May 19:
Quote:
I have at last arrived safely at my destination. Yesterday was a rotten day, but I motored to Dover in the afternoon and from there into St. Margaret's Bay, where I saw the holes made by the Zepp bombs. they were most disappointing, being very small, one foot by six inches deep. They were incindiary and not explosive.
I took the air from Folkestone this afternoon at 3.15 and circled round for 15 minutes, getting to only 2,000 feet. At that I pushed off across the Channel. My engine developed a most appalling vibration, and I hardly hoped to reach the other side. I arrived at Calais at 1,500 feet, and struggled on up the coast here.
Things are much as usual. I am taking an 80 Avro out to an advanced base to-morrow morning, the B.E., of course, being useless... Please send the gramophone at once.
-Harold Rosher, letter to his father, May 19, 1915
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Air War: Anthony Fokker demonstrates the first working synchronized machine gun to a group of Iflieg officers at Döberitz. The test bed is one of the five M.5k monoplanes copied by Fokker from the Morane-Saulnier model H purchased the previous year.
Celtic Sea: Bernd Wegener, commanding
U-27, sinks the freighter SS
Dumfries, 4,121 tons, carrying a cargo of coal from Cardiff to Livorno, Italy, bringing his score to 5 ships and 20,233 tons.
North Sea: Hans Schultheß, in
U-23, captures and sinks three more British trawlers -
Chrysolite, 222 tons,
Crimond, 173 tons, and
Lucerne, 154 tons. His score is now 6 ships and 4,997 tons.
Gulf of Aden: At 1345 hours HMS
Chatham comes across the collier
Kendal Castle in Cloch bay. At 1400 the cruiser stops to communicate with the collier, and at 1415 is on her way again. It's not in
Chatham's log, but according to one source
*, Chatham also encountered the monitor's convoy itself and Captain Drury-Lowe sent a wireless message to Captain Fullerton: "Wish you the best of luck and success. Left Zanzibar 9 p.m., 16th. Strong SSW winds to Cape Guardafui and strong northerly currents all the way."
When the convoy reaches Cloch Bay they don't stop, but repeat the procedure used at Gibraltar, the tugs slipping their tow lines and recoaling in shifts as the convoy proceeds past the bay.
*Severn's Saga, by E. Keble Chatterton, Hurst & Blackett, Ltd. London, 1938