Old Palace School - the largest Fire Service tragedy on British soil

The order of service for the ceremony (author's photograph)

Towards the end of last month, I was honoured to be invited to the dedication and unveiling of the latest commemorative plaque placed by the charity Firemen Remembered, at the Old Palace Primary School in Bow, in London's East End.

In many ways, this represents a full circle for the charity as the first commemorative plaque ever placed by the charity was at Old Palace School in 1997. Whilst this plaque is still in situ, it is no longer visible to the public and although the names were known at the time, they were not listed on original blue plaque and so it was right that the story was brought up to date.

The original plaque, now obscured from public view (author's photograph)

In common with many London schools, whose pupils had largely been evacuated out of the capital, Old Palace School, in St Leonard's Road was taken over by the Auxiliary Fire Service to serve as Sub-Station 24U, under the control of the erstwhile Brunswick Road Fire Station. It had served throughout the Blitz, including the dark days of "Black Saturday" on 7 September 1940, the great fire raid of 29 December 1940 and countless other raids affecting the East End of London. 

Old Palace School before the war (Firemen Remembered)

By April 1941, although Londoners didn't know it at the time, the Blitz was drawing to an end. Hitler was about to strike east at the Soviet Union and despite the misgivings of senior figures within the Luftwaffe such as Hugo Sperrle, the majority of the Luftwaffe's bomber forces were redeployed east. 

Despite the impending changes, bombing on London continued for the time being, with another particularly heavy raid being mounted on the night of 16/17 April 1941, a raid which became known to Londoners simply as "The Wednesday".

Three days later, on the night of 19/20 April came another heavy raid, said by some to coincide with Hitler's 53rd birthday and again, it was a sufficiently heavy and devastating raid to be given the simple label "The Saturday" by those that experienced it.

One of the purposes of the Auxiliary Fire Service was for the various units to act as a mobile reserve to be deployed wherever the need was greatest and on this night, as all of the local crews had been called out to fires in the local area, the call went out to Beckenham Fire Station for reinforcements. The twenty one Beckenham Firefighters arrived at 01.30 on Sunday 20th April and were mustering for orders alongside fellow crews from Homerton and Bow, when at 01:53 a high explosive bomb scored a direct hit on the school, demolishing a large part of it and setting the remainder on fire.

The results were catastrophic; all thirty two Firemen at the school as well as two Firewomen (1941 ranks used) were killed outright. It was - and remains - the largest loss of Fire Service personnel in a single incident in British history.

The grim task of recovery (Firemen Remembered)

The ceremony was presided over by Stephanie Maltman of the charity Firemen Remembered and the Rev'd Cathy Wyles; it was attended by Steve Dudeney, the former London Fire Brigade Borough Commander for the area when the original plaque was unveiled, as well as members of the present day Beckenham and Bow Fire Stations. As always, it was an extremely moving ceremony, especially as the names of the fallen were read.

Stephanie Maltman and the Rev'd Cathy Wyles (author's photo)

Fire Brigade guests, past and present (author's photo)

After the ceremony, we repaired to the school for tea and cakes but before we did, the School Caretaker invited us to the rear of the school buildings, where he showed us the splinter-strewn car park walls, the only part of the original school still standing, mute witnesses to an appalling horror. The walls had been slated for demolition a few years ago, he told us but the-then Head Teacher had mounted a campaign to save them, which ensured that they are now listed and saved for future generations to see.

Splinter strewn wall at Old Palace School (author's photo)

Splinter strewn walls (author's photo)

Thanks are due, as always to Stephanie Maltman and Bill Hickin of Firemen Remembered for organising the ceremony and for inviting yours truly to attend.

The new plaque in situ (author's photo)

The Joys of Guiding

One of the many joys of guiding is the "surprise factor" brought to the party by our guests - when starting out with a group, whether it be from the Army, RAF, a school or college group, overseas visitors or a home-based group of history lovers, one never knows what to expect and this certainly helps to keep me as the guide, on my toes!

The Hungerford Bridge parachute mine made safe (author's collection)

A recent walk with a London-based group of history enthusiasts brought one of the biggest and most pleasant surprises in my thirteen-year guiding "career".

