First Gotha night raid on London

On the night of 4–5 September 1917 German Gotha bombers attacked London after dark for the first time. For nearly two hours, from 11 p.m. until almost 1 a.m., single aircraft appeared over various districts of the capital and dropped bombs. Sixteen people were killed and 56 injured. The defences, which over the summer had learnt to fight formations of bombers by day, were almost helpless at night. A new stage in the bombing of Britain had begun: from then on aeroplanes attacked London as the airships had done before them, under cover of darkness.

From Chatham to London

Night attacks by aeroplanes were not entirely new. As early as the night of 6–7 May 1917 a lone German reconnaissance aircraft had dropped a few bombs on north London, but that had been an isolated foray. Now a whole bomber wing went over to night raids: Kagohl 3 under Captain Rudolf Kleine, the same unit that in June and July had bombed the capital in broad daylight. After the losses suffered over Kent on 22 August the Germans had given up daylight raids. The previous night four Gothas had bombed Chatham, killing about 130 sailors, and had shown that a night flight over England was feasible. Kleine at once sent the bombers to London.

The night was clear, the moon two days past full, with a moderate south-easterly wind. According to German documents later cited by the German historian of these raids, Major von Bülow, eleven Gothas took off and two turned back with engine failure. The bombers flew singly, at intervals. British observers, confused in the dark, reported 26 aircraft crossing the coast in seven groups between 10.20 p.m. and 12.10 a.m. It was the first example of how the number of attackers was exaggerated at night.

Not all the Gothas reached their target. Bombs fell on fields in Suffolk, near Orford and Aldeburgh, and on villages in Essex, without doing much damage. One Gotha bombed Margate, another Dover, where three people were killed. Fifteen people were injured in Dover and Margate. According to Ian Castle, a British historian of the raids, five bombers reached London.

Bombs over the capital

One of the first bombs hit a disused factory in Stratford which until recently had served as a camp for interned German civilians. Others fell on West Ham, where a man was killed, around Greenwich and on Woolwich. Most of the damage, however, was done by a single Gotha which at about 11.50 p.m. came in alone from the north over Hampstead. Its first bombs destroyed the warehouse of an Oxford Street department store and damaged a nearby cigarette factory.

The next four 50-kilogram bombs fell around Charing Cross station, which the airman was most probably aiming at. The first, in Agar Street next to Charing Cross Hospital, killed three people, according to Castle two Canadian soldiers and a woman. The second wrecked the back of the Little Theatre off the Strand, which housed a Canadian YMCA canteen, but killed nobody. The third exploded in the gardens by the Embankment. The fourth fell on the Victoria Embankment by Cleopatra’s Needle just as a tram was passing. The explosion killed the driver and two passengers and injured nine people. Splinters scarred the obelisk’s pedestal and one of the bronze sphinxes. The marks can still be seen today. A plaque on the pedestal speaks of a bomb dropped “in the first raid on London by German aeroplanes”, although in fact it was the first night raid.

At about 12.30 and 12.50 a.m. more bombers arrived. Bombs fell on Islington, where they partly destroyed a workhouse in Upper Holloway, and on Kentish Town, Gospel Oak, Primrose Hill and Paddington. A bomb in Wellesley Road killed three people, and two were killed near the Edgware Road. H. A. Jones’s British official history of the air war counted 57 bombs in London, five of which failed to explode. Eight men, including three soldiers, seven women and a child were killed. Among the 56 injured was a sailor of the United States Navy.

Helpless defences

The anti-aircraft guns fired about 800 shells. The gunners saw the Gothas in the moonlight, but only for a moment, and the searchlights rarely held a target. The fire did, however, force the bombers to change course, and once turned back an aircraft flying up the Thames from the east. The crew of a gun at Borstal on the Medway were sure they had shot down a Gotha. No wreckage was found, but according to German documents one bomber did indeed fail to return from the raid, for unknown reasons. Eighteen pilots of the Royal Flying Corps took to the air. Only two briefly sighted a bomber and fired a few shots. Three pilots of Sopwith Camel fighters, which had flown at night for the first time the day before, patrolled over London but saw no Gotha.

Smuts and balloons

Two nights of raids in a row caused serious alarm in the government. On 5 September the War Cabinet asked General Jan Smuts, who had already prepared reports on air defence for the government in the summer, to investigate both raids and propose ways of protecting the population. The very next day Smuts presented a memorandum. In it he openly admitted that aeroplanes provided no defence at night, because the pilots could not see the enemy even at two hundred yards, and that they might as well stay on the ground. He regarded attacks on the bombers’ airfields as the only effective defence. In the London area he proposed more powerful searchlights to dazzle the German airmen, and screens of wires hung between tethered balloons, into which the bombers would fly.

The raid of 4–5 September opened the Gothas’ night campaign against London. At the end of September, at the next full moon, the Germans returned and attacked the capital several times in a row within eight days. Thousands of Londoners then began to seek shelter at night in Underground stations.