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00:06In a park in London's East End, there is a memorial which bears the names of 18 children killed in
00:13an air raid.
00:15I think the bombs fell somewhere around 11 o'clock in the morning, if I remember rightly.
00:22While I was standing there, the caretaker came out with the first of the bodies.
00:31These five-year-old children did not die in the Second World War, but in a much earlier conflict.
00:39In 1915, German Zeppelin airships appeared over Britain
00:44and, for the first time, began an aerial bombing campaign against a civilian population.
00:55See, it's the first time we'd experienced a war.
00:59And we didn't know what it was all about.
01:04You never knew, I suppose, when the raids were going to be on.
01:08And we didn't get the warnings that you had in the Second World War.
01:13When the Zeppelin raids begins, there is no home defence.
01:17Even as late as May of 1915, there's only 33 anti-aircraft guns in the whole country.
01:22This was the start of a two-and-a-half-year campaign,
01:26which claimed the lives of many hundreds of people
01:28and whose psychological effect was every bit as powerful as that of the Blitz of the Second World War.
01:35These really were weapons of mass destruction, frightening new terror weapons,
01:40and nobody was quite sure how devastating they were going to be.
01:45This is the forgotten story of Britain's first Blitz.
01:50This is the forgotten story of Britain's first Blitz.
01:51This is the forgotten story of Britain's first Blitz.
02:09This is the
02:09and they are now in theasses' first Blitz.
02:09That's the one diaries's first Blitz
02:14that's theignee role thatج ahiliation only the airen.
02:15Well, the reveal여 bag they need to be seen
02:19on one of the symbols.
02:2190 years ago, the last German airship to be shot down over mainland Britain
02:26crashed and burned in this field.
02:31It was the evening time, of course, because I started coming over when it was getting dark.
02:36I didn't come over in broad daylight to be shot down.
02:47My mother said, come and have a look at Zezep going over the house.
02:51Loads of them were coming over those days, but they didn't all pass off our bungalow naturally.
02:57So when one did come so near, she just said, come and have a look.
03:15They were firing at it when they came over Thorntoness.
03:19And it obviously caught light at the bottom and just flew it up.
03:35We knew it would come down somewhere, and we found out the next day it had come down at Thepleton.
03:41And that's where we made for.
03:4595-year-old Phyllis Rees was just six when, in 1917, she witnessed the destruction of L48,
03:53a German Zeppelin airship returning home from a bombing raid on Britain.
04:04Nine decades later, a team of archaeologists specializing in the First World War
04:10have come to the Zeppelin crash site not far from the Suffolk village of Thebeton.
04:22It is the first time in Britain a Zeppelin crash site has been archaeologically excavated.
04:29We've used metal detectors to re-establish where the main crash impact was,
04:36and that's where we're now working, over here.
04:39We've used the metal detectors, really, to establish where we've got the biggest concentration
04:44of small metal debris from the crashed Zeppelin.
04:50On a June night in 1917, three British fighter aircraft attacked L48,
04:57setting alight the airship's flammable hydrogen, sending the Zeppelin and her crew crashing to the ground.
05:07I can just remember the first look at it, seeing this enormous thing.
05:12It looked as if it filled the whole field up.
05:16The crash was the last gasp in a terror campaign that had dominated mainland Britain
05:21for the previous two and a half years.
05:26So these pictures were taken in 1917 by the Royal Flying Corps?
05:30But you also get a sense from this, don't you, of how there's a fairly confined area
05:35where it's all sort of crumpled up.
05:36Yeah, it's like a telescope shutting, isn't it?
05:38Yeah, absolutely, yes.
05:42I know it was very impressive, seeing the whole thing charred.
05:46It was still in the form of a zip.
05:49It was one huge charred thing.
05:51And we knew that the men, whoever were underneath it, wouldn't be alive.
05:56And all these bods hanging around here, who are these?
05:59These are civilians coming to see the site and the cauldron of soldiers around here
06:03to stop people from pilfering the bits and pieces off the site.
06:07We know that there was a massive official salvage operation following each Zeppelin crash
06:13and that most of the debris was systematically removed by the authorities.
06:17And much of what remained, we know, was salvaged by souvenir hunters.
06:24Ninety years later, only fragmentary evidence remains at the crash site.
06:32These are some of the more interesting artefacts
06:34that have been recovered throughout this excavation.
06:38We have good-conditioned aluminium alloy, probably from the gondola,
06:42in very good condition given the acidic soil content.
06:46We have a fragment of geodetic structure here,
06:48the general framework of the Zeppelin.
06:51Again, showing slight corrosion, but for 89 years,
06:54I think that's, again, in very good condition.
06:56This example here is our officer's cuff button,
07:00clearly showing the anchor, the imperial crown and the rope twist design,
07:04and the words extra fine, which is a standard stamping
07:07for all German transport and military buttons.
