Zeppelin Kommt! Children play a Zeppelin raid on London. Holding his bomb in the gondola is a doll of the airship's inventor, Count Zeppelin. The other children, playing the English, cower, and the British fleet — folded paper boats — remains in port. Prewar postcards celebrated the imposing airships and the excitement they generated with the same expression, 'Zeppelin Kommt!'. Postcard by P.O. Engelhard (P.O.E.). The message on the reverse is dated May 28, 1915.
P.O.E.? EnglandLondonZeppelin Kommt!Reverse:Message dated May 28, 1915Stamped: Geprüft und zu befördern (Approved and forwarded) 9 Komp. Bay. L.I.N. 5
"On August 17 [1915] four more Zeppelins were sent out with definite orders to bomb the City of London. Two of these ships had serious mechanical trouble and had to turn back before they reached England. Von Buttlar in LZ.11 produced another dramatic, but totally fictitious, account of how he bombed London, but he was never at any time within forty miles of the British capital. . . .Wenke, aboard LZ.10 was more successful as far as navigation was concerned, for he actually did reach London, the first Naval Airship commander to do so. . . . He thought he bombed the metropolis between Blackfriars and London bridges and reported that great buildings collapsed and big fires were observed, but he hit the Leyton railroad station, damaged a tramcar roundhouse, and destroyed a number of small houses. Ten people were killed and forty-eight wounded."
The morning of August 12, 1915, Naval First Lieutenant (Oberleutnant-zur-See) H. von Buttlar had been caught in a violent storm over the North Sea while returning from an aborted raid on England, that lifted his airship dangerously high before driving it towards the sea. He was fortunate to survive. Oberleutnant-zur-See Friedrich Wenke was more successful, but overestimated his success. Ian Castle covers this raid on his website: www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk/17-august-1915-1.
The Zeppelin Fighters by Arch Whitehouse, page 99, copyright © 1966 by Arch Whitehouse, publisher: New English Library, publication date: 1978
1915-08-17, 1915, August, Zeppelin, London
