First British air raid on Germany
- Category:
- Military operations
- Front:
- Western Front
- Date:
- 22 September 1914
- Author:
- Natalia
On 22 September 1914 British airmen carried out the first raid of this war on German territory. Four aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service, the air arm of the Royal Navy, took off from Antwerp to bomb the airship sheds at Düsseldorf and Cologne.
Hunting zeppelins
At the end of August an air squadron from the base at Eastchurch, commanded by Commander Charles Samson, arrived in Belgium together with a Royal Marines brigade. At the beginning of September some of the airmen moved to Antwerp. The Admiralty, which was then responsible for the air defence of Great Britain, feared German airship raids. It concluded that the best thing was to destroy them in their sheds before they took off. From Antwerp the Rhineland was relatively close.
The aircraft of those years did not have the range to reach the target and return without landing. Belgian armoured cars therefore prepared and guarded a forward landing ground where the machines could refuel. Each aircraft carried only a few small bombs weighing about 9 kilograms. The pilots had no machine guns, only revolvers.
A raid in fog
The expedition was led by Eugene Gerrard, commander of one of the naval air squadrons. Two aircraft were to fly to Cologne, two to Düsseldorf. When the machines crossed the river Roer, thick fog lay over the ground. Three pilots failed to find their targets and turned back.
Only Lieutenant Charles Collet, an officer of the Royal Marine Artillery, reached the target. He came down low over the shed at Düsseldorf and dropped his bombs. According to most accounts one of them hit the shed but failed to explode, and the rest fell nearby. The raid did the Germans no damage, but it showed that British aircraft could reach German cities.
The second raid
The British tried again on 8 October, when Antwerp was already close to falling. This time two Sopwith Tabloid aircraft took off from the city. The pilot Spenser Grey could not find the shed at Cologne in the fog and bombed the railway station. Lieutenant Reginald Marix, on the other hand, hit the shed at Düsseldorf and destroyed the new airship Z IX standing inside it. It was the first airship destroyed by an aircraft.
Both raids were small, but they began a new kind of operation. Aircraft could strike targets far behind the front line, deep in the enemy’s country. In December 1914 naval aviation attacked the airship base at Cuxhaven, and in the following years raids on the enemy’s rear became one of the tasks of military aviation.
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Meanwhile
(04)Elsewhere in the same days.
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- 22 September 1914 · War at seaAboukir, Hogue and Cressy are sunkOn 22 September 1914 the German U-9 sank three British armoured cruisers in about an hour. Almost 1,500 sailors were killed.
- 21 September 1914 · SocietyBritain extends its contraband listOn 21 September 1914 a British proclamation declared copper, lead, rubber, glycerine, iron ore and hides, among others, to be conditional contraband.
- 21 September 1914 · Asia and the PacificGerman troops in New Guinea surrenderOn 21 September 1914 the last German units on New Britain laid down their arms at Herbertshöhe. One German officer hid in the jungle until 1919.
Related events
(04)The same battle, people or subject.
- 8 October 1914 · Western FrontSecond British air raid on GermanyOn 8 October 1914 RNAS pilot Reginald Marix bombed a shed in Düsseldorf and destroyed the airship Z IX. Spenser Grey failed to find his target at Cologne.
- 21 November 1914 · Western FrontBritish raid on FriedrichshafenOn 21 November 1914 three Royal Naval Air Service aircraft from Belfort bombed the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen. One of the pilots was taken prisoner.
- 15 December 1914 · War at seaGerman airship off the English coastOn 15 December 1914 a German airship was sighted off the Humber estuary. It was the first confirmed presence of an enemy aircraft off the English coast.
- 25 December 1914 · War at seaCuxhaven raidOn 25 December 1914 seven British seaplanes took off from ships off Heligoland to bomb the Zeppelin sheds. They failed to find their target.