Gothas' Air Raid On London

[Dave Homewood]

Here is a sobering first hand account of a Gotha bomber raid by the German Air Force on London in 1917.This comes from the New Zealand Herald dated 24th of November 1934.

Gothas' Air Raid on London

By INSPECTOR CHARLES VINER, who was on duty at the Liverpool Street Railway Station when it was bombed.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER—FOR three months in 1917 Britain lived in constant fear of the Gotha raids—daylight air-raids by the new type of German bombing bi-planes. Eight times the Gothas came, but only twice did they reach London—once in June and once in July. The June raid was the worst air-raid of the whole war. There were more casualties than in any other raid. No fewer than 145 people were killed and 382 injured.

I SHALL never forget that summer morning of June 13, 1917. It was an oppressively hot day. The sun beat fiercely down on to the heads of the hundreds of city workers who moved about the streets engaged on their daily tasks. Paving stones were red-hot to the feet. Asphalt paths gave to the tread. The roads shimmered. A canopy of haze spread itself across the sky, so intense was the heat.

I was on duty at the Liverpool Street Railway Station. Beneath its glass roof the great vault of the terminus was like an oven. I stood outside my hut on Platform 5. Germany and air attacks were far from my mind. They were also far from the minds of the passengers who were arriving and departing by the trains that steamed to and from the various platforms.

No Warning Received
At this advanced stage of the war the warning system in the event of visitation by hostile aircraft was nearing perfection, and the railway companies and their employees were usually among the first to receive official notification of impending attack. But on this morning no warning had been received.

The first knowledge of an air raid we in the station had on this particular morning was the sound of bombs dropping. It was as the 11.40 train for Epping was about to leave that the first bomb was heard. The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag. It was as though he had signalled for the attack. Above the din in the station there sounded a deep, dull thudding that brought anxiety to the eyes of those who heard it.

I immediately shouted to the guard of the 11.40, which had already begun to draw out of the station, to stop the train. This he did. The driver pulled up within the length of his own engine. Heads popped out of carriage windows. Everyone was asking what was wrong. They were warned that an air raid on London was in progress. Within a few seconds both train and platform were empty. Passengers at other platforms were making a rush for the exits in search of shelter. And all the time the dreadful thudding noises drew nearer.

I suddenly realised the danger of remaining under the glass roof of the station. I raced down Platform 5 towards the open. The explosions were getting nearer.

Rush Into the Danger Zone
I had just reached the point where the glass cover ended when I heard the kind of strumming which always accompanied a bomb being released from aircraft during these raids. In my search for safety I had actually run into the danger zone. The bomb fell in the centre of Platform 2 with a deafening explosion that brought down glass from the roof a little to the rear of me in tons of thousands of jagged fragments. Its concussion blew me on to the ground. I had received the full force of the explosion in my face. It temporarily blinded me.

A crater that would easily nave taken a railway waggon in its depths had been torn in the platform, but no one was injured. If the bomb had fallen five minutes before it would have smashed up the 11.37 train to Enfield, which had been standing alongside Platform 2. The result does not bear thought, for the train had been a full one.

I felt as if I had been trapped. Another bomb might come at any moment. I scrambled into an empty carriage of the 11.40, which was still drawn up at Platform 5. The second bomb came an instant later. I heard the bomb tearing through the air. It fell on a main line train shortly due to leave for Hunstanton, standing at No. 9 Platform. It exploded in the dining-car with a terrifying detonation that seemed to rend the air and brought another mass of glass from above. It showered on to the top of the compartment in which I was sheltering with an alarming rattle. People were screaming. The sight of the demolished dining-car was fearful.

Nothing remained but its bogies and an indescribable tangle of wreckage and bodies. Pieces of the car were later found on No. 18 Platform —50 yards away.

I now decided that I would find a safer place for sheltering. I jumped out on to the line and ran to the engine of the Epping train. I crawled underneath. I found two others there. The driver and the fireman. " This is the end of us," the fireman said laconically. No further bombs fell on the station, however. The explosions were receding toward the east. After a while we all scrambled out.

A Terrible Spectacle
It was a terrible spectacle that met our eyes, The wrecked dining-coach had caught alight. Flames leaped high. They spread. The flames fired a horse-box coupled between the engine and first coach of a train from Ongar that amid all the danger and tumult had just steamed into Platform 8 opposite the Hunstanton train. A horse was imprisoned within. Its agonised whinnying was awful to hear.

A stationary coach drawn up in a bay between Platforms 8 and 9 was also alight. It was used by a medical board which periodically visited the station to examine railway employees to see if they were fit for service. The coach had been blown to smithereens by the bomb. The president doctor had been killed instantly by a flying fragment. Two orderlies of the R.A.M.C. in attendance were also killed. Several men waiting to be examined ran nude from the terrible holocaust.

With the fireman and engine-driver and several others I rushed to the burning horse-box to uncouple it from the rest of the train. The heat was too intense for us to get near. It could not be shunted. The driver and fireman of the train to which it was attached had fled for safety.

Platform as Dressing Station
Ten people in the dining-car had been killed, including one attendant, Alfred Daniels, to whom I had been speaking earlier that morning. Mr. James King, a regular passenger on the Hunstanton train—he was a seed merchant living at Coggeshall—was also among those who were killed. Several passengers from coaches on either side of the blazing dining-car to which the flames had spread were running about the platform with their clothes burning on them. Others were begging harassed officials to tell them where there was shelter.

Perhaps the raiders would come back. The attack was still going on. There were awful sounds of continued bombing in the distance. Fire engines were now arriving. Ambulances too, with V.A.D. men to attend to the wounded. The injured were laid on platform seats. Doctors and the railway company's ambulance men bound their wounds. Meanwhile the havoc that the raiders were causing in the city outside the station was appalling, visited several of the bombed areas shortly afterwards.

