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Despite the presence of gun batteries and watchtowers along the North-East coast, the German zeppelins still got through during the Great War of 1914-18. Though one airship was dramatically brought down off Hartlepool in November 1916, a few enemy raids did do some damage along the coast and a little way inland.
The three raids on Hartlepool are infamous, of course, but we have an actual German account of another attack on Tyneside and Wearside on the night of Saturday 1st April 1916, with, perhaps most notably, Monkwearmouth Railway Station losing its roof as a result!
The raid essentially began with a sweep over Tyneside. It was supposed to be heading for central or southern England, in fact, but weather conditions sent Viktor Schutze and his crew drifting over the North-East. The German chief didn’t fancy dropping his bombs across Tyneside as its defences had recently been strengthened, and, besides, the airship was too low and therefore prone to attack itself. So instead he manoeuvred towards Sunderland, which was less heavily defended.
At around 11pm the bombs started to fall in Millfield and Deptford. Then it moved onto Monkwearmouth, where the Goods Yard was hit and the roof over the railway lines (and the station) was badly damaged. There was a good deal of collateral damage in the surrounding streets, too, as a total of about twenty bombs were dropped. 22 people were killed, with several more later dying of their injuries. Wartime censorship of the press meant that a proper account of the raid was not published until December 1918.
Interestingly, Viktor Schutze himself reported on the raid as follows:
I decided not to cross the batteries on account of not being very high in relation to the firing, and also because of slow progress against the wind and the absolutely clear atmosphere up above. I fixed, therefore, on the town of Sunderland, with its extensive docks and the blast furnaces north-west of the town. Keeping on the weather side, the airships dropped explosive bombs on some works where one blast-furnace was blown up with a terrible detonation, sending out flames and smoke. The factories and dock buildings of Sunderland, now brightly illuminated, were then bombed with good results. The effect was grand; blocks of houses and rows of streets collapsed entirely; large fires broke out in places and a dense black cloud, from which bright sparks flew high, was caused by one bomb. A second explosive bomb was at once dropped at the same spot; judging from the situation, it may have been a railway station.
The zeppelin then came under fire from a gun at Fulwell, so turned to the south-east where it dropped more bombs on the docks, and then flew to Middlesbrough where it caused a good deal more damage before returning to base on the morning of 2nd April.
The all-embracing roof over the railway lines at Monkwearmouth was never repaired, and was removed completely in 1928. In its place, platform shelters were built.