The German way of war took a historic and strategic turn during the Great War, incorporating attacks from the air using enormous zeppelins and airplanes in concert with submarine operations and ground offensives.
In World War I, the Imperial German Navy used strategic aerial bombing for the first time as part of an overall combined-arms strategy. The navy viewed Great Britain as the main enemy and strategic bombing as a way to complement submarine warfare.1
The campaign would first use submarines to choke off food and supplies and to retaliate against the Royal Navy’s blockade, which Germany regarded as an immoral, cowardly tactic against civilians. Second, an army offensive would force the British Expeditionary Force to consume more matériel, while strategic bombing would disrupt logistics by striking arms factories. Although civilian workers would be bombed, the German Navy saw this as more legitimate than starving innocent German women and children. This campaign heralded 20th-century ideas of total war and forever changed the nature of warfare.2
Although zeppelins were a symbol of national pride for the Germans, their technology was crude by present-day standards. The “zeps” had a volume of more than a million cubic feet of hydrogen gas contained in 19 individual bags made from cow bladders. They were more than 500 feet long and had a diameter of 61 feet. Powered by three motors, the aircraft cruised at 40 mph, had a top speed of 60 mph, and could reach an altitude of 11,600 feet. Later models incorporated improvements that allowed them to reach almost 20,000 feet.3
The German Navy planned the first aerial attacks for the night of 19–20 January 1915, when two zeppelins, L3 and L4, would bomb Britain.4 Each carried approximately two tons of bombs and a crew of 19 to 21 naval aviators, who manned seven or eight machine guns. The airships could easily reach Britain with a full load of bombs and return home.
The Germans Attack from the Air
Rain and snow squalls buffeted the two zeppelins as they approached the foggy English coast. The L3 followed the coast south, and at around 2025 that night she dropped nine bombs on Yarmouth, killing Samuel Smith, age 53, and 72-year-old Martha Taylor, the campaign’s first British fatalities; another three people were injured.5 The crew of the L4 flew across Norfolk and dropped scattered bombs on various towns, occasionally circling in an attempt to fix their position. They were attracted by the lights of Kings Lynn, and as the L4 approached the town, the commander reported that antiaircraft guns guided by searchlights “heavily attacked” his airship. At approximately 2315 he unloaded seven 50-kilogram high-explosive bombs and seven incendiary munitions on the city, killing 2 and injuring 13. However, there were neither guns nor searchlights in Kings Lynn, the heavy fog perhaps creating that illusion.6 Both airships returned to base safely, and the German government used their successful raid for propaganda purposes.7
Although the destruction of homes was notable, the incendiary bombs did not cause any great fires. The technology was such that the bombs sometimes did not ignite. The rudimentary craft could not bomb with much accuracy; however, area weapons such as incendiaries gave zeppelins, and later German bombers, their best chance at destroying targets. Aiming was unreliable, and high-explosive bombs often missed their targets. Even on good days, the early missions were difficult.8 The effects from this first bombing raid seem insignificant when compared to the aerial attacks of World War II, but this was the beginning of a long process.
The attacks by the L3 and L4 were not the first air strikes on cities. German Army zeppelins had bombed Liège, Belgium, in August 1914, indiscriminately killing and injuring civilians. Later that same month, German airplanes haphazardly bombed Paris, killing an elderly woman but inflicting only minor damage.9 The main difference between those raids and the German Navy attacks was the purpose: Army missions were part of a “frightfulness” policy—Schrecklichkeit—to cow civilian populations, while the navy envisioned a systematic bombing campaign as part of an overarching German combined-arms strategy to knock Britain out of the war.
