| LZ 54 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General information | |
| Type | Rigid airship |
Class | |
| National origin |  German Empire |
Operator | |
| Built by | Luftschiffbau Zeppelin |
| Construction number | LZ 54 |
| Serial | L 19 |
| Flights | 14 |
| History | |
| First flight | 27 November 1915 (1915-11-27) |
| Last flight | 1 February 1916 (1916-02-01) |
| Fate | Crashed in theNorth Sea |
ZeppelinLZ 54, given the military tactical designationL 19, was aZeppelin of theImperial German Navy. While returning from her firstbombing raid on the United Kingdom in early 1916, she came down in theNorth Sea. Its crew survived the crash, but drowned after the crew of a Britishfishing trawlerKing Stephen refused to rescue them, citing fears that the Germans would overpower them. The incident received worldwide publicity and divided British public opinion, and was used in Germanpropaganda.
LZ 54 was one of 22P-class military Zeppelins built byLuftschiffbau Zeppelin for theImperial German Army andNavy as improved versions of the pre-war, M-class airship, with larger gas volume and more power, having four instead of three engines. These were initially 180 horsepower (134 kW)Maybach C-X engines; later replaced with the 240 horsepower (179 kW) Maybach HSLu.LZ 54 had two gondolas, a control cabin forward with a single engine and rear gondola mounting the other three engines. The P-class Zeppelins were around 10 miles per hour (16 km/h) faster than the earlier craft, and had a higher service ceiling, double the payload and over double the range.
A bomb load of 1,600 kilograms (3,530 lb) could be carried and a number ofMG 08 machine guns were mounted for aircraft defence. The number of guns varied – army Zeppelins carried more as they operated over land and enemy aircraft were a greater threat, navy Zeppelins carried fewer to save weight. The guns were mounted in the two gondolas under the airship, in a tail gun position, and on a dorsal gun platform on the top of the envelope. This upper platform could accommodate three guns and their gunners. The airship's normal complement was 18, but it could be flown with a smaller crew.[1]
LZ 54 first flew on 27 November 1915, completing 14 flights during her nine weeks of service.[2] Several of these flights were patrols over theNorth Sea, searching for Allied merchant and naval ships. Naval scouting was the main role of the navy's Zeppelin fleet, and a total of 220 such flights were carried out during the war.[3]
The lack of aggressive activity by the German Navy meant the tactical need for such scouting was reduced.[3] During the winter of 1915,LZ 54 became well known to neutral merchant ships in the North Sea due to her frequent patrols.[4] On one occasion, she touched down close to a Swedish ship to inspect her. The ship was allowed to proceed when her neutral status was established.[5]
On another occasion, she and two other Zeppelins forestalled a British air raid by discovering, to the north ofTerschelling, an approaching flotilla of threeRoyal Navy seaplane tenders, an apparent British attempt to repeat their successfulCuxhaven Raid. The British were surprised while lowering their seaplanes into the sea.[6]
Commanded byKapitänleutnantOdo Löwe,L 19 left her Danish base atTondern at noon on 31 January 1916, one of nine navy Zeppelins to raid England that night.[a] This was part of a new, more aggressive strategy that had been brought to the German Navy with the recent appointment ofReinhard Scheer as its commander-in-chief.[7] The head of German naval airships,FregattenkapitänPeter Strasser, was on boardL 11, leading the attack personally.[8] He had orders to bomb targets of opportunity in central and southern England, reachingLiverpool if possible.[8]
The Zeppelins encountered thick fog in the North Sea, followed by rain clouds and snow off the English coast, and the attacking force became dispersed;[8] the nine airships crossed the English coast between 17:50 and 19:20.L 19 was the very last, crossing the coast nearSheringham. At 22:45, she reachedBurton on Trent, becoming the third raider to attack the town that night.[9] She then proceeded south, dropping the remainder of her bomb load on several towns on the outskirts ofBirmingham. At 00:20, a pub inTipton was destroyed;[b] buildings were also damaged in nearbyWalsall andBirchills.
She caused no casualties aside from some farm animals, although bombs dropped three hours earlier by her sister-ship, theLZ 61, killed 35 people in the area, including the wife of the mayor of Walsall;[10] a total of 61 people were reported killed and 101 injured by the raid.[5] Due to the extreme difficulties of navigating with primitive equipment at night over a darkened countryside, the captain ofL 21 believed he had bombed Liverpool, in fact around 70 miles (110 km) away.[10]
L 19 made a slow, erratic return journey, doubling back several times; this was almost certainly due to engine trouble.[11] The Zeppelin force had been newly fitted with Maybach HSLu engines. While lighter and more powerful than those they replaced, the new engines were proving unreliable – five of the nine airships had suffered engine failures during the raid.L 19 sent several signals, asking for a position fix byradio-triangulation and reporting the results of her bombing. The last signal was heard from her at 16:00 on the day after the raid when she was 22 miles (40 km) north of the Dutch island ofAmeland. She reported three out of four engines had failed and herTelefunken radio equipment was malfunctioning.[11]
Around an hour later, the Zeppelin drifted low over the island, and Dutch units on the ground opened fire on her. The Netherlands was a neutral country and Dutch forces had standing orders to fire on overflying, foreign aircraft.[12][c] A south wind blew theL 19 offshore and, some time during the night of 1–2 February, the Zeppelin came down in the North Sea. Löwe dropped a bottle into the sea, with a report on his situation and with letters to his family; this was found a few weeks later by a yacht nearGothenburg, Sweden.[13] The German Navy put ships to sea that night to search for theL 19, but they only discovered one of her fuel-tanks, still containing fuel.[11] This was likely dropped as a desperate measure to save weight and remain aloft.