Bombs in Crowded Streets
Bombs had been released promiscuously. Many had fallen in crowded streets with tremendous loss of life. One weighing nearly a hundredweight alone killed 32 persons and injured 57. Another fell on the Royal Mint and did considerable damage. Shop-fronts had been blown in. Merchandise of every kind was strewn about the streets. A dray and its horse were blown to pieces. The roadways were like battle-fields. Firemen were removing the terrible signs of the raid with streaming hose-pipes.

One missile—an aerial torpedo—fell on a London County Council school in Upper North Street, Poplar. It crashed through two storeys and exploded in the infants' classroom on the ground floor. Eighteen tiny children, mostly under six years of age, were killed, and more than twice that number cruelly injured. The ensuing scenes were heartrending. Although herself badly hurt, the infants' mistress, Mrs. Middleton—she died four months later as a result of the bomb's shock—assisted by other mistresses, pluckily strove to pacify the hundred or so surviving children in the school. They were marshalled in one of the rooms which had escaped damage and marched out into the playground away from the terrible sight of their dead and injured fellow scholars.

Poison From the Air
The children were smothered in a ruddy coloured powder. Their eyes smarted. They were choking as though suffocated. Their tongues were parched. There had been poisonous constituents in the bomb. The bomb had crashed through the roof into a top room occupied by thirty little girls. It instantly killed one and severed the leg of another. Then it passed through another classroom on the first floor of the building in which were fifty boys. One, aged ten, was killed. Finally the bomb completed its devastating descent to the ground-floor classroom where the infants were having lessons. They were singing. In a second there were indescribable death and destruction.

It was in this room that the greatest number of deaths occurred. Many of the little children were never seen again. The cries of the injured ones were awful to hear. When the work of rescue began—a doctor and a naval officer who were passing the school at the time were the first on the scene, and they had to climb a high wall to gain access to the school premises, as the gates were locked —it was found that in many cases identification of the victims was only possible by means of clothing, boots, trinkets or a scar. Limbs were found, but many bodies were entirely missing.

Pathetic School Relics
In one case a father identified his infant child by a button sewn on his shirt the previous night. Another was identified by his collar, one by her overall. The dead and mutilated body of his own little five-year-old son was the first that the school caretaker, who assisted in the rescue work, extricated. He died shortly afterwards from the shock of his discovery. Nothing but the shell of the walls of the three classrooms remained. There were twisted girders, splintered laths, and heaps of crumbled plaster. Hanging crookedly on the pitted walls were torn and tattered watercolour paintings done at one time and another by the children themselves and exhibited by the teacher as a sign of their merit —pathetic relics of happy hours of schooldays.

To this day on the wall of the corridor outside the infants' classroom at the school at Upper North Street, Poplar, there hangs a framed letter of sympathy sent by Queen Alexandra when she heard of the tefrible catastrophe that had befallen dozens of families. It reads: "In deepest sympathy with the poor bereaved parents who are mourning the loss of their beloved little children. 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.'"

Germany had calculated that more than any other weapon these raids by Gotha machines would hasten war to a victorious end for themselves. They were to be disappointed.

Reprisals on German Towns
Quite contrary to striking terror in the hearts of the British people the effect of these concentrated attacks by day, carried out by as many as twenty machines at a time flying in formation, was merely to stir public feeling to such an extent that the question of reprisals was again revived with renewed vehemence. Massed meetings were held all over London. The aid of the members of Parliament representing the affected districts was invoked.

Shortly afterwards retaliatory measures by our own machines on German towns were brought to bear. The daylight raids iguominiously petered out.

[Dave Homewood]

Here is a story from the same series, another first hand account, this time a Zeppelin raid on London in 1915.This comes from the New Zealand Herald dated 27th of October 1934.

The Story of a Zeppelin Raid Over London

TWENTY YEARS AFTER

By James Wickham



Call-boy at the Gaiety Theatre on the night of the raid.

TWENTY years ago the Empire was passing through the fiery ordeal of the dangers and stress of the Great War. Strange and perilous things happened in those four years—things of which the full facts were never really known. This is the fourth of a short series of articles in which actual survivors tell their stories of the dramas in which they were suddenly called to play a part, and of the events that will remain the outstanding memories of their lives. To-day the Gaiety Theatre callboy describes vividly the scenes following the Zeppelin raid on October 13, 1915, when 38 people were killed and 87 injured.

October 13, 1915. A moonless night. London was apprehensive. Its mood was tense. Zeppelin warfare during the last moonless period had accounted for forty-four lives, had maimed 180 and caused damage in the City alone to the extent of £510,672. Altogether nine of these fearful air monsters had come and gone night after night unscathed, almost unchallenged. So far not one Zeppelin had been brought down on British soil. Our air defences and combative forces in the air at this stage of the war were far from perfect.

The Zeppelins seemed to everyone to be having things pretty well all their own way. London was rather "on edge." Yet, true to the "carry on" policy of the British nation the West End, it seemed, did not lack gaiety on that October night as I made my way along the Strand to the Gaiety Theatre, where I had recently secured the post of callboy. Restaurants were crowded. From behind the heavily-curtained windows of the big hotels there came the sounds of much merrymaking. The popping of champagne corks. The pulse of dance music. Heady laughter. There were toasts, farewells, tears, promises, kisses.

"To-night's the Night."
War ! To-night—Blighty. To-mor-row—who cared? London, capital of the Empire, had everything in the way of pleasure to offer her sons on leave. Theatres were flourishing, "House Full " boards hung round their entrances every night.

