The first Victoria Cross ever conferred on an airman was won by Lieutenant Rhodes-Moorhouse, for extraordinary daring and endurance during the raid on Courtrai, which I mentioned on page 381. While dropping his bombs he descended to 300 feet, and was furiously assailed by anti-aircraft guns, which seriously wounded him in the thigh. He determined to save his machine at all costs, and made for home, flying at a height of only 100 feet. Though again wounded, he did not lose control of his machine, but flew thirty-five miles to his base, where he landed and made his report as if nothing had happened. Shortly afterwards he died in hospital of his wounds. Flight Sub-Lieutenant R. A. J. Warneford, R.N. On the morning of June 7, 1915, Lieutenant Warneford, who was flying in a very light monoplane, sighted a Zeppelin between Ghent and Brussels, and made straight for it. While approaching it he was too low, and was fired at by the Zeppelin's guns. Keeping to the rear of the airship, he climbed upwards by a series of jerks, until he was well above it. Then he swooped down until he was only fifty feet above the great gas bag, and dropped six bombs, the last of which burst the Zeppelin's envelope. A loud explosion followed, and the airship fell to the ground in the midst of smoke and flame. The force of the explosion turned his machine upside down, but he succeeded in righting it. Shortly afterwards his pressure pump failed to work, and he was obliged to come down in the German lines. He got out of the machine, repaired the pump, scrambled in again, and soared off. For two and a half hours he continued flying, and then he came down, happily behind his own lines. He was so weary that he fell fast asleep by the side of the machine, and was finally discovered by French soldiers only twenty yards from the cliffs of Gris-nez.[79] The story of his brilliant feat was flashed over the world, and his name at once became a household word in two continents. He had, by superb courage and skill, destroyed the first of the Zeppelins in flight. The Allies vied with each other in doing him honour; but, alas! his career, which promised so much, was soon brought to a close. Ten days later, while trying a new machine at Versailles, he was thrown out and killed. Captain Lance George Hawker, D.S.O., Royal Engineers and Royal Flying Corps. On 19th April Captain Hawker dropped bombs on a German airshed from a height of only 200 feet. He was under heavy fire all the time, and ran terrible risks. To avoid the shells hurled at him, he took refuge behind a German captive balloon, and was enabled to make good his escape. For this feat he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. On 25th July, when flying alone, he fell in with three German aeroplanes, and attacked them one after the other. The first escaped, but he damaged the second and third so badly that they were forced to descend. For this splendid feat he received the V.C.