#95 • Zeppelin L33 and L32 Souvenir Lot, Shot Down on Same Night over England, Sept. 23, 1916

Part of TRENCH ART & WWI Memorabilia (live auction by Bannerman Auctions)

High bid $450.00

Status: Sold

Category: Britain

Zeppelin L33 and L32 Souvenir Lot, Shot Down on Same Night over England, Sept. 23, 1916.  Some of these pieces are pictured on page 176 of Jane Kimball's book Trench Art: An Illustrated History. Strasser ordered twelve zeppelins to raid targets in England on 23 September. Böcker steered L33 across the North Sea, making landfall at Foulness before heading for London. At 11pm, the airship neared Brentwood and dropped a stick of bombs, some of which fell on a farm and others on an aerodrome, which had flares lit for night flying. L33 continued towards London, but by this time, the city’s defences were aware of the ship’s presence. In fact, defences were already on alert as the Royal Navy’s decoders in Room 40 had intercepted and read messages that revealed when the raid was to take place. As L33 passed over Bromley-by-Bow and Stratford over the next 40 minutes, releasing 300kg, 100kg and 50kg high explosive bombs and large numbers of incendiaries, the zeppelin was subjected to heavy and accurate anti-aircraft fire. The bombing did serious damage, hitting a timber yard and an oil depot which began to burn so fiercely that other zeppelins miles away reported seeing them as they conducted their own raids. L33 had still not exhausted its bomb load, and dropped the remaining weapons over Bromley at around 00.40 on the morning of the 24th. Homes were damaged and a pub destroyed. Ten people were killed and more were injured, some of them badly. But the searchlights had L33 pinned, and the airship was subjected to every gun in range. The shrapnel bursts tearing through the fragile gasbags began to take their toll, and one shell even passed right through the hull. Although it did not explode, the shell caused huge damage to the gasbags and duralumin framework. L33, heading East over Essex, was doomed, but miraculously, the zeppelin was still flying and the hydrogen had not ignited. To seal the airship’s fate, a BE2c flown by 2nd Lt Brandon of 39 (Home Defence) Squadron caught sight of the damaged craft and attacked, firing a drum of incendiary ammunition into the already riddled flanks before losing contact in the darkness. Still, L33 kept flying. After 01.00, L33’s crew started to throw heavy equipment overboard and, when it was clear that the airship could not escape, began to tear up confidential documents and throw them away. At 01.20, the zeppelin was flying so low that when the tail suddenly dropped, it made contact with the ground. The wind blew the airship along for some distance before it finally came to rest by a farmhouse just outside Little Wigborough, not far from Colchester. The crew set fire to the zeppelin, which, remarkably, had still not burned despite everything thrown at it and even a small explosion in the gondola as it hit the ground. There were no casualties among L33’s personnel, and they all handed themselves over to a local policeman who arrived on the scene soon afterwards. A few locals did take souvenirs, even brass instruments and large sections of girder, but soon after L33 came down it was surrounded by a cordon of soldiers who prevented most people getting to the site. The authorities realised that a substantially complete zeppelin having fallen was a huge coup, and the last thing they needed was for the great skeleton and any remaining instruments and equipment to be stripped by souvenir hunters, so police and soldiers went round the area later that day demanding the return of anything taken from the wreck. There were even prosecutions of people who had taken anything and not returned it. When the Admiralty had had the chance to thoroughly inspect and record the details of the wreck, it was broken up, and small pieces of it were sold to raise money for the Red Cross. . . . The story of L33’s sister, L32, is much shorter for reasons that will become apparent. In the case of L33, we have the accounts of the crew of their voyage, crash and what happened to them afterwards. In the case of L32, we have none of this, as there were no survivors. What we do know is that the prior knowledge of the raid meant that the airship was located before it could get over London and bracketed by a great many searchlights. This enabled Captain Frederick Sowrey of 39 Squadron, flying a BE2c, to acquire the target and he attacked the airship, firing three drums of incendiary ammunition at it from close range. In contrast with Brandon’s attack on L33, Sowrey’s assault on L32 was devastatingly effective. The hydrogen caught fire and soon the whole reservoir was burning, a vast pyre in the night sky sinking slowly to earth. It landed at South Green Farm near Billericay. The structure of the airship was far more badly damaged than that of L33, but the crew had not even had time to destroy their confidential documents, and an intact code book was found in the gondola. The destruction of not one but two airships had a huge effect on the population’s morale. The loss of SL11 could have been put down to a fluke, but for the home defence services to claim two of the giants in a single raid so soon after the first showed that the zeppelins were now genuinely vulnerable and could not expect to stage further raids without incurring heavy losses. The relative completeness of L33 was a huge boost to Britain’s naval airship designers, who had been struggling to match the German craft. The Admiralty commissioned several ships that were largely straight copies of L33 – R33 and R34 were built as such with a few slight improvements, while L36 was further modified when a more modern zeppelin was shot down and could be examined later in the war. (https://navalairhistory.com/2016/09/23/the-night-the-zeppelin-fell-to-earth-ww1-centenary/) Estimate: $150 - $200