Target: London
To have a meaningful air campaign, however, the Germans had to target London. Initially, it was off limits to both airplanes and zeppelins, but after French aircraft bombed Karlsruhe, Kaiser Wilhelm II reluctantly gave his permission. Even then, he set restrictions, forbidding attacks on royal residences, national shrines, the Tower of London, and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Of course, zeppelin crews were barely able to fix their own positions at night, let alone bomb a darkened city with any accuracy.10
As early as November 1914, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz had recognized the importance of bombing London, yet he disdained Schrecklichkeit, writing: “I am not in favour of ‘frightfulness.’ . . . Single bombs dropped from flying machines are wrong; they are odious when they hit and kill an old woman, and one gets used to them. If one could set fire to London in thirty places, then what in a small way is odious would retire before something fine and powerful. All that flies and creeps should be concentrated on that city.”11
The Chief of the Imperial Naval Staff, Admiral Henning von Holtzenhoff, agreed and wrote, “I hold the view that we should leave no means untried to crush England and that successful air raids on London, in view of the already existing nervousness of the people, would prove a valuable means to this end.”12
In the crosshairs of the Imperial Naval Staff were the British Admiralty, the War Office, the Telegraph Office, the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England, and main railway stations, as well as gas works and oil and petroleum tanks. To cripple London further, the deputy chief of the Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Paul Behncke, urged that they strike the “soft goods quarter” that was packed with warehouses filled with inflammable textiles. That “dangerous zone” in the heart of the city was the scene of the great London fire of 1897. Hoping to repeat such an inferno, planners targeted this neighborhood, and 70 percent of zeppelin ordnance was incendiary bombs. That area again would be consumed in “the Blitz” of 1940.13
The bombing campaign, centered on London, became part of a joint strategy supported by the chiefs of both the Naval and General staffs, who hoped it would break British will. It also sparked competition between the naval and military air services as to who would be the first to bomb the city.14 At the end of May 1915, a military airship, the LZ 38, was the first such craft to attack London successfully. Afterward, the naval airship service took up the challenge and began its onslaught of the city. On 8 September, a strike started numerous fires and destroyed about £500,000 worth of property.15
Slow-Moving and Loud
Zeppelins were loud at low altitude and slow moving, yet they were hard to see from the air and often from the ground because of haze. At first, they were hard to bring down. People had time to see or hear them approach and at times fled in panic. Air attacks caused work stoppages in war factories, too. Zeppelins that bombed from higher altitude were more difficult to hear approaching, or—to add a measure of stealth and surprise—they could cut their engines and glide over the target area. Despite their poor accuracy and great difficulty in navigating and fixing positions, the zeppelins were destructive and did cause terror. The Thames docks at the East End of the city were frequent targets.
Zeppelins could attack with impunity, since initially the British had almost no effective defenses against them and no means to strike back at the heart of Germany, although the British Admiralty, then led by Winston Churchill, did investigate the problem. Newspapers such as The Times lamented Britain’s “fundamental weakness in repelling the raiders.”16
By January 1916, the zeppelins had made 21 raids and dropped 1,900 bombs of more than 36 tons, killing 277 and wounding 645. Damage was estimated at £870,000. By 1918, zeppelins would kill a total of some 557 people and injure 1,358. Zeppelins also were effective reconnaissance platforms, and Britain had no such capability.17
German civilians could point with pride to the achievements of their naval aviators and had a sense that their military was winning the war, despite the stalemate on the Western Front. The public in Great Britain cried out for stronger defensive measures, and by June 1916 the British had developed a rudimentary air-defense system, the precursor to the one used in World War II, that included 12 pursuit squadrons consisting of 110 aircraft.18
Britain Reacts
As part of this network, the British created a reliable warning system based on sound detection and ranging. They deployed rings of observers, searchlights, and antiaircraft guns in belts around the capital and developed better pursuit aircraft for night fighting. These were equipped with luminous instrument displays, an upward-canted Lewis gun, and efficient incendiary and explosive bullets that could ignite the hydrogen gas and bring the zeppelins down in flames. Industry increased production of antiaircraft guns and shells, and Britain trained more pilots in night fighting. Of course, all these guns, aircraft, and personnel were needed by the army at the front, too.19
Although zeppelins were at last falling to British aircraft, German airmen still wanted to keep pressure on the British Isles. The Allies suffered massive casualties at the battles of Verdun and the Somme, causing shakeups in both British and French leadership. After the Somme debacle, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith resigned in the face of public outrage. King George V asked the Secretary of State for War, David Lloyd George, to form a government, and he cobbled together a coalition of various factions, which seemed weak to German eyes.20
As 1917 began, the German naval and military staffs had every reason to be confident. Russia was on the verge of collapse; its withdrawal from the war later that year would allow Germany to reinvigorate the Western Front with at least a million hardened combat veterans from the East. German military leaders convinced the Kaiser to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in an all-out land, sea, and air effort to strangle Britain before the unprepared United States could make an impact on the war.21
Enter the Airplanes
The German Navy’s prominent chief of its airship division, Peter Strasser, pressed for more attacks with the new V-class zeppelin that could reach heights of 16,000 to 20,000 feet. Although naval airship attacks continued, since they were increasingly at risk, the Imperial Staff wanted something less vulnerable to complement the airships and attack both day and night: airplanes. It reasoned that if it concentrated military and naval air power in a final major campaign in conjunction with unrestricted submarine warfare, the starving population would pressure Lloyd George’s “weak” government to pull out of the war.
