Germany entered the first World War with high expectations as to one, perhaps two of its new weapons of war. Its submarines might offset Britain’s superiority at sea, and certainly the Zeppelins, which had proved themselves in four years of commercial flying, would be able to cross the English Channel and carry the war to the island which had seen no invasion since William the Conqueror.
No nation except Germany had Zeppelins. And as the German people began to feel the pinch of the blockade, cutting their life line of food and supplies, they brought increasing public pressure on High Command to use these weapons to punish England.
Later commentators have speculated as to whether, if Germany had held its fire, waited till it could assemble an overpowering force of Zeppelins and submarines and stage a joint attack, it might not have been able to force a quick decision.
But the Zeppelins were sent over a few at a time, as fast as they could be built, and England was given time to devise defenses. These were chiefly higher altitude airplanes, farther ranging anti-aircraft guns, sky piercing searchlights, which combined to force the invaders to fly continuously higher as the war wore on, as high as 25,000 feet at times, with corresponding sacrifice of bombing accuracy. And when machine guns, synchronized with the propellers, were mounted in airplane cockpits, and began to spit inflammable bullets into the hydrogen filled bags and send them down in flames, the duel took on more even terms.
Less spectacularly the Zeppelins were used on a wide scale as reconnaissance and scouting craft, which flying fast and far were given credit on more than one occasion for saving German Naval squadrons from being cut off by superior Allied forces, were acknowledged even by the British to have played an important part in the Battle of Jutland.
It is a little hard to realize today that whatever air battles were waged over water in the last war were conducted chiefly by lighter-than-air craft. Planes staged spectacular battles along the Allied lines in France, but lack of range and carrying capacity forced them to leave sea battles to the airship. As a measure of that situation, the great hangars at Friedrichshafen, spawning ground of the Zeppelins, one of the outstanding targets in all Europe if England were to draw the dirigible’s fangs, lay hardly more than a hundred miles from the French borders, but even that distance was too great for effective attack.
While these greater events were taking place, British airships, smaller in size, less spectacular, were playing no small part in repelling Germany’s other threat, the submarine.
Blimps Used to Search for U-Boats
Navy opinion around the world was skeptical at the beginning of the War as to whether submarines would ever be practical. There were mechanical troubles, accidents, usually costly. Even Germany, prior to 1914, used to send an escort of warships along to convoy its subs to their station—then send out for them afterward to bring them home again.