At dawn on August 21st, 1917, Zeppelin L23 was shadowing the British First Light Cruiser Squadron off the Danish coast. At 6.30 a.m. Lt. Bernard Arthur Smart of the Royal Naval Air Service took off in a Sopwith Pup from a platform on a gun turret of the cruiser HMS Yarmouth. He was to achieve the impossible: kill position above and behind a Zeppelin at sea.

“I was now at 7,000 feet and the Zeppelin a thousand feet below at an angle of 45 degrees and I was still heading straight for her stern. I pushed forward the control stick and dived. The speed indicator went with a rush up to 150 m.p.h. and I was aiming to cut under the Zeppelin a few yards astern of her. The roar of the engine had increased to a shrill scream while the wires were whistling and screeching in an awful manner. I completely lost my head—the earth vanished, the sky vanished, the sea was no more—my universe consisted of that great round silvery object, myself and space. Everything then happened automatically. At 250 yards and at the same height as the Zeppelin, I flattened out slightly and pulled the lever which works the fixed machine-guns. I had misjudged the angle at which this was mounted on the plane, and saw the white stream of my incendiary bullets going too high. In a flash I had nosed down again, flattened out, and rammed down the machine-gun’s operating lever—and held it there. ...I had just time to see about half a dozen enter the blunt end of the Zeppelin, and a spurt of flame.... I found myself straightened out at 3,000 feet lower and turned to see what had happened. The after end of the Zeppelin was now a mass of flames and had dropped so that the nose was pointing to the sky at an angle of 45 degrees while the flames were fast licking up towards the nose...and continued to burn on the water for three or four minutes. ...I was now a considerable way off and as the flames finally died out, the smoke, in spite of the wind, hung over the sea in a tremendous column.”

Oblt. Bernhard Dinter and his crew of 17 were killed. This was the first-ever successful air-to-air attack from a seagoing vessel. It would lead directly to the sunset of the zeppelin as a weapon of war, and to the rise of the aircraft carrier as the warship supreme.

This full-color art print is presented on heavy paper, 20 inches wide by 16 inches high—a standard size suitable to a wide selection of inexpensive frames available at any good craft store or frame shop. (Obviously the watermark will not appear on your copy! The image will appear as at donhollway.com/tondernraid ). Upon purchase the art will immediately be custom-printed and shipped in a durable tube, arriving within a week or so of the order date.

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