At the Gaiety we had been playing "To-night's the Night" to packed houses. What a striking contrast to the gloom and dimness of the streets was the glamour within the thronging theatres. Soft lights glowed in their auditoriums. There was the surge of lively tuneful music. Bewitching choruses. Frivolous songs. Provocative dancing. Smart quips. War burlesques.

It was almost impossible amid all this light-hearted gaiety to realise the horrors being enacted a hundred miles distant. Had it not been for the ubiquitous khaki —in stalls, in pit, in gallery —the war would have seemed even more remote.

In the shadowy streets —for the Defence of the Realm Act in regard to lighting was being strictly enforced—crowds jostled and shouldered. There was khaki everywhere.

Newsboys vociferously proclaimed the latest news from the Front. I bought a paper. "Gallant Serbia Hard Pressed," streamed the headlines. Street vendors cried their wares by the feeble light of oil lamps. A barrel-organ fumbled with the melody of the moment —" Keep the Home Fires Burning." Some distant clock chimed the hour of seven.

Lurking Danger Unheeded
A beam of light swung across the sky. And then others. They crossed and recrossed in fantastic patterns. Some of the people in the streets occasionally glanced upwards at the ever-moving shafts uneasily. But the majority went their various ways unheeding. We Londoners are adaptable. We groped our way about darkened streets, sweetening our beverages with saccharine, and buying the diminutive Sunday joint with the aid of a food card that we had accepted with characteristic stoicism. In the majority we were accepting the danger that lurked above on moonless nights in the same spirit.

I had been at the theatre for nearly an hour. "Overture and beginners " had been called. The curtain had risen on act one. As I walked down the corridor breathing a sigh of relief that my duties were temporarily finished, the waves of laughter greeting the quips of Mr. George Grossmith and Mr. Leslie Henson reached me. London was enjoying itself.

London did not then know that three hours earlier an urgent message had been flashed from France to the War Office that five Zeppelins had been noticed making for the East Coast. I heard it from Jupp, the stage doorkeeper. We often heard things of that kind at the Gaiety. Marconi House is next door.

Searchlights Rake the Sky
By now air chiefs would be in grave conclave. Anti-aircraft gun-stations would have been warned. Pilots were standing by their machines. Police, the fire brigade and ambulance workers were ready. But the West End pursued its pleasures.

"Suppose they're coming again to-night," grumbled Jupp.

I glanced out of the door across to the west. There was a perfect trellis of searchlight beams raking the blue-black sky. The pavements were still crowded. Shadowy groups gossiped on street corners. Omnibuses and taxicabs, dimly lit, loomed up from and receded into the enshrouding gloom. A clock struck nine. Twenty minutes to go to the first interval.

A few minutes later I heard my name being called. It was the stage manager who wanted me. "Just run across to the post with these letters, Jimmy, he said. "We've a special rehearsal call for the morning and they must go off tonight."

As I went out of the stage door I met Billy, the page. "Come over to the post with me, Billy," I said. He was a bright little lad of fifteen; I was three years older. Only too glad of a little relaxation, he readily agreed. The nearest pillar-box was at the top of Catherine Street, which lies immediately opposite the stage door of the Gaiety, and together we crossed Aldwych and made our way alongside the Strand Theatre. I stopped a moment to light a cigarette, carefully screening the match. Billy waited.

"They say the Zepps are on their way, the swine," I remarked.

Voice of Descending Bomb
As though my words had released ten thousand furies, there was the sudden crackle of anti-aircraft gunfire, and simultaneously a dreadful sound that London knew only too well —a sound like no other on earth. It was the mournful wail created by the velocity of a descending bomb. In the one brief terrible moment before the impact I instinctively knew it was coming directly where we stood. I was not wrong.

It exploded three yards from where we were standing. It flung me against the wall next the pit entrance to the Strand Theatre. It sucked me back again . It dashed me to the ground. Masonry fell and glass rained. I felt unhurt, but only dazed. Yet I had twenty-two lumps of shrapnel embedded in me. They carried me downstairs into the bar of the Strand Theatre.

The streets were pandemonium. I asked for Billy, but he had been blown to pieces. I could hear screams in the street outside. There was the dull vibrant thud of more bombs.

Omnibus Blown to Pieces
Others were brought in and laid beside me. Some were moaning, some calling for missing friends and relatives. Someone rushed in and said a London general omnibus had been blown to bits in Aldwych, opposite the Waldorf. It was true. More injured were brought in. They were carried on theatre boards.

There was the ring of ambulance bells, the imperious clang of fire alarms. And above it all a terrible, insistent thudding. More bombs, death and destruction. Would they never cease this agonising rain of death? They held every card up there. It was so easy for them.

The stories of that night are terrible ones. The Zeppelin—it was the L15 on her maiden voyage to England—had manoeuvred herself into line with the Strand and travelled directly eastward, dropping bombs at short intervals. Two fell barely a second before the one that hit me, in a narrow street running parallel to the Strand between the Lyceum and Covent Garden.

Old Orange Woman's Fate
The little street was crowded. As the first bomb exploded people were flung in all directions. One woman was blown to pieces. Another was cut in two by a sheet of glass blown from a shop front. When those in the vicinity who were unhurt recovered sufficiently to lend help they found 36 people prone on the pavement, in the roadway or the gutters. All around was the glitter of glass. It lay everywhere in millions of pieces.

There was an old orange seller who had been standing at the gallery entrance to the Lyceum. She lay huddled against the wall still clutching her wares. She was dead. A man from the audience had hurried down the staircase into the street when the firing began, leaving his wife in her seat. He never returned. He was instantly killed by a flying fragment of shell from our own anti-aircraft guns. One man, terribly mutilated, yet still clutching a glass and sandwich, was discovered half inside and half outside a public-house whose walls had been shattered by the explosion.

