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Zeppelin Raids

Dear Nicole

     On the morning of January 19th 1915 i took off on my first flight on the zeppelin to go drop bombs on military and industrial buildings. Packing up the ships took a lot longer then i had anticipated.  we had to fill the aircraft with  30 hours of fuel, 8 bombs and 25 incendiary devices. I remember flying higher and higher into the sky until we were above the cloud cover.  we would fly for 3 hours until we were around the location we wanted to be but being above the cloud cover made it hard to tell where we were so we were ordered to drop the incendiary bombs to enable the pilots to navigate.  We were aiming for Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn and to our luck we were right above where we wanted. It was 8:30 in the morning and we were already dropping bombs but I had a strong confidence that I was safe and that god was watching over me. After dropping 16 of our incendiary devices and our eight bombs we headed back to Germany. Further raids were carried out on coastal towns and London later that year but I did not venture out again because i felt like i was more use preparing the airships then dropping the bombs and driving the zeppelins. I felt good with what i was doing I helped a total of 52 Zeppelin take off and do raids on Britain. Pilots would come back and repot that there artillery guns used against them on the airships but they had little effect. I remember it like it was yesterday, It was May and 2 fighter planes armed with incendiary bullets were used to attack the Zeppelin. The incendiary bullets pierced the Zeppelin and ignited the hydrogen gas it was filled with. We were warned about this, the Zeppelin ignited and fell to the ground in a big ball of fire, it was a day of sorrow. After that day we started sending out less and less Zeppelins.

 Benjamin