Overview: While most people think the Blitz originated in WWII, the truth is that the first Blitz happened during WWI. Bombs were delivered from giant airships designed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who got his inspiration when he was a Germany Army observer in the US during the Civil War and rode in a hot air balloon for the first time. These lighter than air superstructures, two times longer than the Statue of Liberty is high, measured their flights in hundreds of miles when pioneering aviators measured their success in hundreds of yards.