Cuxhaven raid

On Christmas Day 1914 seaplanes of the Royal Naval Air Service took off from the waters of the Heligoland Bight to attack the German airship base near Cuxhaven. They had been brought close to the German coast by three converted ferries serving as seaplane tenders. It was the first raid in history carried out by aircraft carried to the scene by ships. The Zeppelin sheds could not be found, but the raid showed that aviation could operate together with the fleet far from its own bases.

The Admiralty’s plan

The British Admiralty wanted to destroy the German airships before they could attack England. Land-based aircraft had already bombed the sheds at Düsseldorf and the works at Friedrichshafen, but the naval airship bases on the North Sea lay beyond their range. The main one was at Nordholz, about 13 kilometres south of Cuxhaven. There stood a huge double shed mounted on a turntable, so that its doors could be turned to face the wind. To attack it, aircraft were needed that would arrive near the target aboard ships.

For this task fast ferries that had plied the English Channel before the war were adapted: Engadine, Riviera and Empress. Each carried three Short seaplanes, kept in hangars on deck and lowered onto the water by crane. Attempts at such a raid had already been made in the autumn, but they were frustrated by the weather or called off for fear of German warships. This time the tenders were escorted by cruisers and destroyers from Harwich under Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt, and off the German coast the submarines of Commodore Roger Keyes waited, ready to rescue the airmen. The navigation for the raid was prepared by a lieutenant of the naval reserve, Erskine Childers, author of the spy novel The Riddle of the Sands, who had sailed these waters before the war.

Flight above the fog

The force left Harwich on 24 December. Early on Christmas morning, before dawn, the ships reached their position north of Heligoland. Nine seaplanes were lowered onto the water, but in the cold air only seven managed to start their engines and take off. Each carried three bombs of about 9 kilograms.

Fog and low cloud lay over the German coast. None of the pilots found the shed at Nordholz. The airmen dropped their bombs on other targets they took to be military, but did no significant damage. They were fired on by German anti-aircraft guns and by warships. The seaplane carrying Childers flew over the Schillig Roads at the mouth of the Jade, where ships of the High Seas Fleet lay at anchor, and the airmen managed to gather valuable information about the disposition of the German forces.

Meanwhile the Germans tried to attack the British ships from the air. Two German seaplanes and the airship L 6 dropped bombs on the straggling Empress, which was having boiler trouble. None hit, although one burst only a few metres from her bow. It was one of the first engagements between ships and aircraft. German submarines also hunted the withdrawing ships, likewise without success.

The return

The seaplanes stayed in the air for over three hours. Only three of them returned to the tenders, including the machine carrying Childers. Three others, running out of fuel, alighted off the island of Norderney. Their crews were taken aboard the submarine E11, and the aircraft were sunk so as not to fall into German hands. The seventh pilot, Francis Hewlett, came down with engine failure some ten or fifteen kilometres from Heligoland and was posted missing. He was, however, picked up by a Dutch fishing trawler, which took him to IJmuiden. Hewlett returned to Britain at the beginning of January 1915. The British lost four seaplanes, but no airman was killed.

Significance

Militarily the raid was a failure, because its main target was never found. Even so, in Britain it was hailed as proof of the courage and ingenuity of naval aviation. For the first time in history a fleet had attacked the enemy simultaneously on the sea, from under the water and from the air. According to a telegram from Copenhagen intercepted by the British censorship, the raid led the German command to move some of its ships from Cuxhaven inland to the Kiel Canal, but this is not certain. The raid opened the road that a few years later led to the creation of aircraft carriers.