It appears on her Homefront WW1 Blog and features local newspaper reports from the period about deaths, promotions and the home front.
Today, Remembrance Sunday, seems an ideal time to reflect on the sacrifices made.
Read about the death of an officer from the Brigg area
Read about a visit to Brigg in 1916 by a "noted flyer" who brought down a Zeppelin
Brigg soldier's death in 1914 reported
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1 comment:
Interesting...I didn't realise Lt Leefe Robinson came to Brigg.
He was the first to shoot down a German airship over the UK. (There were 2 types - Zeppelin - used by German Imperial Navy - aluminium framed...and the wooden framed, ?Schuttes-Lanz, used by the German army.......the airships were commonly called Zeppelins).
Robinson shot down a S-L as it approached London from Essex.
Both London and the Humber regions were the main target focuses for Zeppelin attacks....Hull had 15 air-raid warnings and Scunthorpe was bombed on the night of 31st Jan 16....Cleethorpes in the March..etc
The airships could fly over Britain with impunity...we didn't have the technical equipment to shoot them down...
However, by the late summer of 1916, advances in aircraft design enabled aeroplanes to fly faster and reach Zeppelin altitudes.
In addition, it was found that normal rounds (bullets) had little affect on Zeppelins...if the rounds punctured the gas bags inside the canopy, a airshipman would seal the hole with sticky paper.
Also, by the summer of 1916, the British started to use a combination of rounds in an ammunition drum...explosive, normal, and incendiary (tracer)...the idea was that the explosive round would rip holes in the gas bags and the incendiary would ignite the gas...and it worked.
In early September, Robinson flew for several hours at night trying to intercept an airship...as well as ground friendly fire...
He fired his 3rd drum into the bottom, rear of the airship, which then started to glow red....crashing to the ground and killing all the crew.
Robinson was awarded the VC.
Within a few weeks other Zeppelins were brought down...resulting in the demoralisation of the German forces..some crews refused to fly, or would turn back on reaching the British coast.
The RFC had defeated the Zeppelin threat...
The so-called 'Baby Killers'...the war equipment that took war to civilians was virtually neutralised.
The Germans continued to use airships to invade the UK, but were designed to fly at higher attitudes...they were called High Climbers, but their effectiveness was limited..crews froze to death, the cold froze the water ballast fabric and metal became brittle....and it was difficult to bomb accurately...Near the end of WW1, 2 High Climbers were seen over the Humber...but no reports of damage.
Killed German crews were buried on Cannock Chase....now close to the Rememberance Arboritium in Staffordshire.
Lt , later Capt Keefe Robinson survived the war....only to die of Spanish Flu in late 1919......the flu that seemed to incubate on the Western Front in 1918...and after the Armitice spread world-wide as troops went home.......the flu ironically killed more people than the number killed in WW1....
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