Airship LZ 77 shot down

On the evening of 21 February 1916, the day on which the Germans began the Battle of Verdun, French anti-aircraft artillery shot down the German army airship LZ 77. The burning airship came down at about 9.15 p.m. in the fields of the commune of Brabant-le-Roi, a few kilometres from Revigny-sur-Ornain in the Meuse department. The whole crew was killed, together with the commander, Captain Alfred Horn. The British chronology of the war places this event on the night of 21/22 February, but French sources, including the captions to photographs of the wreck in the French army archives, give the evening of 21 February.

LZ 77 was an army airship of the P type, which first took to the air in August 1915. She was based in occupied Namur. According to German records she took part in six raids on England and France, dropping a total of more than 12 tonnes of bombs. At the end of January she was to bomb Paris together with LZ 79, but according to French studies turned back before reaching the target. On 21 February she was ordered to bomb the railway junction at Revigny. Through the area of Revigny and nearby Bar-le-Duc ran the lines by which the French brought reinforcements and supplies to the Verdun sector, and the German command wanted to paralyse them in the first days of the offensive. That same night other army airships also flew over the French rear.

Revigny was defended by the 17th section of motor anti-aircraft guns, that is 75 mm guns mounted on De Dion-Bouton lorry chassis, supported by a searchlight. When the searchlight picked the airship out of the darkness, the gunners of Adjudant Gramling (in some sources Grameling) fired, according to the section’s war diary, 26 rounds. The 24th, an incendiary shell, struck the rear part of the hull at a range of about 3.6 kilometres, while the airship was flying at a height of about 2,000 metres. The hydrogen in the gas cells caught fire, and the airship began slowly to descend, lighting up the surrounding area. According to accounts of the time, the bombs she had not had time to drop exploded only on hitting the ground, and the crew of another airship, flying a dozen or so kilometres away, saw her fall.

The number of dead is uncertain. The British aviation weekly Flight, in its list of losses for 1916, gave 15 killed, while French studies speak of 22 crew members. The names of a dozen or so of them are known. The bodies were so charred that they most probably could not be identified, and today only the commander’s grave is known. The wreckage of the airship lay near a level crossing, and photographs of it went round the French press. Adjudant Gramling received the Médaille militaire, and the gun-layer Pennetier, who fired the decisive shot, and other gunners the Croix de guerre.

In France this was considered the first great success of the motor anti-aircraft guns. According to French studies, by the end of the war they had shot down more aircraft than any other anti-aircraft weapon. For the German army, which was having growing difficulties with its airships, the loss of LZ 77 was further proof that over well-defended targets large, slow aircraft filled with hydrogen were very easy targets. In the summer of 1917 the German army disbanded its airship service.