PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE VII: Peter Strasser
Born in Hanover on April 1, 1876, Peter Strasser joined the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) at the age of only fifteen. After serving on board the SMS Stein and Moltke, he entered the naval academy in Kiel. Strasser was promptly promoted to Leutnant in 1895.
Over a five year period, he served aboard the SMS Mars, Blücher, Panther, Mecklenburg and Westfalen. Strasser was an excellent gunnery officer, and he was placed in the German Imperial Naval Office.
In September 1913, Strasser took command of the Naval Airship Division (Marine-Luftschiff-Abteilung). Airships were as yet an unproven technology and Korvettenkapitän Strasser became the new naval airship chief after his predecessor (Korvettenkapitän Friedrich Metzing) drowned in the crash of the very first naval airship, the L1. The single remaining naval airship (the L2) was soon lost in another fatal accident.
Strasser completed theoretical studies on airships and gained practical experience piloting the civilian airship LZ17 Sachsen. Another airship, LZ13 Hansa was chartered to train naval crews while new ships were being built.
At the start of the Great War, the German Navy had only one operational airship, the LZ 24 (Navy designation L3), which was under Strasser’s personal command. Navy airships were initially confined to anti-submarine, anti-mine and scouting missions. These airships were better known as zeppelins, so named in 1900 after its developer Grad Ferdinand von Zeppelin. They were used in the Battle of Heligoland Bight on August 27, 1914, just off the German North Sea coast.
However, just two days earlier, the zeppelin was first used in a bombing raid over Antwerp, Belgium. On January 19-20, 1915, the L3 and L4 participated in the first bombing raids over England, attacking Great Yarmouth, Sheringham and King’s Lynn. Over the next three years, bombing campaigns would be launched primarily against Britain. Such raids were also launched on Paris and other cities.
After winning two Iron Crosses in 1914, Strasser participated in the England raids at least once a month. He decided to test the newly developed spy basket himself, and he almost fell out when it became entangled with the aerial! Initially, bombing was limited to military targets. However, with the help of Konteradmiral Paul Behncke, the Kaiser approved attacks against civilian targets.
Official British estimates list 498 civilians and 58 soldiers killed by air attack in Britain between 1915 and 1918, with 1,913 injuries being recorded. The Imperial Navy dropped 5,751 bombs in fifty-three raids on the British Isles. Twenty-two raids took place in 1916; the largest being a raid on London with sixteen airships on September 2-3, 1916. It was during this particular raid that a British aircraft brought down a zeppelin for the very first time (the Schutte-Lanz SL11 commanded by Hauptmann Wilhelm Schramm).
Bombings were also carried out in Italy, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean. German Army airships carried bombs to designated targets in Belgium, France, England, Russia, and southeastern Europe. But questions remain over whether airships (more importantly, their irreplaceable crews) would have been better used as a purely naval weapon.
Vizeadmiral Reinhard Scheer became Strasser’s superior in January 1916. He tried unsuccessfully to tame Strasser’s aggressive pursuit of independence. On November 28, 1916, Strasser was appointed by imperial decree as “Leader of Airships” (Führer der Luftschiffe). On August 20, 1917, he won the Pour le Merite.
Sadly, he did not live to see the end of the war. During a night raid against Boston, Norwich and the Humber Estuary on August 5, 1918, Strasser’s L70 met a British reconnaissance D.H.4. Pilot Major Egbert Cadbury and Gunner Major Robert Leckie shot down the L70 just north of Wells-next-the-Sea on the Norfolk coast, killing all twenty-three men on board. It proved to be the last airship raid of the war over Great Britain.
Peter Strasser was instrumental in the development of long range bombing and the development of the rigid airship as an efficient, high altitude, all-weather aircraft. He also advocated bombing attacks on military AND civilian targets… to serve both as propaganda and as a means of diverting resources from the front line.
“We who strike the enemy where his heart beats have been slandered as ‘baby killers’ … Nowadays, there is no such animal as a noncombatant. Modern warfare is total warfare.”