Fragment of fabric from the German Schütte-Lanz SL11 airship, brought down over Cuffley, Hertfordshire, 3 September 1916

2nd Lieutenant (later Captain) William Leefe Robinson (1895-1918) of the Royal Flying Corps was flying a converted Blériot Experimental 2c aircraft over Cuffley, near Potters Bar, in Hertfordshire, on the night of 2/3 September 1916 when he spotted a German airship. The Schütte-Lanz SL11, officially an airship rather than a Zeppelin, was returning from a bombing raid and carried a crew of sixteen men. Robinson made a number of attacks on the airship from different angles, eventually causing it to catch fire. The German crew were all killed in the resulting crash and the site became the focus of sightseers and souvenir hunters.

Robinson became a celebrity as the first British pilot to bring down a German airship in World War One (1914-1918) and he was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross for his action. In 1918 Robinson was shot down on the Western Front and was held as a prisoner of war until the end of the War. Soon after his repatriation in December 1918 Robinson died having contracted the Spanish Flu.