First bomb on English soil

On Christmas Eve 1914, at about 10.45 a.m., a German seaplane again appeared over Dover. This time its bomb did not fall into the sea, as it had three days earlier, but landed on the town. It was the first aerial bomb to fall on land in England. No one was killed and the damage was slight, but the news quickly spread through the British press.

The aircraft from Zeebrugge

The aircraft was a two-seat Friedrichshafen FF 29, number 204, of the 1st Naval Air Unit (Seeflieger-Abteilung 1), based at Zeebrugge in Belgium. It was a sister machine of the one that had dropped two bombs near the Admiralty Pier on 21 December. Its crew included, as three days earlier, Lieutenant von Prondzynski. Sources differ on his first name and his role: the British historian of the raids Ian Castle names him as the pilot, while the Dover Society writes that he was not flying the aircraft but held the bomb between his knees throughout the flight. Apart from this one bomb the aircraft carried no armament.

The raider came in from the direction of Deal under cover of cloud and appeared over the town unnoticed through a gap in the clouds. The bomb was dropped from a height of about 1,500 metres and was most probably aimed at Dover Castle, the medieval fortress overlooking the harbour, which was still in military use. It missed. It fell just over 300 metres from the castle walls, in the garden of Thomas Terson off Taswell Street, behind the rectory of St James’s church. Some accounts place the crater in a garden on neighbouring Leyburne Road.

A gardener in a tree

The explosion tore a crater about three metres long and about one and a half metres wide and deep. The blast broke windows up to 200 metres away, including at the rectory, where the cook was showered with glass. A fragment flew as far as a veranda in Victoria Park. The rectory gardener, James Banks, who was cutting greenery for the Christmas decorations, was thrown from a tree but was not seriously hurt. According to the Dover Society he was the only casualty. Another version has it that Terson himself, who was picking Brussels sprouts in his garden for Christmas dinner, was also slightly hurt.

The British sent two aircraft and a seaplane in pursuit, but the raider was flying high, in the clouds, and managed to escape out to sea, back to its base at Zeebrugge. Fragments of the bomb became souvenirs. Some of them, mounted on a shield, were presented to the King, and one fragment was sold at auction for £20 for the Red Cross.

The following days

The next day, Christmas Day, the same crew in seaplane number 203 ventured over the Thames estuary and reached the area of Erith (PL) on the outskirts of London. A British aircraft fired on it in the air, and the Germans dropped two bombs, which fell harmlessly near the railway station at Cliffe, and turned back. Both airmen were awarded the Iron Cross on their return.

For Dover this was only the beginning. By the end of the war 113 air raids had been recorded in the borough. 184 aerial bombs and 23 shells from German warships fell on Dover, and these attacks killed 23 people, including three children. Since 2000 the spot where the first bomb fell has been marked by a plaque at the corner of Taswell Street.