Loss of airship L 12

Early on the morning of 10 August 1915 the German naval airship L 12, damaged during the night over Dover by a British anti-aircraft shell, came down on the sea off the coast of occupied Belgium. German torpedo boats towed it into Ostend. Throughout the day it was attacked there by airmen of the Royal Naval Air Service from Dunkirk, and while the wreck was being dismantled the airship burned. The British chronology of the war records under this date that L 12 was “seriously damaged by British aeroplanes off Ostend”. In reality its fate had already been sealed by the night-time fire from Dover, and the bombing from the air finished the job.

A raid on London that never arrived

L 12 was one of the newest airships of the Kaiserliche Marine. It first took to the air on 21 June 1915. After the army’s first raid on London the navy wanted to attack the capital with its own airships. On the afternoon of 9 August the commander of naval airships, Peter Strasser, sent five airships over England: L 9 was to attack the Humber area, and L 10, L 11, L 12 and L 13 London. None reached the city. L 13 turned back with engine trouble. L 9 bombed Goole, mistaking it for Hull, and killed 16 people. L 11 dropped bombs on Lowestoft, where one woman was killed, and L 10 mistakenly bombed the naval air station at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, believing it was over London.

L 12, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Werner Peterson, appeared at about 10.50 p.m. over Westgate-on-Sea in Kent. In the fog Peterson lost his bearings and was convinced that he was much further north, and as he flew south he thought he was approaching Harwich. At about 12.30 a.m. he decided that he was over Harwich and chose to drop his bombs, since it was by then too late to fly on to London. In fact he was over Dover. Three incendiary bombs fell on the Admiralty Pier and the rest into the harbour. One exploded under the bow of the trawler Equinox and wounded three seamen. The damage was slight.

Hit over Dover

Over Dover the airship was caught in the searchlights and came under the fire of the anti-aircraft guns. According to the British official history of the air war, the second or third shell already hit L 12. Peterson dropped water ballast and the airship quickly climbed out of range of the guns and of the pursuit by two aeroplanes, but hydrogen began to escape from the holed cells. According to German accounts three gas cells had lost their gas while still over England, and the airship tilted sharply nose up. The crew threw overboard everything that could be thrown: fuel tanks, machine guns, the wireless set. It did not help. Towards morning L 12, with its stern broken, settled on the water a few miles off the coast, according to some sources near Ostend, according to others near Zeebrugge. Peterson survived and later commanded other airships.

That same night the British defences suffered a loss: a pilot from Westgate who had taken off in pursuit of L 12 lost it in the fog and crashed his aeroplane on landing. He died of his injuries.

Bombs over Ostend

News that the airship was coming down on the sea reached the RNAS base at Dunkirk shortly after 8 a.m. Despite thick fog, aeroplanes were sent off at once. The first to take off, at 8.25 a.m., was Flight Sub-Lieutenant J. R. W. Smyth-Pigott. He found L 12 about three miles off Ostend, surrounded by four torpedo boats. He attacked it with bombs and grenades, and as he flew away he saw that the airship’s back was broken. Another airman was shot down and killed. Others attacked as the wreck was being drawn between the breakwaters into the harbour, and in the afternoon, as workers tried to haul it onto the quay. Heavy fire from the ground prevented the pilots from seeing whether they had scored hits. In the afternoon, however, the rear part of the airship slid back into the water and the Germans gave up trying to save it whole.

While the wreck was being dismantled on the quay a fire broke out and L 12 burned. Only part of the structure and equipment was saved and sent back to Germany by rail. The first attempt at a combined raid by naval airships on London thus ended in failure: few bombs fell on British soil and the Germans lost a new airship. After LZ 37 and LZ 38, destroyed in June by RNAS airmen, it was another German airship lost that summer in combat with the British. Strasser was not discouraged and on 12 August sent another expedition over England.