07:09And also you might just see on the back here,
07:11where there is evidence of burning extreme heat subjection.
07:16Finally, probably one of the most interesting things I've seen,
07:19is a fired British .303 bullet.
07:22Very difficult to identify date range of this particular type of ball round.
07:26But I think given the situation, given where it was recovered from,
07:29the depth that it was recovered by the metal detector,
07:33I'm pretty keen to state that this was one of the bullets that brought down L-48.
07:41L-48 was huge.
07:44Over 600 feet long, it was bigger than any battleship of the time.
07:49For the Germans, the loss of L-48 was the end to an era which had begun nearly two decades
07:56earlier.
08:04Three years before the Wright brothers lifted off at Kitty Hawk,
08:08the German Count Zeppelin was pioneering his rigid airship.
08:12A solid aluminium framework which was covered and filled with hydrogen,
08:17a gas that is lighter than air.
08:22Maneuverable and with a speed of up to 50 miles per hour,
08:25the airship was revolutionary.
08:29The great advantage of the rigid airship is that you can make it much larger,
08:33therefore you can carry more fuel, you can put in more power,
08:37and basically you can come up with a complete system that is capable of travelling a very long way.
08:42And the great strength of the rigid airship was its range.
08:46The fact it could go a very long way compared to an aeroplane
08:50that even by 1914 could barely hop off the ground and get back home.
09:00A new and glamorous form of transport.
09:02By 1914, Zeppelins, as the airships were now being called,
09:08had flown over 100,000 miles, carrying 37,000 civilian passengers without incident.
09:17But even as early as 1908, science fiction writers like H.G. Wells foresaw the Zeppelins' potential
09:25as an instrument of war.
09:31And it wasn't long before the German military were taking an interest in the Zeppelins.
09:37The German Navy rapidly saw the advantages of the airship as a long-range reconnaissance platform.
09:44And the Navy saw the Zeppelin as the only way they could give themselves that long-range eye in the
09:53sky
09:53that would prevent their numerically inferior fleet being trapped by the British.
09:59The German Navy's fleet of airships were to be commanded by a young officer called Peter Strasser,
10:06seen here with the elderly Count Zeppelin.
10:09It was Strasser who saw the full military impact the Zeppelins could have,
10:14boasting that England can be overcome by means of airships.
10:20Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, the British Navy blockaded Germany,
10:26attempting to starve her into submission.
10:30The German Navy retaliated against British civilians,
10:35shelling the English seaside towns of Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool just before Christmas in 1914.
10:44But the Germans were to take a more audacious step the following month,
10:49when they extended the conflict from the sea to the air.
10:59On the 19th of January 1915,
11:02two airships, the L3 and the L4, approached the east coast of England.
11:09While the L4 headed northwards,
11:11her sister ship turned south towards the seaside town of Great Yarmouth.
11:17L3 unleashed a cluster of bombs.
11:24At the Kitchener Road Cemetery in Great Yarmouth,
11:28Joan Roberts and her son Christopher
11:30are paying a visit to the grave of Joan's great-uncle Sam.
11:35The family knew nothing of the grave's existence until a local historian recently discovered it.
11:40It's a bit different, isn't it?
11:42Yes.
11:45Samuel Alfred Smith.
11:47He was killed by a bomb from a zeppelin, January 19, 1915.
11:53Aged 53 years.
11:56That night, Sam Smith became the first British civilian ever to be killed by aerial bombing.
12:03My great-great-uncle.
12:06So...
12:09So that's Samuel?
12:11That's Samuel, yes.
12:12Right.
12:12And that is as well.
12:15At 8.25 in the evening,
12:18Zeppelin L3 dropped seven high-explosive bombs.
12:24It was the bomb which landed here, in the St. Peter's Plain area, that killed Sam Smith.
12:3172-year-old Martha Taylor also died.
12:35Three others in Great Yarmouth were injured that night.
12:37This is it.
12:40There we are, look.
12:41The first house in Great Britain to be damaged by a zeppelin air raid, 19th January 1915.
12:51So Sam's workshop was just over there?
12:54Yes.
12:54In that gap there?
12:55Yes.
12:56Because that's 16 and he was 16A.
12:58And he came out of his workshop and stood at the gates and was hit by shrapnel.
13:06He was badly injured, his head was injured and eventually he was found and declared dead on the spot.
13:14An hour later, the second airship, L4, approached the Norfolk coast just north of Hunstanton.
13:22Thirty minutes later, it dropped its deadly cargo on Kings Lynn, killing two people and injuring a further 13.
13:31The fact that people had been killed in their houses, in their streets, from the air, this was new.
13:40Science fiction writers like H.G. Wells had written about this, but now it was happening.
13:46This was the full horror of modern war and it was quite a shock.
