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SHORTLY before midnight on Sunday, April 2, 1916 , the people of Edinburgh were woken by a droning sound overhead.

As it grew louder, those who looked up into the moonlit sky saw something both majestic and terrifying – a giant, cigar-shaped craft flying serenely just over 2000ft above the capital.

It was the L14 Zeppelin airship of the Imperial German Navy.

For more than a year, the Zeppelins had rained terror on English towns and cities with a series of bombing raids.

Now it was Scotland’s turn.

But this was no ordinary air raid – the L14 was on a special mission, one which the Germans hoped would deliver a major blow to the British war effort. The target? The Forth Bridge .

Not only would destroying the bridge cause serious disruption to moving troops and supplies between Scotland and England but bombing such a prestige target would be a huge propaganda triumph for the Germans.

On the afternoon of April 2, two Zeppelins lifted off from their base at Nordholz and headed out across the North Sea towards the east coast of Scotland, joined soon after by two others. The orders issued to their crews read: “Chief target – Rosyth, Forth Bridge, English fleet.”

Soon after setting off, one of the Zeppelins was forced to turn back with engine problems, leaving the L14, L16 and L22 to press on.

But the British knew they were coming. Their secret codebreaking unit Room 40 had intercepted and deciphered wireless messages between the Zeppelins and their base, and the authorities in Edinburgh were put on alert.

Street lighting was dimmed and “all traffic was stopped and the lights on vehicles extinguished”, reported Detective Inspector Peter McAusland, of the City of Edinburgh Police.

“The Central Fire Station and Red Cross were also notified.”

Bad weather added to the Zeppelin crews’ difficulties. Strong winds over the North Sea broke up the formation and the L16 drifted off course, dropping its payload in fields near Blyth, Northumberland.

L22’s captain Martin Dietrich fared a little better. But while he successfully reached Scotland, Dietrich was unable to find any of his primary targets and scattered most of his bombs on farmland just north of Berwick-Upon-Tweed.

Two hours later, the L14 – the last of the Zeppelin raiders –appeared above Edinburgh.

Its commander Kapitanleutnant Alois Bocker was not only one of Germany’s most experienced Zeppelin captains but was familiar with the area, having visited the port of Leith while serving in the merchant navy before the war.

While he was unable to pinpoint the Forth Bridge or the Rosyth naval base, Bocker guided the L14 to Leith and, at around 11.50pm, dropped the first of his bombs, hitting a patch of empty ground at Bellevue Terrace.

For the next hour, the L14 glided over the north of the city, dropping more than 4000lbs of bombs.

The heaviest casualties were in Marshall Street, where six were killed and seven others were hurt when a bomb exploded outside a tenement at 12.20am. Among the other buildings hit were the White Hart Hotel in Grassmarket, George Watson’s College, a whisky warehouse and a nursing home.

By the time the bombs stopped, 13 people were dead and a further 24 injured. The youngest of the raid’s victims was a baby boy, the eldest a 71-year-old woman.

At around 1am, the drone of the L14’s engines finally faded as Bocker, having dropped all his bombs, set course for Germany.

The Forth Bridge had survived but the German Navy were satisfied with the results of this first bombing raid on Scotland.

The German press reported: “In Edinburgh and Leith, the damage is very great. Barracks, munitions depots, ironworks and other factories lie in ruins.” No mention was made of the civilian casualties.

The raid had cruelly exposed the inadequacy of the city’s defences.

When one of the L14’s bombs hit Castle Rock, all the soldiers stationed in Edinburgh Castle could do was fire a blank shell from the famous One O’Clock gun.

The only air station in the area was at East Fortune, more than 20 miles away, which was home to a motley collection of obsolete aircraft, like the pre-war Avro 504.

One of these was scrambled to intercept the L14 but its pilot, Flight Sub-Lieutenant George Cox, was unable to find the airship and crashed as he attempted to land back at his airfield in the dark.

With a public clamour for greater protection from the Zeppelins, two more home defence fighter units, 43 and 26 Squadron, were formed at Stirling and Turnhouse, Edinburgh.

But of the two new squadrons, 43 initially had no aircraft, while 26 Squadron arrived too late to counter the next and – so it proved – final Zeppelin raid on Scotland, exactly one month later.

Once again the targets were the Forth Bridge and the naval base at Rosyth, and once again Bocker’s L14 took part. Unlike the April raid, however, this one was little short of a disaster.

On the night of the mission, the weather was bad, with strong winds and thick cloud restricting visibility.

Bocker mistook the Tay for the Forth and jettisoned his bombs on a farm near Arbroath, the only casualty being a cow.

The only other Zeppelin to reach Scotland that night had even less success. The L20 ended up over the Highlands, scattering its bombs on a forest near Inverness.

Hopelessly lost, the airship crashed on the return leg of its journey in neutral Norway, where commander Franz Stabbart and his crew were interned.

Bocker’s war came to a dramatic end five months later.

Given command of one of the Germany navy’s new so-called Super Zeppelins, the L33 – a monster airship almost 200 metres long – on the night of September 23, 1916, he joined 11 other Zeppelins on one of the largest bombing raids of the war, targeting London.

While heading for home after dropping its bombs over the east end, L33 was hit by an anti-aircraft shell over Kent, before being hit again by fighter planes scrambled from a farm in Essex.

Losing altitude, Bocker ordered his crew to dump everything that wasn’t nailed down. But it was no use. The stricken Zeppelin crashed in the Essex village of Little Wigborough.

Remarkably, all 21 of her crew survived without serious injury.

Bocker then had his men set fire to the L33 to prevent it falling into enemy hands and marched his crew off towards Colchester.

The bizarre sight of 21 German naval personnel marching in formation along quiet English lanes attracted the attention of an off-duty special constable.

They were arrested in the village of Polden by local duty constable PC Charles Smith and handed over to the Army.

Scotland’s tormentor spent the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war – no doubt much to the satisfaction of the people of Edinburgh.