The next morning, the floating wreck of the airship was discovered by a British steamfishing trawler,King Stephen, of 162 tons,[14] commanded by William Martin. The vessel had sighted distress signals during the night and had spent several hours steaming towards them. Clinging to the wreck were the airship's 16 crew.[d] The normal complement of a P-class Zeppelin was 18 or 19,[e] but Zeppelins flying on air-raids often flew short-handed, with two or three of the least needed crew members left behind in order to save weight.[15]
The fishing vessel approached andKapitänleutnant Löwe, who spoke English well, asked for rescue.[16] Martin refused. In a later newspaper interview, he stated that the nine crew ofKing Stephen were unarmed and badly outnumbered and would have had little chance of resisting the German airmen if, after being rescued, they had hijacked his vessel to sail it to Germany.[16] This fits the known facts, but an alternative explanation for his action was suggested by a 2005BBC documentary on the incident. This was thatKing Stephen was in a zone in which fishing was prohibited by the British authorities and that Martin feared that if he returned to a British port with a large number of German prisoners, attention might have been drawn to this and he would have been banned from fishing.[17] Ignoring the Germans' pleas for help, disbelieving their promises of good conduct, and refusing their offers of money, Martin sailed away. He later said he intended to search for a Royal Navy ship to report his discovery to. However, he met none. The encounter withL 19 was reported to the British authorities on his return toKing Stephen's home port ofGrimsby. No official action on the supposed illegal fishing is recorded to have been taken, however, the vessel did not fish again and later became aQ-boat.
The weather was worsening asKing Stephen departed and the Zeppelin remained afloat for only a few hours. During this time,L 19's crew threwa bottle with messages into the sea. Discovered six months later by Swedish fishermen atMarstrand, the bottle contained personal last messages from the airmen to their families and a final report from Löwe.[18]
With fifteen men on the top platform and backbone girder of the L 19, floating without gondolas in approximately 3 degrees East longitude, I am attempting to send a last report. Engine trouble three times repeated, a light wind on the return journey delayed our return and, in the mist, carried us over Holland where I was received with heavy rifle fire; the ship became heavy and simultaneously three engines broke down. 2 February 1916, towards one o'clock, will apparently be our last hour.
— Odo Löwe[19]
Royal Navy ships made a search of the area, but they found no trace of the Zeppelin or her crew.[4] The body of one of the Germans washed ashore four months later atLøkken in Denmark.[20] In 1964, a journalist researching the incident checkedAdmiralty archives and interviewed two surviving members ofKing Stephen's crew. This revealed that Martin had indeed been fishing in a forbidden zone and had initially given the naval authorities a false position for the Zeppelin in order to conceal this, making the Royal Navy search for the airship futile.[21]
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The incident received worldwide publicity and divided British public opinion. Martin was condemned by many for leaving the German airmen to die.[22] Others, includingArthur Winnington-Ingram, theBishop of London, praised Martin for placing the safety of his crew first and not trusting the promises of the Germans.[23] Some elements of the Allied press viewed the Germans' deaths as just "retribution" for their bombing of civilian targets.[24] German airship crews, sometimes referred to as "baby killers" or "pirates" because of their bombing of civilians, were the subject of intense Allied propaganda and public hatred.
Martin was vilified by the German press, as was Winnington-Ingram for supporting him.[19] The encounter between theL 19 andKing Stephen also featured in German propaganda. The scene was recreated for a German propaganda film[25] and illustrated by an anti-British medal, designed byKarl Goetz who also designed the well-knownLusitania medal.[26] The incident was still remembered 25 years later, when it was used in Nazi-era, anti-British propaganda.[27]
King Stephen never again sailed as a fishing vessel. After her return, she was taken over by the Royal Navy for use as aQ-ship, under the command of Lieutenant Tom Phillips.[28] She was sunk 12 weeks later on 25 April 1916.[29] An official German communiqué, reported byThe New York Times, stated she had been sunk by one of the German vessels taking part in thebombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft.[30]King Stephen, now fitted with a3 pounder Hotchkiss gun,[31] had fired on and pursued a surfaced U-boat, but then inadvertently steamed directly into the path of the returning German fleet.[31] She was sunk by the torpedo boatSMS G41 and her crew taken prisoner.[32]
King Stephen's name was notorious to the Germans, and Lt. Phillips was charged with war crimes upon reaching Germany.[28] However, the charges were dropped and he and his crew were treated as normal prisoners-of-war after a photograph of William Martin was published in a British newspaper and the Germans realized they held another man.[28][31] William Martin himself died of heart failure in Grimsby on 24 February 1917, slightly over a year after encountering theL 19.[33] He had received a large numbers of letters, including both letters of support[31] and, reportedly, hate mail[34] and death threats.[35]
In July 1939, an unexploded munition—described by a press report as anaerial torpedo—was discovered nearKidderminster during renovation work on a bridge. At the time, it was believed to have been dropped by theL 19.[36]
One of theL 19 crew's bottles, together with its messages, are surviving relics of the incident; they were displayed as part of an exhibition at theNational Maritime Museum in London in 2001.[37] TheAeronauticum, the German naval aviation museum inNordholz, displays one of theKing Stephen's lifebelts, as well as herRed Ensign flag, taken from the vessel before she was sunk.[32]
Both the National Maritime Museum[38] and theNational Air and Space Museum[39] in the United States own rare examples of Karl Goetz's medal.
Data from"Zeppelin L 19". Zeppelin and Garrison Museum Tønder. Retrieved8 May 2019.
General characteristics
Performance
Armament