German industry accommodated, producing some of the largest winged bombers up to that time for the military air service—the Grossflugzeuge (large aircraft) and Riesenflugzeuge (giant aircraft, or R-planes). The former category included the twin-engine Götha G.IV, which had a 78-foot wingspan and a length of 39 feet, cruised at 80 mph, and carried up to 1,100 pounds of bombs. An R-plane, the enormous four-engine Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI had a 138-foot wingspan and 73-foot length, cruised at about 80 mph, and carried 4,400 pounds of bombs. These were precursors to the big bombers of the subsequent war, and the Germans planned to use them to break the will of the British people in a joint systematic strategic-bombing/submarine campaign.22
Götha raids began on 25 May 1917, with the bombers flying in daylight in large formations. That initial attack caused more casualties than all the zeppelin raids combined. Göthas next struck London on 13 June. Although the attacks were not crippling, anxiety gripped London, and many workers stayed away from East End factories. A surprise raid on 7 July revealed how utterly unprepared the British were to confront bomber formations. A newspaperman reported: “The raiders have London at their mercy, there are no defenses against them.” The city was under aerial bombardment in squadron strength on an unprecedented average of once every two weeks. Riots broke out in London, the people demanding that Britain retaliate.23
When U.S. Navy Vice Admiral William S. Sims had met with First Sea Lord Admiral John Jellicoe in April to discuss U.S. naval support in the First Battle of the Atlantic, Sims was appalled to learn that unrestricted submarine warfare was working and that Britain was losing the war. The situation was dire: The British only had food reserves for about six to eight weeks, since they obtained “from overseas the larger part of their food and a considerable part of their raw materials.” Munitions production also declined, as night-shift workers avoided the factories because of the German bombers. Unless some effective method were found to stop the Germans, Great Britain would have to surrender to Germany around 1 November 1917.24
In response to public outcry, the British government recalled three pursuit squadrons from the Western Front to defend the homeland. It could not have come at a worse time, since the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was in a close fight for air superiority with the Germans during “another bloody April.” The loss of those squadrons put the RFC at a decided disadvantage, while the recalled squadrons were unable to stop the German bombers.25
By late summer, British air-defense aircraft were finally able to begin intercepting the bombers, but only as they were heading home near the coast—after they had struck their targets. To avoid losses, the Göthas switched to night attacks. R-plane raids on England, also flown at night, began in September. London was a city under siege. Shops and businesses closed early, while people left the city. Some 300,000 took shelter in “the Tube” (subway) stations before nightfall.26
The British demanded retaliation to punish Germany for its raids and to defend Britain through a bomber counteroffensive. They were encouraged by Prime Minister Lloyd George, who remarked in 1917, “The bomber will always get through.” Other reputable leaders believed strategic bombing could be decisive in war, such as General Jan Christian Smuts, Sir William Weir, and Churchill, so the British government formed the Independent Air Force to launch strategic bombing attacks against Germany.27
The Future Face of War
Independent of the army at the front and commanded by Marshal Hugh Trenchard, the force was predicated on two ideas: first, “the bomber will always get through,” and second, the only effective counter to a German strategic bombing campaign was a corresponding British effort. But assets were constantly diverted to support the ground war, though some politicians wrote to Trenchard suggesting he use incendiaries to burn down German cities. Some 31 squadrons were planned by the end of October to strike systematically at German industrial towns on or near the Rhine. The British also built an equivalent to the German R-planes, the Handley Page V/1500, which could carry 7,500 pounds of ordnance. Three were fueled and loaded in Norfolk for the first British raid on Berlin when the Armistice stopped the war.28
