IN JANUARY 1916 England had a new menace to contend with, air raids as German Zeppelins appeared in the skies.

On January 31, nine airships left their bases intending to show the German's ability to raid the United Kingdom. That evening the entire flotilla crossed the east coast of England. Their orders were to fly across the entire breadth of England en masse and bomb Liverpool which until then had been considered well beyond the range of the raiders. In past columns I told the story how, before the war, German spies had been arrested spying out the Nine Arches, a double whammy as it could also take out the canal below.

L21 was the first to cross the North Sea and the land but when they could no longer see any lights or ground features at all they decided they were over the Irish Sea, slightly north of Liverpool. The airship turned south flying down the coast looking for the port. Then they saw, twinkling below, the lights of a large town. Towards the south, separated by an area of darkness, was another smaller town. Dietrich, the captain, concluded he was over Birkenhead and Liverpool separated by the mouth of the Mersey.

He ordered action stations and began his approach. L21 was nowhere near Liverpool. When they thought they had passed over Manchester it was actually Derby below. And when they crossed the coast and passed over the Irish Sea they had been flying over the sparsely populated unlit areas of North Shropshire and eastern Wales.

When they thought they were finally flying over Liverpool, Birkenhead and the Mersey they were wrong. Dietrich called action stations and ordered his men to bomb. He was 75 miles to the south east. His 'Birkenhead' was Tipton, a small industrial town in the middle of the industrial West Midlands.

His dark, featureless Mersey was an area of industrial wasteland and collieries known as Lea Brook. And his jewel 'Liverpool' was Wednesbury where he dropped his bombs. Ironically L19 from the same flotilla appears to have made the same mistake as they flew over England.

They believed they had located Liverpool. Below they could see fires still burning convincing them that they had reached their target. Wednesbury was in for it again.

The first raid, affecting towns in the East Midlands, dropped 300 bombs, killing 59 people. It wasn't until 1918 that a Zeppelin finally dropped its bombs on our borough but that's another story.