13:51The first two attacks on Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn showed just how ill-prepared Britain was for a war
13:58from the air.
14:01When the Zeppelin raids begin, most of the targets are fully illuminated.
14:07Nobody had really seriously thought about air raid precautions, about how you deal with this threat.
14:13It wasn't until the summer of 1916 that a full blackout was ordered over London, paralysing the city by night.
14:21The whole idea of the German offensive against Britain, both surface ship and airship, was to demonstrate that, at its
14:33core, the British Empire was vulnerable.
14:37In fact, Winston Churchill, Britain's first lord of the Admiralty, had anticipated the threat posed by the Zeppelins as early
14:44as 1910.
14:48And so just over a month after the outbreak of the First World War, Churchill authorised the bombing of the
14:55Zeppelin sheds in Germany.
14:57An event that was to make front page news.
15:01Basically what they did was they carried the bombs in the cockpit and threw them over the side when they
15:09got to their target.
15:10The successful, if primitive, bombing of the Zeppelin sheds caught the imagination of the British press.
15:18Three weeks later, another British airman, Flight Lieutenant Reggie Marricks, went one step further, when he actually destroyed an airship
15:27on the ground.
15:28The whole idea that you could get into an aircraft of the day, fly 150 miles or so, and drop
15:34a bomb on what was in fact a strategic target at that time, is quite a significant step in thinking.
15:42A pre-emptive strike, if you like, we'd probably call it these days.
15:47And yet, despite the success of these pre-emptive strikes, the war on the Western Front was the prime focus
15:54of the military leaders.
15:56And most aircraft were diverted to support the troops on the ground.
16:02In the spring of 1915, German Zeppelins continued to attack Eastern Britain, with increasing intensity and a growing number of
16:12casualties.
16:18We had no crew of taupe members had been in flight.
16:23We had no force to attack Eastern Britain, but we were in的.
16:25We received a very very small group of raids on the ground.
16:26We have the bombs in the ground, in the night, in the night, and the Общ him at the sea.
16:33No doubt, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt.
16:38We were degrees were very small for a while.
16:38We were also a large group of teams at the sea.
16:38We were very lucky to complete a matter of time.
16:38We were very happy to have a war on the ground floor.
16:39We had a war on the ground, but we were too close to the ground with the ground.
16:41We had a war on the ground.
16:43We were very happy to have a war on the ground ground.
16:58The attacks are a novel experience for British civilians.
17:02I mean, the last time that anybody, in a sense,
17:04had directly attacked civilians, you could argue, I suppose,
17:06was when the Dutch came up the Medway in 1667.
17:10And therefore, for some people, it's very, very frightening indeed.
17:14The Zeppelins attacked with impunity
17:17and, importantly for those on the ground, with little warning.
17:25We had police round with whistles on a bike and also rattles.
17:33When the raids came on, they used to get us out of bed
17:39and we used to be taken downstairs to the kitchen
17:43and just sit underneath the table until the all-clear went.
17:49Some of the advice given now seems truly bizarre.
17:54What to do in an air raid?
17:56Go in the cellar and take your whisky with you.
18:00A lot of people went over to the local coroner's court,
18:04which was also a mortuary,
18:07because they had reinforced basements there.
18:10Well, we didn't have any shelters, you see.
18:13Some of our houses did have the basements, which we could use,
18:17but they always had the feeling
18:18that they wanted to be with other people.
18:22They'd come out into the street to do that.
18:26As the number of civilian casualties increased,
18:30indignant newspapers published photographs
18:32of the innocent women and children who had been killed.
18:35The public, angry and frightened,
18:39began to turn on the people meant to protect them.
18:44When Hull is bombed,
18:46it is said that army soldiers are beaten up on the streets of Hull
18:51because there is no adequate defence.
18:52There is certainly a case of a Royal Flying Corps vehicle
18:56being stoned in Beverley after a raid on East Yorkshire.
19:01So there is this rising concern that the defences are inadequate.
19:06The problem with Britain's air defences at the start of the war
19:10was that the few remaining planes were old, slow,
19:14and couldn't operate effectively at the same altitude as the Zeppelins.
19:26The Shuttleworth collection has the world's largest number
19:29of flying British aircraft from the First World War.
19:33In 1914, air defence was divided
19:37between the Army's Royal Flying Corps
19:40and the Royal Naval Air Service.
19:42When you look at a Zeppelin, this is a big thing.
19:45It's 600 foot long, 60 foot wide or so,
19:47and you'd think they'd be relatively easy to shoot down,
19:50but I think the reverse was certainly the case.
19:53This is intriguing, isn't it?
19:54Wire, wood and fabric.
19:57This is what made up a typical First World War fighter aircraft.
20:02I think what you've got to remember about the state of the Air Force
20:05is at the beginning of the First World War in 1914
20:07is that the aircraft itself was only 11 years old or so.
