Raid on Sheerness

On the evening of 5 June 1917 the German bomber squadron attacked England for the second time. Twenty-two Gotha G.IV bombers of Kagohl 3, the squadron of Captain Ernst Brandenburg, came in by the same route as two weeks earlier, when they had bombed Folkestone. This time they did not even try to reach London. According to the British historian Ian Castle the weather forecast for the capital was uncertain, so the squadron set off straight for the alternative targets at the mouth of the Thames: the artillery ranges at Shoeburyness and the naval port of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, guarding the entrance to the river Medway and the naval dockyard at Chatham.

The bombers crossed the coast of Essex between the mouths of the Blackwater and the Crouch shortly after six in the evening. The first bombs fell on fields near Great Wakering. Over Shoeburyness, home of a Royal Artillery school, the Gothas dropped about 27 bombs according to the British official history of the air war. Most exploded on the beach and on waste ground, but a few hit the gun park and killed two soldiers. The formation then flew across the Thames to the Kent side.

Bombs on Sheerness

The bombing of Sheerness lasted only about five minutes, but it was much more dangerous. According to Castle five bombs fell within the naval dockyard. One started a large fire in the main storehouse, another exploded on the quay of a dry dock and killed a dockyard worker. Bombs also fell on the military camps in the Blue Town district, where battalions of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and the Middlesex Regiment were quartered, and on houses in the residential part of the town. One destroyed a uniform shop, killing the manager and a customer, a naval warrant officer. According to H. A. Jones, author of the official history The War in the Air, 11 people were killed in Sheerness, of whom only three were civilians, and 34 were injured, 25 of them soldiers. Material damage was slight, mainly because the bombs that hit the most important targets did not explode. The total toll of the raid was 13 killed and 34 injured.

This time the anti-aircraft defences proved more effective than over Folkestone. Eight guns at Sheerness and Shoeburyness fired 504 rounds. One of the Gothas came down over Sheerness to a height of about 2,700 metres, was hit, and at about 6.30 p.m. crashed into the sea less than three kilometres north of the Barton’s Point battery, near the Nore lightship. It was the first Gotha brought down by the defences of Great Britain. The wreck sank, but the British later raised it. Sources differ on the fate of the crew: according to Jones two prisoners were pulled from the water, according to Castle only one airman of the three-man crew, Georg Schumacher, survived. The aircraft achieved nothing. According to Jones 66 pilots took off, but only five got close to the bombers, and then only for brief, ineffective attacks. Over Belgium the returning Gothas were intercepted by ten naval air service pilots from Dunkirk. The British believed they had brought down two bombers, and Castle writes of one shot down and one wrecked on landing near Bruges. According to Jones, however, German records list only the loss of the Gotha off Barton’s Point.

The dispute over home defence

The same day Field Marshal John French, in command of the defence of Great Britain, wrote to the Army Council that the means at his disposal for defence against aircraft were inadequate. He complained that the home defence squadrons were constantly giving up men and machines to the front, and that he had only 75 aircraft for night flying. He warned that continuing such a policy might have disastrous consequences. The raid on Sheerness did, however, bring one practical change. French’s order of 7 March 1917 forbade the anti-aircraft guns, except for designated batteries in the coastal zone, to fire at aeroplanes, even those identified as hostile. It had been issued at a time when no one expected daylight raids and the front was demanding trained gunners, so it had allowed the gun crews inland to be reduced. On 7 June it was cancelled verbally, and the defence of London was given a fire plan prepared in advance. It was able to use it only a week later, when on 13 June Brandenburg’s squadron reached the capital in broad daylight.