British air raid on Constantinople and Adrianople

The British chronology of the war records under 14 April 1916 that aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service from Mudros on the island of Lemnos attacked Constantinople and Adrianople (Edirne). According to the British Admiralty communiqué the raid took place on Friday evening, and 14 April 1916 was indeed a Friday. The British official history of the war in the air gives the date as 15 April, which suggests that the aircraft may have returned after midnight. Some Turkish studies, on the other hand, mention a raid by two aircraft on 12 April.

After the evacuation of Gallipoli British naval aviation remained on the islands of the Aegean. Its No. 2 Wing had detachments on Imbros, at Mudros and on Lesbos. The airmen reconnoitred the Turkish coasts and bombed targets within range, above all railway lines. In the autumn of 1915, when Bulgaria entered the war and, after the fall of Serbia, the railway from Berlin to Constantinople opened, pilots from Imbros tried several times to destroy the railway bridge over the Maritsa at Kuleli Burgas, south of Adrianople. On the night of 13 November the pilot Joseph Smyth-Pigott flew there in weak moonlight, but his bombs missed.

Now Smyth-Pigott led three B.E.2c aircraft of “C” Flight at Mudros. According to the Admiralty communiqué, two of them dropped bombs on the powder factory at Zeytinburnu, which the British called Zeitunlik, on the shore of the Sea of Marmara just west of the walls of the old city, and on the aircraft hangars. An arms factory is also mentioned among the targets. The third aircraft bombed the railway station at Adrianople. The communiqué mentioned no losses, but emphasised that the flight to Constantinople and back covered 300 miles, or about 480 kilometres. The American monthly “Current History” wrote that this was a record. The previous one was said to belong to the French, who had flown 240 miles from Nancy over Stuttgart and back.

The damage was slight, although according to later accounts the raid caused alarm in the city. A few aircraft with small bombs could not threaten Turkish war industry, but they showed that the capital of the Ottoman Empire was now within range of British aviation. Some of those who took part in the flight were decorated. In these months the airmen from Mudros and Lesbos also attacked other targets: barracks at Gallipoli, the railway junction at Ferejik near Dedeağaç and the station at Smyrna. Larger raids on Constantinople came only in 1917, however, when the heavy Handley Page bomber reached the Aegean islands.