{"id":50193,"date":"2015-01-19T09:08:44","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T15:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50193"},"modified":"2015-05-04T21:56:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T02:56:49","slug":"bombed-houses-of-the-holy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50193","title":{"rendered":"(Bombed) Houses of the Holy"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\n

“In all previous forms of war, both by land and sea, the losing side was speedily unable to raid its antagonist’s territory and the communications. One fought on a “front,” and behind that front the winner’s supplies and resources, his towns and factories and capital, the peace of his country, were secure… In aerial war the stronger side, even supposing it destroyed the main battle fleet of the weaker, had then either to patrol and watch or destroy every possible point at which he might produce another and perhaps a novel and more deadly form of flyer. It meant darkening his air with airships. It meant building them by the thousand and making aeronauts by the hundred thousand…<\/p>\n

And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, “If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here.” In the air all directions lead everywhere.”<\/p>\n

–HG Wells\u00a0‘The War in the Air’<\/a>, 1907<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the night of January 19th, 1915 Great Yarmouth, England seemed a world way from the bloody carnage of the trenches in Flanders where hundreds of thousands of young Englishmen were fighting and dying. \u00a0The fishing village 20 miles to the east of Norwich was hardly a military target, housing neither significant industries nor a population worth striking. \u00a0And really, how could the town be struck, anyhow? \u00a0The German Navy remained bottled up in port. \u00a0The U-boat campaign, which would soon dominate British concerns, had barely begun.<\/p>\n

The soft droning noise in the night air told a different story. \u00a0Emerging from the darkness, two massive German Zeppelins dropped their payloads on Great Yarmouth, and several nearby towns. \u00a0The cost in lives was minimal – 4 dead and 16 wounded. \u00a0But the cost to public morale was astronomical. \u00a0Wells’ fictional aerial apocalypse was now all too real – the Great War had come to the skies.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\"\"

A British Army recruiting poster from 1915. Not exactly a winning argument – die in the trenches to avoid dying at home. Around 1,400 people were killed in almost 90 air raids in Britain during World War I<\/p><\/div>\n

The process had been replayed many times already – initial hopes that the War would not escalate; would not consume\u00a0some new front<\/a>\u00a0or turn some new technology into a means to kill or destroy, were constantly dashed, only to see the War expand further still. \u00a0Why should the air be any different?<\/p>\n

The attack on Great Yarmouth was hardly the first aerial assault in the Great War. \u00a0From the war’s very beginning, Germany had assembled the “Ostend Carrier Pigeon Detachment” – a code-named unit for conducting Zeppelin raids on Entente targets. \u00a0A few bombings had occurred at the start of the Belgian campaign. \u00a0\u00a0Li\u00e8ge and Antwerp were both hit in August and early September, causing very little damage and few civilian casualties. \u00a0A more consistent bombing campaign by German byplanes had hit Paris in the opening weeks of the war, but the destruction was minimal and the German demands (dropped in leaflet form by the planes) of immediate surrender struck Parisians as more comical than threatening. \u00a0An accidental bombing near the\u00a0Notre Dame Cathedral, and the start of trench warfare, combined to seemingly end the German fascination with aerial bombardment before it even really began.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The remains of a British home in Suffolk of April 1915<\/p><\/div>\n

If air bombardment was seeking an advocate in the German leadership, it wasn’t Kaiser Wilhelm II. \u00a0While German Naval Commander\u00a0Alfred von Tirpitz lobbied vigorously for attacking Britain through the air (perhaps in part because his fleet was being kept out of combat and any air campaign would be under the Naval office), Wilhelm was concerned that attacking Britain would mean attacking his English relatives – most of the houses of Europe were literally related. \u00a0But as the hopes of a quick resolution to the war were dashed and 1914 became 1915, Wilhelm relented to his Admiral’s advice:\u00a0“The measure of the success will lie not only in the injury which will be caused to the enemy, but also in the significant effect it will have in diminishing the enemy’s determination to prosecute the war,” Tirpitz claimed.<\/p>\n

<\/em>Britain would now experience it’s first “blitz.” \u00a0\u201cNowadays there is no such animal as a non-combatant,\u201d justified German Zeppelin corps commander Peter Strasser, \u201cmodern warfare is total warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Peter Strasser – head of Germany’s Zeppelin Corps. Strasser advocated the Zeppelin as a tool of “total war” against civilian populations<\/p><\/div>\n

