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The Great Double Event, September 24, 1916. On the night of September 23/24, 1916, two Zeppelins of a raiding party of twelve airships were brought down: L.32 with all its crew east-northeast of London near Billericay, and L.33 in Essex. The crew of the latter all survived, as did the frame of their Zeppelin.
Postwar postcard map of the Balkans including Albania, newly-created Yugoslavia, expanded Romania, and diminished former Central Powers Bulgaria and Turkey. The first acquisitions of Greece in its war against Turkey are seen in Europe where it advanced almost to Constantinople, in the Aegean Islands from Samos to Rhodes, and on the Turkish mainland from its base in Smyrna. The Greco-Turkish war was fought from May 1919 to 1922. The positions shown held from the war's beginning to the summer of 1920 when Greece advanced eastward. Newly independent Hungary and Ukraine appear in the northwest and northeast.
Entrenched German soldiers behind sniper plates at Slota Gora, September 26, 1916. Slota (or Zlota) Gora was in Polish Russia, west of a line running from Warsaw to Cracow. An original watercolor (over pencil) by O. Oettel, 12th company of Landwehr, IR 32 in the field. A sketch in pencil and red crayon is on the reverse.
A map of the Russian-Turkish front from Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918, a 1930s German history of the war illustrated with hand-pasted cigarette cards, showing the Turkish Empire in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas and the Persian Gulf. To the west is Egypt, a British dominion; to the east Persia. Erzerum in Turkey and Kars in Russia were the great fortresses on the frontier.
View of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme 1914–1918 from Mouquet Farm, commemorating the 72,246 British and Empire missing of that sector. It is a monument both to the British Empire and French missing from the Battle of the Somme and other battles in Picardy. © 2013 John M. Shea
"The airship was well lighted by searchlights but there was not a sign of any gunfire. I could distinctly see the propellers revolving and the airship was maneuvering to avoid the searchlight beams. I fired at it. The first two drums of ammunition had apparently no effect, but the third one caused the envelope to catch on fire in several places; in the center and the front. All firing was traversing fire along the envelope. The drums were loaded with a mixture of Brock, Pomeroy and tracer ammunition. I watched the burning airship strike the ground and then proceeded to find my flares. I landed at Sutton's farm at 1:40 A.M., 24th instant. My machine was B.E.2C 4112. After seeing the Zeppelin had caught fire, I fired a red Very light." ((1), more)
"The revolt now spread to most of the Greek islands, and the kingdom was soon divided between two governments: the Royalist, which maintained authority over most of old Greece, and the Nationalist, which controlled the territory acquired in the Balkan wars. The latter region was the one in which the influence of Venizelos was strongest, and on September 20th [1916] he issued a statement in which he said he 'would wait a brief time yet to see what the government purposes to do before deciding on the course it will be best to adopt in the event that Greece does not enter the war.' As the government apparently purposed to do nothing, on September 25th Venizelos, Admiral Condouritis, commander of the Greek navy, and a considerable number of army and navy officers and civilians of influence left Athens, and after making a tour of the islands, landed at Salonika, where Venizelos became the real head of the 'Provisional Government of Macedonia.'" ((2), more)
"Slota Gora26.9.16O.Oettel 12L.32.I. Felde" ((3), more)
". . . the situation deadlocked on all three fronts, and the early onset of winter — it snowed for the first time on 26 September — translated standoff into impasses, leaving the Turks with very little to show for a six-or-more-week campaign which had cost them at least 30,000 killed and wounded out of a total strength which had probably never exceeded a hundred thousand. By any standard, this was a disaster; not quite the catastrophe which had befallen Vehip's Third Army, perhaps, but nonetheless a calamity, and one which effectively spelled the end of Turkish offensive campaigning in the Caucasus. The final blow to Turkish morale fell before September's end, when Kemal ordered his 8th Division to pull back from Muş, and the Russians retook the city as easily as they had given it up." ((4), more)
"The French did not co-operate in the battle [of Flers-Courcelette], and continued to delay entering the heavy fighting which followed. They took little part until the 25th, when another attack was launched. It was the anniversary of the British reverse at Loos, and Charteris, Haig's intelligence chief, wrote in his diary '. . . a great difference between this year and last'. He was not attempting irony. On 27 September the Thiepval spur was at last taken, having held out since 1 July. A battalion of the Bedfordshires were the ones who finally took possession. The land surrounding this stronghold was carpeted with British corpses from the numerous previous attacks which had failed." ((5), more)
(1) Part of the official report of his downing of Zeppelin LZ.32 on the night of September 23–24, 1916 by Lieutenant Frederick Sowrey of Number 39 Squadron flying from his base at Sutton's Farm. The commander of LZ.32 was Oberleutnant-zur-See (naval Lieutenant) Werner Peterson who perished with his crew. The British found a copy of the latest signal book of the German navy in the wreckage. The same night L.33 was brought down relatively gently after being hit by ground fire, and losing some of its gas gas compartments or cells. L.33 was commanded by Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant Commander) Alois Böcker who survived with his crew of 21. Although they fired the airship, the frame survived to provide intelligence to the British. Peterson and Böcker captained two Zeppelins in a raid by twelve. The losses were unsustainable. 'Brock' and 'Pomeroy' were types of explosive bullets.
The Zeppelin Fighters by Arch Whitehouse, page 152, copyright © 1966 by Arch Whitehouse, publisher: New English Library, publication date: 1978
(2) Conclusion from an account of the events leading to the declaration of the Provisional Government of Macedonia by Stephen Duggan. Constantine became king of Greece on the assassination of his father in 1913. He had been educated in Germany, was married to a sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and was pro-German. Eleftherios Venizelos had been Prime Minister of Greece until March 1915 when he resigned over the King's refusal to support the Allied invasion of Gallipoli. He was re-elected and returned to office in August. As Bulgaria prepared for war against Serbia, Venizelos had invited the Allied landing at Salonica. Constantine dismissed his Prime Minister when the Allies landed 13,000 troops on October 5, 1915. Greece had significantly expanded its territory north and northeast in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, against the Ottoman Empire (First Balkan War) and Bulgaria (Second).
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. IV, 1916, pp. 337–338, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3)
Slota Gora, September 26, 1916 by O. Oettel, Front, publication date: 1916
(4) Since the Battle of Sarikamish in January, 1915, the Russians had steadily advanced into eastern Turkey, territory with a large Christian population, much of it Armenian until the the Turkish government's genocidal attacks on that people. In September, 1916 Russia was reaching the limits of its advance in the Caucasus Mountains and eastern Turkey, but had also moving into Persia, an independent but weak country on which the Turks also had designs. Even as the situation in the Caucasus deteriorated, Turkish War Minister Enver Pasha sent troops to support the invasion of Romania. Turkish General Mustafa Kemal had been a hero in the defense of the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915.
Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford, page 178, copyright © Roger Ford 2010, publisher: Pegasus Books, publication date: 2010
(5) The Thiepval spur is the site of the Thiepval Memorial to the 72,246 British and Empire missing of the Somme. The Battle of Loos was Britain's 'Big Push' in the autumn of 1915, a time when the British had not had the resources — of men, artillery, and aircraft — that they mustered in 1916. British General Douglas Haig had been promoted commander in chief after the failures of 1915. The September 15, 1916 Battle of Flers-Courcelette, an engagement in the Battle of the Somme, saw the first use tanks.
The Big Push, A Portrait of the Battle of the Somme by Brian Gardner, page 130, copyright © 1961 by Brian Gardner, publisher: William Morrow and Company, publication date: 1963
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