Three were already returning to base when, at 7.45 pm, Mathy's 元1 passed over the Cross Sand lightship still heading west. The weather was bad, and as the evening wore on squalls in the North Sea blew some of them off course. In Mathy's last raid a fleet of eleven German naval Zeppelins had set out for England. German aeroplanes would take over the offensive, but after October 1st, the great Zeppelin fleets of this year never again dared to attack London. His loss set the seal against the Kaiser's plans of razing London to the ground by means of his 'Iron Thunderstorm' - a phrase coined by the German propaganda press to refer to Zeppelin raids. On board the 元1 was the greatest Zeppelin commander of them all Kapitan Heinrich Mathy. Three weeks after the Cuffley incident two more German airships were brought down over Britain and on the night of October 1st a giant new super Zeppelin, the 元1, was downed at Potters Bar. London was in pandemonium people danced in the streets train whistles blew and works-hooters and the sirens of boats on the Thames all blared their triumph. Millions of spectators from all over the Home Counties witnessed the SL11 descend in flames upon the village of Cuffley. A tremendous boost to flagging civilian morale was provided on the night of September 2nd, 1916, when the SL11 became the first German airship to be shot down on British soil. By then Britain's air defences, almost non-existent to start with, had improved sufficiently to make the struggle, if not equal, then at least contestable. Imperial Germany's Zeppelin campaign on Great Britain during the Great War began in January 1915 and reached its climax in the early autumn of the following year. An extract from the PB&DLHS publication Occasional Papers No 1 L-31 at its German base
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