The group's organiser had requested a bespoke walk starting at Hungerford Bridge, which for non-Londoners is a bridge that carries the railway from Charing Cross Station across the Thames and which also doubles up as a footbridge. To be brutally honest, this isn't the most picturesque part of London but is one which has a wartime history, so I had a suspicion that at least one member of the group might have a connection in some way.

So when the group met on a dank Sunday morning in March, I began by explaining the wartime history of Hungerford Bridge, which began on the night of 16/17 April 1941, when a parachute mine settled on to the tracks just outside the station. Incendiary bombs were also falling and had started a major fire in the signal cabin at the end of platform one, with the flames creeping towards the mine, which had failed to explode.

Lieut. Cdr. Ernest Oliver "Mick" Gidden GC, RNVR (fotostock)

As parachute mines were adapted anti-shipping weapons, they were always dealt with by the Royal Navy who had the necessary expertise to deal with them and accordingly, a team led by Lieutenant Commander Ernest "Mick" Gidden RNVR. 

Gidden worked on the mine for over six hours, breaking it free from the live rail, from which it had welded itself and forcing it back into some sort of shape with a large hammer, so that he could unscrew the fuse from the weapon and in doing so, earned himself a George Cross into the bargain. While Gidden was working on the mine, he was aware of the large fire burning in the signal cabin and noticed that two Auxiliary Firemen were tackling the fires, seemingly oblivious to their own safety - he later spoke of these men thus:

“When I arrived at the incident on Hungerford Bridge I found about half a dozen firemen working within 15 feet of the unexploded mine. This had already lost its filling plate, exposing the explosive to the naked fire should it have reached it. Luckily for the bridge and several important Government offices the firemen were able to prevent this happening. I warned the men of their imminent peril but they seemed not to care a jot and I had to order them away. They left with great reluctance.”

The two firemen in question were Station Officer George Watling, a London Fire Brigade "regular" with 21 years service and Auxiliary Fireman Alf Blanchard, a chef in civilian life, who had joined the Auxiliaries shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939. The men were based at Holloway in North London and in keeping with the work of the Auxiliaries, had been summoned down from their usual base of operations to assist in Westminster. 

Auxiliary Fireman Alfred Blanchard BEM (Kevin Ireland)

For their work on the night, Blanchard and Watling were awarded the British Empire Medal, which was gazetted on 3 October 1941. 

After explaining this incident to the group and the subsequent near-destruction of the bridge in a V-1 incident in July 1944, one of the group stepped forward and informed me that he was Alf Blanchard's grandson and had some mementos of his late grandfather to show me.

Alf's grandson was called Kevin Ireland and produced Alf's B.E.M. as well as a souvenir that his grandfather had secured for himself once the mine had been made safe - this was a piece of one of the cables that suspended the mine from the parachute. For once in my life, I was speechless!

Kevin Ireland with his grandfather's souvenirs (author's photograph)

To say that I went into geek mode would be an understatement and many photographs were taken at the time and after the walk, when e-mail addresses were also exchanged.

Close up of Alf's BEM (author's photograph)

Close up of Alf's BEM (author's photograph)

The section of parachute cable (author's photograph)

After the walk, the group kindly invited me to join them for a curry and as mentioned above, email addresses were exchanged. I was able to obtain Alf's Fire Service record card from the London Fire Brigade archives, as well as his British Empire Medal citation. In return, Kevin sent me some copies of letters that Alf had received from his then employers informing him of his impending medal award and perhaps rather sadly, a letter informing him of his release from the Fire Service in early 1945. After the war, Alf returned to his old occupation and passed away, aged 73 in 1982.

Alf's letter of release from the Fire Service (Kevin Ireland)

I am indebted to Kevin Ireland and indeed to the rest of the group for a memorable afternoon and for providing me with yet another reason to love the job that I do.

Sidney Alfred Holder, The Wall and the Unknown Soldier

Firemen Remembered Plaque to Sidney Alfred Holder in Shoe Lane (author's photograph)

This post was originally written in August 2011 but since then, one or two discrepancies in the original story as recounted to me have come to light. These corrections have now been incorporated into the text, which is updated accordingly.

