The raiders were Squadron-Commander Briggs, Flight-Commander Babbington, and Flight-Lieutenant Sippe, all of the Royal Navy. They are supposed to have started from the neighbourhood of Belfort, that very strongly fortified town on the eastern frontier of France. They were mounted on similar machines--Avro biplanes. Heading almost due east, they struck the Rhine in the vicinity of Basle--where it turns almost at a right angle from east to north--flew upstream as far as Schaffhausen with its picturesque falls, and then struck across country to Ludwigshafen, at the western extremity of Lake Constance, or the Boden See as the Germans term it. Thence they steered directly down the lake at their objective, the cluster of hangars and workshops on the lakeside, just east of the town of Friedrichshafen. Their advent was both seen and heard, and the whirr of their propellers was at once answered by the stutter of Maxims, the banging of guns, and the popping of musketry. But it is not easy to disable an aeroplane unless you are successful in damaging it in a vital part; so, regardless of this very warm reception, the naval airmen swooped down one after the other from the high altitudes at which they were travelling, and, passing over their target at a height of about 1200 feet, discharged their cargoes of bombs. Commander Briggs was the first to arrive and drop his bombs, but his petrol tank being pierced by a bullet the petrol ran out and he was brought to the ground, where he was made prisoner and taken off to hospital, having received some injuries from his fall. Babbington and Sippe, following in his tracks, bombarded first the hangars and afterwards the Zeppelin factory, and, circling round, flew off down the Rhine and arrived safely at their starting-point, though their machines had suffered some minor damages. Both were decorated on their return with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, which was pinned on their breasts by General Thevenet, the Governor of Belfort. All three, too, appeared as recipients of the Distinguished Service Order in the New Year's Honours List. And they had well earned their distinctions. Putting on one side the risks inseparable from such an enterprise, they had flown right into the enemy's country for a very considerable distance, over a mountainous district and in quite unfavourable weather conditions, and had created a tremendous moral effect in the enemy nations. They had probably done a considerable amount of material damage to the hangars and workshops, possibly to one or more Zeppelins as well, but no certain details as to the extent have yet become available.