This sinisterly atmospheric night composition was previously mistakenly described as a German raid on the lower reaches of the Thames: it is in fact a raid by British aircraft on German trenches in France or Belgium , sometime between late 1916 and the end of the First World War. The aircraft are Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2b fighter-bombers, which entered service in summer 1915 as fighters and were relegated to night bombing in late 1916, serving as such in France until the end of the war. The F.E.2b was a single-engined two-seater 'push-prop' biplane, armed with two machine guns and capable of a speed of 91.5 mph (147 kmh).