Last airship raid with casualties

On the evening of 12 April 1918 five airships of the German navy, L 60, L 61, L 62, L 63 and L 64, came in over the east coast of England. The raid was led by Fregattenkapitän Peter Strasser, the commander of the naval airship service. It was the first German raid on Britain for a month and the first since the creation of the Royal Air Force on 1 April, which took over the country’s air defence. That night bombs fell in several counties of central and northern England, from the area of Lincoln to the outskirts of Birmingham. The most casualties were in Wigan in Lancashire, where seven people were killed. The British chronology of the war states that the raid cost 27 killed and wounded.

The British official history of the war in the air (H. A. Jones) points out that the airships were by then flying at heights of up to 6,000 metres and carrying as much as three tonnes of bombs, more than ever before. So high, they were almost out of reach of anti-aircraft guns and aircraft, but their commanders had great difficulty working out where they were. Kapitänleutnant Flemming in L 60 believed he was bombing Leeds, but his 34 bombs fell on fields south of the Humber estuary. L 64 dropped its bombs on villages near Lincoln, which the warning had not reached and where lights were burning, damaging the engine shed and track at Skellingthorpe. L 63 dropped its load on fields near Metheringham, although its crew thought they were attacking the Grimsby area.

Wigan instead of Sheffield

Furthest west went Kapitänleutnant Ehrlich’s L 61, which crossed the coast near Withernsea at about 9.30 p.m. Despite engine trouble it flew almost to the outskirts of Liverpool, the great port that German airmen had long wanted to bomb. Ehrlich, however, was convinced that he was over Sheffield, and turned north. At about 11.30 p.m. he saw the lights of Wigan. The town had received no warning, and the furnaces of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company were blazing at full fire. Eight bombs fell on the suburb of Ince, where they destroyed workers’ houses and railway track, and fifteen on Wigan itself, killing seven people and injuring twelve. Further on, at Aspull, four 300-kilogram bombs fell in a field, but the blast damaged nearby houses, injured four people and started a fire in a brewery. On his return Ehrlich reported that he had attacked the factories of Sheffield.

Hauptmann Kurt Manger’s L 62 circled over England for six hours. It dropped bombs in a field near Coventry, and when anti-aircraft guns opened fire on it over Birmingham it turned back and got rid of the rest of its load over Hall Green and Shirley in the south of the city. Jones admits that more than two tonnes of bombs dropped near industrial towns did almost no damage and that the British were very lucky. Because of bad weather only about twenty defence pilots took off. One of them got into action: Lieutenant C. H. Noble-Campbell of No. 38 Squadron, who fired on L 62 but was himself wounded in the head and had to make a forced landing near Coventry.

All the airships returned to their bases. The raid showed that the airship fleet could still reach deep inland, as during the first great raid on the Midlands in January 1916. It proved, however, to be the last airship raid on Britain in which people on the ground were killed. The Germans made their next and final attempt only on 5 August 1918. The bombs then did no damage, and over the North Sea the airship L 70 was shot down, with Strasser himself killed on board.