While today, the Zeppelin looks as an ungangily and vulnerable weapon of war, Zeppelins could travel up to 85 miles an hour and drop two tons of explosives on their targets below. \u00a0With such destructive capabilities, Germany hoped that by bombing Britain, it would spark such fear that it would force the country out of the war. \u00a0The military ramped up Zeppelin production to the point that Germany ceased production of sausage because the intestinal linings of cows that were used as sausage skins were required to fashion the skins of the Zeppelins\u2019 leak-proof hydrogen chambers (A quarter-million cows were needed to build one Zeppelin).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A combination of government fear and technological limitations gave Britons few protections from the early Zeppelin raids. \u00a0The persistent bombing campaigns against British targets may have led to the creation of the RAF (then, the Royal Flying Corps or RFC), but few planes could fly high enough to challenge them. \u00a0Nor did the planes’ machine-gun fire have much effect, between the armored-plating of the Zeppelin and the difficultly of directing fire. \u00a0Given such limited options for defense, London thought it best not to warn their citizens until the Zeppelins were directly above. \u00a0Such moves minimized panic but probably maximized casualties as few civilians had time to seek cover once alerted to the Zeppelin threat.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"

Know Thy Enemy – and thy Friend, apparently.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
This wasn’t to suggest Germany’s Zeppelin crews were either effective or having an easy time striking Britain. \u00a0Zeppelins were frequently lost to bad weather, and few Zeppelins ever reached their intended targets. \u00a0Indiscriminate bombing of civilians targets may have caused initial fear in the civilian populace, but fear quickly turned to rage. \u00a0The Zeppelins were deemed “baby-killers,” and a tactic only worthy of the barbaric “Hun.” \u00a0Instead of driving British public opinion to pull out of the War, the Zeppelin only deepened the English commitment to the fight.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The German response was to double-down on the bombing campaign and start targeting London; Wilhelm had long since gotten over his fear that an errant bomb might kill a distant relative. \u00a0On September 8, 1915, the shadow of a Zeppelin passed over the dome of St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral and unloaded a three-ton bomb, the largest ever dropped at the time, on the city\u2019s financial hub. The attack caused massive damage and killed 22 civilians, including six children. The Zeppelin raid would be the worst of the war on London. \u00a0Britain immediately instituted blackouts and installed searchlights. \u00a0Anti-aircraft defenses were diverted from the front lines in France and positioned around the capital. \u00a0Authorities drained the lake in St. James\u2019s Park to prevent its nighttime glitter from directing Zeppelins to nearby Buckingham Palace. \u00a0And to build morale, Charlie Chaplin filmed a propaganda short in which he brought down a Zeppelin. \u00a0Like Churchill would say a generation later, the British “could take it.”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"

A Zeppelin bomb crater in Paris<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Technology was catching up to the Zeppelin crews. \u00a0By 1916, the British had developed higher flying planes shooting explosive bullets designed to light the Zeppelin’s hydrogen interior on fire. \u00a0Anti-aircraft gun targeting had improved and Zeppelin losses were increasing. \u00a077 of the 115 Zeppelins used by the Germans were destroyed in action by the end of the war. \u00a0Strasser ordered his fleet to fly at higher altitudes, but crews began to suffer from the frigid temperatures and became incapacitated from oxygen deprivation. \u00a0Zeppelin effectiveness was further reduced.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
By 1917, the Zeppelin had been made obsolete. \u00a0But Germany’s belief that a sustained bombing campaign could force Britain to its knees hadn’t wavered. \u00a0Operation<\/em>\u00a0T\u00fcrkenkreuz<\/em>\u00a0saw the renewal of the German aerial assault, only this time with fixed-wing Gotha G.IV planes. \u00a0With a crew of three, room for up to 4 machine-guns and capable of carrying a payload of a half-ton in explosives, the Gotha was the first German heavy bomber, and more than able to defend itself against Entente fighters.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"

The German Gotha G.IV. – the first “heavy bomber” of the Great War. Only around 230 were built (as were several hundred of similar Gotha models). Initially, the Gothas were the Great War’s equivalent of a B-29 Superfortress – capable of carrying both a massive payload and multiple machine guns<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
The Gothas attacked during the day, a far cry from the usual nighttime Zeppelin raids. \u00a0A June 13, 1917 daytime raid on London killed 162 and wounded another 432 without the loss of a single Gotha. \u00a0As frightening as the initial Zeppelin raids had been, they were nothing compared to the German Gothas. \u00a0The Royal Flying Corps commander\u00a0Lionel Charlton\u00a0understood the long-term consequences of the raid, calling it “the beginning of a new epoch in the history of warfare.”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The British defense against the Gothas was even worse than their efforts against the Zeppelins. \u00a0A July 1917 Gotha raid against London killed another 57 civilians and wounded 193. \u00a0Over 100 sorties were launched against the Gotha formation, succeeding in shooting down one to the loss of two RFC planes. \u00a0It wasn’t until August of 1917 that British air defenses could coordinate their counterattacks. \u00a0The loss of three Gothas during an August raid convinced the Germans they had to switch to nighttime attacks as only 30 Gothas had originally been produced.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"