20:12So everything is really very embryonic.
20:15Well, here we are on the business end, the office.
20:17So it's basically plywood and canvas and wire.
20:20Not much protection for the pilot as well, as you can see.
20:23It's just a thin covering.
20:24So up at 18,000, 19,000 feet
20:27with the temperature down in the minus 20s.
20:29Yeah.
20:30It's not going to be very warm.
20:31OK, looking forward, we've got the altimeter at the top,
20:34we have an airspeed indicator underneath,
20:37an ignition switch just at the bottom there,
20:40a level indicator.
20:41Organisation on the ground was virtually non-existent.
20:45You see squadrons being formed
20:48with different types of aircraft
20:51rather than single types of aircraft.
20:53You see pilots training themselves
20:57or paying for their own training.
21:00If the pilot's life was difficult on the ground,
21:03it was even worse in the air.
21:06It's a very basic environment.
21:08You're open to the elements,
21:09so you've got a 90 to 120 mile-an-hour wind
21:12blowing around you.
21:14And as you get up to height,
21:16temperature goes down 2 degrees per 1,000 feet.
21:19So up at 15,000 to 18,000 feet,
21:22they're down in the minus 15 to minus 20s.
21:25Coupled with that at altitude,
21:26you've got lack of oxygen to reducing the power in the engine.
21:30Lack of oxygen is reducing the motive function of the pilot as well,
21:34so you're not thinking straight.
21:37With air defences virtually absent,
21:39the Zeppelin attacks continued,
21:42the death toll rose,
21:44and London, for the first time,
21:46became the main target.
21:51On the evening of the 8th of September, 1915,
21:54a single Zeppelin, the L-13,
21:57crossed the wash on England's east coast
21:59and headed straight for the capital.
22:04L-13 was commanded by 32-year-old Heinrich Matty,
22:09one of the most experienced and audacious of the Zeppelin captains.
22:14A skilled navigator,
22:16Matty had become infamous as a result of the impact of his earlier raids.
22:21He had even boasted to a reporter that he
22:24would bomb London three times in succession or perish in the attempt.
22:33At around 11pm,
22:36Matty dropped his first bombs at Golders Green in the north of London
22:39before heading down towards the centre of the city.
22:45David Warren is a tour guide
22:47who leads groups along the route of Matty's September raid.
22:52One of the more important parts of his tour
22:55is in Lamb's Conduit Passage in Hoban.
23:01Airship number L-30 came straight above us here
23:05and dropped a 50-kilogram bomb,
23:07striking a lamppost which killed Henry Coombs,
23:11the employee of the Gaslight and Coat Company, outright.
23:13It blasted in the Dolphin public house,
23:16stopping the clock at 10.40,
23:19and it's remained at that time to this day.
23:21The blast then blew its way down Lamb's Conduit Passage,
23:26damaging number 7 and number 10,
23:29and setting those two buildings ablaze.
23:32Matty continued dropping bombs,
23:34heading towards his primary target,
23:36the textile warehouses around Bartholomew Close in the city of London.
23:41Aboard the L-13 was the biggest bomb yet used in Zeppelin raids.
23:47The L-13 was right on target to strike its main objective,
23:52the soft goods centre, just to the east of me,
23:55but avoiding St Paul's Cathedral that is directly behind us.
24:00Charles Henley, who was the fire brigade duty fireman in this muse at the time,
24:05heard a strange noise in the distance like the whirr, whirr, whirr of an engine.
24:10Then all of a sudden there was an almighty crash.
24:13And when Charles Henley came round,
24:16he looked around him and the square was an absolute shambles.
24:21Up there, Captain Leutnant Heinrich Matty was looking down.
24:26He said afterwards that within the funnel of the explosion
24:31of the first 300-kilogram bomb ever to be dropped on London,
24:34all the lights within that funnel disappeared.
24:38The raid left 26 dead and 87 injured.
24:42It also caused half a million pounds worth of damage,
24:45making it the costliest air raid of the First World War.
24:49Despite the fact that just 26 anti-aircraft guns
24:52defended the whole of London,
24:55their effects that night had worried Matty.
24:57He would later write to his wife, asking that,
25:00a good angel will hasten to guard my ship
25:03against the dangers which throng the air everywhere about her.
25:13Moncombe's Hall Hill to the northeast of London
25:16provides a clear vantage point over the city.
25:22It's here that the Great War Archaeology Group have come
25:26to investigate the remains of a First World War anti-aircraft position.
25:33This platform was one of the defensive positions
25:36constructed in a ring of iron around London.
25:41It was the first attempt to defend a city from an airborne attack.
25:47If this is the first air war that's ever been fought,
25:50and therefore this is the first air defence system ever established,
25:54where do the guns come from?
