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from where it was able to use the distant glow of the
London lights to chart a course south to the capital.
Golders Green took three bombs, probably as the Captain
checked his sights, and then at 10.45pm flying at 8,500
feet and 37 miles an hour the Zeppelin dropped bombs on
Bloomsbury, Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. A massive
660IB bomb fell on St Bartholomew Hospital at
Smithfield leaving a crater eight feet deep and shrapnel
damage to the hospital walls that can still be seen today.
From the telephone exchange on London Wall Alfred
Crouch witnessed the attack:
A streak of fire was shooting down straight at me, it
seemed, and I stared at it uncomprehending. The bomb
struck the coping of a restaurant a few yards ahead and
then fell into London Wall and lay burning in the roadway.
I looked up, and at the last moment, the searchlight caught
the Zeppelin full and clear. It was a beautiful and
terrifying sight.
A number 35 bus was hit near Liverpool Street Station
and a number 8 in Shoreditch: passengers, a driver and
a clippie died. £530,000 worth of damage was wrought
upon London that night. In the morning Lord Kitchener
summoned the Royal Flying Corps commander to his
office demanding action. The next month bombs fell on
Theatreland. At 9.35pm an army officer travelling in a
black cab along the Strand saw the bombs fall:
Right overhead was an enormous Zeppelin. It was
lighted up by searchlights and cruised along slowly and
majestically. I stood gaping in the middle of the Strand,
too fascinated to move. Then there was a terrific
explosion, followed by another and another.
The bombs fell just as the Lyceum audience from emerged
to buy interval drinks from the street carts and pubs.
Seventeen died and 21 were badly injured. Shrapnel
damage still visible on the walls of St Clement Danes
Church on the Aldwych dates from this attack. We also
have an eye-witness account of this attack from the
Captain of the Zeppelin,
Kapitanleutnant Heinrich Mathy
:
The picture we saw was indescribable, beautiful –
shrapnel bursting all around.
Send The Bill To The Kaiser!
Germany hoped that the ghoulishly terrifying airships
raining death on London would subdue the British but
after the fifth raid on London the Evening News reported
the sense of disappointment many Londoners felt at having
missed the show. Miss Bannerman, a VAD (Voluntary
Aid Detachment worker) wrote:
I have lived through an air raid and I feel life has been
worth living.
Another VAD from Ware in Hertfordshire was travelling
home on the late train with her friend, also a VAD nurse,
when Captain Mathy’s Zeppelin dropped bombs on them.
One landed in the River Lea with an almighty splash that
soaked the ladies. In a letter to her fiancé serving in the
trenches (kept by her grandson Charles Fair) she wrote:
Think of two maidens returning by a late train, hearing
a noise, and looking out of the window and there, like the
Ghost Ship “sailing comfortably over the stars” was a
fine fat Zeppelin. Soon – Crash! Crash! And we caught
a glimpse of falling bombs, our heads thrust out of the
window. Then, splash! One fell into the river quite close
at hand as well. The Lea water does not improve coats
and skirts and Olive says we shall send in the bill to the
Kaiser!
The prize though for over-excited romanticism of Zeppelin
raids belongs to DH Lawrence:
I cannot get over it. The Zeppelin is in the zenith of the
night, golden like the moon, having taken control of the
sky. Our cosmos has burst; the stars and the moon blown
away, the envelope of the sky burst out, and a new cosmos
has appeared.
How To Bring Down a Zeppelin
The British reaction to the Zeppelin raids must have been
deeply frustrating to the Germans. The raids stopped and
all was quiet on the Home Front until 1916. Meanwhile
a technological arms race was in full swing. If the airships
could kindle and explode by accident why couldn’t we
bring down the Zeppelins? Within just the first two years
of the war our pilots had grown immeasurably in skill and
