The bombers were enormous. They left their bases in Germany and set their courses for London. As they advanced toward the the British coast by night, operators stood ready at their dishes, waiting to detect their approach and call out the fighters. The early raids proved unstoppable but eventually the British pilots learned to bring the bombers down in balls of flame. The threat faded.
What time was being described in the paragraph above? The Battle of Britain was fought in 1940 but it wasn’t 1940. It wasn’t even World War II.
The period was 1915-1918 and the bombers in question were not even airplanes. They were airships—Zeppelins. As long as two football fields and filled with flammable hydrogen they would seem like sitting ducks. Flying as high as 21,000 feet at speeds almost as great as the airplanes of the day and large enough that bullets made only insignificant holes in them, they made it through anyway.
The dishes that listened at the coast were not radar. That did not appear until World War II. They were “sound mirrors,” parabolic dishes made of concrete. The operators stood in front of them and used a listening horn at the end of a pole to listen for the sound of the approaching engines. Once they found the horn position that made the sound the loudest, the pole pointed to the Zeppelin. It was still too far away to be seen and could not be heard without the mirror but they knew it was coming and could phone the Zeppelin’s bearings to the the nearest airbase.
What is familiar can lead us astray when we don’t realize that history isn’t always what or when we expect. Whenever one researches anything, prepare for surprises!
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If you are intrigued by the thought of enormous Zeppelins bombing Britain, you can watch this NOVA documentary.