KITS 06/2023

N6755, Capt. Bernard A. Smart, HMS Furious, July 1918

Bernard Arthur Smart was born on December 24,

1891 in Luton. He qualified as a pilot on July 24,

1916, becoming a Captain in the Royal Naval Air

Service. He made himself famous with shooting

down the Zeppelin L23 German airship in his

Sopwith Pup on August 21, 1917, the 17-men strong

crew led by Oblt. Bernhard Dinter was killed.

As he took off from a platform on a gun turret

of the HMS Yarmouth, he thus achieved the first

ever aerial victory with an aircraft launched

from a vessel. Smart’s second day of glory came

on July 19, 1918, when he led the second wave of

“Ship’s Camels” in a raid on the German Zeppelin

hangars at Tondern (today Tønder, Denmark).

It was the first bombing raid carried from the

deck of a Royal Naval Ship. Seven Camels 2F.1

took off from the HMS Furious and managed to

destroy two airships (L54 and L60) hidden in the

biggest hangar named Toska. A captive baloon

in hangar Tobias was also destroyed. The N6755

serial of this Camel is probable and the coloring

depicted here shows the aircraft prior to the

Tondern raid. For this mission, the roundels on

the upper wing as well as on the fuselage and

cockade on the rudder were toned down with

PC10 or PC12 overspray, under which the insignia

colors were only hardly visible. Some sources

state the undersides were also oversprayed in

one of the aforementioned colors, but the photo

of one of the Camels which landed in Denmark on

the return leg shows it was not the case. It is not

clear whether the nose checkerboard was toned

down for the raid as well.

N6812, FSL Stewart D. Culley, Special Flight, NS Felixstowe, United Kingdom, July 1917

Stewart Douglas Culley was born on August 23,

1895, in Omaha as the son of an English father and

a Canadian mother. After his studies in California

and Vermont he joined RNAS in Ottawa on April

19, 1917. A month later he arrived in UK and after

training he served at Calshot and Falmouth Naval

Air Stations before he moved to Felixstowe. There

he made the first successful take off from lighter

H3 barge towed by a destroyer steaming at 36

knots. It happened on July 31, 1918 and he used

N6812. On Sunday August 11, Culley was in his

June 2023

Camel aboard a lighter towed by HMS Redoubt

as a part of the Harwich Strike Force tasked with

defending east coast of Britain. When a Zeppelin

airship was spotted, Culley took off and it took

him about an hour to reach his quarry and attack.

One of his machine guns jammed, but he emptied

the other one’s magazine into the sky giant

setting it afire. His victim was L53 and crew of 19

led by Kapitänleutnant Eduard Prölss died. Just

prior to this event, N6812 was modified, sporting

two Lewis machine guns mounted atop the

upper wing. The fuselage-mounted Vickers was

removed and an Aldis gunsight added. Later, the

aircraft served with No. 212 Sqn RAF. At the end of

its service, it was presented to the IWM, where it

is on display until today. Originally, the undersides

were painted in light blue, since restoration the

Camel sports the natural doped linen.

INFO Eduard

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