WW1 Filming 'Victoria Cross' @ Sywell 6.9.06 pics!!!

Willam Robinson VC

A few years ago I was astounded to find out that William Leefe Robinson was a distant relative of mine. He was my Grandmother’s cousin, son of a brother of William Robinson, my Great-Grandfather. Apparently my Grandmother had a piece of the Zeppelin in her care (it fell not far from her family home) but I’ve no idea where that might be now.

Here’s an account of the incident taken from “Hindenburg, an illustrated history” by Rick Archbold and Ken Marschall. A wee bit dramatic but interesting reading.

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The turning point came on September 2, 1916. From German navy and army bases sixteen airships took to the air, their chief target London. By now all limits on bombing of the British capital had been removed, beyond the proscription on historic buildings and royal palaces. The cream of the two airship corps would bring a fire storm to the enemy capital, or so Peter Strasser believed.

Ernst Lehmann, now in the brand-new LZ98, flew one of the thirteen airships to reach the target. As he aproached the city by way of the River Thames, he could see that London was already under attack: “The entire city lay under a luminous mist dotted everywhere with incessant flickering and flashes of bursting projectiles.” As he moved forward he noted that the enemy searchlights seemed more powerful and the ground guns bigger than on his visit the previous spring. The scene before him had an eerie beauty. “We could see many explosions on the ground, evidently from other ships, but they were hidden from view by the haze, bursting shells and searchlight beams. It was like hanging above a lighted stage in a theatre with the rest of the house darkened,” he later recalled.

The widespread haze would deceive him into thinking he was closer to his goal than he actually was. With artillery shells whizzing nearby Lehmann thought he was already over the London dockyards. He released his bombs, then dodged from cloud to cloud to evade the enemy searchlights. In fact, his explosives fell nowhere near the docks. Satisfied at what he believed to be a job well done, he entered a cloud bank, rose to 13,800 feet and headed for home.

Just before Lehmann found his final cloud cover, he was spotted by Second Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson in his single-engine BE2c biplane, the slow-moving night fighter that would prove to be the most effective weapon so far for combatting zeppelin attacks. In vain, Robinson spent fifteen minutes searching for the vanished zeppelin amidst the clouds. Then, in the glare of exploding shells he caught sight of another airship. This one would not get away.

He reached the giant without raising any answering fire, the airship crew had not detected him, then ran the whole length of the ship pumping one whole drum of incendiary ammunition into the hull. Like a whale oblivious to a school of minnows, the airship swam on. Robinson regained his altitude and attacked again, but again he saw no discernible result. “She might have been the Flying Dutchman for all the signs of life I saw,” he later commented.
For his third and final attack, Robinson positioned himself just behind the ship, below the huge cross formed by the horizontal and vertical stabilizing fins. Then he emptied a whole drum of ammunition into a small area of the hull, which immediately began to glow pink. The glow quickly spread forward until the entire interior was lit – a later pilot would describe a similar scene as resembling a huge Chinese lantern. Then, suddenly, the tail section burst into flames and the airborne whale began a slow death dive. The falling inferno lit up the countryside for sixty miles around.

Ernst Lehmann was leaning over the maps in the chart room of the LZ98 when a call from the bridge told him to look back at London. When Lehmann did so, he saw “a huge ball of fire,” perhaps forty miles behind him: “The flaming mass hung in the sky for more than a minute and we could see parts breaking loose and falling faster than the main body. Poor fellows, they had no chance at all when their ship caught fire.” (As a weight-saving measure, the wartime airships did not carry parachutes.)

The remainder of this account goes on to describe how the British defences, particular night-fighters equiped with incendiary ammunition, went on to inflict severe losses on German airships over the remainder of 1916, including the loss of the L31 commanded by the most famous of the zeppelin captains, Heinrich Mathy (who had opened the bombing campaign against London with a spectacular and remarkably destructive raid a year before on September 8, 1915). This was followed by a period of German technological ascendancy as new airships, capable of operating above the ceiling of the British defences, were constructed and brought into action. This in turn was countered by new British aircraft and this see-saw effect continued on throughout the war.

For his part, William Leefe Robinson was awarded the Victoria Cross and great acclaim.

It’s a bit too wordy to put on this thread, but if you want to read the story of William Leefe Robinson’s flight, in his own verbatim report as written ninety years ago, you can access it by clicking on the news section of the Biggles Biplane website. www.biggles-biplane.com

Hope so, although in the caption on the profile the spelling of the word Captain is unfortunately incorrect.

