Target London

Press proof – Ian H – 01/02/11

Target London

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To the citizens of London, past and present

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Target London Bombing the Capital, 1915–2005

Peter Reese

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First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Pen & Sword Military an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd 47 Church Street Barnsley South Yorkshire S70 2AS Copyright # Peter Reese 2011 ISBN 978-1-84884-122-2 The right of Peter Reese to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt by Concept, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire Printed and bound in England by CPI UK Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe Local History, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Frontline Publishing.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

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Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

PART 1 – Attacks During the First World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5

1. The Zeppelin Onslaught . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

2. The Gothas Take Over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21

3. The City’s Defenders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

4. London’s Home Front, 1914–18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

PART 2 – Between the Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

5. The British Air Service – The Locust Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

PART 3 – Attacks During the Second World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

6. Renewed Air Assaults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7. The London Blitz, 1940–1 – Ground and Air Defenders . . . . . . .

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8. The London Blitz, 1940–1 – Civil Defenders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 9. The London Blitz, 1940–1 – Home Morale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 10. London and the Doodlebugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 11. London and the V2s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 PART 4 – Terrorist Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 12. The IRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 13. Al-Qaeda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Select Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

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Preface and Acknowledgements

In this book I set out to describe the full range of attacks made on London during the twentieth century, throughout the two world wars and latterly by terrorists.

The men and women who witnessed the first Zeppelin attacks have all but passed away and those who were in London during the Second World War are rapidly diminishing in number. I count myself as one of them, although I was an evacuee during the Blitz before living as a boy in North London during 1943–5 in a house bearing the scars of the earlier bombing. Like others at that time I watched V1s flying overhead and waited fearfully for the rough pulses of their engines to cut out before they tumbled to earth. Although personally unscathed, like others I had a close friend whose home was reduced to a pile of smouldering rubble by a V2. While memories of so long ago may not be fully reliable, my strongest impression of that time was that nothing was allowed to prevent the lives of schoolboys (and other citizens) from following their regular course, which in my case included the regular physical chastisement which, with the young masters away, was delivered by others of advancing years.

For me – and hopefully for most readers of this book with no direct experience of them – the number and scale of the attacks upon London during the last century is astounding and the stories about the individuals concerned illimitable. *

* *

With regard to my research, I have mined a wealth of correspondence about the raids in the Library of the Imperial War Museum and the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex. Other institutions used have included the Prince Consort’s Library, Aldershot, The Army Central Library, London’s Guildhall Library, The London Metropolitan Archives, The Library of the Royal Aeronautical Society, The National Army Museum and Farnborough Air Sciences Trust. As in the past, much of the writing has taken place in the Prince Consort’s Library where Chief Librarian Tim Ward and his amazing staff are a writer’s dream.

The book would never have been completed without the support of commissioning editor Rupert Harding and all at Pen & Sword. As for my

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own ‘support system’, Mrs Christine Batten and her computer have again transformed ‘old-style’ writing into working form.

For personal assistance I would like to thank Mrs Jennifer Prophet for her arduous and vital work in scrutinising the book’s first draft, and both her and her son Charles for shouldering the detailed task of compiling the index; my friend Paul Vickers, author, historian and head of the Army Libraries Information Systems, for his production of excellent maps and illustrations and much more besides; Colonel Mike Wellings for discussing at length the book’s early tentative form; Colonel Tony Guinan TD for suggesting additional sources, in this case with the ack-ack services; and Mike Cawley who, with distinguished airman Bob Pugh, generously loaned me books from their personal collections.

Finally, above all I would like to thank my wife, Barbara, who over many years has coped with an absent husband at his library desks. This time she has acted as a sounding board for the book’s early drafts where her good sense and practicality have, as before, proved invaluable.

Any mistakes are, of course, mine alone.

Peter Reese Aldershot September 2010

Prologue The bombardment of London began during the night of 31 May 1915 with the arrival over the north-east of the city of German army Zeppelin L38, commanded by Hauptmann Erich Linnarz. The airship moved high over the industrial East End before passing across West Ham and Leytonstone. During the course of its flight it released over 2,500lb of bombs, including eighty-nine incendiaries and thirty grenades. These killed seven people and injured thirtyfive. The dubious honour of being the first London house to be bombed went to 16 Alkham Road on the outskirts of Hackney where the owner, Albert Henry Lovell, together with his wife, their children and two women visitors, escaped unscathed from the blazing upper rooms.

Unlike the supremacy enjoyed by the British Royal Navy over other naval forces, London’s air defences were as yet inadequate, a fact that astonished and enraged its citizens. A warning was received as the airship crossed the coast where the ack-ack response had been limited to machine guns. These opened up during both the Zeppelin’s approach and return journeys to London but they failed to damage it. At the time London’s ground defences were just twelve genuine anti-aircraft guns and the same number of searchlights. A total of nine aircraft were despatched to meet it but they too failed to locate the massive craft. This was not surprising. One was a very slow FE2a two-seater with a ‘pusher’ rear engine, whose observer, sitting in his open cockpit in the aircraft’s nose, was armed with no more than a rifle and incendiary bullets.