Theatres As Dressing Stations
Nine other people in the saloon bad been wiped out. A barmaid was killed. When official help arrived it was found that 17 had been killed and 21 injured by that one missile. No single bomb dropped from a Zeppelin during the war claimed a greater death roll. A fire had been started by a piece of bomb which penetrated a gas main. Flames leaping high illuminated the grim scene.

People from every part of London were pouring into the Strand. The rumour that between 400 and 500 people had been wiped out and many more injured in the raid had spread. Roads leading to the devastated areas had to be closed. No one was admitted except those engaged on the work of rescue and clearance.

Every theatre —there were five in the immediate vicinity—was used as a dressing station. Here, where suddenly tragedy had taken the place of the earlier hilarity, doctors attended to wounds. There was irony in the shrapnel-riddled boards that hung forlornly outside the Gaiety Theatre proclaiming " To-night's the Night."

Mr. Leslie Henson worked valiantly to calm the audience when the terrific din occurred outside the theatre.

Orchestra's Rollicking Tune
Many rose in alarm. Chorus girls stood transfixed on the stage. Some men were on the point of running into the streets in their flimsy attire. Mr. Henson saw all the dangers. He ordered the orchestra to strike up a rollicking tune; he led the girls in a lively dance, he cracked jokes and struck comical gestures. The situation was saved.

Within a mile of the Strand nineteen bombs in all were hurled. One hit a home for Belgian refugees in Aldwych. Another narrowly missed Somerset House. Another fell between the walls of the Divorce Court and Bankruptcy Buildings, in Carey Street. Many of the beautiful sixteenth century stained glass windows in Lincoln's Inn Chapel were smashed by a third. A fourth damaged Gray's Inn Hall.

But nowhere in all the areas visited by the five airships that night—Hythe, Hertford, and Croydon among them— was death and destruction worse than in the Strand.

Flying Over Woolwich Arsenal
How little the Zeppelin commanders knew of their position can be gathered from the fact that one—the L13 under Mathy—flew the whole length of the barracks and arsenal at Woolwich. Four high explosive and 28 incendiary bombs were dropped, but is quite evident that Mathy was unaware of the vital character of his target—hundreds of soldiers and munition workers were in the buildings—for he passed on and hurled a final missile on Plumstead Marshes. It fell alongside the powder magazine, which, had it exploded would have caused tremendous damage and loss of life. Only four men were injured in the arsenal and eleven in the barracks.

At Hertford nine people were killed and fifteen injured. Nearly 200 houses were damaged. In Croydon nine persons were killed and fifteen wounded. At Hythe a number of high explosive bombs were dropped on Otterpool Camp. Fifteen soldiers were killed and eleven injured. The Zeppelin commander had been attracted by the light of the camp fires.

Shower of Wooden Blocks
In all 71 people were killed in this attack and 128 injured—the largest casualty list in any Zeppelin raid in proportion to the number of airships engaged and the total number of bombs dropped. In London alone 38 people were killed, including several children, and 87 injured. The damage was assessed at £80,000.

The raid was not without its freak incidents. A piece of shrapnel from one of the bombs tore through the window of Miss Madge Saunders' dressing-room at the Gaiety Theatre, penetrated a wardrobe and a dress hanging in it, and lodged in the wall.

Other fragments from the same bomb were hurled through the stage door, shattering the legs of the chair on which Jupp was sitting, so that the seat collapsed to the ground. Jupp escaped with nothing worse than a shaking.

Wooden blocks thrown up from the roadways by the concussions were found on the roofs of buildings within a hundred yards' radius —some of them eight storeys high. There was room for a horse and cart in the craters made in roadways and pavements by many of the bombs.

The voyage of the Zeppelin crews was not without incident that night. The L13, while on its way to Woolwich, narrowly escaped collision with the L14 —commanded by Kapitan-leutnant Bocker—on the latter's return from Croydon. One man in L15 dropped his hat, which fell at Charing Cross.

Next week's story will be the thrilling account oi a Zeppelin which hovered over Sandringham, when the King and Queen were there, on the night of January 31, 1916. The narrator is Mr. Guy C. Pollock, a sub-Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve's Anti-aircraft Brigade.

[Dave Homewood]

Here is the Sandringham Zeppelin story from the Herald dated the 3rd of November 1934.

Zeppelin Over Sandringham

By GUY C. POLLOCK,

Who was a, Sub-Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Anti-Aircraft Brigade, which was defending Sandringham.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER

TWENTY years ago the Empire began the four most tremendous years of her history. Strange and perilous things happened in those four years —things of which the full facts were never really known. This is the fifth of a series of articles in which the actual survivors tell their stories of the dramas in which they were suddenly called to play a part, and of the events that will remain the outstanding memories of their lives.



To-day Mr. Guy Pollock describes vividly how a Zeppelin, on the night of January 31, 1916, hovered above York Cottage, Sandringham, where the King and Queen were then staying.

THE really devilish trick of fate, at 11 p.m. on January 31, 1016, was the heavy bank of rainclouds underneath which we stood by two anti-aircraft guns, and above which a Zeppelin was booming— and bombing—its way on a course set straight for York Cottage, Sandringham. And there were the King and Queen in the garden, anxious to see and hear and experience anything and everything which happened.

I had charge of the forward gun a mile or two on the Dersingham side of Sandringham, and my superior officer, Lieutenant C. C. Phillips, of the R.N.V.R, was inside, or just outside, the grounds of York Cottage with the other gun. I knew that the King and Queen were outside the house, because a motor-cyclist, the only means of communication between the two guns, had just told me so. And, in spite of heavy rain and a chilly night, I began to drip with the sweat of apprehension.

