The leading spirit and commanding officer was Commander Samson, R.N., and by 4th September, 1914, he was able to report that bombs had been dropped on four German officers and forty men who had got rather too near Dunkirk. Then, about a fortnight later, came the first raid in force against the enemy's country, which created quite a scare in the German frontier cities, since, judging our gallant airmen by their own low-down standards, they feared for the lives and property of civilian inhabitants. After carefully and successfully assisting in covering the transit of the Expeditionary Force to France, a temporary base for the naval wing was established at Ostend. It was to assist in establishing this base that the three battalions of Royal Marines were dispatched to that place in the early part of the war. Other outlying bases were gradually established in Belgium. The naval motors, acting in conjunction with the Belgians, made things very warm for the prowling Uhlans, and eventually a regularly organized combined expedition of motors and aeroplanes was directed against Cologne and Düsseldorf, with the object of destroying the Zeppelin sheds at these places and, haply, any Zeppelins that might be taking their repose within. It fell to Flight-Lieutenant Collet of the Royal Marine Artillery to score the first "bull's-eye". This officer had attracted some attention by the way he had handled a heavy German-built biplane which the Admiralty had bought from a Leipzig firm in 1913. In the hands of the German pilot who came over with her the new machine appeared but a slow and lumbering affair, but flown by Collet she became endued with a new life, and was made to perform all sorts of startling manoeuvres. "To see him descend for a thousand feet or so," says an eye-witness, "in a closely wound spiral, with the machine standing vertically on one wing-tip, was an education in the handling of big aeroplanes." Accompanied by other aviators, Lieutenant Collet set out from their base on 22nd September, and made for Düsseldorf, about 100 miles distant from Antwerp. Here, flying very low, he dropped four bombs on the Zeppelin shed which was the special object of attack. What damage was done was not ascertained. The attacking machine was only struck by a single bullet, which did no damage, and Collet and his companions regained their base without difficulty. About a fortnight later another raid was made against the same sheds and also against those at Cologne.