ZEPPELIN AIR RAIDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19966, 7 June 1928, Page 9

ZEPPELIN AIR RAIDS.

STARTLING REVELATION. WAR PLAN ABANDONED. WHAT LONDON ESCAPED. Australian and N.Z. Press Association. (Received June 6, 7.56 p.m.) LONDON. June 6. Herr Ernest Lehmann, who was director of the German air raids during the war, reveals the plan under which 20 Zeppelins were to have struck London simultaneously by night. They were to have dropped 6000 bombs, as a result of which it was calculated that London would have to combat more than 1000 fires at the same time. No organisation on earth could have fought such a conflagration. It was estimated that one-third of the Zeppelins would have been shot down in flames, but only after they had dropped their bombs on the city. The plan was feasible but was abandoned, says Herr Lehmann, because the Kaiser had stipulated that such places as Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral and the residential sections of London should not be bombed, even by accident. " I commanded the first Zeppelin to fly over England and I knew what my orders were, and what it would have meant had I disobeyed them," says Herr Lehmann. " The object of air-raiding was to weaken the enemy's morale, but if anything the British morale was strengthened by the Zeppelin raids."