JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This issue of Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig) was published 27 April 1916 (volume 146, number 3800) and features an early-ish image of an airship bombing a city. The first time this occurred in WWI was in the autumn of 1914, at Liege, with a bombing campaign initiated against London in January 1915. (The first aerial bombing seems to have been during the first Italian War of Independence and used by the Austrians from a balloon against Venice in 1849; while this 1916 bombing occurred a few years after the first bomb was dropped from a heavier-than-air aircraft during the Italo-Turkish War on 1 November 1911, the Italians this time delivering the blow in Tripoli.) The scene here illustrates an airship in flight over a very industrialized section of a city, perhaps to drive home a propaganda point that bombing was accurate enough to be strategic and also that targets were industries and not general populations.
- "Airships made about 51 bombing raids on England during the war. These killed 557 and injured another 1,358 people. More than 5,000 bombs were dropped on towns across Britain, causing £1.5 million in damage. 84 airships took part, of which 30 were either shot down or lost in accidents. Aeroplanes carried out 27 raids, dropping 246,774 lb (111,935 kg) of bombs for the loss of 62 aircraft, resulting in ground casualties of 835 dead, 1,972 injured and £1,418,272 of material damage."--Wikipedia
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