First airship raid on England

On the evening of 19 January 1915 two German naval airships, L 3 and L 4, appeared over the county of Norfolk in eastern England. They dropped bombs on Great Yarmouth, King’s Lynn and several coastal villages. Four people were killed and more than a dozen wounded. It was the first airship raid on Great Britain and the first in which people were killed on British soil. A third airship, L 6, turned back because of a breakdown before it reached England.

The Kaiser’s consent

The British had been expecting Zeppelins since the first days of the war. In December 1914 a German airship was sighted off the mouth of the Humber, and German seaplanes from Belgium dropped the first bombs near Dover. Real airship raids, however, had still not taken place. The obstacle was Kaiser Wilhelm II, who for a long time would not agree to the bombing of the British Isles.

The naval command obtained his consent only at the beginning of January 1915. It was limited: the airships could attack docks, depots and military installations on the English coast and on the lower Thames, but not London. Peter Strasser, head of the naval airship service, had long been preparing for such attacks. The targets of the first expedition were the area of the mouth of the Humber with the port of Hull, and the Thames estuary.

Take-off and the flight over the sea

On 19 January at about 11 a.m. L 3 and L 4 took off from the base at Fuhlsbüttel near Hamburg. L 3 was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Hans (Johann) Fritz, and L 4 by Kapitänleutnant Magnus Graf von Platen-Hallermund. Each carried eight 50-kilogram high-explosive bombs and incendiary bombs (sources give different numbers of them). Their target was the Humber. A third airship, L 6, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Horst von Buttlar, set out from the base at Nordholz near Cuxhaven. Strasser himself was on board, and the airship was to attack the Thames estuary. After several hours of flight, near the Dutch island of Terschelling, a crankshaft broke in one of L 6’s engines. In bad weather Buttlar and Strasser decided to turn back.

The other two airships flew all day over the North Sea in bad weather. An ever stronger north wind drove them southwards. When they reached the English coast after dark, they found themselves not over the Humber but over Norfolk, more than 100 kilometres further south. At about 8 p.m. they crossed the coastline between Cromer and Great Yarmouth. There they separated: L 3 turned south, and L 4 west, along the north coast of the county.

Bombs on Great Yarmouth

L 3 reached Great Yarmouth, a fishing port at the mouth of the river Yare, less than an hour after crossing the coast. Accounts give times from about 8.25 to about 8.45 p.m. One of the bombs exploded on St Peter’s Plain. It killed the 53-year-old shoemaker Samuel Smith and the 72-year-old Martha Taylor, who was on her way home for supper. They were the first people in Great Britain killed as a result of an air raid. Several other people were wounded, and the explosions destroyed or damaged nearby houses. After dropping its bombs L 3 flew out to sea and headed back to Germany.

The wanderings of L 4 and King’s Lynn

L 4 circled over Norfolk for almost three hours. At about 8.30 p.m. it dropped an incendiary bomb on Sheringham. It fell between houses and did not go off. Further bombs fell near Brancaster and Heacham and on Snettisham, where an explosion damaged the church and nearby houses. Platen-Hallermund was convinced he was bombing towns on the Humber. In his report he wrote of attacking places on the south bank of its estuary.

The airship passed not far from Sandringham House, the country residence of King George V. Rumours soon spread in Britain that the Germans had wanted to attack the royal family. According to most studies, however, this was chance: the crew did not know exactly where they were and navigated by landmarks visible from above, among them a railway line.

At about 11 p.m. L 4 reached King’s Lynn, a port on the mouth of the river Great Ouse. Bombs fell on fields, allotments, terraced houses, workshops and the dock quays. The worst damage was in Bentinck Street. The 14-year-old Percy Goate, whose house was hit by a bomb, was killed, as was Alice Gazley, the young widow of a soldier killed on the Western Front. More than a dozen people were wounded. L 4 then flew out to sea. Both airships returned to Germany the next day.

Toll and reactions

In the whole raid four people were killed and sixteen wounded. Material damage was estimated at just under £8,000. Militarily the expedition brought the Germans no benefit at all: not one target on Strasser’s list was hit, and the airships did not even know which towns they had bombed. The British defences proved helpless: no effective attempt to intercept the airships could be made.

In Britain the raid caused outrage. The coroner at Great Yarmouth called the deaths of Samuel Smith and Martha Taylor the murder of defenceless people. The press called the airship crews “baby killers”, and the image of a Zeppelin over an English town soon appeared on recruiting posters.

The start of a campaign

Neither airship lasted long. Less than a month later, on 17 February 1915, during a reconnaissance flight over the North Sea, L 3 and L 4 were driven by a snowstorm over Denmark and had to make emergency landings. The crew of L 3 burned their airship on the island of Fanø and were interned. L 4, after its forced landing on the Danish coast, rose again with four men on board and was lost over the sea.

The raid of 19 January nevertheless opened a campaign that lasted, with breaks, until 1918. From the end of May 1915 airships also began to bomb London. In more than fifty raids over 500 people were killed in Great Britain, most of them civilians, and more than a thousand were wounded. The war, which until then had been fought at the front and at sea, for the first time truly reached the homes of the inhabitants of the British Isles.