Last air raid on London

On the night of 19–20 May 1918, from Whit Sunday to Whit Monday, German bombers carried out the largest raid on London of the whole war. In the moonlight several dozen Gothas and three Giants came in over Kent and Essex. The bombs killed 49 people in and around London. This time, however, the defences inflicted the heaviest losses of the entire campaign on the raiders: according to H. A. Jones’s British official history of the war in the air, seven German machines were lost over England or off its coast. The raid proved to be the last attack by German aeroplanes on Great Britain.

The largest raid

The bombers belonged to Bombengeschwader 3, the squadron known in Germany as the Englandgeschwader, which since the spring of 1917 had been bombing England from airfields near Ghent. Since February 1918 it had again been commanded by Captain Ernst Brandenburg, who had returned to duty after a serious crash in June 1917. According to the German documents cited by Jones, 43 aircraft took off: 38 twin-engined Gothas, most of them of the Gotha G.V type, three Giants of Riesenflugzeug-Abteilung 501 and two smaller aircraft. Together they carried 14.5 tonnes of bombs. The targets were London and Dover. The machines took off at intervals of about five minutes and attacked singly, without formation.

From 10.42 p.m. until about 1.30 a.m. there was almost continuous aircraft movement over Kent and Essex. The British counted about 34 bombers over the coast, of which in their view thirteen reached London. German documents say that at least nineteen got as far as the capital.

Bombs on London

According to Jones, 72 bombs fell on London. They killed 48 people, injured 165 and destroyed or damaged more than a thousand houses and commercial buildings. Bombs fell, among other places, on Rotherhithe, around the Old Kent Road, Peckham, Sydenham and Catford. 36 bombs fell on Essex and 49 on Kent, but most exploded in fields. In Faversham three people were injured, and in Dover one. Fragments of anti-aircraft shells killed one more person and injured eight. The most commonly cited toll of the raid is therefore 49 killed and 177 injured, although some works give slightly different figures. Damage in London alone was estimated at more than £130,000.

The defences prevail

Before this raid London’s defences had once again been reorganised. Some guns were moved from the city to an outer ring, and searchlights in the north-east and south-east were assigned to work with the fighters. That night 84 defence pilots took off. Almost all flew machines able to catch the bombers: Sopwith Camels, S.E.5as and Bristol Fighters. The guns fired more than 30,000 shells. The barrage was often fired by sound and blind, but it deterred many crews from London.

The guns brought down three Gothas. The first, which had bombed Sydenham and Catford, fell in flames into the sea on the way back, near Foreness Point. The second was hit over the Essex coast and plunged into the sea before it had dropped its bombs. The third burned near Dover.

Three more fell victim to fighters. The Gotha that had bombed Rotherhithe and Peckham was attacked over Kent by Major Frederick Sowrey, the same man who in 1916 had shot down the airship L 32. It was finished off by a Bristol crew from No. 141 Squadron. The Gotha crashed while trying to land at Harrietsham airfield; only one of the three airmen survived. Captain Quintin Brand, flying a Camel of No. 112 Squadron, attacked a bomber over Faversham from so close that the flames of the burning machine scorched his face. The Gotha came down by a sea wall on the Isle of Sheppey. The third bomber was shot down by Lieutenant A. J. Arkell and Air Mechanic A. T. C. Stagg of No. 39 Squadron. The burning machine crashed on open ground by Roman Road in East Ham in east London, and the whole crew was killed. The seventh bomber, damaged while evading anti-aircraft fire, made a forced landing in a field near Clacton-on-Sea. An eighth crashed on landing back in Belgium. Some works give a lower number of kills, but even according to them the German losses were the heaviest of the entire campaign.

End of the campaign

The raid of 19–20 May ended the German bomber campaign against England, begun a year earlier. According to historians’ tallies, the Gothas and Giants killed more than 830 people in Great Britain and injured nearly two thousand, most of them in London. Until the end of the war German aeroplanes crossed the English coast only three more times, and none dropped bombs. Planned new raids were called off.

Losses were not the only reason the campaign ended. Since March the Germans had been waging a great offensive in the west, and the bomber squadrons were needed over the front. According to a German author, Major Freiherr von Bülow, cited by Jones, from May they were employed solely in supporting the troops in France. In August 1918 the German Supreme Command ordered, for military and political reasons, that the bombing of London and Paris be stopped. After that only naval airships raided England, for the last time in August 1918.