LZ 61 (L 21)

LZ 61, with the tactical number L 21, was a German Navy airship of the First World War that carried out ten raids on England in 1916 and 17 reconnaissance missions. On 31 January 1916 it was ordered to attack Liverpool but bombed Tipton, Bradley, Wednesbury and Walsall instead, killing over 30 people including the mayoress of Walsall. On 1 April it attacked Cleethorpes, where a bomb killed 31 soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment billeted in a chapel. On 2 September it took part in the largest airship attack of the war and saw SL 11 shot down. After a raid on the Midlands on 27 November 1916 it was intercepted off Great Yarmouth at dawn by Royal Naval Air Service pilots Egbert Cadbury, Gerard Fane and Edward Pulling, and it fell blazing into the sea. The wartime press wrongly named the downing of SL 11 as that of L 21, a confusion that lasted for decades.