25:55I mean, are they made specifically to be anti-aircraft guns?
25:59No.
25:59Are they guns that are adapted from the Navy or something like that?
26:01I mean, I don't know the answer to that.
26:02No, apparently not.
26:04The whole thing is a matter of improvisation
26:06and working it out as you go along,
26:08and it seems these three-inch quick-firers,
26:10as they were,
26:12were an adaptation of an ordinary artillery piece.
26:17These were supposed to be able to fire
26:19up to 18,000 feet straight up into the air.
26:22Now, I mean, maybe that was in optimum conditions
26:25and they didn't normally achieve that performance,
26:28but it seems occasionally they could shoot that fast.
26:30And if they're firing vertically,
26:31isn't the danger that stuff's going to come down and land on them?
26:35The records suggest that there's quite a few casualties,
26:38quite a few people killed,
26:39quite a few people injured
26:40by falling fragments of British anti-aircraft shells
26:44exploding in the sky.
27:00I mean, the anti-aircraft guns were not terribly effective
27:04in terms of shooting things down.
27:05They estimated after the war
27:06that you probably needed to fire 8,000 shells to get one hit.
27:11And, of course, a hit wasn't necessarily a kill.
27:13So, Zeppelins, generally speaking,
27:15weren't shot down by the anti-aircraft guns,
27:18but this kind of ring of iron which built up,
27:21and probably a tenfold increase, I think,
27:23altogether in the number of guns
27:25over the space of about two years,
27:26a real build-up in the firepower,
27:28it meant that it was increasingly difficult
27:30for the Zeppelins to get into London,
27:32which was their prime target.
27:43Ninety years on,
27:45the metal detectors can still turn up
27:47frightening reminders of that war.
27:52This time, an unexploded anti-aircraft shell.
27:58Excavations will have to stop
28:00while the bomb squad removes the shell.
28:06But the military had developed some less obvious ways
28:09of helping to combat the Zeppelin threat.
28:12The German Zeppelins would use radio a lot,
28:15and this meant you could find out where they were
28:18by the direction-finding technique,
28:21DF-ing, as it was known.
28:22If it was a radio source with German naval codes in the air,
28:25it was pretty obviously a Zeppelin.
28:27And you could track them, and they were tracked.
28:29You might even be able to read the codes
28:31of where they were going and what they were doing.
28:33And it was often said that the British knew
28:36where a Zeppelin was better than its own crew did.
28:40In addition, the airship was beginning to reveal
28:44its own fatal flaw.
28:46In France, a low-flying Zeppelin
28:49had been turned into an inferno by anti-aircraft fire.
28:53With no parachutes, the crew were burnt alive
28:56as their airship fell.
29:05Despite these dangers,
29:06by 1916, the number of raids over Britain
29:10significantly increased.
29:19My mother and all the other neighbours
29:21were very, very annoyed
29:24to think that a big thing like that
29:26should be allowed to come across London.
29:29In terms of the anger,
29:31you start getting anti-German riots in the East End.
29:34For example, there's an anti-German riot
29:36in Stoke, Newington.
29:38There's stories, for example,
29:39Dax hounds being stoned in the streets,
29:42this kind of thing.
29:43Anybody who has a German name,
29:45their premises is going to be targeted.
29:47The shopkeepers, of course,
29:48were the ones who were the targets.
29:51They were hounded out as quickly as possible.
29:56And, of course, this made a difference for shopping
29:58because you miss their shops, anyway.
30:04The Germans thought to assess the impacts of their raids
30:08by interrogating captured British servicemen.
30:13British officers who were captured
30:15tend to say that these are of no military value,
30:18they're not hitting military targets,
30:20they're futile,
30:21a waste of time.
30:23But what's interesting
30:24is that ordinary British soldiers
30:26who are interrogated by the Germans
30:28will tend to say that they've heard from their mothers
30:30or their wives or their sisters or whatever
30:32that these raids are, in fact,
30:35having a great impact on morale at home.
30:46In March 1916,
30:48the British guns started to have some success
30:50when the L-15,
30:52damaged by anti-aircraft fire,
30:54was forced to ditch in the sea
30:56off the Kent coast.
31:09But it was aircraft
31:10from the newly created
31:12Home Defence Squadrons
31:13which were to have the biggest impact
31:15in Britain's battle with the Zeppelins.
31:19In the summer of 2006,
31:21the standard of the RAF's 39 Squadron
31:25was laid up at St Clement Dame's,
31:27the Royal Air Force Church in London's strand.
31:31The squadron has been disbanded
31:33after 90 years' service.
31:36Formed in May 1916
31:38as one of four Home Defence Squadrons,
31:41its purpose was to defend London
31:43from the Zeppelin threat.
31:45It was to have a dramatic impact
31:47on the aerial war over Britain.
