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At
the beginning of September 1916, the
LZ98 joined twelve other army and navy airships in a united action against London. Over the metropolis I made the unpleasant discovery that the English had
still further improved
their defense system and now sent veritable hornet-swarms of single-seater combat planes
against us. Amid heavy losses of men and
material, their fliers had learned
to attack at night also, and their machine guns showered us with incendiary bullets. As long as an airship flew in the dark, it was almost invisible to the enemy; but once
in the clutches of a searchlight, it
could be seen for miles. In the protection of the night, the little combat planes stole unnoticed
upon the enormous targets, which
were at least one
hundred times as large as they, and they were often within shooting distance before
the German machine-gunners could open fire. A single hit in one of the gas chambers
sufficed to destroy the airship and its crew.
Pretty
Things: Balloon
Burning (Link)
Pretty
Things: Dream/Joey (Link)
From: Zeppelin,
The Story of Lighter-than-air Craft by the late Captain Ernest Lehmann, Commander of the Hindenburg, 1937.
Virginia
Woolf
February 14, 1915
We both went up to
London this afternoon; L[eonard] to the Library, and I to ramble around the
West End, picking up clothes. I am really in rags. It is very
amusing. With age too one’s less afraid of the superb shop women.
These great shops are like fairies’ palaces now. I swept about in
Debenham’s and Marshall’s and so on, buying as I thought, with great discretion.
The shop women are often very charming in spite of their serpentine coils of
black hair. Then I had tea, and rambled down to Charing Cross in the
dark, making up phrases and incidents to write about. Which is, I expect,
the way one gets killed. I bought a ten and elevenpenny blue dress, in
which I sit at the moment.
-- Virginia Woolf
Flight
Sub-lieutenant Reginald Warneford, RNAS, at Hendon in February 1915.
Reginald Warneford was the first pilot to destroy a Zeppelin in
the air when he brought down LZ.37 on 7 June 1915, during the second month of
the Zeppelin bombardment of London. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.
Warneford died in France on June 17, 1915 when his aircraft crashed.
Piccadilly Circus, 1915
First Zeppelin to bomb London, May 1915
The
interior of a restaurant at 76-77 Aldgate High Street showing the effects of
the major Zeppelin raid on the night of 13 -14 October 1915.
Embankment Gardens, June 1915
London's
"Theatreland" in the West End -- 1915 -- published during Zeppelin
bombardments. Designed by MacDonald Gill (brother of celebrated Arts &
Crafts movement artist and paraphiliac Eric Gill), the map is a lighthearted
and colorful effort interspersed with topical jokes and anecdotes.
NOTE:
This post began as a simple St. Valentine's Day
blog. I thought it would be interesting to reprint Virginia Woolf's itinerary and some of her thoughts from ninety-seven
years ago today.
But my photo research
quickly took me somewhere else -- to other London 1915 venues (the war, which killed so many mothers' sons, poor and rich, was half-a-year old by
mid-February) -- and it seemed appropriate to give a slightly broader
picture given the mess we're still in today. (Meet The New Boss, Same As
The Old Boss, etc., etc.)
It's so difficult as
an American to imagine what it must have
been like to anticipate and endure serial aerial
bombardment. New Yorkers (I am one)
experienced 9-11, but even that corurscating, choking horror quickly became a "one-day event" for many people.
Happy
St. Valentine's Day! I mean it.
Music
Links:
The
Pretty Things -- This Balloon Burning (from S.F. Sorrow)
The
Kinks: Some Mother's Son (from Arthur)
