The London Blitz in World War One

I was referring specifically to the WW I German bombers in my comment about nothing surviving from the Berlin museum other than the Staaken nacelle, sorry for the confusion, Flood.

Ah – my wrong.

Flood.™

I don’t know when it was built but the Alcock and Brown Vimy in the Science Museum is the actual aircraft, not a replica.

Taube and Spin.

Mike
any chance of scans of the Spin and Taube??
I went to the Berlin Technical museum in 2002 but they were having a new aircraft hall built at the time and all aviation exhibits were in storage pending new displays.
It’ll be a while before I’m in Berlin again and it was the Taube I really wanted to see.
Any Chance??
Andy

Anything preserved in the Berlin museum would have been destroyed in WW II. The only surviving piece that I am aware of is this (rather large) engine nacelle for two 300 hp Maybach engines, from a Zeppelin Staaken R.VI bomber.

This is preserved, unrestored, in the Krakow aviation museum, where I photographed it last summer. It originally came from the Berlin museum, part of that collection was evacuated to Poland in WW II, and is now on display in Krakow.

Quite a bit survived – although it might just be comparative – but 23 survivors and other assorted items ended up at Krakow…
One of Ernst Udets Curtiss Hawk IIs (the one that didn’t crash!), parts of the Me209 V-1, Sopwith Camel B7280 (missing 15/9/1918 with 210Sqn), a Fokker Spin (which I believe went back to the Aviodome, Netherlands?), and a host of other German WWI and inter-war period aircraft apparently ended up there because they were evacuated to ‘safer’ Poland in 1943. The DH9A, F1010, now in RAFM Hendon was in the Berlin Museum (having been captured on 5/10/1918 whilst in use with 110Sqn), then Krakow before coming ‘home’. Info from Vintage and Veteran Aircraft (by Leslie Hunt) 4th edition (1974).
I recall reading somewhere that other survivors, or engines, were sold or looted for scrap in the very early post-WWII period – anyone else remember?

Flood.™

Hopefully this will be a better size

🙂 I took these a couple of weeks ago,i didnt realise that what the damage was until i read the plague,it is Cleopatras needle on the Thames embankment

Zeppelins!

Co-incidentally I found this new book review on Hyperscale
http://misc.kitreview.com/bookreviews/zeppelinsbookreviewrb_1.htm

Might be interesting to some of us here

I’ve been pestering my local bookshop for it for the past week…

Zeppelins do seem to get overlooked – there’s been hardly anything in the media about the 75th anniversary of the Graf Zeppelin’s round the world air trip. :confused:

Cheers

Alistair

Co-incidentally I found this new book review on Hyperscale
http://misc.kitreview.com/bookreviews/zeppelinsbookreviewrb_1.htm

Might be interesting to some of us here

Preserved.

Thanks for that Mike.
Knowing that you have ‘connections’ there you’ll have to take me on a tour there one of these days. You keep posting tantalising snippets of what’s contained in museums in Poland. How about a thread on it?
See you Saturday
Andy

PS Dave there’s also an AEG G.IV in a museum in Canada. I can’t remember which museum at the moment but I’m sure a quick Google will put you in the right direction.
The AEG type wasn’t used to bomb the UK but was used in fairly substantial numbers to bomb behind the lines in France including what we would now call strategic bombing of towns and cities.

Wow, thank you all for this fascinating information. It is a really interesting topic, and one that should warrant some sort of modern revisit through either documentary or dramatic film.

It must have been quite something to fly all that way in such flimsy slow old planes, to face flak, etc, and I thought WWII was bad.

Thanks for the referrals to those books. Sadly any books that are scarce in the UK are going to be almost non-existent in NZ. I hve never come across anything on the subject in any of the three local libraries I use. But is is good to know someone has recorded it all for posterity.

Do any genuine WWI bombers still exist? I know the two Vimys that are around (one in Hendon) are replicas, but does Germany have anything like a Gotha or anything in a museum?

Great story about your grandmother to cbstd. She sounds like a really lady. 🙂

My 97 year old English Grandmother has living memory of the Zeppelin raids on London during WWI. Born in 1907, she was a young girl living with her mother and father in Hampstead during the war. She can remember the people coming out into the street to see the Zeppelins flying over and then the damage the bombs caused.