This plane failed to reach the 1,500m height required to get anywhere near the Zeppelin and it subsequently crashed on landing, killing the pilot. Another defending aircraft was a Short S81 two-seater seaplane, which was so underpowered that it could not carry an observer and whose armament consisted of a rifle and two grenades resting on its pilot’s lap. After failing to make contact, this also crashed on landing, although the pilot survived. Another aircraft involved was an obsolete pre-1914 Deperdussin whose pilot was similarly equipped with a rifle and grenades. This also failed to make contact, although it landed safely.1 While the damage inflicted during the initial raid was minor it marked the end of a period lasting almost 900 years when, following its capture by the

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Target London

Danish King Cnut in 1014 and then by William the Conqueror in 1066, London had been spared from external attack. From its time as a Roman city with an 18ft-high perimeter wall stretching for 2 miles and a single bridge crossing the Thames at a point opposite its forum and basilica, significant changes had already taken place which would continue and accelerate following William’s accession. This was fully predictable because, positioned as it was close to the lowest bridging point over the River Thames where routes from the south, west and north of the country converged, and with the river’s estuary facing the great waterway of the Rhine leading into the heart of Europe, London was virtually guaranteed commercial success.

This was recognized as early as ad 604 when the Venerable Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, described it as a ‘mart of many people arriving thither by land and sea’.2 Although the original city of roughly a square mile would remain, London was soon to spread rapidly outside its original walls. William the Conqueror’s coronation took place at Westminster, in the Cathedral of St Peter, but after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries the church desmenes surrounding the city became Crown lands thereby enabling it to undertake a new expansionary surge. Along with the city’s material spread, which by 1915 saw it stretching for over 700 square miles within a 13-mile radius, its population had also grown immensely aided by immigration, with seventeenth-century Flemish, Dutch, Walloon and Huguenot merchants and craftsmen joined during the nineteenth century by other nationals including many Jews who settled in the East End.3 As a result, by the time of the first air raid the multinational population of London totalled over 7,250,000.

The metropolis, whose palaces, Parliament and other public buildings, factories, docks and private houses were overflown by Zeppelin L38 on 31 May 1915, was also the greatest city in the world. Even with New York reputedly catching it up, Europe’s other capitals – Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, Rome and Vienna – could not compete in terms of population (about a fifth of Britain’s population was in London) or in economic importance. While its Square Mile hosted the nation’s short-term money market and financed both national and worldwide enterprises, the traditional ‘mart’ activities took place in its fashionable West End, whose famous shops brought customers from all over the world, to be counterpoised by London’s mercantile East End which produced goods of all types and whose industries included ones concerned with printing and paper, machine working, petroleum and chemicals, shoes, clothes, food, drink and tobacco. This area, containing the city’s docks, handled twice the number of cargoes passing through Liverpool at that time.

From the windows of the Zeppelin’s control car Linnarz calmly recorded his impressions as his missiles rained down: ‘One by one, every 30 seconds, the

Chapter 1

The Zeppelin Onslaught You English! We have come, and we will come again soon, to kill or cure!

Hauptman Erich Linnarz, commander of Zeppelin L381 At the start of the First World War Germany had undoubted superiority in lighter-than-air craft. They owed most here to the remarkable, long-lived Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who, with the appearance of the rival dirigible La France thirty years before, had become convinced that Germany not only needed such ‘air cruisers’ but ones specifically for military purposes.

Von Zeppelin retained his belief in such remarkable vehicles, even after a succession of disasters that would have caused a less-dedicated man to give up, and in 1909 founded the world’s first airline. By 1911, while embarking on journeys of two hours or so, his passengers seated in wicker chairs were able to enjoy elaborate cold menus and fine wines. By now his airships were 518ft long and 48ft in diameter, with their envelopes holding almost 800,000cu ft of hydrogen gas compared with the 100,000cu ft of contemporary French airships, the 60,000cu ft of the British army’s second airship Nulli Secundus II (broken up in 1908) and the similar dimensions of the Royal Navy’s ill-fated airship The Mayfly of 1911.2 Such advantages in capacity were important because they enabled larger loads, including fuel, to be carried thereby increasing the airships’ range and height ceilings far beyond the capabilities of any contemporary aircraft.

By 1914 both the German army and navy had determined to use airships in wartime roles – the army already had thirteen in service which they planned to use by flying over battlefield areas in support of their ground troops, while in 1912 the navy had commenced its own building programme, since with its North Sea Fleet chronically short of destroyers and cruisers it intended to use airships for scouting purposes. A powerful argument in the airships’ favour was their six-week construction period compared with the two years required for cruisers.