Repeat after me, Next time I must remember to save my PSD profile file after spell checking and printing it for the No 6 Sqn RAF 90th Anniversary display, only to dig it out and put it on Key forum 2 1/2 years later with the original spelling error on it. Doh 😡

Is the pilot of this aircraft going to get a mention?

Hope so, although in the caption on the profile the spelling of the word Captain is unfortunately incorrect.

Any idea when this program is going to be put out?

Watch out on Channel 5 somewhere around the 18th November.

His name was given to the pub next door to his grave yard. I keep meaning to get some pics as I live quite close by. I’ll try again if anyone is interested.

DS

surprised no one has commentated on the similarity between the actor playing Leefe and a certain broadcaster from Kahzakstan!

TT

yip. If you shoot at him, he wil CRUSH you!

Bless ‘im. Blue Max was tired……. :diablo:

Well it was a long night!!

For myself, I am off to get a life, as instructed!

😀 good man, I think you rather walked into things there….!

TT

Yes he was, in a dH2 while CO of 24 Sqn RFC, the Baron’s 11th Kill if memory serves (and most likely one of the most difficult as far as the Baron was concerned).

According to reports, the dogfight was a long and involved affair, both men being talented enough to avoid the gunfire of the other – even waving to each other at one point. The manouevrability of the DH2 will have helped Hawker, though it was a slow and lightly armed machine by the standards of the day. The time came when, low on fuel he had to make a dash for the lines. Richtofen brought his guns to bear and fired a quick burst but suffered a jam – it was already too late for Hawker who had been hit and killed by one of the few bullets the Freiherr had managed to loose off. Hawker was undoubtedly one of the pioneers of air combat and Richtofen called him ‘the English Immelmann’. He later recovered Hawker’s machine gun as a trophy.

I think you’ll find Lanoe Hawker was killed.

Yes he was, in a dH2 while CO of 24 Sqn RFC, the Baron’s 11th Kill if memory serves (and most likely one of the most difficult as far as the Baron was concerned).

I think you’ll find Lanoe Hawker was killed.

Is the pilot of this aircraft going to get a mention? The Baron got him in the end too.

but not killed

Is the pilot of this aircraft going to get a mention? The Baron got him in the end too. Any idea when this program is going to be put out?

I willingly withold any judgement until I see the finished article.

With the combined input of our (forum) top men, I expect it will be in a class of its own!

For myself, I am off to get a life, as instructed!

The one angle you will NOT get in a ‘flying shot’ is a rock-steady portrait of the pilot taken from three feet away, aft of the wing, but ,hey , that is exactly what they have done.

I suggest you wait and see and then comment, the above statement is far from the truth. If you take a closer look you will see more than one camera for a start!!!

I duuno, you’d think the Biggles Biplane Boys would have rushed their other Tiger Moth mocked up as a BE2… :diablo:

Adrian

Aint got another Tiger Moth mocked up as a BE2 :confused: Do have a BE2 Replica that happens to use some Tiger Moth components though 😀

Oh and Propstrike, this is a half hour TV docu drama with a very modest budget, and was done with what was available and possible!!! If you can tell me how to film a Tiger Moth Air To Air at night i would love to hear it. so wait untill you have seen it and get a life 😀

Sounds interesting. Now if only someone had the money and resources to recreate the epic battle fought between William Barker and the mass formation of Fokkers, for which he won his medal, and his last handul of victories.

Cor you lot were quick to get these posted. And yes, Andy, you’re right, we did shoot the entire sequence with that darn mag switch off! I only noticed it too, when I saw Damien’s pics! 😮

The Leefe Robinson story will be just one part of the story of the Victoria Cross, in a series made by Empire Productions. Having spent quite a bit of time with the production team, I can confirm that they’ve got a very good ‘handle’ on historical accuracy and presentation.

As TT said earlier, although the ‘Zeppelin’ hunt was shot with the aeroplane on trestles, it was shot from multiple angles and I’m pretty sure their effects and cgi guys will combine tell the story well.

It may not be 100-percent accurate historical documentary (or they’d have given us a huge budget to finish the BE-2 wouldn’t they? :rolleyes: ), but it will interpret the story in a way which will get the interest of a wide audience who may never have heard of Leefe-Robinson and many other VC heros too.

As you can see, forumites make ideal scruffy ‘erks’. Having been on-set from 10am to 2 this morning, I can vouch for the fact that it was “a hard day’s night” – but a heck of a lot of fun! Watch out for the results on Channel 5 somewhere around the 18th November

LOL!

😀

TT