I had never known this bit of family history until I took her to go see the movie “Hope and Glory” back in 1987. This movie about WWII featured a young boy and his younger sister during the Blitz. As we were watching the movie, my Grandmother started to cry because she had been the same age as the little girl in the movie during the WWI Blitz.

My Grandmother is a remarkable woman, but I will spare you the details of her life. But even at her advanced age, she is active and runs her own household.

Scott

Hope this attaches o.k. !
Took a trip over to the old industrial area of Sheffield to get this not very easy to read shot.I don’t know how much longer the memorial will survive , at least in it’s current spot.The area is so run down, and all the buildings around are already gone.Sad that th area was once impressive enough to warrant such attention, but the march of time has done so much more than the German Air Force could.

One of the best books on the subject is The Zeppelin in Combat, by Douglas H Robinson. I’m not sure which one damaged Cleopatras Needle, but one candidate is L33, which dropped its bombs in the Tower Bridge area on the night of the 23rd / 24th of September 1916, dropping 2 bombs of 300kg, 8 of 100kg and 32 of 50kg. It also dropped 20 incendiaries before being shot down, crash landing in Essex.

Robert.

“Did the RFC have long range bombers and bomb Germany back?”

I’m told we dropped over 1 million phosphorous incendiaries on Germany in the last few months of WWI. Interestingly a lot of the targetting was not against cities but against the German harvest of 1918 – trying to set fire to their wheat fields etc.

Did the RFC have long range bombers and bomb Germany back?

Hi Dave,

I’ve a facinating book called “Darkness shall cover me” (night bombing over the western front 1918) by Humphrey Wynn about 207 Sqn flying from Ligescourt in Picardy on raids behind the German lines.

Amazing what these guys did in their fabric covered machines. The raids were carried out in Handley Page 0/400’s but the subject of the book, 2/Lt Leslie Blacking, did convert to the four engined V/1500 before the wars end but never got to use them in anger.

Cheers

Tank

The aforementioned Cole & Cheeseman book is definitely the best general history of the subject.

Most of the things we are familiar with from the strategic bombing campaigns of WWII were foreshadowed in WWI.

German Giants.

Hi John
yes the book you’re thinking of is indeed ‘The German Giants’ by Haddow and Grosz.
There are some pretty amazing pictures of the giant R-planes in there.
They carried out a number of night raids on London and there was never one shot down over the U.K.
Another book that might be useful to anyone new to the subject would be ‘The Gotha Summer’ by C.M. White published by Hale 1986.
It’s brightened my day having a Great War thread on the forum. There’s not enough WW1 on here.
Cheers
Andy

MORE INFO….

I recall another Putnam book on the subject “German Giants”. Lots of information on the German heavy bombers of the era.
Also, 35 years ago I read a book about the WWI German air attacks on the UK…went into a lot of detail about how the British used the attacks to build sympathy in the U.S. and gave details on U.K. civilian losses. Pity I can’t recall the name..but there is something out there published in 1968 or 69.

Thanks for the added info Andy , well done !

I,ll try to get over to the raid site with my digital tomorrow !

Regards

Paul

Hi Dave
The book you need to get your hands on is called ‘The Air Defence of Britain 1914-1918’ by Christopher Cole and E.F. Cheeseman published by Putnam 1984.
It’s probably getting a bit hard to get these days so it might be worth trying to get it through a library but it will give you all the information you need.
It gives a daily diary of every raid (including Zeps) that was carried out on the UK during The Great War.
It also gives in great detail all the measures taken by the defenders.
I can guarantee that there’s more information here than you’ll ever need.
I suspect the raid on Sheffield was the on the night of 25/26th September 1916 when L22 made an attack on that city.
(I’d like a picture of the plaque too please).
The first attack by a heavier than air machine on London was carried out by Lt Walther Ilges and Deck Offizier Paul Brandt on 28th November 1916 flying in a LVG C.IV.
This was a daylight raid and was carried out with commendable bravery.
Later in 1917 the daylight raids carried out by Gotha G-series aircraft caused consternation in London and the committee that was set up to investigate the almost complete inability of either the RFC or the RNAS to intercept these raids concluded that a separate air-force was needed. The rest they say is history with the RFC and RNAS being amalgamated to form the RAF on April 1st 1918.
Hope some of this helps
Andy