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and two Jewish East Enders died. The last bomb of that
first raid fell on Stratford. From that night until the end
of the war Germany would mount fifty-two Zeppelin
bombing raids on the United Kingdom. Not all of the
airships that took part in the raids were Zeppelins but
the name very soon became the
Hoover
of airships.
Brave Men
They were called
Baby Killers
by the British press but
the Zeppelin crews were undoubtedly brave men fighting
loyally and fearlessly for their country. Flying at 10,000
feet the temperature fell as low as minus 30°C so the
German crews were clad in fur overcoats on top of leather
overalls on top of thick serge uniforms on top of thick
woollen underwear. Scarves, goggles, leather helmets
and gloves completed the weather proofing and thus
encumbered the men had to climb wooden step ladders
and, dizzy from the thin air at high altitudes, they had to
pass between gondolas by crawling along narrow catwalks
that ran along the keel. Many men were lost simply by
falling overboard.
Fortified on vacuum flasks of strong coffee with
provisions of bread, sausages, chocolate and tinned stew,
that heated itself luke-warm when the tin was opened,
and armed only with paper maps, torches and hand held
compasses the raiders were entirely at the mercy of the
weather and were very often blown miles off course.
Relying on steering by dead reckoning over the sea, fog
and even heavy cloud could wreck a mission and one
lightning strike could spell disaster and death. To jump
or to burn was the nightmare question that faced every
Zeppelin crewman: parachutes were rarely carried.
Zeppelins absorbed rain adding extra weight that forced
them lower – potentially within range of anti-aircraft fire
from the ground. If ice froze on the propellers sharp shards
thrown back with terrific force might puncture the airship.
men lowered in the cloud cars first used in March 1915. If
caught in cloud the captain could throttle back the engine
and lower a steel cable on the end of which a crewman sat
in a plywood tub shaped like a cartoon bomb to dangle up
to 1000 feet below the airship and deliver
Bernie-the-Bolt
left a bit, right a bit instructions back to the airship by
telephone. There’s one in the Imperial War Museum.
Fishing for Zeppelins
At the beginning of the war the weather was by far
our biggest weapon against the airships, pretty much
everything else in our arsenal was hopelessly ineffective.
The Lewis Gun could fire a 50-100 round burst of
machine gunfire but against an airship made up of many
independent cells the worst damage would be a slow
puncture. The Woolwich Arsenal developed a flaming
bullet but it was too temperamental to be used in a
machine gun having a tendency to explode so many of
Churchill’s fleet of aircraft were armed with single-shot,
breech loading Martini-Henry cavalry carbines that had
last been fired in anger during the Zulu Wars. Obviously
built to last three Martini-Henry rifles were seized from
Taliban fighters by US Marines in Afghanistan in 2011.
Even if the pilot could hold his fragile craft steady enough
and free both hands in order to fire these
sawn-off rifles
it
was unlikely that they’d reach sufficient altitude to take
aim let alone climb high enough to fly above the Zeppelins
to drop bombs as the aircraft available in 1914 and 1915
might take 50 minutes to reach 10,000 feet. This limitation
rendered ineffective the only other weapons available early
in the war including the Rankin Darts – 1IB bombs with a
sharp steel nose to pierce the skin of the Zeppelin and four
pivoting tail vanes to snag on the envelope and fire the
detonator. A weapon developed at the Army Factory at
Farnborough, but thankfully never issued to the Royal
The terrifying Cloud Car that would be trailed up to 1000 yards beneath the Zeppelin
