A Daring Pursuit
In an Ordinary Plane Aviator Bone Chased a German Sea-Plane Over Sea
On Sunday, March 19, 1916, four German sea-planes sailed over East Kent, England, in a bombing raid upon defenseless towns—Deal, Margate, Ramsgate—and arrived over Dover about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and dropped more than a dozen bombs, doing a considerable amount of damage. One bomb went through the roof of a Home where there were a large number of children; fortunately, the children, at the first sound of the raiders, had been taken to the shelter of the basement. Several children going to Sunday school were killed or injured. A woman walking along the street was blown into a doorway of a shop and badly hurt. The invaders were given very little time to do their work. British aeroplanes rose in pursuit. A sharp fight followed, both attackers and defenders using their machine guns freely in the air. One British airman particularly distinguished himself. Flight Commander R. J. Bone, R. N., pursued one of the German sea-planes out to sea for nearly 30 miles, in a small single-seater land machine. There, after an engagement lasting about a quarter of an hour, he forced it to descend, the German machine having been hit many times, and the observer disabled or killed. For this, Flight Commander Bone received the D. S. O.
The commander left the aerodrome while the enemy machine was still in sight, and making no attempt to climb steeply, kept the enemy in view. After a pursuit of nearly 30 miles he rose to 9,000 feet, 2,000 feet above the enemy. Rapidly overhauling the other machine, he attempted to make a vertical dive for it, both sides firing vigorously. Then he maneuvered ahead of the other and steered straight at him, diving below him and turning with a vertical right-hand bank immediately under him.