On this day, German Gotha bombers conducted the first – and most lethal – daytime bombing of London during the First World War. Of the 20 Gotha bombers that left Ghent in Belgium, 16 reached London where the inhabitants, unused to daylight air raids, came out into the streets to watch, oblivious of the danger. As a result, when the shrapnel bombs began to fall at 11:40 a.m., casualties were high. Two bombs exploded at the Liverpool Street railway stations, killing sixteen people and a bomb killed eighteen children in a school in Poplar. London’s defences were organised primarily for zeppelin attacks and although fighter planes managed to take off, the Gothas had gone before they reached the necessary altitude. The final toll was 162 dead and 432 injured.