31:51One of its first pilots
31:52won the Victoria Cross
31:53for his action against the Zeppelins.
31:57Lieutenant William Leif Robinson
31:59became an overnight hero
32:01when, on 3rd September 1916,
32:03he shot down the first German airship
32:06over British soil.
32:09Leif Robinson flew close to the airship
32:12and fired a number of rounds
32:13into its hydrogen-filled bags.
32:16As these contemporary photos show,
32:19it sent the SL-11 plummeting to the ground,
32:22killing all of its crew.
32:28For his action,
32:30Leif Robinson was awarded the VC.
32:32But the real breakthrough was technological.
32:36He was using newly developed incendiary bullets,
32:40which burned as they were fired,
32:42igniting the highly flammable hydrogen
32:44in the airship.
32:47The late summer of 1916
32:48should have been
32:49the high spot of the Zeppelin offensive.
32:51They carry out some mass attacks,
32:5216 airships on one occasion,
32:54the biggest ever.
32:55But the British have the incendiary bullet.
32:59Now, the fighters,
33:01which have got the organisation
33:02to get themselves in more or less the right place,
33:04with the Zeppelins illuminated by searchlights,
33:07are able to fire large numbers
33:11of explosive and incendiary bullets
33:13in a very nasty mix
33:15into the gaspags of the Zeppelins.
33:18And it has a tremendous impact.
33:20So there's stories of people coming out into the streets,
33:23dancing with joy, singing,
33:25some of these playing the bagpipes,
33:27it's reported in one place.
33:30The loss of the SL-11
33:32was felt hard by the airship crews in Germany,
33:35none more so than the now notorious
33:38Zeppelin commander Heinrich Matty.
33:40He wrote to his wife,
33:42The war is becoming a serious matter.
33:45It is my earnest wish
33:47that you be spared
33:48this most heavy of sacrifice
33:50for the fatherland,
33:51and that I may remain with you
33:53to surround you with love as a garment.
34:00On the night of the 24th of September, 1916,
34:03Germany launched a 12-Zeppelin raid
34:06against Britain,
34:07commanded by Heinrich Matty in L-31.
34:13The airships were met
34:15by heavy resistance from British defences.
34:32The first victim was L-33,
34:35which, having dropped incendiary bombs
34:37on the east end of London,
34:39was hit by anti-aircraft fire.
34:42Losing gas,
34:43she was forced to land in a field in Essex.
34:46So little hydrogen remained
34:48that the crew were unable to destroy her
34:50before surrendering.
34:52The British forces even managed to salvage
34:55one of the engines for later use.
34:58All of the crew of the L-33 survived the crash.
35:02They were the lucky ones.
35:05For that same night,
35:07Matty and his crew up in L-31
35:09watched in horror
35:11as they saw their sister ship,
35:12the L-32,
35:14burst into flames
35:15and plunge to the earth.
35:27L-32 had been hit
35:29by the new incendiary bullets
35:31and crashed here
35:33at Great Burstead in Essex.
35:35Because of weight restrictions,
35:37the Zeppelin crews
35:38were forbidden to carry parachutes.
35:41All of the crew died in the crash.
35:47The pilot who had shot the airship down
35:49was Lieutenant Frederick Sowery,
35:52also of 39 Squadron,
35:54seen here with VC winner
35:56Leif Robinson.
35:59When Matty was asked
36:01by reporters in Germany
36:02whether, in the event of being attacked,
36:04he would burn or jump,
36:06he replied,
36:08I won't know until it happens.
36:11In L-31,
36:13Matty and his crew
36:14were filled with a deep sense of foreboding.
36:17It is only a question of time
36:19before we all join the rest.
36:22If anyone should say
36:23that he was not haunted
36:24by visions of burning airships.
36:27Then he would be a bracket.
36:32It was to be just a week
36:34before his dark fears
36:35were to become realised.
36:42On one particular night,
36:46my father came
36:48and picked me up
36:50from underneath the table,
36:52took me up to the front door,
36:55lifted me up,
36:56and from the front door
36:58we looked due north,
37:01and there was this Zeppelin
37:04coming down in flames.
37:08What Jack Brown saw that night
37:10was almost certainly
37:12the flaming remains
37:13of Zeppelin L-31
37:14with Heinrich Matty
37:16and his crew on board.
37:21L-31 crashed in a mass of flames here
37:25at Potter's Bar in Hertfordshire.
37:29Matty and his entire crew
37:31perished in the crash.
37:33The downing of L-31
37:35was carried out
37:36by 2nd Lieutenant
37:37Walston Tempest
37:39of the by-now-famous 39 Squadron.
37:43Tempest described
37:44the final moments
37:45of the airship.
37:47I saw her go red inside,
37:49like an immense Chinese lantern.
