The Airship Blitz

XXIII

The "Many Fires Reported" were indeed the product of the Zeppelins' firebombs, but with no air raid system in place, the Government used the Press to calm the incipient panic among the general public. The people who were being bombed, however, knew exactly where the bombs were coming from

 

By the early summer of 1914 DELAG had completed constructing a series of Zeppelin hangars near major German cities and was just beginning its regularly scheduled inter-city flights. The company had also negotiated an agreement to build a Zeppelin hangar outside Paris to begin international service.

The sudden, unexpected onset of the conflict that was to metastasize into World War I threw all these plans into a cocked hat. DELAG, being a patriotic German firm, immediately offered its entire airship fleet, both existing ships and ships under construction, to the German Air Force.

The German Air Force intended to use the Zeppelins to bomb London. Although Graf von Zeppelin publicly supported the war as an aristocrat and a General Officer Retired, privately he objected to the bombing scheme, thinking it would demonize airships in the public mind. He had a powerful ally in making this argument, Kaiser Wilhelm, whose first cousin, after all, was a certain British King who lived in London. 

("Willy" was not only first cousin to "Georgie" the King-Emperor of Great Britain, Ireland and India, he was also first cousin to "Nicky" the Tsar of All The Russias. World War I, with its 30 million dead was essentially a family spat.)

The Kaiser thought air bombardment, a new idea, was barbarous, but as it turned out, he was a man capable of being manipulated. The German General Staff finally received his permission to bomb the Outer Boroughs of London in 1915.

Not long afterward, the entire city became a target of the Zeppelins' incendiary bombs. Large areas of north and east London burned.

Over the Mother of Parliaments

 

Germany's War Zeppelins dropped the first bombs in history. They also, as it turned out, made the first international Zeppelin flights. In 1908, H.G. Wells had imagined "herds of airships" and "Drachenfliegers" ("Dragonflies" i.e., airplanes) attacking European capitals in his book The War In The Air. His prediction seemed to have come true.

The War Zeppelins flew higher and faster than the prewar Zeppelins and were lighter. Some had frames made of wood, and could reach the stratosphere.

At first, the War Zeppelins seemed unstoppable. Britain had no aircraft capable of reaching the operating altitude of Zeppelins, and so the big balloons were impregnable. By 1916, British industry had developed more powerful planes, and British pilots immediately discovered that incendiary bullets would turn the big, slow-moving attack ships into fireballs. The damage from flaming falling wreckage was so great, in fact, that British planes were quickly ordered to cease firing on airships over populated areas. Instead, British aircraft were sent to strafe and bomb the forward Zeppelin bases in Belgium, which proved to be indefensible. Most of the War Zeppelins were destroyed.

Germany withdrew its remaining airships beyond British reach, and opted instead to send Gotha bombers --- Germany's biggest, heaviest and most powerful planes --- to continue the bombing campaign.

Germany's Gotha bomber of 1917 was a giant for its time. At 41 feet long and with a 78 foot wingspan, the Gotha weighed three tons, and could carry 14 60-pound bombs. It usually had 3 parabellum machine guns. Unlike most World War I planes, the fuselage completely enclosed the pilots and crews

But in their relatively brief career as war machines, Zeppelins killed over 700 Londoners. Time has misted over the facts of the "First Blitz" but it was, indeed, an airship Blitz.