Observer vents anger as enemy planes hit capital
Germany was resorting to a “new method of frightfulness” by sending planes to bomb British communities, the Observer said 100 years ago.
Between January, 1915, and the end of the war, the Germans carried out 52 Zeppelin raids on Britain killing more than 500 people.
But attacks by enemy planes didn’t begin until late spring of 1917.
On May 25 of that year German aircraft targeted Kent and the south-east of Britain killing 94 people in Folkestone, Kent, two in Hythe and one in Ashford.
And 162 people died, 18 of them children from a primary school, when German bombers carried out a daylight raid on London on June 13, 1917.
No fewer than 432 were injured in what proved the deadliest raid of the war.
Referring to one of the raids, the Observer said it occurred about 6pm one evening when streets and shopping centres were crowded.
“It seems this time the Huns succeeded in dropping their bombs where they would be most destructive to civilian life and property,” added the paper.
“It has always been probable that when things became too hot for the Zeppelins they would resort to attacks by swarms of aeroplanes and our only defence is the maintenance of large aerial forces capable of resisting the raiders.”
The Observer said the “outrages” might be stopped by a vigorous policy of reprisals but admitted the country “did not have the heart for the indiscriminate slaughter of noncombatants”.
The General Assemby of the Church of Scotland had already raised its voice against retaliatory action of that kind.
It was felt the best hope of combatting the number of air raids on south-east England was to force Germany out of Belgium and that prospect would, said the Observer, would be bright “were it not for paralysis in Russia”.
Nevertheless, the paper felt that with the possibility of a Russian recovery and the prospect of the United States “getting into her full astride” the prospect for the war was “cheering”.
Germany hoped to “starve us out” with their U Boat campaign but, concluded the Observer, Prime Minister Lloyd George had given an assurance she would not succeed.