German airship off the English coast

On the afternoon of 15 December 1914 a German airship was sighted near the estuary of the Humber, on the east coast of England. British chronologies of the war recorded the day as the first appearance of an enemy aircraft near the British Isles. Since the start of the war the authorities had received numerous reports of mysterious airships over England, but this was the only one that could be confirmed. It is not known exactly, however, which airship it was or what its task was.

Fear of the Zeppelins

The British had feared German airships long before the war. In Germany the giant airships of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin had become a source of national pride, and in Britain a symbol of the threat. Novels about war in the air and press speculation fired the imagination. In 1909, and then in 1912–1913, waves of reports of mysterious airships seen at night over the coast swept the country. In October 1912 a “huge German airship” was reported over Sheerness, and in February 1913 a ship’s captain was said to have seen an airship flying towards the Humber. None of these accounts was confirmed, and the Germans denied that their airships had flown over England.

After the outbreak of war such reports began to pour in with new force. People reported mysterious lights and aircraft seen at night, and the police and the army passed these accounts on. The British official history of the air war states that the reports were so persistent that a special committee was set up to investigate whether enemy aircraft were carrying out night reconnaissance over England. Most of the reports turned out to be illusions, often caused by the light of distant searchlights reflected off the clouds.

The Admiralty defends the skies

At the beginning of September 1914 responsibility for the air defence of Great Britain was taken over by the Admiralty, headed by Winston Churchill. Almost all of the military aviation had gone to France with the British Expeditionary Force, and what remained at home was above all naval aviation, the Royal Naval Air Service. Churchill believed that airships were best destroyed before they took off. That was why his airmen attacked the sheds at Düsseldorf and Cologne, and in November the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen.

The defence of the country itself was modest. When the navy took over the task, London was defended by just three small quick-firing guns set up by the government buildings in Whitehall. Churchill decided that it was impossible to cover the whole city with artillery and ordered new guns to be sent above all to naval ports, ammunition depots and fuel tanks. Searchlights manned by volunteers and policemen were set up in the capital, and aircraft stood ready at Hendon aerodrome and a few other places. From 1 October London was under a blackout: illuminated advertisements were switched off and street lamps and shop lighting were dimmed. Lights were also restricted in the towns of the east coast. The police within about 100 kilometres of central London, and later in further counties as well, were to report every aircraft directly by telephone to the Admiralty.

The Imperial Navy’s airships

The Germans, however, were far from the raids the British feared. The Imperial Navy began the war with only one airship, L 3. By mid-December it had received more, L 4 to L 7, and L 8 was to be handed over a few days later. Peter Strasser, head of the navy’s airship service, was in favour of attacks on England, but the navy’s airships served above all for reconnaissance over the North Sea, looking out for British warships for the fleet. The army’s airships, several of which had already been lost in August, operated over the land front.

Kaiser Wilhelm II also stood in the way. Although German public opinion had been demanding the bombing of England since the start of the war, the Kaiser for a long time refused to allow raids on the British Isles, and above all on London. According to many historians, he feared for the capital’s historic buildings and for the lives of his relatives in the British royal family. The naval command obtained permission for attacks on military targets in England only at the beginning of January 1915, and London itself was to remain excluded from the raids for some time longer.

The airship over the Humber

Against this background 15 December was an exceptional day. The British official history of the air war, “The War in the Air”, states that of all the reports investigated only one was accepted as true: that of an airship seen near the Humber on the afternoon of that day. On the estuary of this river lie the ports of Hull and Grimsby, and on the south bank, at Killingholme, there was a naval seaplane station.

The British linked this flight with an expedition that was just beginning. Early on the morning of 15 December the battlecruisers of Rear-Admiral Franz von Hipper put out from the Jade estuary into the North Sea, followed later by the main forces of the German fleet. According to the official history, the airship was most probably reconnoitring for them. The available German accounts of this operation, however, make no mention of airships taking part, and studies have not been able to establish which ship approached the English coast. No detailed descriptions of the flight itself have survived either: its altitude, its course, or whether the airship flew over land or only appeared over the sea near the coast.

What followed

The next morning Hipper’s ships bombarded towns on the coast of Yorkshire and Durham. More than a hundred people were killed, mostly civilians. The shock was enormous. The British government began to wonder what would happen if a similar attack came from the air over the densely populated districts of London.

A few days later the first German aeroplanes reached England. On 21–25 December German seaplanes from a base in Belgium dropped a few bombs near Dover and over the Thames estuary. The damage was negligible, but the British realised that the enemy could come both from Belgium and from the airship bases on the North Sea. The government speeded up the strengthening of London’s defences, and the Admiralty assigned more aircraft to protect it.

The airship over the Humber dropped no bombs and harmed no one. It was, however, a sign of what was to come. In January 1915 German naval airships bombed England for the first time, and by the end of the war more than 50 airship raids had killed more than 500 people in the British Isles.