British Antique Pom-Poms
In those comparatively early days the anti-aircraft defence of London and England was controlled by the Admiralty, and the armament of the Eastern Mobile Motor Section, of which we were part, consisted of one-pounder pom-poms guns firing a shell with an impact fuse only. Indeed, the progressive armament of the anti-aircraft gun defences of England in the Great War will make a quaint appendix or footnote to the history of the greater war when it comes to be written.

Every one to-day knows everything about the perils of invasion by air. They guessed very little in 1914. Then we had one three-inch quick-firing gun on an A.A. mounting in Hyde Park, and on several roof-tops these antique pom-poms.

A Grotesque Procession
In 1915 mobile gun defences were formed. They began with Maxims and Lewis guns, went on with pom-poms, were promoted to a few three-pounder naval guns, and in the autumn of 1916 exchanged Admiralty for War Office, blue for khaki, and finished the war with the thirteen-pounder horse gun mounted on a lorry, firing a thirteen-pound H.E. shell with an eighteen-pounder charge.

"From Pea-shooter to Pip-squeak." And a grotesque procession it was—interspersed with such incidents as the wooden guns of Hull and bombarding Liberty Hall in Dublin, and the progress of searchlights from acetylene—which was apt to go out at the critical moment—to electric.

There was, however, this much to be said —that these pom-poms and shells were much less dangerous to England and Englishmen in the country than in London, where in 1914 and 1915 they had been mounted on roof-tops. They were also likely to do rather more damage to the enemy than the Maxims, each with a history sheet dating from the Boer War, with which the Eastern Mobile Anti-Aircraft Section had begun operations in February, 1915. These machine-guns were quite futile as serious artillery.

Low-Flying Zeppelins
But the earlier Zeppelins flew impudently low. The German mind could not believe that even Englishmen would use a gun against them, like David with his sling and his smooth stones from the brook, in a spirit of jocund irresponsibility. Our bullets zipped into their envelopes, and once —in September, 1915 my miserable Maxim had the honour of a German official reference to " the enemy batteries of Ipswich," which had, they imagined, attacked them with star shell (incendiary bullets from a Martini-Henry rifle with a range of some 1,000 yards) and shrapnel (belts fired from a Maxim gun). That was funny. The pom-poms, if they had ever opened fire in London, raining on our streets a number of little shells all liable to burst on impact, might have been tragic.

And, unless my memory is all wrong, gratitude was due to the energetic persistence of Mr. R. D. Blumenfeld, then editor of the Daily Express, for their removal to open country, where at least they gave us metal a trifle heavier to thrust into the air.

Such were the ridiculous improvisations of England's anti-aircraft defence at a time when the concentration of serious effort was needed elsewhere. They were of a piece with the quasi-naval uniform, and the Admiralty's control of land gunnery. One uniform was as good as another, and if blue was a bad colour for motoring along dusty roads, it was not less suited to mechanical transport than field boots and spurs.

Sweating with Fear
I have been taken in those days for a cloakroom attendant at Liverpool Street railway station, and, on the Sandringham spell of duty, subjected to cross-examination about warships and the sea on crossing the river in a public ferry at King's Lynn. And I dare say the traveller at Liverpool Street did report me to the railway company because, when he turned to me and said angrily, " I want a wash," I answered, " So I perceive."

But at 11 p.m. on January 31, 1916, even these comedies of comfortable and inglorious service seemed grim enough. I sweated with fear and—for once—not the fear of being bombed, but the fear of a predicament. We had received an early warning and had bundled out of King's Lynn, where we had quarters in an empty house, in broad daylight to find the gun positions which we had chosen for the defence of Sandringham. And a cold, clear, moonless night succeeded the day, bringing with it the usual conflicting messages about the whereabouts and activities of several Zeppelins. There were plenty of these, But, oddly—so far as I remember — we heard nothing of the Zeppelin which, half an hour after we had left the town, marched into King's Lynn before it was dark and solemnly strolled up the High Street at an impudently low altitude. I believe it dropped bombs also. And it was not really surprising that "Yah! Cowards" and brick bats at the windows should have rewarded our lack-lustre return.

Fall of the First Bomb
If you bring A.A. guns to King's Lynn in order that they may be rushed to the defence of some other spot, you are bound to deceive and anger King's Lynn—without, probably, fooling the enemy at all. Then the first man heard the first far-off rumble and, while the rest of us doubted, the first bomb was heard to fall.

A still distant bomb, and we might not have been sure about it if all the cock pheasants had not begun to crow. Soon another bomb, and another, and another. Nearer bombs, these, the last one horribly near, and all making a straight course more or less from Hunstanton, which would reach or pass straight over York Cottage —and the King and Queen.

And then the rain came down, voluble, pitiless rain from dense dark clouds, with the noise of the Zeppelin's engines droning closer and closer, straight for our heads, above them.

Unpleasant Predicament
What, so to speak, should A do? To uncover a searchlight would be foolish. It could not pierce the cloud; it might give away the secret of something to be guarded. Barraging to sound only became of any use when it was done on a scientific scale, with massed batteries of thirteen-pounder three-inch guns much later in the war. With one pom-pom it was an extremely forlorn hope. What should A do? Let the damned Zeppelin pass straight overhead and do nothing because there was nothing sane or feasible to do?

Yes, but if it went on and dropped a bomb on York Cottage and killed the King and Queen? Then A had better shoot himself, before he was court martialed and held up to obloquy in all the patriotic Press as the vacillating poltroon, who had let this awful thing happen. These were not exhilarating thoughts.