On Thursday 11 August 2011, I was lucky enough to be invited to the unveiling ceremony of one of the memorial plaques to be erected by the charity 'Firemen Remembered' which does so much excellent work in preserving and honouring the memory of the firefighters of the Second World War, who went from being described as "£3-a-week Army Dodgers" according to some of the more unscrupulous organs of the press, to receiving a ringing endorsement from Prime Minister Winston Churchill no less, who described them as "Heroes with grimy faces."

This particular plaque is located close to the scene of the incident at Shoe Lane, just off London's Fleet Street and commemorates a tragedy that was immortalised on canvas by the War Artist Leonard Rosoman R.A., who at that time was a member of the Auxilary Fire Service and who witnessed the event at first hand. Deeply troubled by what he had seen, Rosoman created a powerful image, which he found himself painting and re-painting, as if trying to exorcise what he had witnessed from his own consciousness. The artist subsequently stated that he was never entirely happy with the work and at first thought it was too raw for public consumption but it is today recognised as one of the iconic images of the Blitz. The image entitled 'The Falling Wall' by the artist but for some reason re-titled by the Imperial War Museum as 'A House Collapsing on two Firemen, Shoe Lane, London EC4' is reproduced below, courtesy of the IWM. The original is currently on display at the IWM North in Manchester, although perhaps would be better located in London, given that is where the incident occurred.

"The Falling Wall" by Leonard Rosoman (IWM collection)

On the night of 29th/30th December 1940, some 140 medium bombers of the Luftwaffe dropped some 24,000 incendiary bombs concentrated on the City of London in a raid that became known as "The Second Great Fire of London". The raid had been carefully planned to coincide with an exceptionally low tide on the River Thames, which once the water mains had been damaged by the high explosive bombs which were also dropped on the Square Mile, made it nigh on impossible for the beleaguered firefighters to obtain emergency supplies of water from the river. The spread of the fires was further compounded by the fact that many nightwatchmen and fire watchers employed by the various businesses in the City, had taken advantage of the Christmas and New Year holidays to sneak away for a long weekend, so leaving fires to spread unchecked. This failing was the subject of an official Government Enquiry after the event, the result of which was to compel companies to provide full-time fire watches on their premises.

As part of the ceremony, the redoubtable Stephanie Maltman, one of the leading figures behind the charity, explained what to the best of our knowledge today, had happened on this night in Shoe Lane and how Auxiliary Fireman Sidney Alfred Holder and a now unknown helper who had simply been passing by had come to perish beneath fifteen feet of white hot bricks and masonry.

The programme cover for the unveiling event (author's photograph)

Sidney Holder, Leonard Rosoman and the future travel writer and novelist William Sansom were part of an AFS squad from Station 13 at Belsize Park, detailed to fight a major fire in Shoe Lane, just off Fleet Street, adjacent to the Daily Express building. The three men were controlling a branch directing water onto the blazing building and although it looked a hopeless task, stuck bravely at their task. Amazingly, but not uncommonly during a major raid, there were still passers by going about their business and the firefighters were joined by an off duty soldier and an RAF airman, who offered to help. During the course of their toils, a more senior AFS Officer appeared on the scene and instructed Rosoman to leave the branch to the others and accompany him on a recce from an adjacent building to see if they could find another spot from which to direct their branches at the by now out of control fire. As they surveyed the scene, Rosoman heard the ominous crack of the wall crumbling under the heat and collapsing onto the men below, one of whom was Rosoman's close friend, William Sansom.

Incredibly, Sansom and the RAF man survived the incident by dint of good fortune; the wall had collapsed almost as a solid slab of masonry but they had had the luck to be standing more or less in line with a window aperture which framed them as the wall collapsed. The two men were showered with masonry but were not seriously injured and were quickly able to free themselves in order to clamber to where Holder and the soldier had been directing their branch. The two men tore at the red hot bricks with their bare hands, severely burning themselves at the same time. They were quickly relieved by a Rescue Squad and it was only when they were taken aside, that Sansom and his colleague realised the extent of the injuries to their hands.

