KAISER BILL'S AIR FORCE

THE ZEPPELINS

Indeed, just as he was to forsee tanks, the science fiction writer Herbert George Wells anticipated strategic bombing two years before even the Wright Brothers first tested their heavier than air "Flyer" at Kitty Hawk in 1903. He wrote that "The victor in that aerial struggle will tower with pitiless watchful eyes over his adversary [ visiting upon him ] incredible disasters of shot and shell." The Bromley-born visionary expanded on this notion in his 1908 novel "The War in the Air" in which a fleet of German airships bomb Broadway and engulf Manhattan in flames - and airships hovering over pulverised cities became a staple pulp fiction image.

The popular fear of airships was exacerbated by German propaganda to the extent that when war broke out in 1914 British authorities were inundated with imagined sightings. In an early precursor of the flying saucer "flaps" of the 1950s, it was even rumoured that a Zeppelin was hiding in the English Lake District and coming out at night. Certainly the Great Westen Railway authorised the villagers of Shakemantle in the Forest of Dean to use its 109 yard long Blue Rock tunnel as an Zeppelin raid shelter, although this refuge was so far down the valley from their houses that they might have been safer staying at home had a German airship ventured so far west.

In fact the first of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's metal-framed Maybach-engined airships flew in 1900 and commercial airship services began in Germany in 1910. By 1914 37 000 civilian passengers had been carried 100 000 miles without incident.

However, the military potential of the uniquely long-range Zeppelin was realised by both German and British authorities from the outset of the Great War. For the Kaiser's admirals, airships could provide an "eye in the sky" to counter entrapment by the numerically superior Royal Navy, which nonetheless blockaded German ports from the outbreak of hostilities.

In Britain meanwhile, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill was also concerned about the potential of Germany's dirigibles and in October 1914 Lieutenant Marix of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) flew a Sopwith Tabloid biplane from Antwerp to destroy Zeppelin Z.9 at Dusseldorf. Similarly, on 21 November 1914 three Avro 504 biplanes bombed the Zeppelin hangars at Friedrichshaven on the shores of Lake Constance.

Zeppelins L3 and L4 crossed the coast of East Anglia with L3 curving south east to attack Great Yarmouth while L4 turned north west to Kings Lynn. Shrapnel from a bomb dropped by L3 claimed Samuel Alfred Smith as the first British civilian to be killed by aerial bombardment while after 8.25pm L4 was to drop seven high explosive bombs and leave two dead and thirteen wounded.

In the weeks that followed, eastern English towns from West Sleekburn in Northumberland to Ashford Kent were to be hit. These first Zeppelin raids on Britain inflicted a public terror out of all proportion to the actual damage done. Similarly, German expectations for the newly tried "wonder weapon" were high.

Peter Strasser, commander of the German Navy's Airship Division, commented that "England can be overcome by means of Zeppelin"

In fact, during 53 raids carried out between January 1915 and August 1918 Zeppelins dropped nearly 6 000 bombs, causing 1 900 casualties and damage worth £ 1 500 000 - about a quarter of what Britain was spending on the war each day.

Similarly, the German airships were more vulnerable and imprecise than their propaganda image implied. Aerial navigation was in its infancy and the Zeppelins relied on a mixture of dead reckoning and observation of the ground along with radio signals which gave away their position to British direction finding stations. Indeed, once German naval codes had been cracked, the defenders of Britain often knew where the Zeppelins were better than their own crews!

Even when they found their targets, bomb aiming was crude - and the Zeppelin crews - who were denied parachutes to save weight - also had a fear of burning to death in a tangle of wreckage if the hydrogen bags of their craft caught fire.

Nevertheless in May 1915 there were only 33 anti-aircraft guns to cover the whole of the United Kingdom. Similarly, most British fighter aircraft had been despatched to the Western Front at the outbreak of War, leaving only slow and obsolete types for home defence. These machines struggled to reach the working altitudes of the Zeppelins, and at 19 000 feet the interceptor pilots and their machines would have faced both sub-zero temperatures and a lack of oxygen.

On the night of 8-9 September 1915 Zeppelin L13 - commanded by renowned navigator Heinrich Mathy - crossed the Wash and headed for London which Mathy had vowed that he would " bomb three times in succession or perish in the attempt."

Bombs first fell on Golders Green while at 10.40 pm a 50 kg ordnance blew in the frontage of The Dolphin Tavern in Lamb's Conduit Passage in the Borough of Holborn.

Mathy was then able to start massive fires in textile warehouses at Batholemew's Close north of St Paul's Cathedral and scored direct hits on two packed buses. In total this raid caused £ 500 000 worth of damage and included the dropping of a 300 kg bomb- the largest air dropped weapon so far seen. Despite fire from 26 anti-aircraft guns and sorties by seven home defence fighters, L13 got away.

In the days that followed, the British press raged against "Murder by Zeppelin" and politicians addressed packed public meetings demanding effective defence and retaliation. Just as the demand for materials was reaching a peak on the Western Front in France, the authorities were forced to bring guns, aircraft and pilots home, while blackouts - imposed on London from the summer of 1916 - and shutdowns seriously disrupted war production.