The Royal Flying Corps – the RFC would eventually become the RAF in 1918, but not before surviving horrendous casualty rates, including over 700 killed in 1917 alone (a large percentage of the RFC’s active pilots). Most of these pilots served in France, not in Britain<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Worse for the Germans, the Royal Flying Corps finally decided to be proactive and target the Gothas on the ground. \u00a0Sorties at\u00a0St. Denis-Westrem and Gontrode in Belgium, the home of the Gotha airfields, forced the Germans to further push back their bases of operation. \u00a0With even greater distances to travel, many Gotha formations missed their targets, dropping bombs on rural locations or even in the ocean.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
By 1918, the Germans were desperate enough to press the Zeppelin and Gotha attacks regardless of the losses. \u00a0Gothas were dropping like flies – a May 1918 squadron of over 40 planes lost 7 in an attack against London. \u00a0The high rate of losses prompted Peter Strasser to personally direct an assault against London aboard one of his beloved Zeppelins. \u00a0Leading a raiding party of four Zeppelins in early August 1918, British air defenses managed to shoot down Strasser’s Zeppelin, killing him and his entire crew. \u00a0The remaining Zeppelins, leaderless, crashed either in England or at sea. \u00a0It was the last Zeppelin raid of the Great War.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"

The remains of a Zeppelin. By the end of the war, the Zeppelin were little more than ineffective death traps for their German crews<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

By any definition, the German aerial campaign against Britain was a failure. \u00a0Despite killing nearly 1,400 civilians and wounding another 3,300, the material damage to the British cause was only around 3 million pounds (47 million in 2014 pounds). \u00a0The prime objective – knocking Britain out of the war – never came close to materializing. \u00a0Throughout the Great War, Germany would adopt tactics that successfully struck at Britain’s ability to continue the fight. \u00a0The unrestricted submarine warfare nearly starved Britain and the “Spring Offensive” of 1918, targeting the British Fifth Army, were both terrible blows to British morale. \u00a0But Germany rarely committed to these campaigns except in fits and starts, and Germany never attempted to try them all at once. \u00a0One can only imagine a Britain pressed by U-boats, bombed heavily by Zeppelins or byplanes and suffering major losses in France all at the same time. \u00a0The German strategy of separating Britain from its French ally might have succeeded.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Nevertheless, the campaign had forever changed the nature of war. \u00a0As Wells had predicted, the concept of a “front” at which all the fighting was done was now a 19th Century concept. \u00a0Civilians were as much a target as soldiers in the field, if not more so as those civilians provided the material and political support necessary to maintain the war effort. \u00a0Strasser was sadly correct – modern warfare was now total warfare. \u00a0Strasser prided himself on his air ships being called “baby-killers.” \u00a0In his mind, it only proved how effective his tactics had become.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"

British propaganda on the Zeppelin raids – dubbed “baby-killers,” the raids only deepened the British commitment to fight<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
British Prime Minister\u00a0David Lloyd George\u00a0promised to repay Germany for its air raids “with compound interest,” leading to the development of the\u00a0four-engined\u00a0Handley Page V\/1500\u00a0bomber, designed to drop 7,500\u00a0lbs on\u00a0Berlin. \u00a0The Handley never saw action, and relatively few British bombs hit German territory. \u00a0The few that did prompted German retribution – against French cities. \u00a0Thus the French demanded that their British allies stop.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Berlin saw only one air raid during the War. \u00a0In 1916 a French plane\u00a0flew over\u00a0Berlin\u00a0and dropped not bombs but leaflets. \u00a0For in the words of the translated leaflet, “Paris did not make war on women and children.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  “In all previous forms of war, both by land and sea, the losing side was speedily unable to raid its antagonist’s territory and the communications. One fought on a “front,” and behind that front the winner’s supplies and resources, his towns and factories and capital, the peace of his country, were secure… In aerial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,281],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-ww1-fact-and-myth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50193"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53149,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50193\/revisions\/53149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}