WW1 – Airship Bombing
During WW1 a German Airship passed overhead, apparently dropping is first bomb over Sugar Hills
at Newby, before proceeding to Wormold Green Station, where it dropped a further four bombs.
The following morning, Tuesday, Newby estate workers found and inspected the impact crater.
John Holt
Skelton on Ure: A Changing Yorkshire Village
Artefact
Mounted shrapnel in Newby Hall collection. Small fragment of shrapnel mounted on screw thread
and secured with epoxy resin. The small wooden pediment, has a silver plaque affixed engraved
with the following inscription “A piece of H.E.Zeppelin Bomb dropped in the Sugar Hills Field at
Newby Hall. Ripon, Yorkshire. At 11.20 P.M on Monday 25th September 1916.”
K J Cale
Yorkshire Zepplin Raids
The first time a Zeppelin alert was raised was in September 1916 when there were raids over
Yorkshire on 2/3 September and 25/26 September. The first dropped a few bombs in Holderness
then flew off, but the second attack involving four Zeppelins was more extensive and bombing
included York and Sheffield, where 23 people were killed.
http://www.pocklingtonhistory.com/history/20thcentury/pocklingtoninww1/zeppelin/index.php
Zeppelin Raid on Ripon, Monday, 25th September 1916
Zeppelin raids on Britain began in January 1915 and were initially seen by the British population as a
prelude to a German invasion. Throughout the course of the war, Zeppelins carried out a total of 52
raids over Britain, claiming the cost of more than 500 lives from their bombing activities (ref.1). Each
Zeppelin was armed with five machine guns and could carry 4400lbs (2oookg) of bombs (ref.2). The
use of Zeppelins to carry bombs came at a time when military aviation was still very much in its
infancy (the RAF would not be formed until 1918) and the bombing brought the war to the home
front for the first time. As a result, civil defence began to be organised in Britain, with blackout
conditions beginning to be put into being and enforced by the civil authorities. Initially, it was the
police who had the task of ensuring that no lights would be visible to from the air, a precursor to the
ARP service in WW2.
Zeppelins were very vulnerable to both attack and bad weather, and British pilots and anti-aircraft
gunners became adept at shooting them down. Filled with hydrogen gas, they would burst into
flames if the gas was ignited by gunfire. A total of 115 zeppelins were used for raids during the war
of which 77 were either destroyed or so badly damaged that they were unusable. Because of their
losses, the Germans ceased to send Zeppelins over Britain before the end of the war (ref.2).
On the night of Monday, 25th September 1916 seven Zeppelins raided Britain, including Yorkshire.
The initial report in the Harrogate press was very brief, reproducing a report from London the
following day:
‘Official- Seven airships engaged in last night’s raid. Districts attacked were South-east and Northeast coasts and North Midlands. No damage of military importance. Twenty-nine deaths reported’.
(ref.3).
This was subsequently expanded in the same issue of the newspaper to describe the raids in more
detail , but without any mention of Yorkshire. The editor at that time, Mr W.H. Breare, was
accustomed to send an open letter to men from the area serving in the armed forces, to update
them of local events. In the same edition, he finishes his letter by describing the raid as experienced
in Harrogate:
‘On Monday night last, soon after half-past ten, the signal came, ‘Lights out’. There followed a long
period of waiting. About 12.30 we heard what we supposed to be the distant sound of a Zeppelin;
then explosions, but many of us were in doubt whether they were bombs or shots from the antiaircraft guns. You will be glad to know they did not come too near us. Many people were out in the
streets. A number thought they saw something but at such times imagination is active. There were
innumerable aeroplanes of ours about. Many people found significance in clouds passing over stars.’
(ref.3).
Five Zeppelins seem to have flown over Yorkshire that night and both York and Sheffield were
bombed, with 23 people being killed. Decoy fires were lit on Barmby Common to save York Minster
and the sound of the Zeppelin engines so alarmed the residents of Pockington that they asked the
headmaster of a local school to quieten the choir, in case their voices should act as a guide to the
German crew (ref.4).
At Ripon, 76 Squadron had just been formed (on 15 September) and were based on the site of the
racecourse on Boroughbridge Road, with flights also stationed at Copmanthorpe, Catterick and
Helperby (ref.6). Their role was one of home defence, to protect industrial areas against German
attack but there is no indication in the records that their obsolete aircraft engaged the enemy on
this occasion. Night flying, like aerial warfare, was still in its infancy.
Bombs were dropped that night near Ripon and although no damage was done, the event was
recalled many years later by a local resident who had been a young girl at the time and living with
her parents on the Newby estate (ref.5). Seventy four years on, this unnamed resident recalled that,
on September 17th 1916 at approximately 6.30pm, a Zeppelin flew very low over Newby, heading up
the river Ure. A swastika and the number ‘174’ were clearly visible on the side of the airship before it
was obscured by trees, this latter point emphasising its low height. On that occasion, no bombs were
dropped. A week later, a Zeppelin returned to the area and at 11.20pm on Monday 25th September,
she heard three heavy thuds, apparently unnoticed by anyone else, even by the army camp less than
a mile away in Ripon. The next Thursday, her mother took her to Sugar Fields where they found two
large craters, one about twenty feet in diameter, close to the river. There was no trace of the third
bomb and she speculated that it may have fallen in the river. The police were informed and men
from the locally-based Royal Signals came to investigate but made little of it. Local children doing
their own digging did find fragments of metal and a screw cap and it was sufficient of an event for
sight-seers to visit at the weekend.
On the night of 25/26 September 1916, a Zeppelin bombed Harewood House. Andrew Stokell of
Leeds University has written a book about this, obtaining much info from the Zeppelin Museum at
Friederichshafen and the National Archives at Washington DC, The Americans having apparently
seized German naval records. I suppose these sources are beyond our means although the book
may itself be worth getting hold of. It is titled 'Target Leeds: The Attack by Zeppelin L14'.
References
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www.historyonthenet.com/WW1/zeppelin-raids.htm
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWzepeelinraids.htm
Harrogate Herald 27 September 1916
www.pockilingtonhistory.com
Ripon Gazette 22 June 1990
Bruce B. Halfpenny: Action Stations 4, Military Airfields of Yorkshire 1990
Kevin Earl
Claro Community Archaeology Group
2013