ZEPPELIN RAIDS ON FRANCE AND ENGLAND
The idea of warfare in the air has been a dream of romancers from
a period long before Jules Verne. Indeed, balloons were used for
observation purposes in the eighteenth century by the French armies.
The crude balloon of that period, in a more developed form, was used
in the Franco-Prussian War, and during the siege of Paris by its
assistance communication was kept up between Paris and the outside
world. Realizing its possibilities inventors had been trying to develop
a balloon which could be propelled against the wind and so guided that
explosives could be dropped upon a hostile army. Partially successful
dirigible balloons have been occasionally exhibited for a number of
years.
The idea of such a balloon took a strong hold upon the imagination of
the German army staff long before the Great War, and Count Ferdinand
Zeppelin gave the best years of his life to its development. From
the beginning he met with great difficulties. His first ships proved
mechanical failures, and after these difficulties were overcome he met
with a series of accidents which almost put an end to his efforts.
By popular subscription, and by government support, he was able to
continue, and when the war began Germany had thirty-five dirigible
balloons of the Zeppelin and other types, many of them as much as 490
feet long.
The Zeppelin balloon, called the Zeppelin from the name of its
inventor, was practically a vast ship, capable of carrying a load of
about fifteen thousand pounds. It would carry a crew of twenty men or
more, fuel for the engines, provisions, a wireless installation, and
armament with ammunition. For a journey of twenty hours such a vessel
would need at least seven thousand pounds of fuel. It would probably
be able to carry about two tons of explosives. These Zeppelins could
travel great distances. Before the war one of them flew from Lake
Constance to Berlin, a continuous flight of about one thousand miles,
in thirty-one hours.
These great aerial warships were given a thorough trial by the Germans.
They disliked to admit that they had made a costly mistake in adding
them to their armament. It soon turned out, however, that the Zeppelins
were practically useless in battle. Whatever they could do, either for
scouting purposes or in dropping explosives behind the enemy’s lines,
could be better done by the airplane. The French and the English, who
before the war had decided that the airplane was the more important
weapon, were right. But the Germans did not give up their costly toy so
easily, and they determined to use it in the bombardment of cities and
districts situated far away from the German line, in dropping bombs,
not upon fortifications, or armed camps where they might meet with
resistance, but upon peaceful non-belligerents in the streets of great
unfortified cities.
It was their policy of frightfulness once again. And once again they
had made a mistake. The varied expeditions of the Zeppelin airships
sent from Germany to bombard Paris, or to cross the Channel and, after
dropping bombs on seaside resorts to wander over the city of London in
the hope of spreading destruction there, did little real damage and
their net effects, from a military point of view, were practically nil.
The first Zeppelin raid upon England took place on January 19, 1915.
The Zeppelins passed over the cities of Yarmouth, Cromer, Sherringham
and King’s Lynn. On this expedition there were two Zeppelins. They
reached the coast of Norfolk about 8:30 in the evening and then steered
northwest across the country toward King’s Lynn, dropping bombs as they
went. In these towns there were no military stations and the damage
suffered was very slight. Nine persons were killed, all civilians. This
raid was followed by many others, which at first usually wasted their
ammunition, dropping their bombs on small country towns or in empty
fields.
On the 31st of May an expedition reached London and killed six persons
in the east end. The result of this raid was to stir the English to
intense indignation. Mobs gathered in the London streets, and persons
suspected of being Germans, or with German sympathies, were attacked.
Other raids followed, none of them doing serious military damage, but
usually killing or wounding innocent non-combatants. The stupid policy
of secrecy which they maintained during the first year of the war
unfortunately permitted great exaggeration of the real damages which
they had suffered.
During the first year, according to Mr. Balfour, in eighteen Zeppelin
raids there were only seventy-one civilian adults and eighteen children
killed, one hundred and eighty-nine civilian adults and thirty-one
children wounded. No soldier or sailor was killed and only seven
wounded.
In France similar attacks had been made on Paris and Calais. On the
20th of March two Zeppelins dropped bombs on Paris, but Paris, unlike
London, was a fortified city, and the sky soldiers were driven off by
the anti-aircraft guns. The French also devised an efficient method of
defense. On the appearance of an airship great searchlights flashed
into the air and the enemy was made at once a target, not only for
the guns of all the forts, but also for airplane attack. In order to
attack successfully a Zeppelin it was necessary that an airplane should
attain a position above the enemy. For an airplane to rise to such a
height time was required, as the airplane rises slowly. The French,
therefore, devised a scheme by which two or more airplanes were kept
constantly circling at a very great height above the city. Relays were
formed which relieved each other at regular intervals. When an airship
approached it would therefore be compelled in the first place to pass
through the fire of the guns on the great forts, and then would find in
the air above airplanes in waiting. The Germans, therefore, practically
gave up attacks upon Paris. They were dangerous.
[Illustration: GUARDING PARIS FROM THE HUN
Observation post fitted with instruments for gauging the height and
speed of enemy aircraft, a giant searchlight, a listening post and a
“75” gun installed on the outskirts of Paris.]