37:54When Matty's L-31
37:56is shot down by Tempest
37:58in October of 1916,
38:00because he has this fear of burning,
38:02Matty jumps.
38:03And there are these famous pictures
38:05of the imprint of the body
38:07where it landed in the field.
38:08He was still alive
38:10just when they found him,
38:12but he died
38:13almost immediately afterwards.
38:21At the funeral
38:22of the crew
38:23of L-31
38:24at Potter's Bar
38:25in Hertfordshire,
38:26the last post
38:28was sounded.
38:30The Zeppelin commander's coffin
38:31bore the simple inscription,
38:34Commander Matty
38:35died on service
38:36October 1st,
38:381916.
38:47Back in Germany,
38:49the news of Matty's death
38:50was greeted with disbelief.
38:53As one officer wrote,
38:55With him,
38:56the life and soul
38:58of our airship service
38:59went out too.
39:01The fact that the British
39:02were able to bring down
39:03the man who is generally
39:04recognized both by the British
39:06and the Germans
39:07as a kind of the ace of aces
39:09when it comes to Zeppelin commanders
39:10of course is highly significant.
39:13And coming on top
39:13of those earlier successes
39:15the month before,
39:17it really does mark
39:18the end of pretty much
39:19of the Zeppelin threat.
39:21But head of the Naval Air Service,
39:23Peter Strasser,
39:25was not about to give up.
39:26He ordered a new flight
39:28of super Zeppelins,
39:29the height climbers.
39:31The original advantage
39:33that the Zeppelins had
39:34was their superior
39:35operating height.
39:37Once British aircraft
39:38could reach that altitude,
39:40the airships
39:41became easy targets.
39:43To regain their advantage,
39:44the Zeppelins needed
39:45to fly even higher.
39:47And so by 1917,
39:49the first of these
39:51high-flying Zeppelins
39:52was delivered
39:53and the Germans
39:55tried to exploit that.
39:57Unfortunately,
39:58if you fly high,
40:00you have oxygen problems.
40:02The crews go,
40:03get intoxicated,
40:05they go slightly mad in fact
40:06from the effects
40:07of no oxygen.
40:09You freeze
40:10because you haven't
40:11got any heating systems.
40:12You can't see the targets
40:14quite often,
40:15let alone hit them.
40:16You can't stay up there forever.
40:18And when you come down
40:20as you approach your bases,
40:21or as you get even more lost
40:23because you're flying so high,
40:25then you become vulnerable again.
40:26It turned out
40:27to be a blind alley.
40:31So vulnerable
40:32were these new airships
40:34that L-48,
40:36which crashed at Theberton
40:37in Suffolk,
40:38was shot down
40:39on its very first
40:40bombing raid
40:41over England.
40:42I don't think
40:43we hoped
40:44there'd be anyone survive.
40:45I think there was
40:46a sort of feeling
40:47that they'd come over
40:49to bomb us,
40:50so if we'd got them
40:51first,
40:52we were pleased about it.
40:54that was how
40:54you looked upon the war.
40:56I mean,
40:56you don't particularly
40:57want them sailing over you
40:59and dropping everything
41:00and getting away with it.
41:05But even as the Allies
41:06toasted their victories
41:07over the downed airships,
41:09the Germans were about
41:10to unleash
41:11their new terror weapon,
41:13the bomber.
41:15And the Gotham
41:17was the first bomber
41:18with a range
41:19to reach England.
41:20The first raid
41:22by heavy aircraft
41:23is in May of 1917.
41:25It's on Folkestone.
41:26And you get
41:28a lot of public indignation.
41:30One of the great shocks
41:31for the British
41:32really is that
41:33aircraft will arrive
41:34in daylight
41:35and therefore,
41:36in theory,
41:37they can see their targets
41:38that much better
41:38and do that much more damage
41:39than the Zeppelin.
41:40The first daylight bomber
41:42raid on London
41:43was on June the 13th,
41:451917.
41:47I think these bombs
41:49fell somewhere around
41:5011 o'clock in the morning
41:52if I remember rightly.
41:55Jack Brown was six
41:56at the time
41:57at school in Poplar
41:59in London's East End.
42:01Our teacher said,
42:03oh, well,
42:03let's have some
42:06airway drill
42:07which consisted of
42:10pulling down
42:10the flap of the deck
42:12desk and getting underneath
42:14which we did.
42:16And of course,
42:17we'd no sooner
42:17got underneath it
42:18than all the glass
42:20and everything fell in
42:22and there was smoke
42:23and fumes
42:25and all sorts of things
42:26around the place.
42:28A single bomb
42:30hit the roof
42:30passing through
42:32two floors
42:33before exploding
42:34in the infant class
42:35next door
42:36to where Jack was sitting.
42:37It's all silent
42:39in my memory.
42:40I don't remember
42:42a bang as such.