The navy’s first airship was engaged in the strategic fleet manoeuvres of 1913, which took place in good weather conditions, before it was subsequently

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Target London

destroyed after plunging into the sea during a storm. Undeterred, ten larger airships were ordered. These had 955,000cu ft of gas and were powered by four Mercedes Maybach engines, each developing a very respectable 165hp with a speed of up to 70mph. Unfortunately, soon after delivery the first of these burst into flames and crashed, killing all its crew.

Despite, or possibly because of, the evident frailty of such craft the German authorities ordered even larger ones, and after August 1915 ships containing 1,126,000cu ft of gas became standard for both services.3 By this time the army had already lost three of its earlier airships while supporting its soldiers in France.4 Since such hazardous craft were scheduled to be working across the watery wastes of the North Sea, the navy’s airship division was made all-volunteer, advertising for men who preferably were unmarried and able to pass a medical examination paying special attention to head, eyes, ears and possible nervous conditions,5 and an outstanding officer, Corvette Captain Peter Strasser, was appointed to lead it. In addition to the high level of physical fitness required, anyone serving under Strasser had to be highly dedicated, for in addition to Fleet reconnaissance duties he shared the ambitions of Rear Admiral Paul Behneke, the Deputy Chief of the German Naval Staff, for the more hazardous task of crossing over to Britain and mounting bombing raids – with London as the chief target.

For this purpose Behneke attempted to gain the support of his chief, Admiral Tirpitz, and other senior naval colleagues by arguing that German naval inferiority could also be reduced by bombing the London docks and the British Admiralty’s headquarters in London. Even so, he revealed his wider ambitions by declaring that such raids ‘may be expected whether they involve London or the neighbourhood of London, to cause panic in the population which may possibly render it doubtful that the war can be continued’.6 Although the naval airship division saw a rapid increase in its personnel from 352 officers and men at the commencement of the war to 3,740 4 months later (including 25 flight crews of 22 men each and teams numbering at least 300 men that were needed to move the craft in and out of their hangers), it was still chronically short of airships and their capabilities for both tasks were still largely unproven.

Some idea of the dangers to be faced came on 28 August 1914 when a single naval airship on reconnaissance at the Battle of Heligoland Bight not only failed to distinguish itself, but in conditions of poor visibility cost the Germans dear, largely owing to the timidity of its commander. After arriving in the locality at 8.40 am it found German destroyers moving at full speed towards Heligoland with British warships in pursuit. The airship then unexpectedly came under

The Zeppelin Onslaught

9

fire from its own destroyers and moved away from the battlefield area. At 8.50 am it radioed to base that it had turned back in the face of fire from an enemy cruiser and was returning due to technical reasons. By leaving the area the airship commander could no longer track or report upon Admiral Beatty’s fast-moving battle cruisers, which went on to sink the three light German cruisers Mainz, Koln and Ariadne without loss, and although the alarm felt by an airship commander when fired on in this way needs no emphasis, unless the technical reasons proved very serious it was his duty to remain on station. Such actions were the more blameworthy because this rebuff contributed massively towards the German fleet subsequently opting to stay in harbour for the greater part of the war. In partial extenuation however, it could be argued that the task was far too much for a single airship. Such an event was unlikely to occur again since, during the latter part of 1914, both the navy’s and army’s air divisions were receiving reinforcements. By the middle of January 1915 the navy had six of the latest types while the army had four, and with the completion of the navy’s revolving shed at Nordholz its ships could become airborne whatever the wind direction, thus enabling the division to consider its second task, the strategic bombing of London and other parts of Britain.

The projected bombing of ‘defenceless’ civilians raised grave moral questions, which would continue with strategic bombing. Discussions about such a policy between Admiral Tirpitz, Chancellor von Berhman-Hollweg and the Kaiser at this time revealed their differing opinions: with Berhmann-Hollweg remaining implacably opposed, Tirpitz gave his support providing such raids concentrated on London, but when on 12 February 1915 the Kaiser finally approved the air war against London, it was still conditional upon the royal palaces being exempted and the capital’s residential area spared.

In fact, on 19 January 1915 the naval division had already made its first raid on Britain, although this was in the nature of an experiment. On this occasion 3 Zeppelins, 2 from Fuhlsbuttel (near Hamburg) and 1 from Nordholz, on the Baltic coast, set out to bomb the British east-coast towns. One was compelled to turn back halfway across the North Sea, before its accompanying Zeppelin bombed Yarmouth at 8.25 pm, killing two people and wounding three. The third Zeppelin, having entered British airspace, missed Cromer, which was in darkness, and dropped incendiary bombs along the coast before attacking King’s Lynn (which still had its lights on), where two further people were killed and thirteen injured.

By any standard, such casualties were light, although the commanders’ reports acknowledged that within the chosen towns their bombing had, in fact, been indiscriminate. Captain Strasser targeted the coastal towns at this time because his airships’ deficiencies in range and height capability gave him little