FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0721.PDF
MARCH 27TH, 1941. a 'THE NIGHT BOMBER How the Night Bomber Has Developed During the Past 26 Years THIS is the third article in our evolution series. It deals with the ancestry of the types which are causing so much loss of sleep on the Continent these nights THE roots of night bombing go back to April 16, 1913,when Lt. Cholmondeley, of the Military Wing ofthe Royal Flying Corps, flew a Maurice Farman from Larkhill to the Central Flying School at Netheravon in bright moonlight. The Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps, which later became the Royal Naval Air Service, were not to be outdone, and they also—particularly Com- mander Samson—practised night flying later in the same year. All this early work was dependent on the moon, for there were no such things as boundary lights, naviga- tion lights, flare paths or glide path indicators. With the exception of the work carried out by naval units in' 1915, night bombing was not taken in hand seiiously until February, 1916. This early work of the R.N.A.S. at Dunkirk is of particular interest, if only as a record of the first attempts to bomb one aircraft from another. It seems quite possible that we may see the bomb used as an anti-aircraft device again in this war, not against single machines but to split up formations ; that, however, is rather a different story. May, 1915, saw three new Zeppelin airships, LZ.37, LZ.38 and LZ.39, the pride of the German naval air ser- vice, indiscriminately bombing London. Within a week two were destroyed and the other damaged. The story is one of bombing the night bomber, and here it is: — The first success came early one morning, when the LZ.39 was seen as a faint shape off Dunkirk at 3.15 a.m. Two machines of the R.N.A.S. were actually on patrol at the time, and a further seven took off. Of these nine aircraft three actually got within machine-gun range, but two were outclimbed, and only FJt. Commander Bigsworth, fijn an Avro 504, was able to get above the airship at ^o.oooft. At this height he found himself 200ft. above the Zeppelin. His attack took »-""—• the form of flying the whole length of the en- velope and dropping a stick of four 20 lb. bombs which represented his entire bomb load. Despite direct hits, Commander Bigsworth had the mortification of seeing his enormous enemy still more or less airworthy. It struggled back to its base with one officer killed and several of the crew wounded. Five of the Zeppelin's gas bags were damaged, and it appears that the bombs just went whistling straight through the envelope and out at the bottom. It was out of action for some while. The next part of the story is of a raid against the dirigibles in their lair. Round about midnight, 12.04 to be precise, Lt. J. P. Wilson and Fit. Sub. Lt. Mills set out on Henry Farmans to bomb the Zeppelin sheds at Evere, in Belgium. They were to some extent unlucky in that only the LZ.38 was at home STAND FROM UNDER : External manualbomb releases were used on the F.E.2b, which was the standard medium bomber of the 1014-18war. This is obviously the origin of the ex- pression "pulling the plug." INTERIM INTERIOR : The radio operator and navigator attheir stations in a Handley-Page Harrow, which was the first of the monoplane bombers and the last of the fixed under-carriage types. at the time. Lt. Wilson was the first to arrive at trie target shortly after two a.m. After putting the ground defenders off their guard by sending down a few flashes by hand torch to simulate a recognition signal, he dropped his three 65 lb. bombs from 2,000ft. Direct hits on the hangars were seen but apparently these were empty as there was no resulting fire. Mills arrived some ten minutes later to receive a specially warm welcome from the ground. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour he flew away aAd returned at some 5,000ft. to let go his load of four-40-pounders. Despite the pip-squeak size of his bombsphe got a direct hit on LZ.38 in its shed, and
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
