Masterton pilot's tale of bravery

MISSION: Sopwith Camel aeroplanes on the deck of HMS Furious during World War I.PHOTO/COURTESY OF LONDON IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

The name of Masterton's Samuel Dawson can be found on a memorial at the far north city Archangel, a Russian naval port on the edge of the White Sea.

For half the year the temperature struggles to rise above freezing. For a World War I pilot, it is a long way from New Zealand and his parents' farm near Masterton.

Flight Lieutenant Dawson - a decorated airman discharged as medically unfit after a few weeks with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force - ended his days in a remote theatre of war flying a Royal Air Force seaplane over the Gulf of Finland in the campaign against the Russian Red Army. The action which led to his death took place 10 months after the Armistice in November 1918 and occurred during the unsuccessful Allied intervention in Russia to defeat Bolshevik forces.

Dawson's journey to the Baltic was an eventful one. After leaving school, he trained as a telegraphist.

Following his stumble with New Zealand services, he crossed the Tasman and joined the Royal Australian Naval Transport Service, and served in the Mediterranean. This made the next step straightforward - entry to the Royal Naval Air Service in Britain in July 1917. Dawson got his pilot's badge in January 1918 and within three months was training for a top-secret operation.

At the controls of single-engined Sopwith Camels, the mission pilots flew practice runs over targets on a Scottish airfield before heading into the North Sea on board HMS Furious. Their objective was the destruction of Zeppelin sheds at Tondern, a German town near the border with neutral Denmark.

Airships had been an important part of Germany's arsenal, used for reconnaissance and less successfully in bombing raids over Britain. The real value of the cigar-shaped craft was the psychological impact felt by people on the ground.

Seven Camels flew off Furious in the early hours of July 19, 1918. Dawson, with two 25kg bombs strapped to his bi-plane, took off in the second group for the 120km flight to the target. The raid was a triumph - two 200m-long zeppelins were destroyed and the airbase crippled, the first carrier strike in history. The Te Puke Times, noting that Lieutenant Dawson once worked in the town post office, reported the pilot, despite fierce enemy fire, saw his bombs "burst on the building with fine effect".

Running low on fuel, Dawson had to put down in Denmark, landing safely despite a punctured tyre, and began a search for petrol.

The New Zealander, "not hankering after an indefinite holiday", swapped his flying outfit for civilian clothes and headed for the coast. There his luck ran out. Arrested by police, Dawson was reunited with two other Tondern raid pilots and detained in a hotel. The Kiwi managed to slip out, disguising himself with a hat. He dodged his pursuers by train and bicycle until he caught a boat to Sweden, hopped across to Norway before catching another boat for Scotland. He was back in Britain barely two weeks after the raid.

Dawson, awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, remained on active service. In 1919 he sailed on the modified cruiser HMS Vindictive with the British and French Fleet in support of White Russian forces fighting the Bolsheviks at Petrograd - modern-day St Petersburg. On September 17, Dawson failed to return from a patrol. He was 25. The brave airman was buried at Koivisto, a former Finnish town but now part of Russia.

- Sources: Errol Martyn, Gerry Wright, Flying Navy by David Allison with Ray Richards (Fleet Air Arm Museum)