Beauchamps et DaucourtDeux daring Frenchman of L'escadrile 23 conduct a lengthy raid deep into German territory to bomb the Krupp works in Essen. Though their mission caused nominal damage, it was harbinger of raids to follow not just in the Great War but also WWII. Though a Nieuport is depicted in the article below, the made the journey in two Sopwith Strutters. One week previous this event was also reported in The Spectator:
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Lieutenant Daucourt, made a successful flight—two hundred and fifty miles each way—to Essen, the seat of Krupp's works, and returned safely after dropping bombs. The raid is officially recorded by the Germans, who admit that small bombs were dropped by several enemy airmen in the centre of the town, while minimizing the results—" most of them caused no damage." The French airmen, both of them already distinguished by their fine records, are to be congratulated on their daring and skill. Their exploit is a most encouraging earnest of further and more serious attacks on the heart of the German war industry".
Also noted on albidenis.free.fr: "
On September 23, 1916, to test his Sopwith 1A2, Capt. Robert-de-Beauchamp dropped five bombs on the Spincourt forest. The next day, he took off at 11 a.m., followed by Lieutenant Pierre Daucourt. At 5 p.m., they returned to the field, very tired, after a 700-kilometer mission flown between 4 and 5,000 meters above sea level. The target of the two planes was the Krupp arms factories near the city of Essen. Twelve bombs were dropped. Certainly a very negligible quantity but which shows, for the time, the possibility of bombing cities far from the front."
(from Le Miroir, 8 October 1916):
