First World War Service
Leckie learned to fly in Toronto and joined the Royal Naval Air Service in 1915. During the First World War he flew anti-submarine patrols over the North Sea. Flying a Curtiss H12 flying boat on reconnaissance, Leckie downed the German zeppelin L22 near Terschelling on 14 May 1917. Fifteen months later, during a nighttime raid on 6 August 1918, a German zeppelin formation under the command of Führer der Luftschiffe (FdL.) (Admiral, 2nd class) Peter Strasser attacked Boston, Norwich, and the Humber estuary. Flying in a DH.4 biplane, Major Egbert Cadbury (pilot) and Leckie (gunner) took part in the interception engagement and were credited with downing Zeppelin L70 just north of Wells-next-the-Sea on the Norfolk coast. FdL. Strasser, head of the Imperial German Navy's zeppelin forces, was on board L70 and did not survive. By the end of the war, Leckie was a Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force (RAF).
Read more about this topic: Robert Leckie (RCAF Officer)
Famous quotes containing the words world, war and/or service:
“The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people’s reproductive behaviour, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)