Wreath laid at the unveiling ceremony (author's photograph)

The rescuers eventually reached the two buried men; the soldier was dead when they found him. His steel helmet had been crushed almost flat and he was burned beyond recognition. Although the details are sketchy, history tells us that Sidney Alfred Holder was alive when pulled from the rubble; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission tells us that he died 'near to St Bartholomew's Hospital' which suggests that he died in an ambulance whilst being taken to hospital.

Sidney Alfred Holder was born on 21 April 1907 and lived at 69 Denmark Road, Hendon, with his mother, Emily. His peacetime job as shown on the 1939 Register was a Temporary Railway Porter but he had obviously joined the Fire Service at some point after this. Despite fairly extensive research by Stephanie and her colleagues at Firemen Remembered, the identity of the soldier who heroically offered to help on that fateful night has never been established and he remains 'known unto God' but to us mere mortals, one of the many 'unknown soldiers.'


Dark City alleyways and passages,
curtained for a century by tall walls,
exchanged their twilight gloom for
a flood of yellow light in one
theatrical moment...

                         William Sansom                                                       

Published Sources:

Fireman Flower - William Sansom, Hogarth Press 1944
The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE, After The Battle 1991

Unpublished Sources:

1939 Register - UK National Archives

Grenfell Road - a previous tragedy

It is probable that most people around the world will be aware of the tragedy that befell the residents of Grenfell Tower in 2017 but fewer will know the area in which the 1974-built block is located. Grenfell Road, on which the tower stands, is today part of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, a product of the reorganisation of London's local government in 1965. Prior to this date, Grenfell Road had formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Kensington, a solidly working class area known as Notting Dale and as we can see from the extract from the 1939 A to Z atlas, a warren of smaller roads running to the east of Latimer Road Station, which was then part of the Hammersmith & City Branch of the Metropolitan Line.

The impact area (arrowed) on the 1939 A to Z (author's image)

As Christmas 1944 approached, the war-weary residents of the area, along with all Londoners were hoping for a quiet Christmas and perhaps had begun to have thoughts about the end of the war in Europe being on the distant horizon. Since September 1944, London had been under attack from the latest of Hitler's vengeance weapons, the V-2 rocket but on the evening of 12 December 1944, the residents of Notting Dale were hoping for a peaceful night - there had been no nearby incidents since 6 December, when the "Red Lion" pub in Marylebone had been destroyed by a direct hit but at 22:40, the silence was shattered by an explosion in the area between Treadgold Street, Lancaster Street and Grenfell Road.

As was usual with these weapons, destruction was widespread and not limited to the immediate area of impact. As we can see from the extract reproduced below from the LCC Bomb Survey, many buildings were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable but remarkably, just two people lost their lives in the incident; 61-year-old Edith Bryant of 21 Grenfell Road and 39-year-old Edith Ryell of 9 Grenfell Road. The BC4 report held at the National Archives in Kew informs us that 30 people were seriously injured, with another 20 "lesser injuries". The missile had been fired just minutes earlier from Battery 444 at Scheveningen, in the Netherlands and was one of ten fired by this particular battery on the day and one of twenty two in total fired on that day.

Extract from BC4 Report held at the UK National Archives (HO198/106)

The National Archive file connected with this incident also contains some useful sketch maps and photographs, with which it is possible to compare some of the views with a "then and now" perspective, although such was the level of damage incurred not only as a result of this incident but also due to earlier damage in the Blitz, that when the London County Council began the post-war redevelopment of the area, the local geography of the road network was changed, further compounded by the construction of the Westway in the 1960s and 70s, which submerged many of the roads in the north of the area seen on the 1939 map.

The 1944 map drawn immediately after the incident (HO198/106)

Google Maps view of the comparable area today (author's screen grab)

We can see above some of the changes on the geography by comparing the BC4 map drawn immediately after the incident, with the Google Maps view of the comparable area today. For example, Lancaster Road no longer exists, apart from a short section of it which has now been renamed Whitchurch Road and Grenfell Road today continues north on a new alignment, crossing the site of Lancaster Road, at the end of which lies the ill-fated Grenfell Tower.

