Sighting record / 1912
14 October 1912. Dusk was falling fast over Sheerness, the naval dockyard town at the mouth of the Medway. Then came the sound. An engine, somewhere overhead. Many people heard it, in Sheerness and in Queenborough two miles to the south. Witnesses, among them a Royal Navy lieutenant, made out a red light passing to and fro over the town. At the Eastchurch aerodrome, flares were lit to guide the aircraft in. Nothing landed. No British aircraft was flying that night. Within weeks Winston Churchill was answering questions in Parliament, and privately blaming a German Zeppelin. Germany denied it. The mystery was never solved, and it set off Britain's great phantom airship panic.
In 1912 Britain watched the sky with growing unease. Germany's Zeppelins were the most advanced airships in the world. Night flying was still a rarity. At Sheerness, a naval dockyard town at the mouth of the Medway on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, the Royal Navy kept its torpedo school, HMS Actaeon. Nearby lay Eastchurch, the naval flying school and aerodrome.