Less than a dozen years after Orville Wright had taken the first powered flight at Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on Dec. 17, 1903, the British Naval Wing, still part of the British Army’s joint Royal Flying Corps, launched what was to be one of the largest bombing raids of the First World War on Feb. 12, 1915 – 100 years ago today – by targeting railway operations in the German-occupied Flemish North Sea port coastal towns of Blankenberge, Ostend and Zeebrugge in West Flanders in Belgium.
Under the command of Air Commodore Charles Rumney Samson, 34 planes from the British Naval Wing attacked Blankenberge, Ostend and Zeebrugge, targeting the railway stations in Ostend and Blankenberge, as well as railway lines across the coast that were being used by the German occupation forces. The Blankenberge railway station had opened on Aug. 16, 1863. Zeebrugge was being used by the Germans as a base of operations for their deadly submarine warfare, light shipping, and for a planned blockade of the Belgian coast.
Samson, 31 at the time of the bombing raids, was already a British naval aviation pioneer. He was one of the first four officers selected in 1911 for pilot training by the Royal Navy and in May 1912 was the first pilot to fly an aircraft from a moving ship, taking off from the battleship HMS Hibernia during the annual naval review in Weymouth Bay.
The unprecedented bombing raids of Feb. 12, 1915 at Blankenberge, Ostend and Zeebrugge were an extraordinary success, causing heavy damage to the occupying German military force. Despite coming under heavy ground fire from German anti-aircraft guns, not a single British Naval Wing plane was shot down and there were no British fatal casualties.
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