First airship raid on London

Late in the evening of 31 May 1915 the German army airship LZ 38, commanded by Captain Erich Linnarz, appeared over London. Within a quarter of an hour or so it dropped more than a hundred high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the northern and eastern districts of the city. Seven people were killed, including three children, and 35 were injured. It was the first air raid on the capital of Great Britain, which until then had seemed beyond the reach of the war.

London as a target

German naval airships had bombed England for the first time in January 1915. For a long time, however, Emperor Wilhelm II refused to permit an attack on London, partly because of his relatives in the British royal family. Only at the beginning of May 1915 did he allow the city to be bombed, but only east of the Tower.

The army, which in March had sent airships over Paris, got ahead of the navy in this. Its newest airship, LZ 38, was based at Evere near Brussels, from where England was much closer than from the bases on the North Sea. Linnarz had already attacked the English coast in it several times: in the night of 29–30 April he bombed Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds, and in May Southend-on-Sea and Ramsgate. Several people were killed in these raids.

Bombs on the East End

On 31 May two army airships were to have set out to raid London, but the second, LZ 37, turned back because of damage. LZ 38 crossed the English coast near Margate at about 9.40 p.m. and headed for the Thames estuary. At about 11 p.m. it was over Stoke Newington in the north of the city. From there it flew south and east, over Shoreditch, Whitechapel and Stepney, and then over Stratford and Leytonstone. According to British figures it dropped 91 incendiary bombs, 28 high-explosive bombs and two grenades, about 1.4 tonnes in all.

The first victims died in Stoke Newington. An incendiary bomb set fire to the house of the Leggatt family. Three-year-old Elsie was killed on the spot, and her eleven-year-old sister Elizabeth died of burns. In Balls Pond Road a married couple, Henry and Caroline Good, were killed, and in Whitechapel eight-year-old Samuel Reuben. Sixteen-year-old Leah Lehrman died in hospital, and 67-year-old Eleanor Willis two days after the raid, as was ruled, as a result of shock. The material damage was estimated at about £18,600.

A helpless defence

London’s defences proved powerless. The searchlights failed to pick up the airship, and the anti-aircraft guns in the city remained silent. Aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service flew a dozen or so sorties, but only one pilot sighted the airship, and he had to break off the chase because of engine failure. Another aircraft crashed on landing at Hendon, and its pilot was killed. LZ 38 returned to Belgium unhindered.

After the raid

After the raid the government imposed strict restrictions on the press. From then on newspapers could publish only official communiqués, without the names of streets and districts, so as not to help the Germans assess the effects of the bombing.

LZ 38 did not survive long: in the night of 6–7 June it was destroyed in its shed at Evere by the bombs of British airmen. The raid of 31 May, however, opened a campaign of bombing against London that continued intermittently until 1918. From 1917 German bomber aircraft also came over London. For the first time in history the capital of Great Britain had become a target of air warfare.