What should A do? Open fire on the enemy with a gun not likely to cripple him, laid by a gunner who could not see his target; expose the whole position, reveal the fact that something of value to England was near by, warn the Zeppelin commander, if he really had Sandringham for his target, that hereabouts was the time and place for concentrated bombing, and, with 'the maximum of good luck, pin-prick him into angry activity?

Is it strange that, nearly twenty years later, I can still feel myself sweating as I restate the predicament? Chance, or Fate —Providence anyhow—avoided these pitfalls.

I had left it to the gunlayer. I had decided to shoot rather than let them go over our heads, and my orders were to pull the firing lever when he judged the Zeppelin to be within the bearing of the gun. What was more, and probably much worse, I had fired one incendiary cartridge from the Martini-Henry rifle which was still our supplementary armament. I did this hoping that it might possibly give us a glimpse of the airship or possibly scare him off his course. 

I was well cursed by Phillips when he saw me. But at that moment, and with the gunlayer's fingers twitching on the lever, the Zeppelin altered its course. It turned right-handed and made for the sea.

Silence of the Night
The stars came out again, and afterwards no sound but the bark of a dog and the hoot of an owl broke the chill silence of a lovely night. The men were furious. For all I know the King and Queen were bitterly disappointed. But I had thought harder in five minutes than in most of the rest of my life, and the horns of my dilemma seemed so sharp that their points have never been forgotten.

Before the King and Queen left Sandringham, and our guns were withdrawn from King's Lynn, we were inspected in the drive of York Cottage, and the Queen said at one moment, "It must be very difficult to know what to do." It was.

[Dave Homewood]

I have skipped a lot of the Twenty Years After articles as they cover events involving ships or munitions factories and not aviation related stories. But this one is another air raid story from the New Zealand Herald dated 26 January 1935:


TWENTY YEARS AFTER

DAYLIGHT AIR RAID

TRAGEDY OF FOLKESTONE

ABOUT A HUNDRED DEATHS

AUCKLAND WOMAN'S NARRATIVE

The appended story of the air raid at Folkestone, Kent, toward the close of the second year of the Great War is told by a present resident of Auckland, who, with her parents and sister, passed through the never-to-be-forgotten experiences narrated.

On a glorious spring evening in May, 1916, the first and biggest daylight air raid by a fleet of German bombing aeroplanes took place at Folkestone. About 6 o'clock in the evening my father, who was busy watering the garden, came into the sitting-room through the open French doors, looking very anxious, and remarked. "There are a lot of aeroplanes about, and I don't think they look like ours."

No sooner had we gone into the adjoining dining-room at my mother's suggestion when there came a deafening bang and crash, accompanied by the noise of smashing glass, and the whole house filled with sulphurous fumes and dust. As soon as we had sufficiently recovered from the shock to be able to investigate, we found the sitting-room which we had vacated only just in the nick of time, was now a hopeless wreck of smashed vases, broken furniture and ripped cushions, while everything was smothered with white plaster from the ceiling.

In the wall separating the dining-room, and just behind the chair on which my mother had been sitting at the time, was a hole at least six inches in diameter, and all but penetrating through the two-brick wall.

Big Hole in Concrete Path
The French doors were now just skeleton frames with no glass, and the long lace curtains were hanging in just a mass of ribbons. On the concrete path outside, about six feet from the doors, was a large hole two or three feet deep and several feet in diameter where the bomb had exploded. The water can which my father had been using only a few minutes previously was lying a short distance away riddled by the shrapnel. This is now in the Folkestone museum among other war relics.

Every window in the back of our three-storied house and several in the front were blown out. The bedrooms in the back of the house were a mass of splintered glass, pieces of concrete, branches of rose trees and mud.

Soon I heard the unusual noise of buses going past, and going out to the front gate I inquired of a man who was passing. He said that they were taking wounded people to the hospital. He stated that bombs had been dropped in the chief shopping centre and that dozens of people had been wounded and killed. My first thoughts were for my sister who was out shopping, but our anxiety was soon relieved by her safe return.

Several Loud Explosions
It was a fine spring evening for the Friday shoppers, and although only six o'clock Tontine Street was already thronged with mothers with perambulators, babies and older children. War or no war, they must be fed and clothed.

Only small rations of meat and sugar were procurable on presentation of a ration card. Potatoes were unobtainable, and butter was a thing of the past, except by doctor's orders for invalids. But in spite of all there was no complaining or grumbling.

As I stood looking in one of the large draper's windows in Rendezvous Street, where as yet there were only a few people, there were several loud explosions not very far distant. Seeing several people making their way towards the Lees, I joined them, but had not gone far before there was a cry, "It's a raid! Take cover!" Hurriedly some of us entered the nearest shop, a small confectioner's, and stood up against the wall for protection.

Fourteen Aeroplanes
Explosions were sounding thick and fast now in all directions. One woman, a Belgian refugee, kept running outside exclaiming in broken English, "My children, my children! Oh. where are they!" Then we heard her call, "Come, look! There they go! One, two, three ..." and heedless of danger we all rushed out to see. And sure enough, in perfect dove-tail formation, there were fourteen aeroplanes flying away across the Channel, having completed their deadly task of slaughter and destruction.

Hurrying home along the now deserted Guildhall Street the first indication I saw of the harm done was a fly-driver coming from the station with both hands badly cut and bleeding. Then turning into Bournemouth Gardens, there was a hedge blown out from a front garden. Finally, on reaching home, I found that another bomb had been dropped in our garden, doing a lot of damage to property, but happily, none to life, my parents and sister being safe. But these were only minor damages.

