Giants raid London

On the night of 7–8 March 1918 German bombers again attacked London. This time only the so-called Giants (Riesenflugzeuge) came, the largest aircraft to fly over England during the war. The night was moonless. Since the autumn of 1917, when the German bombers had switched to night attacks, they had flown over England almost exclusively on bright nights, around the full moon, because moonlight helped the airmen find their way. That night the sky was lit only by the aurora borealis. In London 21 people were killed, and the most victims were claimed by a single bomb weighing a ton, which fell on a quiet residential street in Maida Vale.

Giants from Ghent

The Giants belonged to Riesenflugzeug-Abteilung 501, a squadron commanded by Captain Richard von Bentivegni. It was based on airfields near Ghent in occupied Belgium. From September 1917 it had flown over England together with the Gothas, and sometimes on its own. Most of its machines were four-engined Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI biplanes with a wingspan of over 42 metres, built at Staaken near Berlin. Their construction had been begun by Count Zeppelin himself. They could carry about a ton of bombs, or if required a single bomb weighing 1,000 kilograms. The Giants dropped the first such bomb on London on 16 February 1918. It hit a wing of the veterans’ hospital in Chelsea and killed the family of one of its officers.

On the evening of 7 March six Giants took off. One turned back before reaching the English coast because of engine failure. According to H. A. Jones’s British official history of the air war, of the remaining five three reached London, the fourth got as far as Luton, and the fifth flew no further than Billericay in Essex. The bombs of the aircraft that did not reach the capital fell mainly on fields. One damaged a hotel and several houses in Herne Bay in Kent.

The bomb on Warrington Crescent

The first over London was the Giant R.39, in which Bentivegni himself was flying. According to Ian Castle, a British historian of the raids, it crossed the coast near Deal before 11 p.m. and carried a single bomb weighing a ton. Shortly before midnight the bomb fell on Warrington Crescent, a street of Victorian terraces in Maida Vale, less than a kilometre north-west of Paddington station. The explosion destroyed several houses and devastated a large part of the street. According to Jones 23 houses were destroyed or badly damaged, and about four hundred more in the vicinity were damaged. Twelve people were killed. Jones gives 23 injured, other sources more than thirty. Among the dead was the American poet Lena Guilbert Ford, who wrote the words of the song “Keep the Home Fires Burning”, one of the most popular war songs in Britain, and her son Walter.

The other two Giants dropped smaller bombs on northern and southern districts of the capital: St John’s Wood, Belsize Park, Hampstead, Finchley, Whetstone and Battersea with the area around Clapham Common. Nine people were killed there and fifteen injured. According to Castle the raid cost 21 killed and 39 injured in all. Seventeen bombs fell on London.

Defence in the dark

The lack of a moon made the task harder for the Germans themselves, who found it difficult to navigate, but the defence gained nothing from it. Forty-two pilots of the Royal Flying Corps went up, and none of them saw a bomber. Two were killed: according to Castle, Captains A. B. Kynoch of No. 37 Squadron and H. C. Stroud of No. 61 Squadron collided in the dark over Essex. The anti-aircraft guns fired nearly ten thousand rounds. Searchlights from time to time caught the Giants, and the barrage forced them to change course, but none was hit. Two of the giants nevertheless crashed on landing after their return, for unexplained reasons, and were badly damaged.

The raid of 7–8 March was the last raid on London by Giants alone. A few days later German airships returned over England. Aeroplanes attacked the capital only once more, on the night of 19–20 May 1918, when Gothas and Giants carried out the largest raid of the campaign. After that the German bomber squadrons devoted themselves almost exclusively to supporting the troops on the Western Front.