Warneford destroys airship LZ 37

Before dawn on 7 June 1915 Reginald Warneford, a 23-year-old pilot of the Royal Naval Air Service, attacked the German army airship LZ 37 over Ghent. Bombs dropped from his single-seat Morane-Saulnier L monoplane set fire to the hydrogen in the airship, which crashed in flames onto the buildings of Sint-Amandsberg, a suburban municipality of Ghent. The same night two other British naval airmen destroyed in its shed at Evere near Brussels the airship LZ 38, which a week earlier had been the first to bomb London.

Night over Flanders

On the night of 6–7 June the Germans sent several airships against England. The naval airship L 9 bombed Hull, where more than twenty people were killed. Three army airships, LZ 37, LZ 38 and LZ 39, took off from bases in occupied Belgium but did not reach England. LZ 38 broke off its flight early and returned to its shed at Evere. LZ 37, commanded by Oberleutnant Otto van der Haegen, according to German accounts dropped bombs in the area of Calais and towards morning was returning over Flanders towards Ghent.

The British naval airmen of No. 1 Wing, stationed at Dunkirk and Veurne, had been hunting German airships for weeks. That night Flight Lieutenant John Wilson and Flight Sub-Lieutenant John Mills flew Henri Farman biplanes to bomb the shed at Evere. Warneford, born in 1891 in Darjeeling in India, a former merchant navy sailor who had only qualified as a pilot in February 1915, took off from Veurne at about one in the morning on a patrol to intercept the returning airships. His aircraft carried six 20-pound (about 9 kg) bombs. On 17 May Warneford, then still flying a two-seater with an observer, had attacked another German airship, but it dropped ballast and escaped out of range of his machine gun.

Duel over Ghent

Warneford spotted LZ 37 near Ostend and set off in pursuit. The airship’s crew fired at the aircraft with machine guns, so the pilot climbed to get above the enemy. According to his report, at about 2.25 a.m. he was well behind the airship and high above it, at about 11,000 feet (3.4 km). He switched off his engine, glided down over the airship and at about 7,000 feet (2.1 km) released his bombs. The last of them set the envelope alight. The explosion threw the aircraft about so violently that for a moment it turned upside down.

The burning LZ 37 fell on Sint-Amandsberg. The wreckage crashed onto a square in the centre of the municipality and onto the buildings of a nearby convent of the Visitation sisters, which housed a school. Eight of the nine crew members were killed, among them van der Haegen. Only the helmsman, Alfred Mühler, survived. The gondola he was in struck the convent roof, and he himself fell through the roof into a bedroom and landed on an empty bed. With minor burns he managed to get out of the burning building. According to Belgian local historians, one nun was killed on the ground, and in the nearby béguinage a nine-year-old girl. Some British sources speak of two nuns killed.

Return from behind the lines

The explosion damaged the aircraft’s fuel line and the engine cut out. Warneford had to land in a field in German-occupied territory, at the edge of a wood near a farmstead. He prepared to burn the machine, but no one noticed him. He made a makeshift repair to the fuel line and, as he stated in his report, took off again at about 3.15 a.m. He lost his way in the fog and landed at Cap Gris-Nez on the French coast, where he was given fuel. He was back at base before noon.

At Evere, meanwhile, Wilson dropped three 65-pound bombs on the shed, one of which hit its centre. Mills followed up with smaller bombs and LZ 38 burned. Both pilots lost their bearings in the fog but returned safely: Mills landed on the beach between Calais and Dunkirk, Wilson in a field near Montreuil.

First victory of an aeroplane over an airship

German airships had been lost before. In August 1914 fire from the ground brought down Z VIII in the Vosges and damaged Z V near Mława, and in October a British airman destroyed with bombs in its shed at Düsseldorf the airship Z IX. LZ 37, however, was the first airship destroyed in the air by an aeroplane. The news spread across Britain the same day and made Warneford a national hero. As early as 11 June the award of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military decoration, was announced, and Wilson and Mills received the Distinguished Service Cross. Warneford did not enjoy his fame for long: on 17 June, the day he received the French Legion of Honour, he was killed in an accident with a new aircraft at the airfield at Buc near Paris.