Author: [English] April Maiden, eds., translated by Gao Zhiwu and Cui Hongyan
Publisher: China Pictorial Publishing House
Zeppelin bombing
On the night of September 8, 1915, the LZ13 Zeppelin submarine dived over the norfolk coast. The airship sailed south along the river, and Commander Heinrich Marty saw the lights of London flickering on the horizon, getting closer and closer to his intended target.
This is not the first time that Zeppelins have bombed London, they have already bombed three times. The first was in May 1915, and the third, the night before, had killed 35 civilians and injured 121. However, the bombings were concentrated in the suburbs east of the Tower of London. Kaiser Wilhelm II was very cautious about which areas his bloodthirsty knights in the air should bomb, and there were still his relatives in the city of London, King George V was his immediate cousin, and the Tower of London was the eastern boundary of the royal family's assets. Tonight, however, will be very different, marty will set the city centre on fire with the emperor's "blessing" and London will experience the first real air raid.
At about 22:40, Marty dropped the first bomb from an altitude of 2,600 meters to bomb Euston Railway Station. Suddenly, the City of London was illuminated with searchlights, and dense anti-aircraft artillery fire was fired at the airship, and Marty commanded the airship to continue flying south, followed by the bombing of Bloomsbury and Holborn. The city below the airship was in flames, and the streets were filled with the wounded and the dead. As the airship passed the north side of St. Paul's Church, Marty fired several incendiary bombs at the textile mill area before turning toward Liverpool Street train station. Bombs dropped above the train station were the most deadly, killing nine people on a bus with a single bomb.
The LZ13 airship burrowed into the clouds and sailed back across the English Channel, behind which the heart of the British Empire was on fire, and 55 incendiary bombs turned the city of London into a sea of fire. Marty's airship also dropped 15 high-intensity bombs, one of which weighed 300 kilograms, the largest of any bombing. The night raid cost London the equivalent of £23 million (about 200 million yuan) today, and 87 people were injured and 22 killed.
London's air defense system proved ineffective. Only 6 aircraft from the military took to intercept the Zeppelins, none of them succeeded; the 26 anti-aircraft guns used to defend the capital were too weak to hit the airships. Some anti-aircraft fire had been close to the airship, but Marty raised the airship to 3500 meters, easily away from the attacked range, and continued to bomb.
This new type of warfare in the early 20th century was frightening. Writer D.H. Lawrence, who witnessed the raid first-hand, wrote in a letter to a friend: "We see Zeppelin flying high above our heads, glinting in the clouds... The shells fell to the ground and exploded and burned, and the flames reflected the shell of the airship. The order of the universe seems to have faded, and a new order has arrived in shock. That night, the moon was no longer the queen of the sky, and zeppelins dominated the firmament. ”
The Big Four of World War I: British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister George Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
Britain's overall war
The Reaction of the British People to the Zeppelin Air Raid was unexpected by Peter Strasser, and instead of breaking the will of the British army, a new "air raid spirit" sprouted. In May 1915, London was bombed for the first time, killing a number of children. The next day's headlines were horrified, accusing Germany of being a "baby killer." Riots ensued, German shops were attacked, and thousands of Germans living in Britain were detained.
In September 1915, central London was hit by an even more bombing campaign, and the anger of the people turned to the British government, accusing it of not providing adequate protection for the citizens of London. The Royal Navy has been vouching for national security for hundreds of years, but who would have expected this threat to come from the air? There is an urgent need for deep reflection.
At that time, Britain did not have an independent air force, and the pilots of the Royal Flying Group and the Royal Navy Flying Team were recalled to defend the rear. By the end of the war, the RAF had been established and the air defense network was in place, and these air defense facilities had saved Britain from danger 22 years later in the Battle of Britain.
Zeppelin attacker Heinrich Marty
Heinrich Marty was the most heroic and fearless Zeppelin attacker, a household name in Germany and Britain. He made his name in the Blue Sky Tree, but he was a professional sailor. He made a quick start on board and began to command the ship independently in his early twenties.
In 1913, while training at the German Naval Academy, he happened to be fascinated by the sight of a new airship designed by Count von Zeppelin that was lighter than air. His move caught the attention of Peter Strasser, commander of the Naval Airship Division. In January 1915, Marty took part in the Zeppelin air raids on Britain for the first time.
Over the next two years, Marty participated in 14 air raids and dropped a total of 38 tons of bombs, far more than any airship commander. One of the most notorious attacks was the bombing of London on 8 September 1915, the most destructive of the entire air raid, causing more than one-sixth of the total economic damage inflicted on British towns by Zeppelins.
Mattie was calm and determined, seemingly overwhelmed, and he knew he was engaged in a life-and-death duel. The British eventually managed to shoot down a Zeppelin, and Marty wrote after hearing the news: "It is only a matter of time before we are shot down one day." If anyone says he wasn't intimidated by the burning of the airship, he must be bragging. His "one day" finally arrived. His airship was shot down over Hertfordshire in October 1916, when he was 33 years old.
The end of the Zeppelin
On September 2, 1916, about a year after the night of Martí's air raids, a larger Zeppelin appeared over London. The SL11 was the largest airship in the air raids, forming a 16-ship formation with other airships to bomb all of England.
A few minutes later, the SL11 airship was locked in by searchlights, and the roaring anti-aircraft gunfire everywhere tore the night out of shiny holes, and at the same time, a British fighter began to attack. The plane was piloted by 21-year-old Lieutenant Lif Robinson of the Royal Flying Brigade, his second involvement in a counterattack against a Zeppelin. The SL11 airship, 3650 meters above him, was clearly visible and almost motionless, as if it were covered by a pillar of searchlight.
Robinson's machine gun was equipped with 3 drum clips and loaded with new combination ammunition (incendiary and bursting shells). He simply flew neatly under the SL11 airship, strafed upwards, and soon shot the entire magazine into the airship's abdomen. Seeing that it was ineffective, he threw another shuttle into the belly of the spacecraft. The machine gun roared, and one of the magazines was gone again, still to no avail. He decided to change his style of play.
He adjusted his position and launched the final attack. Instead of aiming at the large shell of the airship, he concentrated his fire on a point behind it. At this moment, the shell of the airship flashed an orange-red light, and quickly rushed out of the boat, because the hydrogen gas below had already ignited a raging flame. Watching the behemoth break, twist and fall from the air, Londoners watching from below shouted their hats into the air with joy.
The fate of the Zeppelin as a weapon of war began to come to an end. The newly built Super Zeppelin can climb to higher altitudes, but the aircraft manufacturing technology is also rapidly improving. By the end of the war, about 30 Zeppelins had crashed. On August 5, 1918, the last airship, the world's largest airship, the L-70, was shot down. At the helm that night was Peter Strasser, the king of Zeppelin, who still stubbornly believed that the airship could bring victory to Germany. In the final blow of the airship, Strasser broke the blue sky with the crew.
Strather, who launched a series of airstrikes that killed 557 people and wounded 1,358, was wrong to think that britain could be brought to its knees by deterring British nationals. However, he struggled to make an attempt to justify the world's strategic air strikes against civilians. As he himself put it: "We attack the beating heart of our enemies, only to be smeared as 'killers of babies'... Now, there are eggs under the nest? Modern warfare is total war. His appalling prophecies were proven 30 years later in Dresden and Hiroshima.
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