Gotha raid on London

Shortly before noon on Wednesday 13 June 1917 a formation of fourteen twin-engined Gotha G.IV bombers appeared over London. Within a few minutes they dropped their bombs on the City of London, the docklands and the East End. According to H. A. Jones’s British official history of the air war, 162 people were killed and 432 injured. It was the deadliest single air raid on Britain of the whole war. The British chronology of the war gives a total of about 590 casualties, almost all of them civilians. What shocked people most was the death of eighteen children at a school in Poplar. All the bombers returned to their bases.

The third attempt

The bomber squadron Kagohl 3, commanded by Captain Ernst Brandenburg, had already twice tried to reach London. On 25 May it turned back in front of cloud and bombed Folkestone, and on 5 June it flew straight for Sheerness. On 12 June the squadron’s meteorologist at last forecast a clear day over the capital. The Gothas were fitted with extra fuel tanks so that they would not have to land on the Belgian coast on the way. On the morning of 13 June, according to Ian Castle, the British historian of the raids, 20 machines took off from airfields near Ghent. Two soon turned back with engine trouble.

At about 10.45 a.m. one Gotha left the formation and dropped five bombs on Margate, injuring four people. Over Foulness Island three more broke away. Two bombed Shoeburyness, and the third flew over Greenwich, according to Castle probably on photographic reconnaissance. The main formation, fourteen Gothas flying in a diamond, headed straight for London. The roar of the engines was heard in many places ten minutes before the aircraft appeared. Many people came out of their homes and offices into the streets to watch the unusual sight, not thinking it was the enemy.

Bombs on the City

At 11.24 a.m. the anti-aircraft gun at Romford was the first to open fire. Several bombs fell on East Ham, where four people were killed, and on the Royal Albert Docks, where eight workers were killed. The formation turned over Regent’s Park and at about 11.35 a.m. struck the City, the financial heart of the capital. Within two minutes 72 bombs fell within a mile of Liverpool Street station. Three hit the station itself. One tore apart a carriage of a train that was just about to leave, another hit carriages used by army doctors. According to Castle, 16 people were killed at the station. The poet Siegfried Sassoon was there at the time, recovering in England from a wound received at Arras in April.

The bombs destroyed offices, warehouses and workshops. In a building on Fenchurch Street 19 people were killed, in clothing works on Aldgate High Street 13, and at a brass foundry on Beech Street eight workers who were working on the roof. On Central Street Police Constable Alfred Smith turned back into a factory workers who wanted to rush out into the street, and was himself killed by a blast that would have killed them too. A bomb also hit the workshops of the Royal Mint near the Tower, killing four men, and others fell on Southwark across the river and on two fire stations. According to the police, 59 people were killed and 95 injured in the City alone, including 25 killed and 41 injured in the streets.

The Poplar school

On the way back the Gothas dropped the rest of their bombs on the eastern districts. At about 11.40 a.m. a 50-kilogram bomb hit the school in Upper North Street in Poplar in the East End. It pierced the roof and the two floors where the older girls and boys were being taught, killing two children on its way. The bomb, which had broken in half, exploded on the ground floor in the infants’ class, among 64 small children aged four to six. Sixteen were killed, and according to Jones thirty children and four adults were injured. Three teachers who rescued children in the ruined classroom were later decorated for bravery. The funeral of fifteen of the children in a common grave on 20 June became a great demonstration of mourning. Local people raised money for a memorial, which still stands in a park in Poplar.

A helpless defence

Despite a new artillery fire plan introduced a week earlier, the defence proved helpless. According to Jones, 92 pilots took off from home defence squadrons, schools, depots and experimental stations, but each acted on his own and most never saw the enemy. Only a few managed to get within firing range. In one of the Bristol F.2 aircraft the observer, Captain C. H. C. Keevil, was killed. Brandenburg reported afterwards that visibility had been exceptionally good and the anti-aircraft fire weak and badly directed: “Our aircraft circled and dropped their bombs without haste or hindrance.” All the Gothas returned without serious damage. The next day Brandenburg was summoned to Berlin to receive the Pour le Mérite. On the way back, on 19 June, he crashed in his aircraft and lost a leg, and command of the squadron passed to Captain Rudolf Kleine.

Outrage and decisions

The raid shook the country. Jones writes that the dominant feeling was outrage. People who only a moment before had been gazing curiously at the sky learned that the enemy could bomb the heart of the empire with impunity in broad daylight. The War Cabinet met that same afternoon, and the next day the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, called for a substantial increase in the number of aircraft, even at the expense of other armaments. The Cabinet agreed and instructed the departments to prepare a plan for expanding the air services. A reprisal raid on a German city, such as Mannheim, and the recall of fighters from the front were also considered.

Field Marshal Douglas Haig and the commander of the air services in France, General Hugh Trenchard, opposed weakening the front just before the offensive in Flanders. In the end Haig had to give up two fighter squadrons for two weeks: one was moved to England, the other to Calais. They returned to France on 5 and 6 July, and on 7 July the Gothas were over London again. The second raid settled the appointment of General Jan Smuts’s committee, whose reports led to the reorganisation of London’s defences and to the creation in 1918 of an independent air force, the Royal Air Force.