Two more Zeppelins were lost two days later; the L-7 (one of the oldest airships in the service) was shot down by French warships off Saloniki, while the other fell a victim to the guns of a British squadron off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein.
An Italian airship, the M-3, attempted a reconnoitering trip over the Austrian positions on the Gorizia front, but was heavily bombarded with incendiary shells. Fire broke out on the airship and the resulting explosion tore it apart, killing the crew of six men.
Sixteen Allies' aeroplanes undertook a bombing expedition upon the German aerodromes at Mariakerke, dropping thirty-eight large and seventeen small bombs. A sea plane dropped one 100-pound bomb and two 65-pound bombs on the Solvay Works at Zeebrugge. All the machines are reported to have returned in safety, with one exception.
Aerial combats increased in number and violence during the summer months, as many as thirty separate fights taking place in a single day on a short stretch of the battle fronts. In one of the combats, early in June, Lieutenant Immelmann, of the German forces, was shot down and killed. At first the report included his famous comrade, Lieutenant Boelke, among the killed, but news received later mentioned his name among the fighting corps.
Dover and other ports on the English coast were raided by two German sea planes on June 9 and 10, 1916, according to the German official report. The British denied that any such raid took place. The next day, two German sea planes attacked Calais, on the French side of the Channel, dropping bombs on the port and the encampments. They returned to their base undamaged.
German aeroplanes also raided Kantara, thirty miles south of Port Said, and fired on Romani with machine guns. A number of casualties occurred at Kantara.
A raid of considerable magnitude was carried out by the German forces against the port of Reval, during which they bombarded cruisers, destroyers, military buildings, and several submarines lying in the harbor. One of the latter is reported to have been hit four times. The sea planes had been convoyed to the port by a fleet of cruisers and destroyers which waited in the open sea for the return of the aeroplanes. The attacking party had no losses.
An aerial battle between more than forty machines took place on July 3, 1916, near Lille. A British squadron set out to bombard the city of Lille, but was attacked during the bombardment by a fleet of twenty German monoplanes and biplanes. The British claim to have brought down two of the German machines, while all the British returned safely to their lines.
Similar raids continue every day along the battle front in Flanders, Belgium, and France, and even to enumerate them would be merely a repetition entirely without value to the reader.[Back to Contents]