1000 tweets later

5 February 2010 in Blogging, Pictures, Words by Brett Holman | 7 comments

Twitter wordle

Last August I took up Twitter. I’ve just reached a thousand tweets (or will have, when this post is auto-tweeted), so it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on how useful the whole thing is.

I was initially sceptical, but I find that Twitter does complement blogging very well. It’s a good place to post links to useful or interesting links which I think are worth sharing, but aren’t worth a blog post (I don’t like just posting links: I feel I should say something insightful to go along with it, but I don’t always have something insightful to say!) Ditto for things I come across in my reading. It’s not quite as good as having somebody sitting next to you who to say ‘hey, look at this!’ to, but then again that sort of behaviour is usually frowned upon in libraries anyway. As the wordle above shows, most of my tweets are military history-related, and still often aviation-related, but a bit more broadly construed than here on the blog. (‘rt’ is short for ‘retweet’, which reposting the tweets of other users.) I also talk about other interests or pop culture from time to time. Of course, I could do that here if I wanted, but I don’t want to change the focus of the blog. The informality of Twitter makes it easier to play around.

Even more than blogging, Twitter is about who is following you and who you are following. (In round numbers, about 140 and about 100 people, respectively.) While there are a few regular Airminded commenters who are on Twitter (@thrustvector, @AirPowerHistory, @jondresner, @lifeasdaddy), I generally interact with a different set of people there. I get the sense that most of them don’t read Airminded, at least not habitually — even outside of the SEO consultants (who LOVE using the web, but only seem to actually use the web to tell other people how they can get more readers). On the other hand, there are people I’ve interacted with in the Twitterverse who do read Airminded, but wouldn’t comment here. Informality wins again. The abbreviated and fleeting nature of tweeting makes it more liberating, in a sense, than blogging: there’s only so much you can say in 140 characters, so you don’t need to say something brilliant, and if you say something strikingly unbrilliant, well, it’s soon lost in the stream. (On the other hand, it’s surprising just how clever some people can be with so little to work with.)

My proudest Twitter moment did relate to Airminded. @ukwarcabinet is tweeting the British Cabinet’s view of the Second World War, day by day (currently it’s up to 4 February 1940). It’s run by the National Archives (@UkNatArchives), and includes a link to the relevant Cabinet papers, which can be downloaded for free. And according to Jo Pugh (@mentionthewar), who works on it, I was partly to blame:

@Airminded I hope the @ukwarcabinet thing seems like a good idea. It was largely inspired by your post-blogging the Sudeten Crisis.

Which is very cool indeed.

Twitter promises to be even better than a bunch of RSS feeds for keeping tabs on conferences, jobs and general academic gossip. I say ‘promises’ because academia is, as usual, slow to cotton on to new media, and the critical mass of #twitterstorians isn’t quite there yet for Twitter to be an essential way to keep up to date with your own field. Which is one reason why I’m writing this post: sign up, follow @Airminded, and tweet! If you choose not to, you can still get an idea of what I’m tweeting by looking at the bottom of the sidebar on Airminded’s home page.

The wind vs. the whirlwind

2 February 2010 in 1940s, Plots, Videos by Brett Holman | 16 comments

German vs Anglo-American bomb delivery, 1940-1945

It must be time for some plots. The data here is taken from Richard Overy, The Air War 1939-1945 (Washington: Potomac Books, 2005 [1980]), 120, and represents the bomb tonnage delivered between 1940 and 1945 by Germany on Britain (including V-weapons) in blue, and by Britain and the United States on Europe as a whole (meaning Germany, mostly, but also France, Italy, the Netherlands, etc) in red. The first two years cover the Battle of Britain and the Blitz; the last four the Combined Bomber Offensive. Germany dealt out more aerial punishment than it (or its allies and conquests) received only in 1940; from 1943 Britain and the United States dropped vastly more bombs than the Luftwaffe could ever dream of doing. And here is part of the reason why:
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The trumpet calls

1 February 2010 in Blogging, Ephemera, Pictures by Brett Holman | 5 comments

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

The Trumpet Calls

Airminded is hosting the next edition of the Military History Carnival on 15 February. Please send me suggestions for the best military history blogging since 17 January, either by email (bholman at airminded dot org), by web (here or here) or by twitter (@Airminded or tagged #mhc21). Thanks!

