Who won the first Victoria Cross for aerial combat?

Short answer

Captain Lanoe Hawker, flying a Bristol Scout: on 25 July 1915, over Passchendaele and Zillebeke, he shot down two German aircraft and forced a third to retreat, receiving the first Victoria Cross given to a British pilot of a single-seat scout for aerial combat against heavier-than-air aircraft.

Published: November 5, 2026 · Updated: November 5, 2026 · Edited by Above Ten Thousand · Editorial policy

Who won the first Victoria Cross for aerial combat?

Bristol Scout C, archive image (Shuttleworth Collection)kitmasterbloke (CC BY), vía commons

A racing Scout armed with a Lewis

The Bristol Scout was a single-seat, rotary-engined biplane originally conceived as a racing aircraft. It first flew at Larkhill on 23 February 1914, with Busteed at the controls.

Two examples and a homemade mount

Two of the Royal Flying Corps' early Bristol Scout Cs, numbers 1609 and 1611, were flown by Captain Lanoe Hawker of No. 6 Squadron RFC. Each of them carried, in turn, a Lewis machine gun on the left side of the fuselage, on a mount designed by Hawker, almost identical to the way rifles had been trialled on the second Scout B. The 1609 was written off due to combat damage, and the 1611 then inherited the gun's mounting fittings.

The action of 25 July 1915

On 25 July 1915, over Passchendaele and Zillebeke, Hawker shot down two German aircraft and forced a third to retreat. For this action he received the first Victoria Cross awarded to a British pilot of a single-seat military scout/fighter for aerial combat against heavier-than-air enemy aircraft.