5 Pounds - Elizabeth II Victoria Cross - William Leefe Robinson

William Leefe Robinson earned the Victoria Cross on the night of 2–3 September 1916 by becoming the first Allied pilot to shoot down a German airship over British soil — a Schütte-Lanz SL 11, not a Zeppelin as is commonly reported, brought down over Cuffley, Hertfordshire. He was awarded the VC the same morning it crashed. Robinson was later shot down by Manfred von Richthofen's squadron in 1917, spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, and died of influenza in December 1918, weeks after the Armistice.