The first blitz : the German bomber campaign against Britain in the First World War

200 Pages·2002·3.43 MB·English

by  Hyde

THE FIRST BLITZ

First published in Great Britain 2002 by
LEO COOPER
and reprinted in 2012 by Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Copyright © Andrew Hyde 2002, 2012

ISBN 0 85052 812 7
Digital Edition ISBN: 978 17834 615 85

A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

Typeset in 11/13 Sabon by
Pen & Sword Books, Barnsley, South Yorkshire

Printed and Bound in England by
CPI UK
CONTENTS
Introduction and Acknowledgements
Map

Chapter 1 A Power That Controls The Fate of Nations
Chapter 2 Aeroplanes May Come Over This Country
Chapter 3 The Present Form of Parachute Is Not Suitable
Chapter 4 Eat More Slowly, You Will Need Less Food
Chapter 5 An Airship Raid Upon London Has
Become Impossible
Chapter 6 That’s Right In Tontine Street
Chapter 7 The Guns Were Well Fought
Chapter 8 That’s One Of Ours
Chapter 9 Good Old Jerry! Good Old Lloyd George!
Chapter 10 We Are All In This Business Together

Appendices
Appendix 1 Performance Ratings of Aircraft in Service with the Home Defence
Squadrons
Appendix 2 Teachers and Staff Present at Upper North Street School on 13
June 1917
Appendix 3 Pupils Who Died at Upper North Street School on 13 June 1917
Bibliography and Sources
Introduction and Acknowledgements
Travelling on holiday to our uncle and aunt in Dorset during the 1960s was
always a daunting prospect. It was a lengthy, gruelling slog and, before the
advent of the M25 Motorway, involved among other feats of endurance, a long-
winded grind through the London suburbs. Boredom remains the overriding
memory of those tortuous trips, sometimes alleviated only when we got lost or
missed a turning and my parents rounded on one another in their customary way.
There was however one other, fleeting diversion from the ennui. Part of the
journey through London took us along the East India Dock Road in Tower
Hamlets, or what used to be known as Poplar and where both my parents were
born and brought up. Every year we covered the same ground, and at this point,
every year, we would pass Poplar Memorial Park, at which juncture my father
unfailingly took his left hand off the steering wheel and pointed over towards the
left with his thumb. With hardly a fraction of a second to register it in my head,
the barely discernible figure of an off-white stone angel would come briefly into
view. ‘Your uncle’s name’s on that,’ he would pronounce intriguingly. Then the
car would be too far ahead to take a second look and we would be back on our
way – the welcome distraction awaiting our return the following year.
On this went until finally, my curiosity pricked, I decided I wanted to know
more about this enigmatic angel and the story behind it. Finally it transpired that
my uncle, George Albert Hyde, was one of eighteen children killed when a
German bomb demolished their school in Upper North Street Poplar, during the
First World War, just round the corner from where the memorial which bears
their names stands.
It was one of hundreds of incidents to occur in the British Home Front during
the Great War, when German airships and occasionally lone aircraft, flew over
towns and cities to unload their cargoes of bombs. Then, on Wednesday, 13 June
1917 – in a complete change of tack – a squadron of German purpose-built
bombers flew above London and scattered their payloads over the capital in what
would arguably prove to be the world’s first ever strategic air raid.
Naturally, I did not appreciate, much less understand too much of it at first. I
was only a youngster in the 1960s. The deepest my grasp of the past went then
was to absorb the war stories in sixpenny editions of the comics Battle or
Commando, or tales of derring-do in the Victor. However, my love of history
had begun to develop by the time I was nine or ten-years-old and I started
looking the period up in books. There were indeed, accounts of the airship raids
and even brief mentions of the short summer campaign which included the raid
in which Uncle George died when he was just five-years-old.
There was though, never more than a passing mention of this and the other
raids which became the Gotha Campaign. Many books had been written about
the period, but with one or two notable exceptions, only a brief mention was ever
given of the children who died at Upper North Street or any of the other
incidents which occurred in that fateful summer of 1917.
By the time I was in my late teens and early twenties I had developed and
honed my relationship with the subject of history to the extent that I fancied
myself as something of a very amateur historian. I therefore decided to
compensate for the fact that the raid coverage seemed incomplete and research
