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.