Andrew Hyde

Has some interesting bits, but disappointing overall. The First Blitz is subtitled “The German Air Campaign Against Britain 1917-1918”, but wanders around without much focus. We start with a general discussion of the development of air warfare, including such things as the observation balloons in the American Civil War, Austrian balloon bombs in the 1848 Italian campaign, and various actions in the Italo-Turkish War of 1912 and the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Next is a discussion of British defenses against the Zeppelin; Churchill, of course, felt that the best defense was an offense and launched air strikes against Zeppelin sheds and the hydrogen manufacturing works at Friedrichshafen (violating Swiss airspace in the process and provoking a diplomatic response from the Swiss, who were told to “go milk their cows”). Unfortunately, interservice rivalry trumped practicality; Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time and his raids were launched by the Royal Naval Air Service. The Army was outraged, and insisted that all further raids against Zeppelin bases be conducted by the Royal Flying Corps. They got their wish – then didn’t launch any attacks, allowing Zeppelins to reach England unmolested.


Fortunately for the British, although at first Zeppelins could reach the British Isles without interception, they couldn’t hit anything. Raids against London ended up bombing (for example) Yarmouth. Initial air defense was very feeble; the obsolete British fighters (usually the Vickers Gunbus, not a name expected to inspire fear in the opposition) were unable to climb high enough to reach the Zeppelins. Eventually more effective fighters were provided and incendiary ammunition was developed (although one Zeppelin had been downed before that, by the unlikely method of dropping bombs on it in midair). Zeppelins were withdrawn from land attack, and most of the Home Defense fighter squadrons were sent to the Western Front.


At this point author Andrew Hyde takes a side road and starts discussing the submarine war, food rationing, labor unrest, and the employment of women in military industries, none of which is especially germane to his main topic. (There’s a tenuous connection – all these things have to do with home front morale which was certainly affected by the German bombing campaign, too – but that connection is left up to the reader to find between the lines).


At last we get to the meat of the book, the German bombing campaign using Gotha and later Zeppelin-Staaken bombers. For some reason these have always attracted less public interest than the Zeppelin attacks – there’s just something fascinating about airships – but they were more effective (admittedly, that’s not saying much). The British never even considered the possibility that the Germans would develop a heavier-than-air craft that could carry a significant bomb load to London, so the first Gotha attacks were completely unresisted. The Gothas flew high enough to be undetectable unless someone heard the engines, what interceptors were available didn’t have either speed or climb rate to catch the Gothas, and there was no way to direct fighters once they left the ground (they had no radios - land signal flags were tried, but were ineffective – since the signalers on the ground usually didn’t have any idea what was going on, either).


Once again, unfortunately, Hyde gets off the main track. I realize a lot of military histories go overboard on technical weapon details without doing enough interpretation, but Hyde goes too far in the other direction. There’s only one partial photograph of a Gotha, and none of the Zeppelin-Staaken or any British airplanes. Hyde does give quite a bit of verbal description of the aircraft involved, but one picture or line drawing would have easily been worth a thousand words. Then there’s obsessive detail on one particular raid – that of May 25th, 1917. Hyde accounts for almost every bomb dropped by the attackers (it’s true that this was one of the more effective raids – the Gothas, more or less by accident, hit a Canadian military encampment at Folkestone and killed a number of soldiers) and prints as many witness accounts as he could locate. Once again, this is a place where a single map could have substituted for pages of verbiage.


The book winds down from there – there’s one more detailed description of a raid, which tragically hit a school in London (killing the author’s uncle, who was 5 years old at the time). Alas, there’s very little about the German view of the raids (although a couple of newspaper stories are mentioned or partially quoted) and nothing about the long term effect (the ease with which the Gothas penetrated British airspace must have certainly affected the “strategic bomber” theorists and “the bomber will always get through” crowd of the interwar years.


The book’s a British import, and quite expensive for the material contained. It’s certainly worth a read, but if you’re interested I’d get it from your library.… (meer)