Major Sydney Vincent Sippe (pronounced -ee) (24 April 1889 – 17 November 1968) was a British pioneer aviator. He designed, built and tested early aeroplanes, and made the first successful flight from seawater in Britain. He served in the Royal Naval Air Service during World War I, taking part in some of the earliest strategic bombing operations, and was decorated by Britain, France and Belgium. He is particularly remembered for the November 1914 bombing of the German Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen, one of the earliest long-distance bombing missions. After the war he trained pilots in Japan, and led an attempt to recover reputed gold from the wreck of the SS Tubantia, involving a key legal case about salvage.
Early life Sippe's parents were Charles Henry Sippe (1842–1924), a shipping export agent (whose firm, C H Sippe & Sons Ltd, still existed until c.2013), and Elizabeth Jane Thornton (born 1846). They had moved to Britain from Australia, both families having originally emigrated from Liverpool.
The youngest of nine children, Sydney Sippe was born in 1889 in Brixton, London, where his parents lived at 17 Lambert Road.Sippe's birth certificate He was educated at Dulwich College from May 1903 to December 1905.
Name and title Sippe was named after Sydney, Australia, where both his parents had lived."Hero of the air", Sydney Morning Herald, 4 January 1915 His first name is often misspelled 'Sidney', even on official documents, and his surname sometimes written with an accent, 'Sippé', as if of French origin. The form 'Sydney Vincent Sippe' is used both on his birth and death certificates.
Following his service during World War I, Sippe continued to use the title major – and was known as 'the Major' – even though the RAF rank was renamed squadron leader in 1919. He also went by the nickname Pi (pronounced like 'pie'), and was known to his family as Pipi.
Aviation pioneer After leaving school, in February 1906 Sippe became an engineering apprentice with British Westinghouse in Manchester.
Inventor
Between late 1909 and early 1910, shortly after Wilbur Wright first demonstrated powered flight in Europe, Sippe (aged 20), his brother Arthur, and their friend James Jensen (or Jenson) designed and built a monoplane. It had an oxy-acetylene-welded steel-tube forward structure, a bamboo rear fuselage, a detachable one-piece wing and wheel-operated elevator and wing-warping controls; the pilot sat below the wing, giving a low centre of gravity. Lack of funds and a suitable practice ground had prevented an adequate trial. Its attempted maiden flight on 24 April 1910 at Addington, Croydon, may also have failed because the engine was insufficiently powerful:Nick Forder, curator at the Museum of Science and Industry: The Friedrichshaven Raid
Sydney Sippe was thrown forward with some violence and his nose came into collision with one of the steel tubes. The nose came off worst, and a piece of flesh was removed from the inside of his thigh. That, with sundry bruises, was all. A well-meaning friend rushed up with a flask of whisky, which he thrust into the pilot's mouth, and so Sydney Sippe arrived home to his mother with a broken nose, a bleeding thigh—and slightly intoxicated.Letters page (letter from his brother, Arthur H. Sippe), Flight Magazine, 16 September 1960, quoting Croydon Advertiser, date unknown (c. August 1960?).
Test and demonstration pilot He learned to fly at the Avro school at Brooklands, where he was already flying by the autumn of 1911: reporting from Brooklands that September, Flight noted that "Sidney V. Sippe was in the air, and made two or three turns in good style" on the Avro school's new biplane.Flight Magazine, 16 September 1911, p. 803. By the end of that month he was flying solo circuits on the Avro biplaneFlight Magazine, 30 September 1911 ("From the British Flying Grounds: Brooklands Aerodrome"). He gained Royal Aero Club Aviator's Certificate No. 172, taken on an Avro biplane and announced on 13 January 1912, "in a way which showed that he had thoroughly mastered the art". He immediately became a test and demonstration pilot. Three weeks after his flying test he survived a crash near Finchampstead caused by a frozen carburettor; the aircraft was wrecked, but Sippe escaped unhurt.Aeroplane Magazine, 1 February 1912, p. 110.
In the spring of 1912 he supervised and flew trials of Commander Oliver Schwann's Avro Type D hydro-aeroplane at Barrow-in-Furness. Schwann's own attempt in the same machine the previous November had ended with it capsizing on alighting. On 2 April 1912, flying from Cavendish Dock, Sippe made the first successful flight from seawater in Britain.Sydney Morning Herald, p. 10, 30 November 1914. Flight reported that the rebuilt machine had duralumin floats made at the Vickers works and that spray was damaging its propeller tips. The 35-hp British machine left the water after a run of under and climbed to about despite intermittent engine misfiring.
In May 1912 Sippe was appointed chief pilot of Hanriot (England) Ltd. While practising at Reims he completed a flight at about and later climbed to about . Engine failure during another test forced him to land in a cornfield; the monoplane overturned without serious damage, and he flew it again in the first Aerial Derby on 8 June 1912.Aeroplane Magazine, 6 June 1912. The race around London was sponsored by the Daily Mail and included Thomas Sopwith (the eventual winner, after an appeal) and William Rhodes-Moorhouse. Sippe, flying the Hanriot monoplane, was the first competitor to start from Hendon and was awarded a silver shield by the Daily Mail judges, but engine trouble forced him out of the race."Young Aviator Honoured", The Argus, Melbourne, 5 January 1915."Sidelights from the Past", Aeroplane Magazine, 17 July 1942.