Image source: Wikipedia.

Conwy and Caernarfon

30 January 2010 in Pictures, Travel 2009 by Brett Holman | 4 comments

This post relates to my trip to England and Wales in September 2009.

Caernarfon Castle
Another day, another castle. But first …
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A Japanese death ray?

24 January 2010 in 1930s, 1940s, Books by Brett Holman | 4 comments

If anyone came close to creating a death ray weapon by the end of the Second World War, it was the Japanese army. It wouldn’t have helped them much, however, as they weren’t at war with rabbits. According to Richard Overy in The Air War 1939-1945 (Washington: Potomac Books, 2005 [1980]), 195:

The lack of satisfactory evaluative machinery led for example to the diversion of considerable resources to the search for a ‘death ray’; a search that Western powers had abandoned in the 1930s. By the end of the war the Japanese ‘ray’ could kill a rabbit after five minutes at a distance of 1,000 yards.

The reference Overy gives for this is the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, report 15, appendix XX, but this appears to be in error as that’s online and has only ten appendices. According to this site, report 63 (Japanese Air Weapons and Tactics) does in fact discuss the death ray. Unfortunately I can’t find that one (not for free, any way).
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The rise of ‘Luftwaffe’

20 January 2010 in 1930s, 1940s, Words by Brett Holman | 23 comments

Because I’m too lazy to write a proper post, here are some of my recent tweets:

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in The Times was on 24 May 1939, as the owner of 2 yachts entered in a race to Germany.

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in the Manchester Guardian was on 30 Nov 1939, in a commentary on the different national air forces.

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in the Observer was on 5 June 1938, again in reference to a yacht race.

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in Parliament may have been on 21 Feb 1940, in a question about air strengths: http://bit.ly/6yQL6d

It seems that “Luftwaffe” was not in wide circulation in English before c. 1939. It’s somewhat anachronistic then, to use it for the 1930s.

… at least when talking about Britain and its fear of the German air force. But “Luftwaffe” is entrenched, and so much handier!

I can add some other data points. The first use in the New York Times was on 17 February 1940, as part of the name of a German propaganda film (D III 88, Die neue deutsche Luftwaffe greift an). Less authoritatively (because incomplete), the first mention in the Google Newspaper Archive is from 15 January 1939 in the Chicago Daily Tribune (in an article entitled ‘The Nazi air force’).

As might be expected, aviation periodicals were onto the word ‘Luftwaffe’ earlier. Flight first used it on 11 March 1937, in an article about a visit to a German squadron. Aeroplane used it as early as 1 April 1936, in the title of a German-language book being reviewed (Die deutsche Luftwaffe by Kürbs), but there could easily be an earlier use. Oddly, the OED gives The Times in 1935 as the earliest cite, although I can’t find it in the online version:

1935 Times 23 May 15/1 The armed forces are henceforth known collectively as the Wehrmacht (Defence Force) and consist of the Army (Heer), Navy (Kriegsmarine), and the Air Arm (Luftwaffe).

But I stand by the conclusion I originally tweeted, i.e. that ‘Luftwaffe’ was not a widely used term in English before around 1939 (in fact, more like 1940). Between 1935, when the Luftwaffe was officially founded, and the start of the war, it generally seems to have been referred to as ‘the German Air Force’ or some variation thereof (as I noted in response to a query from @clioandme).

Well, so what, one might ask? Not very much, I’d have to answer. I’m fairly pedantic about avoiding anachronistic words — I consciously nearly always write ‘aeroplane’, for example, instead of ‘airplane’ (an Americanism, I think, in my period at least) or ‘plane’ (only common from the late 1930s, at least in written British English). But although the man on the Clapham omnibus might have looked confused if asked in 1935 or 1938 if he was afraid of the Luftwaffe, it was a term used by some English speakers at the time (and presumably all German speakers), it was widely used in the somewhat important period 1939-45, it’s an accepted term today (that it’s in the OED is significant), and it’s precise and concise. It’s too useful to discard, even if it were possible to do so. So all I hope for is that just pointing out the slight anachronicity of ‘Luftwaffe’ for the years 1935 to 1939 will satisfy my inner pedant.

It’s alive!

