I was reading this article and at number 27 there was a picture of a German airplane flying over the Pyramids of Giza. How was it there? From what I understand the Khedivate of Egypt at this point in time had been de facto ruled by the British. How was a german plane able to get to British-controlled territory especially when the Ottoman Empire and the Germans had been pushed back. I would have thought the Germans would have kept their planes in the western or eastern front.
Now this is an interesting case, as the photo is doctored, but it does not show an entirely fictional scene. German plane visible in a picture has been added in the darkroom, as the original picture was showing only an aerial view of Cairo, but the picture itself has been made by an observer/rear gunner of a German military airplane. This photo is credited to Oberleutnant (1st Lt.) Richard Falke and Leutnant (2nd Lt.) Paul Schultheiß, members of the 300th Air Unit, often called 'Pascha' after the common name of the contingent of troops sent by Germany and Austria-Hungary to Palestine. The unit, consisting of eight Rumpler C.I planes has arrived in April 1916 and remained in the area until 1918.
The photograph in question is believed to be taken by Falke and Schultheiß during their long-run bombing/reconnaissance raid undertaken on 13th November 1916 that took them from Be'er Scheva to Cairo with a refueling in al-Arish (in total roughly 800 km [500 miles] there and back, the flight took roughly 9 hours). At the time, Be'er Sheva was still controlled by Ottomans and has been captured by Australians only on 31st October 1917. Airmen successfully arrived at Cairo, released the bombs over the railway station, took pictures of the city and the situation on the Suez Channel and returned to base. The picture with the Pyramids had later another plane added, quite possibly for the propaganda purposes and was widely circulated in German press, causing a lot of interest as it was most likely the first widely published aerial photo of the Pyramids. Although the bombing damage was minimal, Neumann suggests that the raid was considered to be more of a psychological warfare, aimed at distressing the British and making them doubt the reports coming from the vicinity of Cairo and regarding the movement of Ottoman troops.
It is worth noting that the 11th December 1916 issue of The Bombay Chronicle contains an article about an aerial raid on Cairo, where 'no less than nine bombs' were dropped on the city centre, resulting in 21 deaths and substantial number of wounded, with the article naming wife of Lt. George Wyman Bury, a British intelligence agent, as one of the latter.
Gröschel, D., Ladek, J., Wings over the Sinai and Palestine, in: Over the Front, vol.13, no.1, 1998, pp.3 - 65.
Neumann, G.K., The German Airforce I Knew 1914-1918: Memoirs of the Imperial German Air Force in the Great War [transl. by J.E. Gurdon], Pen & Sword Military, 2014.
Prüfer, C., Germany's Covert War in the Middle East: Espionage, Propaganda and Diplomacy in World War I [transl. by K. Morrow]. Continuum-3PL, 2017.