant gentleman.’
The ‘very gallant gentleman’ pigeon. (NURP/17/F16331)
19/20 October 1917
‘The Silent Raid’
The ‘silent raid’ on 19 October 1917 was dubbed so because the AA gun defences were muzzled lest they guide the raiders to London, and because the Zeppelin engines were almost silent.
The sky was cloudy in Lincolnshire and much of East Anglia, and free of cloud in Essex, the London area and Kent, but very misty. Acoustic conditions were peculiar; sound was not carrying very far.
The engines of the Zeppelins were almost inaudible, and this gave rise to the erroneous supposition that they were drifting with the wind with engines cut off, in order to escape notice. This, however, was impossible, as at the heights at which they were flying, their engines would have frozen instantly if stopped, and actually did so in several cases when through accident or negligence they failed.
The sound of exploding bombs was also deadened in such a way that they were often supposed to be much further off than was actually the case. This was so in the London area, where the explosions of the bombs at Hertford were only faintly heard at neighbouring gun stations, whilst at Theydon Bois they were not heard at all. At Harwich, the bombs exploding at Wix, 8 miles away, were not heard, and at Great Oakley, 3 miles away, they were supposed to be as far off as the neighbourhood of Colchester.
Eleven naval Zeppelins participated in the raid. The objective was ‘middle England,’ specifically the industrial regions of Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool. It was known from prisoners captured in France on the following day that Strasser did not accompany the raiding squadron as on previous occasions, but followed the proceedings from Ahlhorn. Some of L-45’s crew expressed surprise that he did not order all Zeppelins to return as soon as the strength of the wind had been reported to him. One prisoner cynically remarked that, since Strasser, the ‘FdL’ (Führer der Luftschiffs) had recently been decorated with the Pour le Mérite he no longer had any occasion to risk his life on a Zeppelin.
Their mission was to bomb the industrial centre of England. If the total number of raiders, their objective and their courses over England are taken into account, it may well be claimed that this was to be the biggest raid attempted by the enemy against the Midlands since 31 January 1916. In the total number of Zeppelins employed it is only surpassed by the attack of 2 September 1916, when every naval and military airship fit for the journey on that day went up to attack London.
The raiders crossed the North Sea and headed for a rendezvous to the east of Flamborough Head. They gradually rose on approaching England but, when at an altitude of about 12,000ft, began to meet an unexpected northerly wind which caused the Zeppelins to struggle against the wind without success. The cold was intense and led to trouble with the cooling system of the motors. The height at which they flew over England appears in no case to have been less than 16,000ft. Indeed a few Zeppelins attained nearly 20,000ft. Height sickness affected the crews to a considerable extent, the results being faulty navigation, bad wireless telegraphy work and carelessness in the management of the engines.
L-41, under Hauptmann Kuno Manger, had been fired on by HMS Albion as she approached the mouth of the Humber at 6.55 p.m. At 7.02 p.m. the flash of a bomb dropping into the sea was seen at Saltfleetby. At 7.05 p.m. she passed the Spurn and ten minutes later went inland over Cleethorpes. At 7.18 p.m. she passed Waltham, at 7.25 p.m. Caistor and, while over Holton-le-Moor at 7.30 p.m., she dropped a petrol tank.
She passed on south-westwards, and at 7.40 p.m. threw two 50kg bombs at North Carlton, north of Lincoln, killing two sheep. She passed near Linc
oln, going south-west, and half an hour later was near Derby, where she circled about slowly for an hour and a half. At 8.20 p.m. she was between Derby and Burton, and then at 9.05 p.m. she was back again near Derby. At 9.25 p.m. she was over Ashby-de-la-Zouch, going north-west. At 9.40 p.m. she was north of Burton and at 9.50 p.m. again at Derby.
She was not observed again until an hour later, when she suddenly appeared at Netherton, west of Birmingham, and dropped a series of HE bombs and incendiaries between Netherton and Barnt Green. The first dropped were three 50kg HE bombs and two incendiary bombs that fell at Rough Hill in Rowley parish. These were followed by two incendiary bombs near Dudhill Farm, west of Rowley Regis, and by one 50kg and five incendiaries near the Eagle Colliery, east of Old Hill. Two incendiaries then fell on a hill known as ‘the Tump’, close by. Only slight damage was done to glass from concussion. One of the 50kg bombs did not explode, and two of the incendiaries did not ignite.