ABSTRACT
The threat of German wartime airship attacks on southern England had, as early as 1906, become the subject of wide speculation in Great Britain, as a number of popular journals came to dwell on this theme. More importantly, the German lead in airship development was specifically in the longer-range, higher-payload types, which at the start of World War I were to constitute the only possible strategic bombing force. An active program of German long-distance patrols over the North Sea was not undertaken until 1912. Reports of German overflights arose continually after 1908 from civilian observers in southern and eastern England, but the earliest possible instances of actual surreptitious German incursions also came only in 1912. German leaders at first expressed concern about the "Zeppelin scare," castigating the British public for foolishly allowing such fears to engender a hostility to Germany.
