Bells rang, hooters hooted, trains whistled and army airships never came to England again. A vast crowd of Londoners watched from 30 miles away and Beatrice Curtis Brown heard a great roar which was the noise of Londoners cheering the first shooting down of a Zeppelin in flames. SL 11 (an army Scutte Lanz airship rather than a zeppelin) was brought down by the new ammunition at Cuffley, Herts – the first crash on British soil that had no survivors. On 24 August the Super Zeppelins reached London but not the heart of the City and on September 2/3 came the largest raid of war but it was disastrous for the Germans. On 25 April LZ97 nearly reached London but was chased away by Capt A Harris (later “Bomber” Harris of the Second World War). The crew of a damaged zeppelin were face with the choice of burning to death or jumping to their death. Hydrogen is only flammable when mixed with oxygen and these bullets would blow a hole in the gas bags, allowing hydrogen to escape and mix with air, after which the incendiary bullet would ignite the mixture to deadly effect. The zeppelin crews flew into battle with more than a million cubic ft of highly flammable hydrogen gas beneath them and the British developed machine guns with a deadly combination of explosive and incendiary bullets to which they added tracer bullets. In 1916 there were now 2 gun rings round capital and 3 rings of searchlights beyond to greet the arrival of Super Zeppelins which were 650ft long. And after what seemed a very long time, the boy scout’s bugle would be heard signalling the all clear. The cook used to sit and, with a kind of melancholy relish, tell us stories of disaster from the last raid. The raids got less enjoyable as they went on.
There were thuds from the bombs and a moaning scream and explosion from our own AA guns – there was one quite near in Finchley Road. During a raid Beatrice Curtis Brown’s family at No 4 went down to the kitchen which was almost below ground level. Patricia Champness noted that the Observatory built by her great great grandfather John Edmund Gardner at No 28 meant that they could see Zeppelins as well as sunsets. Two girls who were living in St Johns Wood Park during the First World War left a record of their experiences. On 8 September 1915 came the raid on central London by one Zeppelin, the L13, which not only caused more than half the material damage of all the raids in 1915, but was the most successful Zeppelin raid on London in the entire war, causing more than half a million pounds of damage. 22 people were killed and the anti aircraft guns proved useless. On SeptemZeppelin L19 reached London via Cambridge, passing over Golders Green, Finchley Rd and Primrose Hill and dropping a bomb in Woburn Square before going on to the City. On the 31st of May 1915 the first raid was carried out against London, mainly affecting Stoke Newington, killing seven and injuring thirty five. This was helpful to the British in some ways, as rain added to the weight of the airship and made navigation difficult.
The arrival of zeppelins brought in the use of black out curtains and low street lighting as well as anti aircraft guns but these generally lacked the range and armament to hit airships which were extremely solid. To begin with the Kaiser did not approve the bombing of London so it was not until 1915 that the capital was attacked, though even then historic buildings were supposed to be avoided. In 1900 the Germans began building Zeppelins – rigid steerable airships – and by 1914 had eleven of them, which they planned to use on bombing raids in the United Kingdom, to destroy morale as well as buildings. Warrington Crescent air raid with special reference to St John’s Wood Zeppelins
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