Airship raid on Naples

At about one in the morning on 11 March 1918 the German naval airship L 59 appeared over Naples. For roughly 40 minutes it dropped bombs on the city. It was the first air raid on Naples. Sixteen people were killed and several dozen wounded. The port, the naval base and the industrial works that were meant to be the targets of the raid were hardly damaged. The official British chronology of the war of 1922 places the raid under 25 March and states that the airship came from the coast of Dalmatia. German and Italian sources agree, however, that the raid took place on the night of 10–11 March and that L 59 took off from Bulgaria.

From the Balkans to the Bay of Naples

L 59 was the same airship that in November 1917 had flown with supplies for Lettow-Vorbeck and turned back over the Sudan. After its return from Africa it was converted into a bomber and used for raids in the Mediterranean. It was still commanded by Kapitänleutnant Ludwig Bockholt (PL). On the morning of 10 March the airship took off from its base near Yambol in Bulgaria. According to Italian studies, it flew over Serbia and Albania, crossed the Adriatic Sea and the Apennines, and arrived over Naples at an altitude of about 4,800 metres. According to the same studies, it carried about 6.4 tonnes of bombs. Its targets were the port and the naval base and the industrial works west of the city: the steelworks at Bagnoli and the Armstrong works at Pozzuoli, which worked for the military.

Bombs on the city

In the darkness and from such a great height the crew miscalculated. The bombs fell mainly on residential districts: on Granili in the Sant’Erasmo area beyond the port, on the Quartieri Spagnoli, around Piazza Municipio, Via Toledo and the Galleria Umberto I, and on the hill of Posillipo. Bombs also fell near the churches of Santa Brigida and San Nicola da Tolentino. The airship hit the Bagnoli steelworks only as it was leaving and, according to Italian accounts, damaged them only slightly. All the victims were civilians. Five people were killed in the Granili area and eleven on Posillipo. The number of wounded is given variously: most often about 40, in some studies 30, and in one, which counts the two districts separately, over 40 in the Granili area and 35 on Posillipo.

The city’s defences failed. Searchlights and observation posts detected the airship but could not reach it, and the anti-aircraft artillery (PL), according to some accounts, did not fire a single shot. Italian studies write that the commander of the anti-aircraft defences was not at his post and that the city authorities had not ordered a blackout. Naples lay far from the front, and no raid was expected there. L 59 returned unhindered to Yambol.

After the raid

Soon after the raid the commanders of the Naples anti-aircraft defences were dismissed, and according to some sources so were the commanders at Foggia and Termoli. A squadron of fighter seaplanes was sent to defend the Bay of Naples. The raid had no military significance, but it showed that German airships could reach cities hundreds of kilometres from the front and from their own bases. For L 59 it was one of its last flights. On 20 March it had to break off a flight to Port Said because of strong winds, and on 7 April it went down in flames with its whole crew over the Strait of Otranto, on its way to Malta.