Terrible Hospital Scene
Acting on my father s advice I quickly changed into a St. John Ambulance Brigade uniform and made my way to the Victoria Cottage Hospital. The matron was standing in the entrance hall and sent me to the sister-in-charge upstairs. There was a scene never to be forgotten. On either side of the long corridor the floor was closely packed with mattresses on which were lying mutilated and bleeding women and children.

One small boy of nine or ten, with his leg hanging from below the knee by a few tendons, and boot and stocking still on, was bravely trying to stifle his sobs. A woman, who had a very efficient tourniquet applied, had her leg severed across the thigh. Just inside one of the wards a nurse was standing beside a table on which lay two dear wee babies, a few months old, mangled and bleeding. She was watching and waiting for them to breathe their last, which they soon did.

One of the wounded soldiers —many of whom were parents in the hospital—remarked, " It's just like a clearing station at the front, only a thousand times worse, for these are all women and children." The vicar was there, doing his best to speak words of help and comfort to those who could hear, and praying with the dying.

Soon the doctors came along the corridor with their coats off and shirt sleeves rolled up, and inspected the cases. Some were despatched to the Military Hospital at Cheriton in order to relieve the congestion at the Cottage Hospital; others were sent to the wards to be made as comfortable as possible for the night. The rest were sent to the theatre, where the doctors and nurses worked heroically all night doing their utmost to save as many lives as possible.

From time to time, as the inspection was going on, a sheet was drawn over first one face and then another, and the ambulance men came and carried the now still forms to the mortuary to await identification. By 10.30 p.m. the corridor was cleared and all voluntary workers dismissed.

No official statement of the number of casualties was ever published, but it was ascertained that over 70 were killed outright, and with the number of deaths which occurred afterwards the total must have reached well over 100. The worst damage was done by an aerial torpedo which exploded among the shoppers in Tontine Street. A post with an inscribed plate now marks the spot.

All the following week the Cheriton Road leading to the cemetery was a daily, unceasing procession of funerals of the victims. Undertakers and gravediggers were working overtime, and the clergy were busy from morning until night. It was very evident that the raiders either knew the district well or else were aided by spies. Their objective was clearly the railway line from the Central Station to the harbour, along which troops were carried for transport to France. A regular shower of bombs fell around the Central Station, killing a fly-driver and breaking panes of glass in the building. Several months afterwards some unexploded bombs were dug up in Kingsnorth Gardens near by. No damage, however, was done to the line.

[baz62]

When I was in London in late 2000/early 2001 I went to most of the museums. I think it was the Victoria and Albert Museum(?) where I spied a brass plaque attached to the facade near the entrance. Beside it was damage to the stone or brick work. I thought that I would be reading that it was from an air raid in WW2 but was surprised to read it was from a Zeppelin raid in WW1.

[Dave Homewood]

I saw a similar plaque about the damage on Cleopatra's Needle, beside the Thames, caused by a Zeppelin raid when I was there in 1994. That was the first time I'd ever heard of London being bombed by the Germans in WWI.

[baz62]

Dec 3, 2022 12:25:14 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I saw a similar plaque about the damage on Cleopatra's Needle, beside the Thames, caused by a Zeppelin raid when I was there in 1994. That was the first time I'd ever heard of London being bombed by the Germans in WWI.

Actually thats it! I googled the Victoria and Albert and it was damaged but in WW2.

[Dave Homewood]

Here is an article in a similar vein from the Herald dated 13th of July 1935:

HERO OF THE SKIES

BRITAIN'S "LONE EAGLE"

SINGLE-HANDED COMBAT

GIANT ZEPPELIN DESTROYED

FATAL CRASH 10 DAYS LATER

Twenty years ago last month one of the greatest one-man battles of the war occurred. Single-handed Flight Sub-Lieutenant Reginald Warneford, in a tiny monoplane, attacked and brought down a German Zeppelin over Belgium, he was the first man to prove that the giant airships could be defeated by aeroplanes. The only two Zeppelins previously destroyed had been bombed in their shed. In one day Warneford banished civilian fear of the Zeppelins. He had proved them a failure. Warneford was awarded the V.C. Ten days later he was accidentally killed.

As dawn lit the Belgian sky on June 7, 1915, twenty-three-year-old Reginald Warneford strolled slowly back to camp, writes Gerald Scheff in the Sunday Express, London. He was, as usual, alone, as he was not popular in the Royal Naval Air Service. His shyness was mistaken for coldness. He went about alone — and he flew alone. But he flew with the cold courage of the lonely wolf who fights apart from the pack.

On that June morning the hangars of Evere, near Brussels, loomed black against the sky. The world was quiet. War seemed a distant thing. Then the noise of engines in the sky made him look upward. A massive black shape was nosing down to the base.

Raked by Machine Guns
It was the first Zeppelin Warneford had seen. He ran the rest of the way, straight for a spot of grass where stood his tiny Morane monoplane.

"Contact!"

His engine roared. The machine streaked across the field and soared into the sky. But the Zeppelin saw him at once. It nosed back into the clouds. The crew hurried machine guns into every port. They trained them on the little attacker. Warneford's machine was swept by bullets. It was raked from end to end. He could approach no nearer.

It was then he tried strategy. He turned his machine away from the Zeppelin as though giving up the chase, and flew steadily toward Ostend. He was 8000 feet above the ground. The German airship had descended to 6000 feet. Back swung Warneford. Shutting off his engine he glided downward over the back of the Zeppelin, now unconscious of its peril.

Nearer and nearer he glided. He was so close to the airship that he could have landed on its back. He released the bomb trigger. Six bombs fell. The last one hit its target. There was a thunderous roar as the Zeppelin exploded. Flames spread from end to end. The fabric withered. The giant airship, swinging helplessly, plunged to earth.

