From 1914-1918 Germany used a variety of new technologies for military tasks. During the Great War Germany employed airships – often known as dirigibles or Zeppelins – on the Western Front, primarily as a weapon for long distance bombing.
The German military quickly realized that the airships could not only bomb targets well behind the trench-works of the Triple Entente Alliance, but that the airships could bomb England itself. This bombing, the German military believed, in conjunction with submarine activity as well as massive attacks against Allied positions, would force England out of the war, leaving only France and Russia as threats.
The German Airships
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin created the Deutsche Luftschiffahrts – Aktien – Gesellschaft GmbH (DELAG) company, and under his guidance it built the first giant airship in 1911. This ship was the Schwaben, designated by DELAG as LZ.10, and made – according to Terry C. Treadwell and Alan C. Wood in their Airships of the First World War – 218 flights before being destroyed in an accident in 1912. The successes of the LZ.10, however, encouraged the German military to place orders for DELAG airships.
Military Use of the Zeppelin
With the outbreak of the First World War the German military quickly discovered that airships, due to their construction and slow speeds, were highly susceptible to ground-fire. The threat of a large and expensive piece of military hardware (as well as the trained crew) being at risk from a foot-soldier’s lucky shot, the German military decided on two central tasks for the airships. The first of these was to serve as reconnaissance vehicles for the Kaiser’s great fleet. The second was to conduct night bombing raids on soft targets behind the English and French lines.
Airships over England
The bombing raids designed for the German airships soon became their central mission as the German High Seas Fleet played only a minute role in the First World War. The bombing raids, however, proved to be moderately successful in regards to material. While the airships did not always find military targets, or civilian targets of worth, they did cause damage on England proper. The German ability to reach across the English Channel and cause damage, however small that damage might be, had a horrific psychological effect on the citizens of the British Empire.
British public reaction to the bombings was a mixture of anger, fear, and hatred. Men and equipment had to be diverted from the Western Front in order to provide and element of security to major cities and to factories. British citizens lived in a shattered world as young men returned damaged from the Front, and the peace of sleep was shattered by German airships. The Home Island, once believed untouchable, suffered the physical as well as emotional pains of the war.
The German airships did not cause either major physical or psychological damage to the British war effort. The raids did force the British Empire to realize that England itself was vulnerable. Airships continued to raid throughout the First World War. The British built better defenses (powerful searchlights and incendiary rounds), and the Germans built better airships (larger, faster), thus the airship raids were significant as they forced military technology to evolve in the face of opposition.
Sources
Treadwell, Terry C. and Alan C. Wood. Airships of the First World War. Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing Limited, 1999.
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