To a certain extent their method of attack was better planned than those of their ill-fated detachments, who were already either destroyed or in full flight. They flew high and with a great space between the pairs of units. Moreover, with the sun well behind them, they offered a difficult target to the British gunners.
The nearest hostile seaplane was actually immediately above the lighthouse at the end of the North Pier of Tynemouth harbour when a twelve-pounder shell from the Cullercoats Battery struck her. In the twinkling of an eye the graceful bird-like machine was literally blown to atoms, the explosion of her petrol tanks throwing out spurts of lurid flame out of which fragments of the ill-fated craft fell with unequal velocity into the sea.
Undeterred by this catastrophe, the second aeroplane, travelling through the air at a rate of seventy miles an hour, passed over the South Pier. Several times she swayed ominously in the air currents set up by the projectiles which screeched within a few feet of the swiftly-moving target.
Now she was within the line of batteries and immediately above the most congested quarter of South Shields. It seemed as if nothing could prevent the seaplane from working havoc upon the crowded shipping between Tynemouth and Newcastle. Men, women, and children crowded into the streets, gazing in blank astonishment at the sight of a hostile aircraft making ready for its work of destruction. Tales of probable invasion had for years past fallen upon deaf ears; now that the actual danger was apparent they could not realize it.
They were not long left in doubt. The seaplane slowed down, and, descending to less than four hundred feet, dropped two bombs in quick succession. No doubt these were intended for the petroleum tanks owned by the Tyne Commissioners. Both missiles went wide of the mark. The first struck and destroyed a Russian timber barque moored at the jetty; the second demolished the best part of a row of houses, and started a disastrous fire that, before it was extinguished, laid bare nearly an eighth of South Shields.
Following the course of the river the seaplane flew onwards. Four hundred feet beneath her lay the locks of Tyne dock, the great commercial basin controlled by the North-Eastern Railway Company, and which, in time of war, would form the principal coaling and oil-fuel base for British destroyers obliged to replenish their bunkers and tanks in the Tyne.