18 January 2010 in 1920s, 1930s, After 1950, Air control, Blogging, Contemporary by Brett Holman | 8 comments

After a long hiatus, a new Military History Carnival has appeared, at The Edge of the American West and H-War. (Thanks, David Silbey!) A post on combat drones at Legal History Blog caught my eye. It suggests that drones are part of a process in America, post-Vietnam, whereby the need for public support for military adventurism is minimised by the increasing use of high technology, particularly airpower, since they minimise American casualties and hence political resistance. I’d argue it goes back much further than that. Air control between the wars — as practiced by the RAF in Iraq and the US Marine Corps in Nicaragua — had much the same purpose. And then there’s the (alleged) American preference for security through superweapons. Still, the conversations we are now having about the ethical and political ramifications of drones are interesting; the prospect of robotic warfare in the interwar period didn’t lead to the same debates. We have different interests now, it seems, even with respect to the same subjects.

Conwy and Llandudno

17 January 2010 in Pictures, Travel 2009 by Brett Holman | No comments

This post relates to my trip to England and Wales in September 2009.

Conwy
This is Conwy from the vantage point of its town walls, on a drizzly morning in early autumn. It has a population of 14000, which doesn’t really qualify it as small, but the area inside the walls is quite compact, so it feels much smaller than it should.
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Dreams of a colder war

11 January 2010 in After 1950, Aircraft, Art, Blogging, Cold War, Ephemera, Pictures by Brett Holman | 8 comments

Freedom has a new sound!

It is officially too darn hot today: 43° C. So naturally my thoughts turn to a colder time: the 1950s. The above image (which I found as part of x-ray delta one’s wonderful Flickr stream; he also has a suitably breathless blog, ATOMIC-ANNIHILATION) would seem to be part of a public relations exercise from Convair, relating to its interceptor, the F-102A Delta Dagger. I’m not sure what year it’s from exactly, but the Dagger entered service in 1956, so probably then or the following year. (So it could be an early effort from Don Draper.) Evidently there were a lot of complaints from the public about sonic booms from the Dagger, the USAF’s first supersonic interceptor. The text is really something else; it almost circles right through brazen propaganda to become an honest argument that sonic booms really are good for you. Almost:

Freedom Has a New Sound!

ALL OVER AMERICA these days the blast of supersonic flight is shattering the old familiar sounds of city and countryside.

At U. S. Air Force bases strategically located near key cities our Airmen maintain their round the clock vigil, ready to take off on a moment’s notice in jet aircraft like Convair’s F-102A all-weather interceptor. Every flight has only one purpose — your personal protection!

The next time jets thunder overhead, remember that the pilots who fly them are not willful disturbers of your peace; they are patriotic young Americans affirming your New Sound of Freedom!

Presumably the next panel would show the milkman clutching his ears and screaming in pain, and the one after that the homeowners sweeping up the bits of broken glass. That new sound of freedom wasn’t free.

To-day and to-morrow

10 January 2010 in 1920s, 1930s, Books, International air force, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Space by Brett Holman | 5 comments

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

‘To-day and To-morrow’ was a series of over a hundred essays on ‘the future’ of a diverse range of subjects, which were published in pamphlet form by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. between 1924 and 1931. The authors are equally varied: some were acknowledge experts in their fields, others seem to have been chosen for their ability to provoke. Some of the ‘To-day and To-morrow’ essays have since attained classic status; most have been forgotten. But as a whole they are an impressive testimony to a vibrant, wideranging (and idiosyncatic) kind of British futurism, and I think they deserve more attention. Some of them have been reprinted from time to time, and if you’re rich you can both nearly all of them in collected volumes through Routledge, but otherwise there are so many they are are hard to track down. So I’ve tried to compile a definitive list of the series’ titles (which are mostly classical allusions) with links to online sources for the texts and some sort of author biography, where available. Google Books has many of them, but only snippets or previews, so I’ve linked to other sources where possible. Additions and corrections are welcome.

Physically, they were very small books (pott octavo, to be precise), easy to slip into a pocket, and numbered only a hundred pages or so, in large type and generous margins. Their price was 2/6, about the same price as a cheap novel, but five times the price of the later, hugely successful Penguins. So they did not attract a mass readership, but do seem to have been much read by the chattering classes. (See Peter J. Bowler, Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2009), 139.) Many of the titles went through multiple impressions. And at least one was discussed in the House of Commons.
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