Mick Powis

Vices and Virtues is a collection of short stories and poetry created by students on the BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing course at The University of Nottingham. Local writers and students on the course produced work inspired by the seven deadly sins and the seven heavenly virtues.

Mick Powis describes the novel threat posed to the British war effort by the raids of German airships, or Zeppelins, and the struggle to develop effective defences against them. Despite their size and relatively slow speed, the Zeppelins were hard to locate and destroy at first. They could fly higher than existing fighters and the early raids benefited from a lack of coordination between British services. The development of radio, better aircraft, incendiary ammunition, and, above all, a more coordinated defensive policy, gradually allowed the British to inflict heavy losses on the Zeppelins. The innovative use of seaplanes and planes launched from aircraft carriers allowed the Zeppelins to be intercepted before they reached Britain and to strike back with raids on the Zeppelin sheds. July 1918 saw the RAF and Royal Navy cooperate to destroy two Zeppelins in their base at Tondern (the first attack by aircraft launched from a carrier deck). The last Zeppelin raid on England came in August 1918 and resulted in the destruction of Zeppelin L70 and the death of Peter Strasser, Commander of the Imperial German Navy s Zeppelin force.

On 31st January 1916 nine Zeppelin airships of the Imperial German Navy bombed the Midlands, opening a strategic bombing campaign designed to cripple British war production. It ended in total failure. The main target was Liverpool but none of the Zeppelins reached it. On foggy Monday night several major Midlands towns were bombed and 70 people killed, 35 in the Black Country between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, 15 in Burton on Trent, 10 in Loughborough, 5 in Derby, 3 in Scunthorpe and 2 in Ilkeston. A lot is known about the military aspects of the raids but much less is known about what happened on the ground. While the press produced many human interest stories and atrocity propaganda, wartime censorship prohibited publication of any information that could be useful to the Germans, including the towns hit and names of the victims. Through intensive research the author has been able to identify many of the victims and give the full story of these events for the first time.