The only thing that stemmed history’s first systematic strategic bombing campaign was the German Army, which changed the airmen’s mission to support beleaguered troops at the front. Although the German High Command could glean intelligence from aerial reconnaissance, its intelligence apparatus lacked the sophistication to piece together just how close Germany had come to knocking Britain out of the war. A skillful U.S. Navy negated the U-boat menace, while fresh U.S. troops arrived to help wear down the weary German war machine.
Like the Nazi “V-weapons” of World War II, the Götha and R-plane bombers of the Great War came too late and in too few numbers to save Germany from defeat. But they did portend future air war.29
1. Raymond H. Fredette, The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain, 1917–1918 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1976), xvii–xviii; 233–34; John Lukacs, A Short History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013), 104–6; John Morris, German Air Raids on Britain, 1914–1918 (Dallington, UK: Naval and Military Press, 1993, first published in 1925 by Sampson, Low, Marston, & Co., Ltd.), 28–29.
2. Hew Strachan, The First World War (New York: The Penguin Group, 2003), 222–25; Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 29, 31–33.
3. John H. Morrow Jr., The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 18.
4. Ibid., 108.
5. Morris, German Air Raids, 17–19; see also BBC News Norfolk at http://bbc.com.co.uk/norfolk/.
6. Morris, German Air Raids, 17–19.
7. Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 108; see Morris, German Air Raids, 17–19, especially a War Office map, 18–19.
8. Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 109; Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 33.
9. Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 69; Historic Wings, http://fly.historicwings.com/2012/08/you-can-do-nothing-but-surrender/.
10. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 156, 158, 160–163.
11. Ibid., 160; Williamson Murray, The War in the Air: 1914–1945 (London: Harper Collins, 2005), 73.
12. Morris, German Air Raids, 11.
13. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 32, 160–61. For modern similarities in categories of targets selected, see John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1988), 33–55.
14. Morris, German Air Raids, 29–30; Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 109–10, 273–74.
15. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 160–61; Morris, German Air Raids, 55–58; Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 109–10.
16. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 31, 112, 158.
17. Strachan, The First World War, 55–56; Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 63, 87, 91–92, 262.
18. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 63, 87, 91–92, 262.
19. Ibid., 62–64, 126–28.
20. Strachan, The First World War, 237–38.
21. William Sowden Sims, The Victory at Sea (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984, first published by Doubleday, Page & Co., 1920), xv–xvi; William R. Griffiths, The Great War, “The West Point Military History Series,” Thomas E. Griess, ed. (Wayne, NJ: Avery Publishing Group, 1986), 145–46; Strachan, The First World War, 226–227; Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 72–73.
22. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, xvi, 37–39, 130, 132–34.
23. Ibid., xvi, 75–76, 80, 153. See also 123–26.
24. Sims, The Victory at Sea, 9–12, 23; Cablegram, Ambassador Page to Secretary of State, 27 April 1917, cited in Sims, 48–49; Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 148.
25. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 64-67.
26. Ibid., 138, 143.
27. Ibid., xviii; Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor, “An Afterword,” in Fredette, The Sky on Fire, 255.
28. Ibid., 151–55, 207, 216, 221, 225–26; Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 319.
29. Fredette, The Sky on Fire, xviii.