Tip-and-run raid

[DEM]

Can anyone confirm that a German aircraft raided England on Jan. 7, 1917?

In a letter home, Billy Bishop of 37 Squadron, posted at Sutton's Farm, claimed to have encountered an enemy seaplane.

He wrote: "Just about noon a Hun seaplane toddled over, and Headquarters ordered me to go up after im. I did and caught up to him at 1,000 feet and had a terrific scrap. He had an observer and I was alone but I was in a BE12a and it was very fast. I must have hit him over and over again but didn't finish him. He hit my machine six times - three times, funny to say, in the propeller."

His logbook makes no mention of a fight, which has led the author Ben Greenhous to conclude Bishop made the story up.

According to the book The Sky on Fire:

"Quite regularly since 1914, single-engined German aeroplanes had braved the channel, one or two at a time, to drop a few small bombs along the coast. Their favourite target was Dover Harbour. After more than twenty such tip-and-run attacks, the British had come to accept them as a routine nuisance."

Is there a record of a Jan. 7, 1917 incursion?
Is lack of mention in a logbook proof that an event did not take place? In other words, did pilots always include everything in their logs?

[Graeme]

I have a note that the first raid of 1917 was carried out by a single German seaplane on 14 February. The aeroplane overflew Deal at about 08:00 but dropped no bombs. As far as I am aware, no combats were reported on that date.

Graeme