Fire plan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The fire plan was a German plan that was about to be implemented during the First World War to force a peace with France and Great Britain through heavy air raids with incendiary bombs on Paris and London in September 1918 .

prehistory

The air war against the enemy homeland had begun with the bombing of German airships on English cities since 1915 . Because of the low bomb load dropped by the few airships deployed, these air strikes with zeppelins had hardly any military or economic significance, but were intended to have more of an effect on the morale of the bombed population (moral bombing ). The airships had accidents due to their filling with highly flammable hydrogen as a lifting gas and, due to their enormous size, were very endangered targets for enemy fighters with incendiary ammunition . Due to the rapid development of aircraft, the zeppelins could be replaced by bombers since 1916 .

The German bomber squadron 3 (Bogohl 3, bomber squadron of the Supreme Army Command 3) flew air strikes on Great Britain and in particular on Fortress London , with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the bombs in the London subway. With the improving British air defense, the German air raids were postponed to moonless night hours. These high- explosive bombs had a psychological effect - the destructive effect was relatively small compared to the heavy air raids on cities in World War II and could not cause any major damage to a city like London. However, the situation changed with the invention of the incendiary bomb .

The development of the incendiary bomb led to the B-1E electron incendiary bomb in Germany in April 1918 . This incendiary stick bomb weighed only one kilogram with a length of 35 centimeters and a diameter of five centimeters with flight-stabilizing fins at the end of the bomb. The electron incendiary bomb developed a temperature of 3000 degrees Celsius and was indelible. Trying to extinguish them with water made them even more dangerous. The extremely hot burning bomb made of mainly magnesium , some aluminum and other substances split water into oxygen and hydrogen, which in turn is highly explosive. Because of its low weight, this bomb could be dropped in huge numbers by the German bombers and could cause huge fires.

Planned execution

On the German side, large city fires were analyzed and the result was that fires triggered in many places in a city would pose unsolvable tasks for the fire brigade due to the large number of fires. Since incendiary bombs were also still completely unknown, their first use on a large scale would cause complete confusion and cause the most serious fires in Paris and London.

Bomber Squadron 3 and Giant Aircraft Division 501 would attack London and Bomber Squadron 1, 2 and 4 would bomb Paris. For the attacks on Paris, the German bombers had to fly over the Franco-German front line twice and had to reckon with many enemy fighters and anti-aircraft guns , while Bomber Squadron 3 only flew over the North Sea and consequently much fewer aircraft losses were to be expected.

The bombers were mainly aircraft from Gotha and Zeppelin-Staaken . While the Gotha bombers were twin-engine double-deckers with a bomb loading capacity of 350 kg, the Zeppelin machines , officially called giant aircraft because of their enormous dimensions, were four-engine double-deckers with a wingspan of 42 meters and a bomb load of up to 1000 kg. For these giant aircraft, none of the grass runways that had been customary up to that time were sufficient as take-off and landing runways and concrete runways had to be built for them in Flanders for their British missions . For the flights to England, their bomb load was reduced because of the large amount of fuel that had to be carried for the long flight.

In order to achieve the greatest possible effect, the air raids on Paris and London should continue to be flown at night after the first major opening strike until no German bomber would be operational any more.

new York

While the planned fire bombing raids on Paris and London were under the command of the Supreme Army Command, the Navy had zeppelins that could fly a load of bombs to New York and then make the return flight to Germany. An air raid on New York was to be carried out by three zeppelins, each with a load of four tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs. The attack on the American city was planned by Corvette Captain Peter Strasser . The new navy airships L 70 (LZ 112), L 71 (LZ 113) and L 72 (LZ 114) were able to carry out the plan.

On July 18, 1918, Strasser handed over the plan for the air raid on New York to the chief of naval warfare , Admiral Reinhard Scheer . The bombing was supposed to cause damage to the city as well as hit the morale of the American people. On July 19, Scheer returned the planning documents with the handwritten note "No".

Attack order

Since August 1918 the German bomber units were ready to attack Paris and London. The deployment order had already been postponed twice when September 1918 turned into an unusually rainy and cloudy month over England and was therefore unfavorable both for the kindling of large-scale fires and as flying weather. It was not until September 23 that the Supreme Army Command finally gave the order for the bombers to operate. On that day all preparations were made for the first air raids of the following night, and after dark the machines of the first wave of attacks were ready to take off. The first wave consisted of 36 aircraft against London and 45 against Paris.

The End

When the German bomber units were about to take off on the evening of September 23, 1918, Erich Ludendorff, as chief of the Supreme Army Command, gave the order to stop. The aim of the devastating attacks on London and Paris should be to bomb the governments there ready for peace. But now such attacks threatened to be directed against Germany itself, because since the summer of 1918 the war situation changed drastically to the disadvantage of the German Reich and the German government tried to hold peace talks with the war opponents through the American President Woodrow Wilson . Heavy air strikes on the opposing capitals would not provide a good basis for peace talks.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Meyer: Airships. The history of the German zeppelins. Wehr & Wissen publishing house. Koblenz / Bonn 1980. ISBN 3-8033-0302-8 . Page 51
  2. ↑ Neil Hanson: FIRST BLITZ . Publisher Corgi Books. London 2009. ISBN 9780552155489 . Page 256
  3. ↑ G. Kroschel / H. Supporters: The German military aircraft 1910–1918 . Lohse-Eissing publishing house. Wilhelmshaven 1977. ISBN 3-920602-18-8 . Pages XXXIII, 19, 33, 43, 47, 53, 83-84, 151-152, 160-161
  4. ↑ Neil Hanson: FIRST BLITZ . Publisher Corgi Books. London 2009. ISBN 9780552155489 . Pages 214-217
  5. ^ Peter Meyer: Airships. The history of the German zeppelins. Wehr & Wissen publishing house. Koblenz / Bonn 1980. ISBN 3-8033-0302-8 . Pages 103-106
  6. ↑ Neil Hanson: FIRST BLITZ . Publisher Corgi Books. London 2009. ISBN 9780552155489 . Page 412
  7. ↑ Neil Hanson: FIRST BLITZ . Publisher Corgi Books. London 2009. ISBN 9780552155489 . Pages 433-434