British raid on Friedrichshafen

On 21 November 1914 three aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service, the air arm of the British navy, attacked the airship works at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. They took off from Belfort in France and had to cover some 200 kilometres each way in a straight line, much of it over German territory. It was one of the first raids in history planned from the outset as a strike on an industrial plant deep inside enemy territory.

Preparations

The British Admiralty, then responsible for the air defence of the country, wanted to destroy German airships before they could take off. After the raids from Antwerp on Düsseldorf and Cologne the target became the main source of the Zeppelins, the works at Friedrichshafen. The only possible starting point was France, and the nearest suitable base was the airship station at Belfort, not far from the Swiss border. The French agreed to make it available on condition of complete secrecy. Reconnaissance and organisation were entrusted to Noel Pemberton Billing, an aircraft designer who had been taken into the naval air service for this mission.

Four new Avro 504 aircraft were assigned to the raid. Instead of an observer they carried an extra fuel tank and four bombs of about 9 kilograms each. The dismantled machines were shipped in crates to Le Havre and from there by rail to Belfort, where they arrived on 13 November. For several days the men did not leave the airship shed in which they were being assembled. After an accident during a trial taxi, test flights were abandoned, so the raid itself was these aircraft’s first flight. None of the pilots had ever dropped bombs before.

The raid

On 21 November the weather at last improved. In the morning the aircraft took off one after another from a makeshift strip. The fourth machine, flown by Roland Cannon, failed to get off the ground and was damaged on the rough terrain. Three went: the flight commander Edward Featherstone Briggs, John Babington and Sidney Sippe. The Avros’ rotary engines did not allow the speed to be adjusted, so the airmen could not keep formation. Each flew separately, over the mountains of the Black Forest and on to Lake Constance. They had to make a detour to avoid neutral Switzerland.

They reached Friedrichshafen around noon. Briggs was the first to come down low over the sheds and drop his bombs, but his aircraft was hit in the fuel tank by fire from the ground. Wounded in the head, the pilot landed in front of the sheds he had just bombed and was taken prisoner. Sippe came in low over the lake, and Babington attacked last. Both returned over France after more than four hours in the air. Babington, who had no map, lost his way and landed on the French side, several dozen kilometres from Belfort.

Consequences

Assessments of the raid’s results still differ today. The British Admiralty announced that the airmen had destroyed one airship, seriously damaged the larger shed and wrecked a new hydrogen plant. Some British studies repeat these claims. According to the report of a German officer present at the works, one bomb hit a house nearby and another a workshop, breaking among other things a window of the shed in which a new, gas-filled airship stood. The airships were not damaged. A German communiqué stated that no damage had been done to the works, while splinters had killed one inhabitant of the town and wounded several people.

Reports appeared in Switzerland that the aircraft had flown over its territory. The matter led to an exchange of diplomatic notes, and Winston Churchill assured Parliament that the airmen had been ordered to avoid neutral territory. Briggs, Babington and Sippe received the Distinguished Service Order, and later the French Legion of Honour. The Germans strengthened the anti-aircraft defences of Friedrichshafen. Although the damage proved slight, the raid showed that aircraft could strike targets far behind the front line. A month later the naval air service tried to strike the airship base near Cuxhaven, this time with seaplanes carried by ships.