Photograph Plot from BC4 Report (HO198/106)

There is also a useful map in the file which references where each of the bomb survey photographs were taken and using this map, it is fairly easy to use Streetview to take a comparable view of the same scene today. In the first comparison shots below, we see image #1, which is the view from Bomore Road, looking towards Grenfell Road, compared with the similar view today.

This is image #1 from 1944 looking from Bomore Road towards Grenfell Road (HO198/106)

The same view taken in 2020 (author's screen grab from Google Streetview)

Whilst in the views below, we see 1944 images #3 and #4 which show Treadgold Street forking off to the right, with Grenfell Road bearing left. The modern image has been incorrectly labelled Barandon Walk by Google Maps, when this is actually a public walkway in the Lancaster West Estate which is out of sight behind the camera operator.

Treadgold Street on the right with surface air raid shelter, with Grenfell Road bearing left (HO198/106)

Comparable view today, with Grenfell Road mis-captioned as Barandon Way (author's screen grab)

Next, we see 1944 photographs #8 and #9, taken from the corner of Treadgold Street looking into Grenfell Road. We can see in the modern comparison view that the Victorian houses in Grenfell Road have been totally demolished and replaced by the Lancaster West Estate.

Photos #8 and #9 looking from Treadgold Street into Grenfell Road (HO198/106)

The comparable view today looking towards the Lancaster West Estate (author's screen grab)

The final view is a montage of photographs #10, #11 and #12, which is impossible to compare with a modern view as the houses in the photograph have been demolished but it does demonstrate the level of blast damage caused to the houses in Grenfell Road.

Images #10, #11 and #12 taken from the rear of Lancaster Street, looking towards Grenfell Road (HO198/106)

This then is Grenfell Road, like many parts of London, an area who's modern geography is framed by events of almost eighty years and ago and which has seen tragedy in war and more recently.

Unpublished Sources:

HO198/106 - Region 5: London Headquarters Forms BC4 12 Dec 1944 to 1 Feb 1945 - UK National Archives, Kew

Web Sources:

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html

The Little Reminders.....

I've been guiding regularly now since 2010 but have been interested in our wartime history for as long as I can remember and in that time, have come to appreciate that as well as the formal memorials and plaques commemorating incidents and events from the Blitz and beyond, there are so many more reminders that can be seen, often hiding in plain sight.

We've covered some of these in previous posts, such as surviving signage, bomb splinter damage and air raid shelters but today we're going to look at some of the quirkier and perhaps more subtle reminders of our wartime past.

We start at St Margaret's Church, adjacent to Westminster Abbey, a 12th Century place of worship that is sometimes called "The parish church of the House of Commons".

The now mostly plain glass window marks the entry point of the bomb (author's photo)

Scorch marks still apparent on Pew 38 (author's photos)

On 25 September 1940, an oil-incendiary bomb smashed through one of the stained glass windows on the eastern side of the church and started to burn inside the ancient building. The fire was soon extinguished but even some 82 years later, we can still see a plain window where there was once stained glass and scorched timber at the end of Pew 38.

Some reminders are so elusive that they can only be seen at certain times of the day, depending on the state of the tide in the River Thames. Walk from St Margaret's around to the Victoria Tower Gardens and if your visit coincides with low water, carefully look over the embankment wall and you will see rubble left over from when the river wall was breached by a high explosive bomb on the night of 16/17 April 1941. The wall over which you might very well be leaning was repaired using a concrete infill and it is quite fitting that this repair carries a City of Westminster green plaque commemorating Sir Thomas Peirson-Frank, the London County Council's Chief Engineer and the man responsible for that organisation's Thames Flood team, who were responsible for ensuring that speedy repairs were made whenever the river walls and flood defences were breached by the enemy's bombs and missiles.