London, practically unarmed, seemed to them an easy mark. But the
British Lion was now awake. The English had been taken by surprise.
They attempted at first, in an unorganized way, to protect their city,
and, though occasionally successful in destroying an airship through
the gallantry of some individual hero, they soon found that their
defense must be organized, and Admiral Sir Percy Scott was entrusted
with the task. Regulations were introduced whose object was to darken
London. Lights were extinguished on the streets and screened on the
waterfront. Illumination for advertising purposes was forbidden;
windows were covered, so that London became at night a mass of gloom.
The Zeppelins, compelled to fly at a very great height, because of
anti-aircraft guns, were blinded. As in Paris airplanes were constantly
kept on the alert and searchlights and anti-airship guns placed at
every convenient point.
The suggestion was made that the English should undertake reprisals,
but the suggestion was strongly opposed on the ground that the
British should not be a “party to a line of conduct condemned by every
right-thinking man of every civilized nation.”
The effect of the English improved defenses was soon obvious, when the
German expeditions began to lose airship after airship. Under the new
régime, when such an attack was signaled, the whole city immediately
received warning and the sky was swept by dozens of searchlights. Safe
retreats were ready for those who cared to use them, but ordinarily the
whole population rushed out to watch the spectacle. Airplanes would
dash at the incoming foe; the searchlights would be switched off and
the guns be silent to avoid hindering the aviators. Then would come the
attack and Zeppelin after Zeppelin would be seen falling, a great mass
of flames, while their companions would hurry back across the Channel.
Even there they would not be safe, for many an airship was brought down
on English fields, or on the waters of the sea.
The Germans, however, did not confine their policy of frightfulness
in the air to the performances of their Zeppelins. Before the
Zeppelins had crossed the Channel their airplanes had visited England.
On Christmas Day, 1914, an airplane attacked Dover, doing, however,
no damage. Other airplanes also visited the British Isles from time
to time, dropping bombs, and as the Germans began to lose faith in
the efficacy of their Zeppelin fleets they began more and more to
substitute airplanes for their airships.
On some of these expeditions much more damage was done than had ever
been done by the Zeppelins. The airplane expedition grew serious in the
year 1917; between May 23d and June 16th of that year there were five
such aerial attacks. The airplanes could not only move with greater
speed but with better direction. An attack on May 25th resulted in the
killing of seventy-six persons and the injuring of one hundred and
seventy-four, the principal victims being women and children. This was
at the town of Folkestone on the southeast coast. In this attack there
were about sixteen airplanes, and the time of the attack was not more
than three minutes. Scarcely any part of Folkestone escaped injury. The
attack was methodically organized. Four separate squadrons passed over
the city, following each other at short intervals. It was impossible
to tell when the attack would end, and people in shelters or cellars
were kept waiting for hours without being able to feel certain that the
danger had passed.
It is probable that one of the motives of these raids was to keep at
home fleets of English airplanes which might be more useful on the
front. Indeed, many Englishmen, alarmed by the damage, urged such
a policy, but the good sense of the English leaders prevented such
a mistake from being made. Pitiful as must have been the suffering
in individual cases, the whole of the damage caused by the German
frightfulness was but a trifle as compared with the usefulness of
the English air-fleets when directly sent against the German armies.
Nevertheless, every squadron of German airplanes sent to England
was attacked by British aviators, and in those attacks the Germans
suffered many losses.
The worst raid of all those made was one on June 13th, which was
directed upon the city of London. On that occasion ninety-seven persons
were killed and four hundred and thirty-seven wounded. These airplane
operations differed from the Zeppelin expeditions in being carried on
in the daytime, and this raid took place while the schools were in
session and large numbers of people were in the street. Only one of
the attacking airplanes was brought down. The raiding machines were of
a new type, about three times the size of the ordinary machine, and
there were twenty-two such machines in the squadron. The battle in the
air was a striking spectacle and in spite of the danger was watched
by millions of the population. The raiders were easily seen and their
flight seemed like a flight of swallows as they dived and swerved
through the air.
The raids on England were not the only raids conducted by the Germans
during the war. Paris suffered, but as soon as the warning sounded, the
sky over the city was alive with defense airplanes. An attack on the
French capital took place on the 27th of July and began about midnight.
The German airmen, however, never got further than a suburban section
of the city, and their bombardment caused but little damage. In one of
the suburbs, however, a German flyer dropped four bombs on a Red Cross
Hospital, killing two doctors, a chemist and a male nurse, and injuring
a number of patients. The raider was flying low and the distinguishing
marks of the hospital were plainly apparent.
Almost every day during the bitter fighting of 1918, reports came in
that Allied hospitals had been bombed by German raiders. Attacks on
hospitals were, of course, strictly forbidden by the Hague Convention,
and they caused bitter indignation. Such attacks were of a piece
with those upon hospital ships which were made from time to time.
From the very beginning of the war the Germans could not understand
the psychology of the people of the Allied countries. They were not
fighting slaves, ready to cower under the lash, but with free people,
ready to fight for liberty and roused to fury by lawlessness.