In August 1912 he flew one of the two Hanriot monoplanes entered for the Military Aeroplane Competition at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain, the other being flown by the Peruvian aviator Juan Bielovucic. The Hanriots recorded the fastest speed over the measured course (75.4 mph) and the best rate of climb of the competition, which was nonetheless won by S. F. Cody's biplane; the Hanriot gained no orders.Flight Magazine, 7 September 1912 (performance tables from the Military Aeroplane Competition, including the two Hanriots).
Later that year he joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company, carried out delivery tests of Bristol monoplanes and remained in Italy while the first licence-built Caproni-Bristol machines were assembled. He took part in the 1913 Italian military aeroplane competition, in which the Bristol-Caproni entries failed to reach the final trials. On returning to Britain he undertook flight testing and instruction on Salisbury Plain. In December 1912 Flight had also published his first-person account, “Testing a 100-H.P. Monoplane: A Reminiscence”, describing an early-morning test flight at Reims.
On 30 July 1914, shortly before the outbreak of war, Sippe took the owner R. P. Creagh to in Creagh's 80-hp Bristol biplane at Brooklands. After about an hour aloft he descended in tight spirals and made a dead-stick landing without restarting the engine; Flight described the landing as perfect.
War service In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Sippe immediately joined up: he was commissioned as an Acting Flight Lieutenant and confirmed in the rank of Flight Lieutenant for temporary service, his commission dated 4 August 1914—the day Britain declared war.Flight Magazine, 4 December 1914, p. 1174 ("The British Air Services", quoting the London Gazette of 1 December 1914). He served in the Royal Naval Air Service. He was posted to the RNAS force operating from Wilrijk aerodrome at Antwerp, which in September and October 1914 mounted the Entente's first strategic bombing raids, against the Zeppelin sheds at Düsseldorf and Cologne. Contemporary despatches record that on the second raid, on 8 October 1914, Sippe set out alongside Spenser Grey and Reginald Marix, but was forced down by mechanical trouble before reaching German territory; Marix destroyed the Zeppelin Z IX in its shed at Düsseldorf, while Grey, unable to find his target in mist, bombed Cologne railway station. Antwerp fell to the Germans the following day; Sippe, Grey and a party of Royal Marines were among the last to leave the abandoned aerodrome, escaping the city by road.
Friedrichshafen raid
This was followed by a celebrated attack on the Zeppelin sheds and factories at Friedrichshafen, Germany on 21 November 1914, one of the first long-distance bombing missions. For the raid a special "Avro Flight" was formed at Manchester in October 1914 under Squadron Commander P. Shepherd, equipped with four brand-new Avro 504s (Nos. 179, 873, 874 and 875) straight from the Avro works, each fitted to carry four Hales bombs. The crated aircraft were shipped to Le Havre and taken by rail to Belfort, France, arriving on the night of 13 November, where they were kept hidden to preserve secrecy. Shepherd fell ill and command passed to Squadron Commander Edward Featherstone Briggs.
On the morning of 21 November the aircraft took off at intervals: Briggs first in No. 873, then Flight Commander John Tremayne Babington in No. 875, and Sippe in No. 874; the fourth machine, No. 179 flown by Flight Sub-Lieutenant R. P. Cannon, broke its tail-skid and could not take off.
The three pilots flew from Belfort over mountainous terrain and in difficult weather—a risky flight near the limit of the aircraft's range. The distance was increased by the need to avoid flying over neutral Switzerland: Churchill told the House of Commons that the pilots had been given instructions to avoid neutral territory, and that the course drawn on their maps should have taken them well clear of it.Flight Magazine, 4 December 1914, p. 1176 ("The Zeppelin Raid and Flying Over Neutral Countries", reporting Churchill's reply in the House of Commons). Reaching Lake Constance, Sippe descended in mist to about ten feet above the water so as to reduce the likelihood of being seen; his report of the flight, written up in timed entries and published in the Admiralty despatch of 17 December 1914, records that at 11:30 he "came down to within 10 feet of water" and hugged the north shore of the lake until about five miles from the objective, before climbing to 1,200 feet for the attack. Making two passes over the works under heavy fire, he dropped one bomb to distract the gun crews and aimed his remaining bombs at the sheds. Despite their aircraft taking damage, the three pilots bombed their targets, dropping eleven bombs in all. Although substantial damage was claimed at the time and in some later histories,Hilary St. George Saunders: Per Ardua: The Rise of British Airpower 1911-1939, Oxford University Press, 1944. the damage inflicted was slight.
Briggs was shot down, wounded and captured (he later escaped from Germany), but Sippe and Babington returned safely: Sippe landed back at Belfort, at the exact point from which he had started, after a flight of 3 hours 50 minutes.Flight Magazine, 27 November 1914
The raid was announced by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, who called it "a fine feat of arms".Kenneth Poolman: Zeppelins over England, publ. Evans Brothers, 1960. One historian concluded: "The pilots deserve all praise for their admirable navigation... this flight of 250 miles, into gunfire, across enemy country, in the frail little Avro with its humble horse-power, can compare as an achievement with the best of them".The War in the Air, Vol. 1, Walter Raleigh, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1922.
The bullet-damaged tail of Sippe's (or possibly one of the other pilots') plane was later mounted on a plaque as a souvenir.Cross and Cockade International, vol. 21, no.3, 1990.
Honours