Zeppelin Blitz: The German Air Raids on Great Britain During the First World War

by Neil R. Storey

In 1907, H.G. Wells published a science fiction novel called The War in the Air. It proved to be portentous. In the early years of the First World War, German lighter-than-air flying machines, Zeppelins, undertook a series of attacks on the British mainland. German military strategy was to subdue Britain, both by the damage these raids caused and by the terrifying nature of the craft that carried them out.

This strategy proved successful. The early raids caused significant damage, many civilian casualties and provoked terror and anger in equal measure. But the British rapidly learnt how to deal with these futuristic monsters. A variety of defence mechanisms were developed: searchlights, guns and fighter aircraft were deployed, the British learnt to pick up the airships’ radio messages and a central communications headquarters was set up. Within months aerial strategy and its impact on the lives of civilians and the course of conflict became part of human warfare. As the Chief of the Imperial German Naval Airship Division, Peter Strasser, crisply put it: ‘There is no such thing as a non-combatant any more. Modern war is total war.’

Zeppelin Blitz is the first full, raid-by-raid, year-by-year account of the Zeppelin air raids on Britain during the First World War, based on contemporary official reports and documents.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2015

About the author

A graduate of the University of East Anglia, Neil R. Storey is a professional historian and lecturer specialising in the study of the impact of war on British society in the first half of the 20th century.

Neil R. Storey is an award-winning social historian specialising in the impact of the First and Second World Wars on British society. He also has a long-standing interest in gothic horror, is the creator of the popular 'Grim Almanac' series published by History Press, and has published numerous works on dark history. He has been in publication since 1989 and now has a canon of over 50 books and has had great reviews in The Times and Daily Mail. A graduate of University of East Anglia he guest lectures for both academic and social audiences across the UK and internationally. He has written countless articles for national periodicals and frequently appears as a guest expert on factual television and radio programmes such as: Who Do You Think You Are?, Classified Britain, The Buildings that Fought Hitler, and Help! My House is Haunted.

Reviews

[Giovanni DeClet · Rating 2 out of 5]

My main issue with this book was that my questions and interests that I wanted answered just weren’t there. But to start with the things I liked about this book, it really gave a perspective about how many times zeppelins made regular appearances since the beginning of 1915. It’s hard to imagine having to live in an environment where you have the possibility of losing your home or life for three years straight. Many of the public rightfully believed that the British government wasn’t doing enough to properly protect civilians. The main thing that this book is strong in is giving a lot of information with all of the bombings and logs that have been put into the book. I sometimes wonder while reading how all that information was gathered. Another small strength in this book is plentiful use of pictures, cards, propaganda posters, and personal logs being used in the book. I don’t see anything wrong with using pictures, especially in history books. Although most of the zeppelin bombings were pitiful, some did major damage, and these pictures really showed what catastrophe was brought upon England.

Now the reason why I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I thought I would is also mentioned in another review. Basically, the writer of this book gave the reader something that would entertain them only if they wanted to look up specific details from a given raid. Don’t get me wrong, times, dates, casualties, economic calculations, all of these are quite impressive to have for the length of the book. However, if the reader wants to read more of a ‘historical’ aspect of the raids and zeppelins themselves, they will not be interested in this book. This is the scenario that I fell in. This book does not explain much more other than what I mentioned. I wouldn’t have been so uninterested in the raids if there was a bit more explaining and less of a bullet-point style of writing. Every raid in this book is the exact same. It starts by saying the date of which the raid takes place, then it tells the reader which zeppelin(s) are being used (ex. L30). After that, it gives a timeline of the zeppelin(s) traveling to their destination. The most frustrating part is the names of the locations. I need maps. Most of these locations I have never heard of and I just get lost. Barmston, Hull, Margate, these are all examples of places that will be mentioned for every raid in this book.

If you were able to change one thing about this book, what would it be? For me, I would add plenty of maps. Showing the route taken by the zeppelins as well as the names of the towns, cities, and villages would help plenty of readers.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given the ubiquity of air travel today, it can be difficult to imagine the awe and fear that the sight of zeppelins plodding overhead must have evoked when they first appeared in the skies over England in the spring of 1915 to attack the country. For the next three years, the zeppelins made regular appearances in an effort to rain down devastation on the cities, towns, and farms of Britain. Though their effect was pitifully small when compared to that of the strategic bombing campaigns conducted by heavier-than-air craft later in the war and in the 1940s, the images of zeppelins spotlighted as they floated over buildings remain iconic images of the conflict, reflecting their continuing impact upon their imagination.

Though the zeppelins have never been forgotten, there has been a recent surge of works about their bombing campaign against England. Among them is Neil Storey, a specialist in local history whose book chronicles every zeppelin attack on Britain during the war. Drawing primarily upon Intelligence Section reports of the raids undertaken by the British government (which he states have been underutilized since their declassification in 1966), he offers a raid-by-raid account that details the zeppelins involved, their attacks on their targets, and the casualties and damage inflicted. These are summarized rather than analyzed, and are supplemented with a generous selection of photographs, postcards, and excerpts from firsthand accounts that were printed after the war.

In this way Storey has provided his readers with a useful resource for anyone seeking to look up the details of a given raid and the fate of the zeppelins involved. As a history of the raids, though, it falls lamentably short. While Storey’s use of the official reports is commendable, he doesn’t take the additional step of examining documentation from the German Federal Archive in Freiberg or the information contained in the German official histories. His employment of English-language secondary sources is equally sparse, with the absence from his bibliography of Douglas Robinson’s books on rigid airships especially unaccountable, depriving the text of any sort of context or broader consideration of the purpose of the campaigns, their role in the overall conflict, or their impact on the conduct of the war. When added to his occasionally inaccurate statements of fact (to say, for example, as Storey does that the 1909 German film Der Luftkreig der Zukunft is “regarded by many to be the very first film of the science fiction genre” speaks more to the unfamiliarity of those unidentified many with the work of Georges Méliès than to Storey’s point), it makes for a book of limited utility that is best treated as a sourcebook of information rather than as a history of the campaign in its own right.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. I always knew of the Zeppelin raids as I have seen the remains of an incendiary bomb dropped on my local town of Rawtenstall and the damaged mile marker from Bold on display in my home town of Widnes.
The book is well researched and gets across just how much of a menace they were.
Once the RNAS and RFC worked out how to shoot them down the tides started turning.
The Germans then moved onto to using planes to bomb London (mentioned briefly in this book). The planes lacked range and payloads of the Zeppelins though.
Book is written from logs from the Zeppelin crews, the British defenders logs and also news stories etc set in date order and often split into sub chapters for each ship.