First airship raid on Paris

On the night of 20–21 March 1915 German airships appeared over Paris for the first time. They dropped bombs on the north-western districts of the city and on the communes around Paris. According to most accounts the damage was slight, but the French capital learned that the threat from the air had not ended when the front was pushed back.

An army expedition

Paris already knew aerial bombs. On 30 August 1914 a German Taube aircraft dropped the first bombs on the city, and over the following days, as the Germans approached the capital, the raids were repeated almost daily. They stopped with the start of the Battle of the Marne. Now, half a year later, far larger machines were sent against Paris.

The airships that set out on the evening of 20 March belonged to the German army, not to the navy, whose airships had bombed eastern England in January. Wilhelm II still would not allow London to be attacked, and Paris lay within range of the bases in occupied Belgium. From airfields near Brussels and from Gontrode near Ghent the Zeppelins Z X (LZ 29) and LZ 35 took off, together with the airship SL 2 built by the Schütte-Lanz company. Some French sources speak of four airships. SL 2 was fired on and damaged over the front line, so instead of Paris it bombed Compiègne.

Bombs over Batignolles

The two remaining airships reached Paris after midnight. Residents were woken by firemen’s bugles sounding the alarm. Searchlights swept the sky, and anti-aircraft guns in the forts around the city opened fire. The airships dropped several bombs on the 17th and 18th arrondissements, around Batignolles and Montmartre. Under fire, they turned back and over the western suburbs got rid of the rest of their load. Several dozen high-explosive and incendiary bombs fell on Neuilly-sur-Seine, Levallois-Perret, Asnières-sur-Seine, Colombes, Courbevoie and other places. They destroyed several houses.

Figures for the casualties vary exceptionally widely. According to the Musée de l’Armée in Paris, three people were wounded in the capital itself, French Wikipedia speaks of nine wounded, and most English-language accounts of one killed and eight wounded. The archive material of the City of Paris, on the other hand, gives as many as 24 killed and 41 wounded. This last figure differs markedly from the others and is not confirmed in other studies.

Z X wrecked

The defence of Paris proved more effective than that of London in later years. The airships had to fly over the ring of forts, from which they could be fired on without endangering the city. LZ 35 took many hits, but returned to base. Z X was badly damaged. The crew threw out everything they could to keep the airship in the air, but it kept losing height. On the German side of the front, near Saint-Quentin, Z X made a forced landing. The crew survived, but the airship could not be repaired and was dismantled on the spot.

The raid of March 1915 was the first of only two airship attacks on Paris. The second came on the night of 29–30 January 1916, when the bombs of one airship killed more than twenty people in the districts of Belleville and Ménilmontant. After that Paris was bombed only by aircraft, and in 1918 also by German long-range guns.