42:44Whether the bang
42:45deafened me
42:46or what,
42:47I don't know.
42:50Even when I remember
42:52the glass
42:53all coming in
42:55and smashing down
42:57all over the place,
42:58I still don't associate
43:00sound with it.
43:03Well, I remember
43:04there was no panic,
43:05no fear
43:06because it was
43:07it was so new
43:09and so sudden
43:10and everything
43:11that the children
43:13were just bewildered,
43:15I think,
43:16and stunned.
43:19So then we walked out
43:21into the playground.
43:23While I was standing there,
43:25the caretaker came out
43:28with the first
43:29of the bodies.
43:32In all,
43:3318 children
43:34from the school
43:35died in the attack.
43:37Another 37
43:38were injured.
43:42Then afterwards,
43:43when I got home,
43:45my mother came
43:46tearing down the street
43:48with one shoe on
43:49and the other one
43:50in her hand.
43:51Always remember her now.
43:54Tearing down.
44:00I don't know,
44:02she just stopped
44:03and looked at me.
44:04What happened
44:05after that,
44:06I don't remember.
44:12Andrew Hyde's uncle
44:13was one of the children
44:14killed by the bomb.
44:17Five-year-old George Hyde
44:18is buried
44:19along with the other children
44:20in a mass grave
44:21not far from the school.
44:24Well,
44:24the local reaction
44:25obviously was
44:26just one of
44:27absolute devastation
44:29and probably
44:31most of the local
44:32area had children
44:33at the school.
44:34It was a large school.
44:36They just couldn't
44:37believe it,
44:37the fact that
44:39Germans could come
44:40over and kill
44:42indiscriminately
44:43and without any resistance.
44:46Well,
44:47the next morning,
44:49we went back
44:50to the school again
44:52and when we got there,
44:55Mr. Denner,
44:56the headmaster,
44:57was there
44:57with the school register
44:59and he stood there
45:01reading the names
45:03out from the register
45:05and I remember
45:07that as he stood there
45:09and the names came out,
45:13he was crying.
45:14He was also a big man
45:15so it was making
45:18a big impression
45:19on me
45:19that a man
45:22of his stature
45:24and his importance
45:25in my life
45:27to see him
45:28actually
45:29brought to this
45:31stage
45:33was
45:34quite a shock.
45:39thousands thronged
45:41the route
45:41of the children's
45:42funeral procession.
45:44It was the biggest
45:45London's East End
45:46had ever had.
45:50Condolence cards
45:51were given
45:51to the families.
45:54In addition
45:55to the more
45:55innocent cards
45:56which were presented
45:57to each of the
45:58victims' families
45:59was a more
46:00general card
46:01which quite starkly
46:03stated
46:03in memory
46:04of the victims
46:05of the Hun
46:05deaf dealers
46:06which really
46:07fairly reflects
46:09the mood
46:09of the people
46:10at that time
46:10especially
46:11at that stage
46:11in the war
46:12and the total
46:13hatred
46:14towards which
46:15the Germans
46:16and the Kaiser
46:16were held.
46:20Many subscribed
46:21to a fund
46:22for a memorial
46:23to the children
46:24which still stands
46:25to this day
46:26in a park
46:27close to the school.
46:29Public indignation
46:30remained high.
46:32One chap
46:33who was recorded
46:34as saying
46:35that fair fighting
46:36between men
46:36one doesn't mind
46:38but making war
46:39on women
46:39and children
46:39just isn't right
46:40it's the work
46:41of beasts.
46:46The Upper North
46:47Street School
46:48almost certainly
46:49was not
46:50the bomber's target.
46:55The bomb aiming
46:56in those days
46:57must have been
46:58pretty primitive
47:00and of course
47:01instead of hitting
47:02a duck
47:02they hit the school.
47:06A lot of
47:08propaganda
47:09at the time
47:10all the newspapers
47:12and everybody
47:13was led to believe
47:15or to assume
47:16that they come over
47:18deliberately
47:18to bomb that school.
47:21But of course
47:22that sort of thing
47:24still happens today
47:25doesn't it?
47:30compared to the
47:31carnage
47:32of the Western Front
47:33the number
47:35of casualties
47:35from Britain's
47:36first blitz
47:37was tiny
47:43but the terror
47:45visited upon
47:46a civilian population
47:47was every bit
47:49as horrific
47:50as occurred
47:5125 years later
47:52in the Second World War.
47:57First the Zeppelins
47:59and then the Gothars
48:01created a template
48:02for future bombing campaigns
48:04where civilians
48:05would become
48:06integral targets
48:07of war.
48:26Do you
48:27or any of your family
48:28have any memories
48:29of the first blitz
48:30or that of World War II?
48:32Why not log on
48:33to our website
48:34and share your memories?
48:36Go to
48:37bbc.co.uk
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