It fell on an orphanage at St. Amand. Two nuns and a number of children were killed. Warneford had no time to watch the Zeppelin fall. The force of the explosion threw his own machine upside down. There was danger of fire. Eddies caused by the explosion made him loop the loop involuntarily. Warneford righted his machine, but engine failure forced him to come down—in enemy territory.

The King's Congratulations
There was no time to lose. At moment he might be surrounded. Warneford worked frantically to restart his engine. In fifteen minutes he had succeeded. He flew back to his base. A few minute's flight past Ghent, and he saw, six thousand feet below, the still burning, twisted wreckage of the Zeppelin he had brought down.

Warneford landed his machine on the Belgian coast. He was arrested by the Belgians because he had insufficient papers on him. A spy might descend from the heavens as well as rise from the earth, so the Belgians marched Warneford — just back from the greatest singlehanded deed of the war—to gaol!

But later he was taken under escort back to his base and received a true welcome from the men who before had ostracised him. He was feted and cheered. In a cafe that night men and women kissed him, spoke of his bravery. He tumbled out a few words of thanks in a language he did not understand. He sat red-faced and embarrassed while the cafe crowds shouted.

Next day at the base he was handed a telegram. Nervously he tore it open. He read: —

"I most heartily congratulate you upon your splendid achievement of yesterday, in which you, single-handed, destroyed an enemy Zeppelin. I have much pleasure in conferring upon you the Victoria Cross for this gallant act. — Georgo R.I."

London's Wild Enthusiasm
In London, when the news reached home, press and public went wild with enthusiasm. The first of the air monsters which for months had terrorised the men, women and children of the civilian population, and wreaked so great havic, had been destroyed—and by a boy hero alone in a tiny aeroplane. Poems and songs were written about Warneford. His mother, Mrs. Corkery, said, "I knew he would do something daring." A man who had helped teach the youth to fly said: "I always thought Warneford would either break his neck or do big things."

Warneford's mother received a letter in German handwriting. It read: "God curse you all." The German Government suppressed the news of the airship destruction. Warneford's life story was in every paper. He had been born in India and educated at King Edward Grammar School, Stratford-on-Avon. He entered the mercantile marine in his teens.

At Hendon, where he received his air training, Warneford surprised his instructors by his immediate confidence. Then he went to Belgium, and nothing more was heard of him until his name was blazoned round the world as the first man to destroy a Zeppelin. But he had not been inactive during that time.

Destruction of Submarines
The destruction of the monster Zeppelin was by no means his only feat. He had to his credit the sinking of several German submarines. He bombed trawlers outside enemy harbours and he destroyed many enemy aircraft. Then came the most daring single-handed exploit of the war which not only earned him the V.C., but gained him the French decoration of the Chevalier d'Honneur.

He went to Paris for a week's holiday and found himself feted and dined everywhere. Celebrities of all kinds kissed him on both cheeks. Warneford went to Bue, near Paris, to be decorated by the Minister of Marine, on June 17, ten days after his Zeppelin battle. While waiting he ascended from Bue Airdrome to test a new biplane. He had a passenger, an American journalist named Henry Needham. When about 750 feet from the ground the machine canted and overturned. Warneford and Needham fell from their seats. Both were killed. Warneford had not' strapped himself in.

The King and Queen sent a telegram of condolence to his parents. France and Belgium mourned with Britain. On June 21 Warneford's body was taken home to London and carried on a gun carriage to the Mortuary at Brompton Cemetery. The funeral took place next day. Thousands lined the streets. Men and women sobbed. His body was borne to the grave by seamen of the Royal Naval Division. Officers of the Naval Flying Wing were the pallbearers.

Precedent, etiquette and discipline forbade that the country should give Warneford a state funeral. But the women in the crowd made amends by their presence and tears. There were 50,000 women in Brompton Cemetery and in the streets. All wore some touch of black. Warneford's mother stood among the women mourners.

Mr. Frank Lynn-Jenkins, R.B.A., the sculptor, made a model of Warneford which was erected over his grave. It bore the words, "Courage— lnitiative — lntrepidity." Lord Derby, then Under-Secretary tor War, unveiled the memorial, He said:

"It was against the Zeppelin murderers of women and children that he cast his bombs. I doubt whether any of the many gallant acts performed during this war have ever appealed to the public imagination in the same way as Lieutenant Warneford's. The reason is not far to seek. It is the spectacle of a man, single-handed, taking on a great opponent, knowing full well that in so doing the odds on himself surviving are indeed small, but counting that not for one moment in his determination to do what was right by his country and by the corps to which he belonged."

The feted hero left £39. Among the many tokens of condolence received by Warneford's mother was a replica of the French Legion of Honour in diamonds, rubies and emeralds, presented to her by the makers of Warneford's aeroplane and other French makers as a symbol of one object, uniting the French and British nations. Mrs. Corkery received her son's V.C., for, tragically, Warneford never actually received the reward, he died before the King could pin the medal to his breast.

[oj]

Thank you Dave. We just have no idea of the terrible detail of real war.
Hollywood versions just don't convey it as convincingly as those first-person accounts above.

[skippynz]

I'm currently reading 'The First Blitz' by Neil Hanson. It's a good read - so far - and covers both the Zeppelin raids and the later Gotha ones. Guess who's got a Wingnut Wings Gotha in the build pile?

[Dave Homewood]

There is some interesting Zeppelin and Gotha content in the very latest Wings Over Britain Show:

cambridgeairforce.org.nz/WONZShow/2023/08/wonz-279-wings-over-britain-biggin-hill/