William Leefe Robinson
William Leefe Robinson VC (14 July 1895 – 31 December 1918) was the first British pilot to shoot down a German airship over Britain during the First World War. For this he was awarded the Victoria Cross the first person to be awarded the VC for action in the UK.
Robinson was born in Coorg, India on 14 July 1895, the youngest son of Horace Robinson and Elizabeth Leefe. Raised on his parent's coffee estate, Kaima Betta Estate, at Pollibetta, in Coorg, he attended Bishop Cotton Boys' School, the Dragon School, Oxford, before following his elder brother Harold to St. Bees School, Cumberland in September, 1909. While there he succeeded his brother as Head of Eaglesfield House in 1913, played in the Rugby 1st XV and became a sergeant in the school Officer Training Corps.
In August, 1914 he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and was gazetted into the Worcestershire Regiment in December. In March, 1915 he went to France as an observer with the Royal Flying Corps, to which he had transferred. After having been wounded over Lille he underwent pilot training in Britain, before being attached to No. 39 Squadron RFC, a night-flying squadron at Sutton's Farm near Hornchurch in Essex.
On the night of 2/3 September 1916 over Cuffley, Hertfordshire, Lieutenant Robinson, flying a converted B.E.2c night fighter, sighted a German airship – one of 16 which had left bases in Germany on a mass raid over England. The airship was actually the wooden-framed Schütte-Lanz SL11, not as is sometimes assumed a Zeppelin. Robinson made an attack at an altitude of 11,500 ft approaching from below and, closing to within 500 ft, raked the airship with machine-gun bullets. As he was preparing for another attack, it burst into flames and crashed in a field behind the Plough Inn at Cuffley, killing Commander Wilhelm Schramm and his 15 man crew.
The propaganda value of this success was enormous to the British Government, as it indicated that the German airship threat could be countered. When Robinson was awarded the VC by the King at Windsor Castle, huge crowds of admirers and onlookers were in attendance. Robinson was also awarded £3,500 in prize money and a silver cup donated by the people of Hornchurch.
Although some RFC pilots considered the shooting down of an airship was easier than shooting down an aeroplane over the Western Front this attitude did not recognise the problems Leefe Robinson had to contend with: his attack took place at night, in an aircraft with minimal modified instrumentation and lighting, at altitude of 11,500 feet and with no oxygen supply. Additionally there was a high risk of Leefe Robinson crashing on landing, assuming he could even find the nearest airfield in the dark. The BE2c was at its maximum ceiling, at which any aircraft is difficult to control. As with the action in which Reginald Alexander John Warneford brought down LZ37 the previous year, the blast from the exploding airship may have blown the attacking aircraft out of control. Furthermore, the airship was armed with machine-guns, which opened fire on Leefe Robinson during his attack.
In a memo to his Commanding Officer, Leefe Robinson wrote:
September 1916
From: Lieutenant Leefe Robinson, Sutton's Farm.
To: The Officer Commanding No. 39 H. D. Squadron.
Sir:
I have the honour to make the following report on night patrol made by me on the night of the 2-3 instant. I went up at about 11.08 p.m. on the night of the second with instructions to patrol between Sutton's Farm and Joyce Green.
I climbed to 10,000 feet in fifty-three minutes. I counted what I thought were ten sets of flares - there were a few clouds below me, but on the whole it was a beautifully clear night. I saw nothing until 1.10 a.m., when two searchlights picked up a Zeppelin S.E. of Woolwich. The clouds had collected in this quarter and the searchlights had some difficulty in keeping on the airship.
By this time I had managed to climb to 12,000 feet and I made in the direction of the Zeppelin - which was being fired on by a few anti-aircraft guns - hoping to cut it off on its way eastward. I very slowly gained on it for about ten minutes.
I judged it to be about 800 feet below me and I sacrificed some speed in order to keep the height. It went behind some clouds, avoiding the searchlight, and I lost sight of it. After fifteen minutes of fruitless search I returned to my patrol.
I managed to pick up and distinguish my flares again. At about 1.50 a.m. I noticed a red glow in the N.E. of London. Taking it to be an outbreak of fire, I went in that direction. At 2.05 a Zeppelin was picked up by the searchlights over N.N.E. London (as far as I could judge).
Remembering my last failure, I sacrificed height (I was at about 12,900 feet) for speed and nosed down in the direction of the Zeppelin. I saw shells bursting and night tracers flying around it.
When I drew closer I noticed that the anti-aircraft aim was too high or too low; also a good many shells burst about 800 feet behind - a few tracers went right over. I could hear the bursts when about 3,000 feet from the Zeppelin.
I flew about 800 feet below it from bow to stem and distributed one drum among it (alternate New Brock and Pomeroy). It seemed to have no effect;
I therefore moved to one side and gave them another drum along the side - also without effect. I then got behind it and by this time I was very close - 500 feet or less below, and concentrated one drum on one part (underneath rear). I was then at a height of 11,500 feet when attacking the Zeppelin.
I had hardly finished the drum before I saw the part fired at, glow. In a few seconds the whole rear part was blazing. When the third drum was fired, there were no searchlights on the Zeppelin, and no anti-aircraft was firing.
I quickly got out of the way of the falling, blazing Zeppelin and, being very excited, fired off a few red Very lights and dropped a parachute flare.
Having little oil or petrol left, I returned to Sutton's Farm, landing at 2.45 a.m. On landing, I found the Zeppelin gunners had shot away the machine-gun wire guard, the rear part of my centre section, and had pierced the main spar several times.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
(Signed)
W. Leefe Robinson, Lieutenant
No. 39 Squadron, R.F.C.
In April 1917, Robinson was posted to France as a Flight Commander with 48 Squadron, flying the then new Bristol F.2 Fighter. On the first patrol over the lines, Robinson's formation of six aircraft encountered the Albatros DIII fighters of Jasta 11, led by Manfred von Richthofen, and four were shot down. Robinson, shot down by Vizefeldwebel Sebastian Festner was wounded and captured by the Germans. He was not well treated by the Germans, and he made several attempts to escape but all failed, and his health was badly affected during his time as a prisoner. He was imprisoned at Zorndorf and Holzminden, being kept in solitary confinement at the latter camp for his escape attempts.
He died on December 31, 1918 at the Stanmore home of his sister, the Baroness Heyking, from the effects of the Spanish flu pandemic to which his imprisonment had left him particularly susceptible.
He is buried at All Saints' Churchyard Extension, Harrow Weald, Middlesex, England (S.E. Section). Later, a memorial to him was erected near the spot where the airship crashed. As of September 2006 there is a financial appeal by the parish council for it to be renovated.
He was commemorated by the name of the local Beefeater restaurant just south of the cemetery, the "Leefe Robinson", by "The Leefe Robinson VC" public house on the Uxbridge road, Harrow Weald, by a monument erected in East Ridgeway in 1986, and by a road named after him (Robinson Close) in Hornchurch, Essex on the site of the former Suttons Farm airfield.
Sources of Information
- [1] Wikipedia