LEEFE-ROBINSON 1916 + Pathe newsreel

Robinson, William Leefe (1895–1918), airman, was born at Kaima Betta, South Coorg, India, on 14 July 1895, youngest son of Horace Robinson (d. 1929), an owner and planter of coffee estates, and his wife, Elizabeth Leefe (d. 1929). Robinson was educated at St Bees Grammar School, Cumberland, entered Sandhurst ten days after the outbreak of war in August 1914, and was commissioned in the Worcestershire regiment in December. He then applied for transfer to the Royal Flying Corps and in March 1915 was posted as an observer to 4 squadron at St Omer, qualifying for his brevet on 15 April. He was wounded on 8 May, and after recovering in England learned to fly at the Central Flying School, Upavon, Wiltshire, qualifying as a pilot in August.

Robinson served with various squadrons in England until February 1916, when he was transferred to 39 Home Defence Squadron. Under the command of Captain Arthur Travis Harris he took part in an attack on German Zeppelins, which were attempting a raid on London during the night of 25/26 April 1916. He engaged, but failed to destroy, the Zeppelin LZ97 near Barkingside. Promoted on 1 September to command B flight at Sutton's Farm, near Hornchurch, Essex, early on the morning of Sunday 3 September he engaged and shot down at Cuffley, Hertfordshire, one of sixteen German airships, which had set out to raid the London area.

Robinson had been in the air for more than two hours, in a BE2C aircraft ill-suited to the task, and had unsuccessfully attacked another airship before he met the SL11. After emptying into the wooden ship, without success, two drums of newly developed explosive and incendiary ammunition, first used by Harris in the sortie against the Zeppelins in April, he set the SL11 ablaze at the third attempt by directing his fire at the rear of the hull from some 500 feet beneath it. The SL11 burned for two hours after striking the ground, the flames being visible over a 40 mile radius.

The SL11 was the first enemy airship to be brought down on British soil, and Robinson's success, witnessed by thousands of Londoners, marked the beginning of the defeat of the airship as a raiding weapon. This demonstration of the airship's vulnerability also allayed public anxiety about the bombing campaign, hitherto conducted with impunity. The award to Robinson, two days later, of the Victoria Cross no doubt reflected the government's relief as well as public sentiment, expressed also in the £4000 reward which had been put up by a consortium of businessmen for the first pilot to destroy an airship over Britain.

A modest man, embarrassed by incessant public adulation, Robinson continued to serve in England until 17 March 1917, when he returned to France as a flight commander with 48 squadron at Bertangles. The squadron had just re-equipped with the new Bristol F2A two-seat fighter, of which much was expected, and on 5 April Robinson led a six-strong formation on an offensive patrol. Over Douai they were attacked by five Albatros scouts led by Manfred von Richthofen, four of the Bristol fighters being shot down. Robinson and his observer, Lieutenant E. D. Warburton, were captured, unharmed.

Robinson made three attempts at escape from captivity, the second of which brought him tantalizingly close to the Swiss frontier. This and his high profile as a holder of the VC led to his being singled out for unusually harsh treatment by the commandants of Clausthal and Holzminden camps between May 1918 and the end of the war, and Robinson was repatriated to England on 14 December 1918 in a severely weakened state. He thus fell an easy prey to Spanish influenza, dying at Lavender Cottage, Harrow Weald, Middlesex, on 31 December 1918. He was buried with full military honours in All Saints' churchyard, Harrow Weald, on 3 January 1919.

David Gunby

Sources

R. L. Rimell, The airship VC (1989) · P. G. Cooksley, VCs of the First World War: the air VCs (1996), 64–76 · C. Bowyer, For valour: the air VCs (1978), 69–79 · R. L. Rimell, Zeppelin! (1984), 84–116 · C. Cole and E. F. Cheesman, The air defence of Britain, 1914–1918 (1984) · DNB · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1919)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35804?docPos=1

British Pathe, The Hero Airman, http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-heroairman/query/cottage+homes, 1916.

worcestershireregiment.com., http://www.worcestershireregiment.com/wr.php?main=inc/vc_w_l_robinson_page1

Home Contact kt_4_u@hotmail.com