Rubble from the Thames embankment wall now on the beach below the Victoria Tower Gardens (author's photo)

The repair - a concrete infill (author's photo)

Sir Thomas Peirson-Frank green plaque (author's photo)

Contiust a mile or so upstream on the Thames from the Palace of Westminster lies Vauxhall Bridge, the northernmost buttress of which carries splinter damage from a V-1 which like the rubble at Victoria Tower Gardens, can only be seen at low water. This too dates from the night of 16/17 April 1941, the second heaviest (and penultimate) raid of what we now call the First, or Night Blitz.

Close-up of the splinter damage at the northern end of Vauxhall Bridge (author's photo)

Continue north along Vauxhall Bridge Road until you reach Victoria Station. On the forecourt of the station, behind the new entrance to the busy Underground Station, one can see damage to the wall of the mainline station. This is not bomb splinter damage but instead is damage caused by a Luftwaffe bomber, the wreckage of which plunged to the ground on to the station forecourt on 15 September 1940. This was part of the Dornier 17 that was brought down when Sgt. Ray Holmes' Hurricane collided with it in the skies over central London on the day that is now commemorated as Battle of Britain Day. The Dornier, which had already been abandoned by it's surviving crew members, was flying on autopilot, and apart from two dead crew, contained a full bomb load, most of which flew from the bomber during its uncontrolled descent.

The contemporary photo shows the wreckage being guarded by soldiers and police to discourage would-be souvenir hunters. The new entrance to the Circle and District Line platforms stands almost exactly where the wrecked "Locks and Cutlery" shop once stood.

Dornier 17 wreckage on the forecourt of Victoria Station (author's collection)

In the modern photographs, we can see the masonry of the station wall, which although recently cleaned, is still disfigured by the impact of the German bomber on that late summer lunchtime.

The battle-scarred walls of Victoria Station (author's images)

In the next edition, we shall take a look at similar reminders of our wartime past elsewhere in the capital.

Please note that all photographs in the above article are the property of the author and may not be used elsewhere without my express written permission. Offenders will be pursued ruthlessly!

"Soldiers and Sportsmen All": The Great War story of the 24th Battalion, The Royal Fusiliers by Dr. Robert Wynn Jones

Bob Jones is a retired professional geologist and palaeontologist, as well as being a keen amateur historian specialising in the pre-1666 City of London. He writes an excellent blog which can be found at www.lostcityoflondon.co.uk/ and so this interesting history of the 24th (2nd Sportsmen's) Battalion, The Royal Fusiliers, is something of a departure for him.

Dr Jones explains in his dedication that he had a family interest in writing this book; his maternal grandfather, Private Charles Reuben Clements served in the battalion until he suffered serious wounds at the Battle of Havrincourt on 12 September 1918 and spent the remainder of the war in hospitals in the United Kingdom, before returning to civilian life in 1919The Sportsmen’s Battalions were an extension of the idea of the various “Pals” Battalions of Kitchener’s “New Army”, except that these men were not work or professional colleagues but instead were bound together by their love and proficiency at the chosen sports. 

These Sportsmen’s Battalions were the brainchild of Emma Pauline Cunliffe-Owen, a remarkable woman of mixed Anglo-German parentage, who reputedly met two big-game hunters in London shortly after the outbreak of war and jokingly asked them why they had not enlisted. When they asked her in reply why she had not raised her own battalion, the idea stuck! 

The 23rd (1st Sportsmen’s) Battalion had been raised in September 1914 and had quickly become over-subscribed, leading to the formation of the 24th (2nd Sportsmen’s) Battalion during the following November. As the Battalion’s title suggests, the vast majority of the recruits came from a sporting background, or could at least shoot or ride. 

The author explains that there were three professional footballers amongst the recruits – Serjeant Adams of Southend United and Fulham, Serjeant Arthur Evans of Manchester City, Blackpool and Exeter City and Private Henry George Purver of Brentford – the latter two of whom were killed at Delville Wood on 31st July 1916. Another of the recruits was Charles Percy “Charlie” McGahey, one of Wisden’s “Cricketers of the Year” in 1901, who played for Essex as well as representing MCC in two test matches in Australia in 1901-02. In common with many of his contemporaries, McGahey was also an excellent footballer who appeared for Millwall, Woolwich Arsenal and Spurs. 

