How to Win a Victoria Cross
The Victoria Cross is a unique award. It is the only award that can be made to any of the armed services. At the same time very few of those so awarded get to wear the cross and its scarlet ribbon since most are awarded posthumously. It is amongst the most controversial of awards since there is a great deal of debate about when is an act heroic or foolhardy. The young man discussed below is one of those forgotten heroes whose deeds thrilled the Empire.
Reginald Warneford entered the Naval Air Service as a probationer in February 1915 and within four months had won the highest award for valour that the King could bestow.
To train their air crews it was the German custom to send their Zeppelins on short cruises over the North Sea prior to flying raids on England. In the early morning of June 7th 1915 one of these monsters was returning from a training flight when she was spotted by Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warneford, out on a solo scouting expedition in a Morane monoplane. The intrepid airman, with nothing in sight to help him against the 600 ft ship, did not hesitate and immediately set off in pursuit. As he approached nearer the Zeppelin opened fire on him with machine guns; but he still kept on in his one man machine, aiming to get above the enemy so that he could drop his bombs - the only weapon carried by the plane.
The Zeppelin was trying to reach the sheds at Gontrode just south of Ghent; but as she saw the British monoplane gaining upon her unharmed by the fusillade of bullets, she made that manoeuvre which was one of the Zeppelins best forms of defence. She dropped a quantity of ballast and shot suddenly to a height of six thousand feet.
The aeroplane is a much slower climber by comparison, but Warneford set the nose in the air and gave chase. Just when he began to believe that it was all in vain the airship began to glide towards the earth. Her station was almost in sight and safety not far away.
As the Zeppelin dipped downwards Warneford was still climbing and soon he was above his quarry. Methodically and carefully he dropped his bombs. The first four hit the airship which began to drift, unmanageable, past the safety of the sheds. Warneford dropped to below two hundred feet above the Zeppelin and dropped the last two bombs causing the airship to hit the ground in a mass of twisted metal and blazing fabric, killing the entire crew of twenty eight. (Unfortunately the Zeppelin had crashed on a convent in a suburb of Ghent, Mont St. Armand, killing several nuns).
The violence of the explosion threw Warnefords aircraft upside down and drained all the fuel from the tanks. Warneford had no choice but to land his plane and refuel her from spare cans he carried. Choosing his landing place he landed and refilled the plane (British reports say that this took fifteen minutes, the French say nearer forty), taking off under a hail of bullets from an approaching party of Germans.
He got back to base and became the first airman to destroy a Zeppelin in flight. But this was not his only record. Within thirty six hours he had received a telegram from the King conferring on him the Victoria Cross - the quickest such award ever made. In addition the French made the officer a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
Warneford was not destined to enjoy these rewards. For long. Ten days later, while testing a new aeroplane at a Paris airfield he was killed as his plane fell out of the sky. He had been in the Royal Naval Air Service just four months and one week.
Paul Robinson
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