Airship raid and the downing of SL 11

On the afternoon of 2 September 1916 the largest raid of airships the Germans had so far sent against England took off from bases in Germany. According to the British official history of the air war, H.A. Jones’s The War in the Air, there were 16 airships: 12 belonging to the navy and 4 to the army. The sole target of the whole raid was London. The British chronology of the war speaks of fourteen airships attacking England, which was in any case the largest number in a single raid. For the Germans, however, the night ended in failure. At about 2.15 a.m. on 3 September Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson shot down the army airship SL 11 in flames over the village of Cuffley. It was the first German airship destroyed over British soil.

The raid on London

According to Jones, the German command may have been encouraged by the fact that a week earlier, on the night of 24–25 August, the naval airship L 31 of Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Mathy had bombed the suburbs of London without much hindrance. Now there was to be a massed attack on the city itself. The Admiralty learned of the airships’ departure at about five in the afternoon and warned the east coast. The weather did not favour the raiders: over the North Sea rain and snow scattered the force. None of the naval airships reached London. According to Jones, 261 high-explosive and 202 incendiary bombs fell on English soil that night, about 16 tons in all, but none of them hit the City of London. Four people were killed and 12 injured. The material damage was negligible.

The farthest to get was SL 11 of Hauptmann Wilhelm Schramm, a wooden-framed airship built by the Schütte-Lanz company and belonging to the army. At about 10.40 p.m. it crossed the coast at Foulness Point in Essex and, in a wide arc over Essex and Hertfordshire, went round London to approach it from the north-west. At 1.10 a.m. it was over St Albans, and ten minutes later it dropped its first bombs on London Colney. More fell on villages and suburbs to the north, from North Mymms to Southgate. Over Wood Green searchlights caught it and the anti-aircraft guns opened a furious fire. The airship turned towards Edmonton and Ponders End, then dropped its last bombs along Enfield Highway. According to Jones, none of the roughly 60 bombs dropped by SL 11 killed or injured anyone, and the anti-aircraft shells burst close but did not hit.

Three drums of ammunition

B.E.2c aircraft from the three flights of No. 39 (Home Defence) Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, based at the airfields of Hainault Farm, Suttons Farm and North Weald Bassett, took off against the airships. Each flight sent up one aircraft every two hours. Lieutenant Robinson took off from Suttons Farm near Hornchurch at 11.08 p.m. with orders to patrol the line to Joyce Green on the Thames. He was a 21-year-old officer born in India who in 1915 had flown in France as an observer and been wounded, and after pilot training had joined the defence of London. In April 1916 he had already attacked an airship without success. That night, at about 1.10 a.m., he spotted an airship in the searchlights south-east of Woolwich, according to Jones the army’s LZ 98, but after a quarter of an hour’s pursuit lost it in the clouds.

At about 2.05 a.m. the searchlights caught SL 11 over north-east London. Robinson dived to gain speed and flew beneath the airship through the fire of his own guns. His Lewis gun was loaded with new ammunition: alternating Brock and Pomeroy explosive rounds. In his report he wrote that he fired the first drum along the whole length of the hull, from bow to stern, and the second along its side, in both cases with no visible effect. The third he concentrated on one spot, under the rear of the airship, from about 150 metres or less. “I had hardly finished the drum before I saw the part fired at glow. In a few seconds the whole rear part was blazing,” he reported. The burning airship fell on a field near Cuffley, north of London. The whole crew was killed, according to Robinson’s biographers 16 men including the commander. The wooden frame burned on the ground for almost two hours. Robinson, who was running short of fuel, landed at Suttons Farm at 2.45 a.m.

A glow over London

The burning airship was visible from much of London and its surroundings. Crowds of Londoners, woken by the guns and searchlights, cheered in the streets. Its fate was also seen by the crews of several naval airships that were circling over England. According to Jones, “their hearts failed them”: they dropped their bombs at random, merely to lighten their ships and climb faster, and then turned for home. One of the army airships, LZ 90, lost that night its observation car, lowered on a cable beneath the clouds, which fell near Mistley in Essex.

The next day tens of thousands of people flocked to Cuffley, and fragments of the wreck were later sold by the Red Cross in aid of wounded soldiers. For a long time the British authorities and press called the downed ship “Zeppelin L 21”, although they knew it was a Schütte-Lanz. According to some historians, the destruction of a hated “Zeppelin” served propaganda better than a little-known design by a rival firm.

The first Victoria Cross over England

Robinson became a national hero overnight. On 5 September the award of the Victoria Cross, the highest British gallantry decoration, was announced, and on 9 September he received it from King George V at Windsor Castle. He was the first serviceman to receive it for combat fought over Great Britain. He was also given large cash rewards, according to his biographers about £3,500 in all.

For the air defences, subordinated to the War Office since February, the night of 2 September was a turning point. In March Second Lieutenant Alfred Brandon had failed to set the airship L 15 alight with bombs and darts. Now it had been shown that a night fighter armed with a gun firing explosive and incendiary ammunition could destroy a hydrogen-filled airship. Jones called the downing of SL 11 “the beginning of the end of the airship menace”. After this loss the German army practically gave up airship raids on Great Britain. Peter Strasser’s navy, however, intended to continue the attacks.