it. This book is the result. In embarking upon this project one cannot, however,
assume that the reader will be aware of all the circumstances surrounding the air
raids. I have, therefore, extended my research beyond the immediate
circumstances of the attacks to take in the relevant events leading up to, and
surrounding, the devastating raids which took place as part of the campaign.
These will include the attack on Folkestone on 25 May 1917, which shook the
south-east of the country, and the almost unknown attack on Sheerness a week
later.
I have been anxious not to repeat what could be found in other works, but in
order to clarify just how this and the other tragedies were allowed to occur in the
first place I have drawn in a number of strands. I have gone back to the days
when men could only dream of flying, and trace developments from there to the
time when that dream became a reality. I have examined other relevant details
connected to the story of the actual raids, so as to describe to the reader how
political and military decisions both in Britain and Germany combined to make
what occurred inevitable.
My aim has been to provide a rounded account of both the raids and the
historical events which were inexorably wound up with them, led up to them,
and eventually caused them.
This book has taken me the best part of twenty years to write, and I have
many people to thank for their time, effort and patience in the help they have
given me. In that time I have visited the Public Record Office at Kew many
times, finding the reports written by the British defenders, pilots and
commanders of the anti-aircraft gun stations, official reports by military
intelligence and leads for further study and investigation. I secured the assistance
of local and national newspapers in the UK and abroad; I have visited libraries
and had letters from people who witnessed, or knew people who had been
present at the events which have been described here. As these incidents
occurred nearly eighty years ago, that has been no mean feat. Most people have
long since passed-on even if they were only children at the time but, despite this,
I have received numerous letters from eyewitnesses over the years, some from as
far afield as Australia and New Zealand, whose accounts have still been vivid so
long after the events they describe. To the many other people who corresponded
with me and spoke over the phone I am very, very grateful.
To supplement the letters, I have found old newspaper articles and quotations
from printed material which I have used to fill in gaps where otherwise the story
would have been incomplete. I have also referred to a book written in the 1960s,
entitled The Sky on Fire by Raymond H Fredette. Mr Fredette’s work includes
interviews with some of the original German Gotha crews, something I could not
have hoped to achieve after all this time. But in the 1960s there were still a few
old survivors left, and he managed to use their recollections to enrich his book. I
have also consulted many other works covering the First World War and the
people who helped to influence its progress – or perhaps lack of it. I have
travelled around the places described and searched for and sometimes found,
relics and evidence of what happened. From this wealth of disparate information
and research material I have produced this book.
Where sources have been quoted in any form, I have endeavoured to contact
the author, his publisher or their successor. I found no successors to the defunct
Women’s Dreadnought, Star and Daily News, but am grateful to original writers
for their observations. Some assorted quotes come from lines found in books,
papers or periodicals which I hastily scribbled down without the foresight of
noting the source. I therefore humbly apologize to, and belatedly thank who or
whatsoever recognizes itself as such.
A special thank you to Mr John Hook, who gave me free and open access to
his labour of love, They Come, They Come and which I found indispensable.
John spent many years researching the raids on London during the period 1915-
1918, and his research uncovered some very interesting and useful material,
which he kindly gave me permission to use. Thanks also to Orion Publishing for
allowing me to refer to Vickers, A History on my description of the Mayfly
debacle, and the Oxford University Press for permission to quote from Echoes
from the Great War. Lionel Leventhal of Greenhill Books generously allowed
me to quote from the Greenhill editions of Flying Fury, 5 Years in the Royal
Flying Corps by Captain James McCudden and Sagittarius Rising by Cecil
Lewis. Both contain priceless firsthand pilots’ accounts of the raids which took
place, and give readers an invaluable insight into the war from their point of
view. My thanks to the Evening Standard for allowing me to quote from