Campaign 193: London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace (Campaign) [Paperback]

My interest in Zeppelins sprang from owning L-15 memorabilia. This fairly thin book packs an awful lot of information into a small space, and the colour illustrations and old mono photos are superbly reproduced. A minefield of information about all aspects of the Zeppelin raids on London. Worth every penny!

I absolutely loved this book and I read it twice already without even noticing the time passing. Ian Castle gave here a splendid description of the first campaign of strategic bombing ever - the Zeppelin raids against London.

The title is a little misleading, because in fact the first Zeppelin raid took place on the night of 31 May 1915 - but on another hand German preparations began already in 1914, so it is not really an error.

This book describes all the raids in a great detail and this is one of its main assets. It begins immediately with the first raid against London, for which we learn that the 31 May 1915 the "LZ38" airship belonging ot German Army and commanded by Hauptmann Erich Linnarz attacked London with 3000 lbs of bombs, killing seven people (all civilians) and escaping unscathed. The first to die that night was a three years old girl, Elsie Leggatt, who burned alive in her baby bed... She was also the first victim of strategic bombing in world history. Later that night another bomb also killed an 8 year old boy, Samuel Reuben.

Those results of the first raid illustrate well the main point about all this campaign - it was ultimately almost totally useless from the military point of view and finally, in nine raids that really reached London, managed only to do two things: kill 181 people and especially inflame British opinion against Germans much better than any possible propaganda campaign. There were certainly some resources in men, aircraft and artillery, which had to be deployed in London and couldn't be used by British forces on other fronts - but compared to the scale of British war effort they were negligible.

Germans paid a very heavy price for all those limited results, when in 1917 British finally found the way to deal with Zeppelin menace. Many brave men who dared to attack the most powerful country in the world on board of airships which were essentially enormous, slow and very vulnerable flying bombs waiting to explode, died - mostly in a horrible way - and ultimately the only thing they really achieved was to kill some helpless civilians, like Elsie Leggatt and Samuel Reuben.

One can only wonder what could be achieved if Germans waited a little bit longer and unleashed a massif surprise attack of three dozens of their improved Zeppelins with improved bombs against Scapa Flow in the middle of 1916. Me for one I believe that they would have then good chances to seriously damage at least one, two, maybe even three, of British dreadnoughts, which would be immobile and which were poorly protected from fully vertical attacks. And once that done, make a sortie with the whole Hochseeflotte and offer the battle against the weakened Grand Fleet would make considerable more sense. Another better use for all this air fleet would be to regularly bomb one of the French ports where troops and supplies from Great Britain were disembarking - which would have the advantage to cut significantly the distance and also remove the hazardous voyage over the North Sea.... Both those solutions would be not only more honorable but also more sound from military point of view.

The detailed and top level description of Zeppelin raids makes this book an excellent read. Maps are even better - they are simply a treasure! And the white and black archive pictures are another treasure, to keep preciously.

But there is one point for which I simply have to take away one star from the rating: the horrible color plates by Christa Hook. Now, this Osprey book is the first since many years in which there are four color plates and that is a very good thing. BUT those plates are also so bad, that the eight pages they take must be considered as a total waste of place! In all of them we can "admire" the "guy with the melted face", so typical to Christa Hook efforts - the same guy who has no real face, just a kind of vague mask. All colors are shades of gray and black and no details are shown.

In the first plate we see a vague shape of a house burning in London and a bobby (with melted face) helping civilians (with melted faces) to evacuate.

In the second one we see a British pilot standing in front of his plane and receiving orders. Surprisingly he has a face (or at least the nose) but his commanding officer and ground crew technician have not. Also the only thing with some details in this illustration is pilot's pet dog...

In the third plate there is a fight between a Zeppelin gunners and a British night fighter with the lights of British projectors in the background. Needless to say, no details are shown - just an impressionist shadow theater. Pity, because the general idea was great and full of potential...

The last plate shows a German Zeppelin in fire and falling down with the crew evacuating - well, kind off... Another great idea but totally wasted by the lack of any details...

I am very happy that I bought this book and for anybody interested in air warfare and First World War this is a must. But the color plates - oh God... For the life of me I really can not understand who in Osprey management accepted to pay for them.

I have only just received this book and generally find this to be very good, as I wanted to research the Zeppelin raids on London and in particulr find the routes they took, all the information that I wanted is included and is well illustrated.

If I had any complaint I would have liked to see perhaps a few extracts from the local papers of the areas' attacked or a few statements from residents,
or perhsps a few pages of the airships logs (if they still exist)
I appreciate that this may not be possible simply due to the passage of time but I think that this would have enhanced the volume .
All inall very good and enought detail to follow the track of these beasts, the Terror weapon of their age.