Raid on London of 7 July

On Saturday 7 July 1917, less than four weeks after the first great Gotha raid, German Gotha bombers again appeared in broad daylight over London. At about 10.20 a.m. a formation of twenty-one twin-engined machines flew over the northern districts, the City and the East End, dropping bombs from Stoke Newington to London Bridge. According to H. A. Jones’s British official history of the war in the air, 54 people were killed in London and 190 injured. Together with the victims in Margate this gives 57 killed and 193 injured, or about 250 casualties, the figure given by the British chronology of the war. It was the last daylight raid on London of the war, but its political consequences proved greater than those of the June raid.

Kleine’s second expedition

The bomber squadron Kagohl 3 was now commanded by Captain Rudolf Kleine. The previous commander, Ernst Brandenburg, had been badly injured in a flying accident a few days after the raid of 13 June. While waiting for good weather over London, Kleine sent 18 Gothas on the morning of 4 July against the naval bases at Harwich and Felixstowe. According to Ian Castle, a British historian of the raids, 17 people were killed, most of them soldiers and sailors. Three days later the weather he had been waiting for finally came: a light easterly wind, little cloud, and only a layer of hazy cloud high over the city.

Observers on the Kentish Knock lightship spotted the formation over the sea at 9.14 a.m. According to Castle, 22 Gothas took off. At about 9.30 one of them, with a damaged engine, turned back and dropped three bombs on Margate. One destroyed a house, killing three people. At the time this was thought to be a manoeuvre intended to draw off the fighters, but Jones writes that it was simply a machine returning to base. The main formation, 21 bombers in a diamond, crossed the coast at the mouth of the River Crouch in Essex at about 9.45 and, under anti-aircraft fire, flew straight for London.

Bombs over the City

Over Epping Forest the Gothas split into two groups. The first turned over Tottenham towards the centre, the second flew as far as Hendon and only there turned back, so that the blow came in two waves, a few minutes apart. The first bombs fell on Chingford, Tottenham and Edmonton. The first casualties were caused by two bombs in Stoke Newington, where nine people were killed. In all, according to Castle, 72 bombs fell on the area from Stoke Newington in the north to London Bridge in the south and from King’s Cross to Whitechapel and Stepney.

In the City five people were killed in Bartholomew Close and four men in Lower Thames Street, and a soldier was killed at his post at the Central Telegraph Office. Bombs damaged buildings in Aldersgate Street, the Barbican and Leadenhall Street, as well as Billingsgate fish market. This time Londoners already knew what the drone of engines meant, but many nevertheless watched the clearly visible aircraft from the streets and windows. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, also watched them from the windows of the War Office building. Some 2,000 shells fired by 44 anti-aircraft guns brought down no Gotha, while falling fragments killed 10 people and injured 55. Material damage in London was estimated at more than £205,000.

The defences helpless again

The two fighter squadrons that Field Marshal Douglas Haig had lent after the June raid had returned to France on 5 and 6 July. 78 pilots of the Royal Flying Corps and 17 pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service took to the air, from home defence squadrons, schools, depots and coastal stations. They flew 21 different types of aircraft, of which only about thirty machines were modern fighters. They took off from all directions and attacked singly. According to Jones, 36 pilots managed to get within firing range of the bombers. Two naval pilots attacked the Gothas over Chingford at close range, but both had their machine guns jam. A two-seater Sopwith of No. 37 Squadron was shot down and its pilot killed. A pilot from a training squadron who attacked the whole formation single-handed was also killed.

Over the sea, near the North Foreland, the crew of a two-seater from No. 50 Squadron caught a low-flying, evidently damaged Gotha and shot it down into the sea. Two Germans climbed out onto the wings, but when the spot was searched later neither the machine nor the crew was found. According to German records this was the only bomber shot down in combat. Four more crashed on landing in a strong wind, and one of them burned out.

Anger and riots

A second unpunished daylight raid caused an outcry in London and the whole of southern England such as had followed none of the earlier attacks. Jones writes that the public might still have forgiven night raids, but could no longer excuse the fact that the enemy had flown over England in full daylight for the second time within a few weeks. According to Castle and other historians of the raids, anti-German riots broke out in Hackney and Tottenham that same day. Crowds, regarding as “Germans” everyone with a foreign-sounding name, wrecked the houses and shops of immigrants.

The Cabinet meets on a Saturday

Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s War Cabinet met in emergency session that same afternoon. It was said that the outcome of the war now depended as much on the endurance of the population as on that of the army. Robertson recalled such excitement “as if the whole world were coming to an end”. The commander of the home forces, Field Marshal John French, complained that his forces were too weak. The Cabinet decided to transfer to home defence a squadron being formed for France, to order Haig to send two good fighter squadrons to England, and to let him understand that a retaliatory raid on Mannheim would be desirable. Haig replied by telegram that he would carry out the order, but that the struggle for air superiority ahead of the approaching offensive in Flanders had just begun and withdrawing the squadrons would make victory harder. A raid on Mannheim, in his view, might force the whole operation to be called off.

In the following days the Cabinet softened its decision: only one squadron of Sopwith Pups flew to England, and the raid on Mannheim was postponed. On 11 July a committee was set up, formally chaired by the prime minister, but in practice its work was done by General Jan Smuts alone. His reports led to the creation of a unified command for the defence of London and to the formation in 1918 of an independent air force, the Royal Air Force. The government also agreed to warn the population of raids, and in the following weeks an alarm signal using maroons was introduced. Jones observes that Brandenburg’s squadron may claim no small share in the founding of the RAF. The Gothas returned over London only in September, by then at night.