Aerial Bombing in WW1 and the Fake Paris Plot
In the first years of aviation, modern warfare changed forever. And so did defensive tactics.
In 1903, the Wright brothers took to the skies in history’s first airplane. Barely a decade later, the Germans dropped bombs on London and Paris during World War I.
For people who lived through the Great War, aerial bombing signaled a horrifying change in modern warfare. Where attacks once came by land or by sea, now the air also posed a threat.
With German bombers attacking from the sky, Paris devised a unique response: a fake Paris designed to trick pilots into wasting their bombs.
The Terrifying Reality Of WW1 Bombers
When we picture aerial bombing, the first images that come to mind include the Blitz in World War II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But decades earlier, when airplanes were in their infancy, Germany targeted Paris. And the lessons learned by the Germans and the French would carry over into World War II.
The Great War introduced terrifying new technologies. It was the first major war that featured tanks and poison gas attacks. While gravity had limited the scope of earlier wars, the 1910s turned the skies into a battlefield that seemed impossible to escape.
As soon as war broke out, the Germans formed an airplane unit to bomb cities for the first time in military history. In the early months of war, a German plane targeted Paris. A single pilot flew several bombing raids on the city.
But what did aerial bombings look like in 1915?
The first bombing attacks on Paris came from a Taube, a monoplane that barely looked different from a glider. Following the Seine River to Paris, the pilot dropped bombs by hand onto the city below. During the first raid, the pilot dropped four small bombs along with a note demanding France’s surrender.
While the bombs themselves did limited damage, they promised a terrifying new chapter in military history.
Early airplanes weren’t the only tool used in aerial bombing campaigns. The Germans also flew Zeppelins over enemy territory to drop bombs. But thanks to their flammable construction, Zeppelins were eventually retired as weapons of war.
Aerial bombings required different defensive tactics. At first, as German planes attacked England and France, the Allies struggled to defend themselves.
But the Allies quickly developed new tactics. When Zeppelins flew over English skies, the Brits sent up airplanes of their own to attack the vulnerable airships. The first anti-aircraft gunners also defended the skies.
Germany quickly changed tactics. Instead of the lumbering Zeppelins, they attacked with long-range bombers that were more agile and harder to hit.
Paris And London Bombing In WW1
Paris was only one of many places targeted by German WW1 bombers. In Belgium, Antwerp and Liège were among the first cities targeted by Germany in 1914.
Great Britain was another major target for German bombers. At first, Germany’s Kaiser Willhelm II held off on targeting London. After all, his cousins sat on the British throne. But the psychological terror caused by the bombing raids convinced the Kaiser that the risk was worth it.
In the spring of 1915, the first Zeppelin attack on London killed seven people. By that fall, a series of attacks killed 71 Londoners.
During the Great War, over 100 bombing runs carried fire to Great Britain, causing over 1,400 deaths. Airships and airplanes dropped a combined 8,500 bombs on Britain.
Venice, Italy also faced bombing raids. “The mosquitos from Pula come buzzing over nearly every fine night, and drop bombs for half an hour or so,” wrote British pilot Ralph Curtis. “At night all is as black as in the dark ages.”
The Allies also struck back. In the fall of 1914, British airplanes bombed German Zeppelin bases and Zeppelin factories. Ottoman targets came under fire from aerial attacks.
By 1918, the German Spring Offensive targeted Paris. As the German army pushed the boundary of the Western Front to within 75 miles of Paris, the number of aerial attacks increased.
During a 5-month period, German airplanes targeted Paris 44 times, dropping 55,000 pounds of explosives onto the capital city. Long-range bombings also targeted the city from 90 miles away. In one particularly devastating attack, German shells landed on a historic church on Good Friday. When the roof collapsed, 91 people died.
Protecting Paris With A Fake Paris
In the face of the onslaught, Parisians devised a surprising way to protect their city. They created a fake Paris to mislead pilots into dropping their bombs in a field miles away.
It was an audacious plot.
Paris would build “camouflaged streets, factories, dwelling houses, railways, with stations and trains complete, and in fact a camouflaged capital,” according to a post-war newspaper report.
The fake Paris would contain three zones to trick pilots. In the first zone, the French would construct replica train stations. The second zone would have fake buildings and recognizable landmarks like the Champs Élysées. In the third zone, the French would construct a fake industrial zone filled with empty factories.
The plan rested on the limitations of early 20th-century technology. Pilots did not have tools like radar to guide their bombing raids. Instead, they simply looked down at the land below. When targeting Paris, German planes followed the Seine, waiting for a particular curve to signal the capital’s location.
By building a fake Paris at an earlier curve in the river, the French hoped to trick the Germans into bombing the “camouflaged capital” rather than the real one.
How would the fake Paris fool pilots? The plan called for a replica of Paris’s busy railway station that included a false train that appeared to move thanks to electrical lighting. Wooden structures and paint created the decoy industrial zone, with colored lamps giving the impression of smoke and fire coming from factories.
Would a fake City of Lights constructed from wood and lamps protect the true French capital? In the early years of the war, the sham might have fallen flat. That’s because aerial bomb raids usually took place during daylight, when pilots could see their targets. But new defensive tactics like anti-aircraft guns made daytime raids too risky. As a result, pilots flew their raids at night, when the lights of the fake Paris had a better chance of attracting bombs.
Nearby Paris would protect itself from nighttime raids with a total blackout, while the decoy let the lights shine.
In the end, the fake Paris plot was never put to the test. At the moment the French finished constructing the false city, the war ended. The timing of the armistice also meant that Britain called off its first air raid targeting Berlin, scheduled for late November 1918.
The Impact Of WW1 Bombings And Fake Paris
The lessons of World War I revealed how technology could completely change the battlefield. Instead of restricting war to the trenches and fields, aerial technology brought the battle to civilians in capitals like Paris and London.
When Paris became a battlefield, the French responded with new tools of their own, like anti-aircraft gunners and fighter pilots. Not surprisingly, the fake city never took off as a defensive tool. The next time German planes flew over Europe, they didn’t need to follow the course of the river to find their targets.
Still, there was a value in deception. As they planned the massive invasion of France in 1944, the Allies created a decoy army to convince the Germans that they would land near Calais rather than in Normandy. Led by General George Patton, the fake army appeared to be mobilizing in southeastern England. But the army camps that German aircraft photographed were simply empty tents, wooden tanks, and fake buildings.
The lessons of the Great War carried into the tactics of World War II.
For more true stories from military history, check out War and Chance to discover the moments that changed the course of military history.
Bruce Wilson Jr. is the author of nine books on history. Visit Bruce Wilson’s website to learn more.