We hear of the Battalion’s training regime and later of their involvement during the various battles and campaigns of the war on a year-by-year basis and learn of the casualties inflicted upon the Battalion at each of the battles they were involved in. 

The author has managed to glean many photographs of the personnel involved in the narrative and finishes the book with some useful appendices in which we can read many biographical sketches of the various men who served with the Battalion, as well as a separate appendix that tells us something of the life of Charles Reuben “Charlie” Clements, the author’s maternal grandfather, another accomplished footballer – this time at club level – for Ealing Wednesday, a team formed largely of shopworkers, who preferred to play on their early closing day rather than on Saturday, so as not to lose their best day’s takings. 

As one would expect when considering the author’s background, this is a meticulously researched and nicely written book that manages to combine the wider history of the Battalion with some family history and I have no hesitation in commending it to you. The book is available to buy direct via the author’s website as detailed above.

Published by Amazon

Available from https://lostcityoflondon.co.uk/books/

Price: £8.99

Softback, pp 296

Book Review: Zeppelin Inferno: The Forgotten Blitz by Ian Castle

This is the second book in a planned trilogy by author Ian Castle and is a detailed study of the German air offensive against Great Britain during 1916.

As with the previous volume which covered the years 1914-1915, the author deals with each individual raid in some detail, whether it was carried out by conventional aircraft, or as was more often the case, by airships either the lesser-known wooden-framed Schütte-Lanz type, or those constructed by the Zeppelin Company, which give the book it’s title. The descriptions of these raids are enlivened by eyewitness personal accounts by those on the ground and in the air, as well as reports from contemporary newspapers.

As well as describing each raid, the author also deals with the countermeasures introduced by the British such as the improvement of the anti-aircraft defences on the ground and the work done to bolster the squadrons devoted to home defence. We also learn about the work done to develop and introduce into service incendiary ammunition for the fighter aircraft that was capable of bringing down the hydrogen-filled airships.

We also read about the personalities on the German side, vilified by the British press as “Baby Killers”, such as Joachim Breihaupt, Heinrich Mathy and Peter Strasser, the commander of the Imperial German Navy’s Airship Division. We also learn about the development and introduction into service of the “R” Class Zeppelins, known to the British as the “Super Zeppelins”, impressive machines that were 198 metres long, with a diameter of 24 metres, capable of carrying a bomb load of up to four tons.

Although the British had brought down their first Zeppelin on 31 March 1916, it had crashed into the sea off the Kent coast. The British public had to wait until 3 September before an airship was shot down over British soil, when the SL-11 was brought down by the guns of a B.E.2c aircraft piloted by Lieut. William Leefe Robinson, who was awarded a VC for his work. The fact that this was a Schütte-Lanz airship rather than a Zeppelin was kept from the public as this stage of the war, as it was felt that this might detract from the achievement!

This was a portent for the future and during the remainder of 1916, the German side lost a further five Zeppelins and although the British weren’t to know it at this stage, 1916 marked the peak of the Zeppelin offensive against the United Kingdom; the majority of future air attacks against this country would be made by conventional aircraft.

The book is well illustrated and also contains many useful maps charting the location of German airship bases in 1916, Air Raid Warning Districts, the penetration of the various Zeppelin raids during the year, location of RFC Home Defence squadrons, and tracks of the final flights of many of the destroyed airships. There are also several useful appendices, which explain the airship numbering systems used by both the German Navy and Army, lists of airship and conventional aircraft raids in 1916, which give the numbers of casualties and the values of material damage caused. The final appendix follows the pattern introduced by the author in the first book, by providing a list of the names of those killed in Britain by enemy air attacks during the year in question. Unlike the later Blitz, there is no central register as such and Mr Castle has done a considerable amount of detective work to identify all but six of the 300 British deaths on the ground in 1916.

As one would expect from this author, this is a superbly-researched and well-written work that will interest anyone who wishes to discover more about this sometimes overlooked aspect of the air war in 1914-1918 and I have no hesitation in recommending it to you.

Published by Frontline Books

RRP £25.00

hardback, pp 382