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roaring straight down onto me before I had time to get out
of the way. I nose-dived for all I was worth, with the Zepp
tearing after me and expected every minute to be engulfed
in flames. I put my machine into a spin and just managed
to corkscrew out of the way as she shot past me, roaring
like a furnace.
The Zeppelin Oak
L31 came down at midnight in Oakmere Park in Potters
Bar. Captain Mathy, aged 33, and all of his 20 crewmen
died. Mathy chose to jump and in the following days a
local farmer would charge sightseers a shilling a head to
see the macabre outline of the captain in the grass caused
by the impact of his body. Mathy and his crew were buried
in the military cemetery at Cannock Chase where most
Germans who died on British soil during the Great War
were laid to rest. What was left of the Zeppelin’s nose
came to rest at what would become known as The
Zeppelin Oak. When the park was built on The Zeppelin
Oak found itself in the front garden of Number 9 Tempest
Avenue, Potters Bar. It was cut down in the 1930s by
a Mr. Bill Crowley from number 7 who feared falling
branches might injure his children: the saw blade was
snagged over and over by pieces of metal embedded in the
trunk. The houses were later demolished and the site is
now a private road called Wulstan Park.
And Second Lieutenant Wulstan Tempest? He fractured
his skull crash landing but the following day he came to
Potters Bar to see the wreckage of L31 paying the farmer
a shilling alongside all the other visitors to see the macabre
outline of Captain Mathy in the grass. As at Cuffley, much
of the aluminium frame of the Potters Bar Zeppelin was
recovered for the war effort but just as much seemed to
make its way into souvenirs. Spars recovered from the
wreck were made into an alter cross for the church of
St Mary the Virgin and All Saints, Potters Bar. Later
Tempest became a Major. He survived the Great War
despite a lengthy assignment of night-bombing on the
Western Front. During the Second World War Wulstan
Tempest commanded the Home Guard in Newbury.
He died in 1966.
Mathy’s death had marked the beginning of the end of the
Zeppelin offensive on Britain and the raids petered out.
The
Zeppelin threat was effectively neutered. In all there
were 52 Zeppelin raids with 556 killed and 1,357 injured.
Vital military installations had rarely, if ever, been hit by
the wildly inaccurate bombing capabilities of the giant
airships. But the terror of attack from the air was far from
over. On 25 May 1917
the first Gotha bombers arrived
over Folkestone and London, dropping even more death
and destruction. Gotha! You can see why the Windsors
had to change their name.
Reading List:
The Baby Killers: German Air Raids on Britain in the
First World War. Thomas Fegan.
London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace. Ian Castle
Aircraft & Flyers of the First World War: Joseph A.
Phelan
And look out for a repeat of Dr Hugh Hunt’s documentary
Attack of the Zeppelins first shown on C4 in August 2013.