Indeed, the full illumination of a number of cities in the English Midlands in January 1916 led to 70 civilian deaths when nine Zeppelins - lost en route to bomb Liverpool - attacked.

By the autumn of 1916 however, more than 17 000 men were allocated to searchlights and anti-aircraft guns while 110 aircraft were committed to home defence. In addition, remote listening stations and observation posts could telephone warnings to the Admiralty, who then scrambled fighters to pre-arranged patrol lines around London.

However, despite a tenfold increase in anti-aircraft guns stationed around London between September 1915 and September 1917, only one in 8 000 of the 3" shells launched up to 18 000 feet in the air by the quick firing guns actually hit its target while falling fragments of these shells claimed some civilian lives.

Indeed, the first airbourne Zeppelin to be destroyed fell to the guns of RNAS Sub Lieutenant Warneford's Moraine monoplane over France in June 1915. The Royal Navy were also prompted by the Zeppelin menace to find new ways of launching fighter aircraft from ships. One German airship was destroyed by Lieutenant S.D. Culley, flying a Sopwith Camel that had taken off from a lighter towed at high speed by a destroyer. Other nimble biplanes took off from platforms built over the gun turrets of battleships although the challenge of recovering such aircraft at sea required the development of the aircraft carrier.

Nevertheless, anti-aircraft fire forced Zeppelin L15 to ditch in the sea off the coast of Kent in March 1916, while in May 39 Squadron became one of four new home defence squadrons founded by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC).

Despite this, on 10 August 1916, Peter Strasser was still able to write to his superiors:

"The performance of the big airships has reinforced my conviction that England can be overcome by means of airships, inasmuch as the country will be deprived of the means of existence through increasingly extensive destruction of cities, factory complexes, dockyards, harbour works with war and merchant ships lying therein, railways etc..airships offer a certain means of victoriously ending the war."

By the summer of 1916, though, British fighter aircraft were equipped with a potent mix of tracer, explosive and incendiary machine gun ammunition. Their aim was to blow holes in the outer fabric of the Zeppelins and ignite the flammable hydrogen gas as it escaped.

As a result, on 3 September 1916, 39 Squadron's Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson became the first man to shoot down a German airship - the plywood framed Schutte-Lanze 11 - over British soil. For this act he was awarded the Victoria Cross two days later.

Two further German airships - of the new battleship-sized "Thirty" series - were to be destroyed as a 12 dirigible formation - led by Heinrich Mathy in L31 - attacked London on 24 September 1916.

Travelling at 60 mph, L33 was brought down in Essex after dropping incendiaries on the East End of London. The anti-aircraft shells that pierced its skin caused the hydrogen bags to leak and the Zeppelin made a soft landing that allowed all its crew to survive and surrender. Indeed, one of the engines was even salvaged by the British authorities for later re-use.

L32 meanwhile was hit by the incendiary bullets of 39 Squadron's Lieutenant Frederick Sowery and crashed in flames at Great Burstead, near Billericay in Essex.

On the night of 1 October 1916, eleven Zeppelins took off from Germany to raid London. Once again, they were led by Heinrich Mathy, still in command of airship L31.

Meanwhile, Second Lieutenant Wulfstan Tempest of 39 Squadron flew his BE2c from North Weald on the eastern edge of London to patrol at 8 000. Just before midnight, Tempest saw in the distance "a small cigar shaped object" illuminated by a pyramid of searchlights. Anti-aircraft shells were bursting around it. Tempest sped toward L31 as Mathy began to climb, hoping to exceed the ceiling of the biplane fighter. Despite Tempest having to manually operate a broken fuel pump though, his wood and fabric aircraft closed the gap and dived on the target, twenty five times its size. Tempest's first salvo of bullets seemed to have no effect, as did a second burst of fire underneath the airship. But on a second attempt he raked the entire underside of the Zeppelin with bullets before he saw it "begin to go red like an immense Chinese lantern".

Mathy's Zeppelin shot 200 feet up, hung in the air for a moment and then fell, flames bursting from the envelope. Falling on open ground at Cuffley, in Hertfordshire, most of the crew were burned to death - except for its captain who jumped and was found half embedded in the earth, still breathing but soon to die. He was buried at Potters Bar.

German airship enthusiasts like Peter Strasser proposed even more advanced "height climbing" Zeppelins that would fly at 20 000 feet, but in the sub stratosphere the new airships were buffeted by winds unknown to existing meterology. Engines seized and metalwork shattered in the bitter cold and crews in their aluminium alloy gondolas were crippled by altitude sickness and frostbite. Despite this, the 600' long L48 was despatched to bomb Britain in June 1917 only to be shot down by three fighters and crash at Theberton, near Saxmundham, in Suffolk. It was the last Zeppelin to be shot down over Britain.

The future of strategic bombing now lay with heavier than air machines, beginning with the twin engined Gotha IV.

THE ACHIEVEMENT

Count Zeppelin: "Stands London where it did my child?"

The Child: "Yes, Father, missed it again"

Count Zeppelin: "Then you had no success?"

The Child: "Oh, yes, Father; I got home again"