AIR RAIDS

The second phase of aerial warfare was represented by the raids carried out by the various belligerents over enemy territory at a considerable distance from the actual theaters of war. In these operations the Germans, as in the past, were the most active and England was the greatest sufferer. But unlike their previous custom, the Germans, during the period from February to August, 1917, used aeroplanes more frequently than Zeppelins.

On February 25, 1917, British naval aeroplanes raided iron-works near SaarbrÜcken in Rhenish Prussia, about fifty miles beyond the border.

On March 1, 1917, one German plane bombed Broadstairs, an English watering place on the island of Thanet off the Kentish coast.

During the night of March 4-5, 1917, French aeroplanes bombed Freiburg-im-Breisgau (Black Forest) and Kehl near Strassburg.

German airships bombed the southeastern counties of England during the night of March 16-17, 1917. Margate was attacked by a German seaplane at the same time. One of the Zeppelins was brought down later by French antiaircraft guns near CompiÈgne, northeast of Paris, its entire crew being killed.

A French aeroplane bombed Frankfort-on-the-Main on March 17, 1917, causing only little damage.

On April 5, 1917, a German aeroplane again bombed the Kentish coast town without causing any damage.

Freiburg-im-Breisgau was once more the object of an attack by English aeroplanes, made, as announced later, in reprisal for the torpedoing of British hospital ships. Ten civilians and one soldier were killed, and twenty-seven civilians, mostly women and children, wounded. Three of the British aeroplanes were shot down. Considerable damage to public buildings was caused. On May 5, 1917, Odessa, the Russian port on the north shore of the Black Sea, was visited for the first time by a German aeroplane.

On May 14, 1917, British naval forces detected a Zeppelin in the act of approaching the English coast. The alarm was given immediately and a squadron of British seaplanes was sent after the invader. The fire from the machine gun of one of these soon reached the big airship, and before long the latter was seen to burst into flames and disappeared.

During the night of May 23, 1917, four or five Zeppelins appeared over East Anglia and penetrated some distance inland. Bombs were dropped in a number of country districts. One man was killed, but otherwise the damage was negligible.

Two days later, May 25, 1917, early in the evening, seventeen aeroplanes appeared over Folkestone on the southeast coast of England. They dropped about fifty bombs. As a result seventy-six persons were killed and 174 injured, most of them civilians, and a large percentage of these women and children. The returning German aeroplanes were pursued by machines of the British Naval Air Service from Dunkirk and attacked. Three German machines were shot down.

Again on June 5, 1917, sixteen German aeroplanes appeared over Essex and the Medway. They succeeded in dropping a large number of bombs which caused two casualties and considerable material damage and injured twenty-nine persons before antiaircraft guns and British planes drove them off. At least four German machines were shot down.

On June 11, 1917, a British patrol boat sighted five German aeroplanes off Dover. Attacking them at once, the British craft destroyed two of the machines and captured their pilots. The remaining three German machines fled.

At noon of June 13, 1917, London was subjected to the most extensive and destructive raid in its experience. In the middle of a beautiful summer day fifteen German aeroplanes appeared over London and dispatched their death-dealing burden of explosives on England's capital; 157 men, women, and children were killed, and 432 injured. Considerable material damage was caused, although the raid lasted only fifteen minutes. All but one of the German planes escaped. The East End, London's tenement district, inhabited chiefly by the poor, was the principal sufferer.

On the same day British naval forces attacked and brought down a Zeppelin in the North Sea. The airship was a total loss and apparently the entire crew perished.

On June 16, 1917, two Zeppelins attacked the East Anglian and Kentish coast. Considerable damage was done by the bombs dropped. Three deaths and injuries to about twenty people resulted. A British aeroplane succeeded in bringing down one of the Zeppelins, which, with its crew, was destroyed completely.

Three times in July, 1917, German aeroplane squadrons appeared in England. On July 4, 1917, about twelve attacked Harwich, a port in Essex; two of the planes were shot down, but not until the attackers had inflicted considerable damage, killed eleven people and injured thirty-six. Three days later, July 7, 1917, twenty aeroplanes bombed London, forty-three people were killed and 197 injured, while three of the German planes were destroyed. Again on July 22, 1917, fifteen to twenty German aeroplanes reached the English coast. Felixstowe and Harwich were raided. Eleven persons were killed and twenty-six injured. On the way back to their base one of the German planes was brought down off the Belgian coast.

During the third year of the war, that is from August, 1916, to August, 1917, air attacks on England caused death to 393 people and injuries to 1,174, according to figures compiled by the New York "Times." The same source claims that from the beginning of the war up to August 1, 1917, or during a period of practically three years, 751 people were killed and 2,007 injured in England as a result of German air raids, of which there were officially recorded eighteen in 1915, twenty-two in 1916, and eleven in the first seven months of 1917.

A fitting end to this chapter is the record of the deaths at the age of seventy-nine of the Zeppelin's inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, which occurred at Charlottenburg on March 8, 1917, as a result of an attack of pneumonia.[Back to Contents]