Monthly Archives: October 2005

Peter Almond. 90 Years of the Air League: The Story of British Aviation. London: Air League, n.d. [1999]. This history of the Air LeagueThe major British aviation advocacy group, founded in 1909 as the Aerial League of the British Empire, then known as the Air League of the British Empire from 1918 until some time in the 1950s. is very slim - only 30 pages in all - and there are no references, but there's still a lot of valuable info in here that can't be found anywhere else (at least until I get to the Air League's archives myself, and/or find a copy of Gibbs-Smith's version, written 40 years earlier). Some nice pictures too. Graciously provided by the Air League itself.

Thanks to Chris Williams for pointing me in the direction of Patrick Wright's article at openDemocracy about the Anti-Air War Memorial at Woodford Green, Essex. I hadn't heard of this before. It was made by sculptor Eric Benfield in the form of a bomb falling through the air, and in June 1936 it was put up on land owned by none other than the socialist and feminist, Sylvia Pankhurst. At this time, she owned a pacifist and anti-fascist newspaper called the New Times and Ethiopia News.I didn't know of Pankhurst's devotion to the cause of Ethiopia. This was just after the Italian invasion and conquest of that country, during which Italy bombed and gassed civilians. She moved to Ethiopia after the Second World War and is buried there. It was soon vandalised by fascists, and so was repaired and re-dedicated by Benfield and Pankhurst in July.

The Memorial itself was dedicated in ironic fashion to the politicians who had 'upheld the right to use bombing Planes' at the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932.Britain had opposed a ban on bombing, partly because of the needs of air control policies, but also because of worries that a ban would be ineffective because of the possibility of converting civil aircraft into bombers. See Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber, chapter 1. Benfield later wrote that these politicians were boasting of their achievement, though unfortunately he doesn't name them. The Memorial's purpose was explained in New Times and Ethiopia News (5 May 1936) by the Countess of Warwick:

There are thousands of memorials in every town and village to the dead, but not one as a reminder of the danger of future wars. The People who care for Peace in all countries must unite to force their Governments to outlaw the air bomb. We must not tolerate this cruelty, the horror of mangled bodies, entrails protruding, heads, arms, legs blown off, faces half gone, blood and human remains desecrating the soil. We must not assent to this merciless destruction of men, women, children and animals.

The ghoulish (and not untypical) language aside, that's an interesting suggestion, that the existing memorials to the Great War dead didn't suffice as a warning of the next war. Today we probably tend to think of them as pacifist statements. But as Winter says, most war memorials were not in fact pacifist in intent, but about mourning.Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 95. So, were there other anti-air war memorials, or was the Anti-Air War Memorial unique?

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On this day in 1922, Andrew Bonar Law, the "unknown Prime Minister", began his premiership - the shortest of the twentieth century.

Here's a minor footnote to Bonar Law's career. Some time before the end of March 1913, while leader of the Unionist Party (as the Conservatives were then called), he told Charles à Court Repington, The Times's military correspondent, that the aerial threat to Britain had convinced him of the need for conscription.A.J.A. Morris, The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896-1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 429-30. This coincided with agitation by both the Navy League and the Aerial League of the British Empire, amplified by the Conservative press, for a million pounds to be spent immediately on a British aerial fleet to counter the Zeppelin menace - which itself followed hard on the heels of a wave of sightings of mysterious airships in British skies.

This seems a bit odd - I don't understand how conscription would have helped defend against airships. Nor does it seem that it was a political tactic of some sort, for even though many conservatives supported conscription, he did not propose to make it part of his party's platform. Maybe he was just trying to convince the influential Repington of his soundness on defence matters!

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While browsing through some nice pictures at Werkost of the Shuttleworth Collection, I found this photo of part of a downed Gotha. It looks like the inside of a wing, but it's the accompanying text that is interesting. The fragment itself is inscribed GOTHA BLANC NEZ 1917, and the label says:

PIECE OF GOTHA BOMBER WING RIB, RECOVERED FROM AN AIRCRAFT WHICH FELL INTO THE SEA OFF CAP GRIS NEZ IN 1917. THE MACHINE WAS DAMAGED IN COMBAT OVER ENGLAND AND CARRIED A CREW OF THREE IN ADDITION TO A SPY DRESSED IN FRENCH UNIFORM WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN LANDED IN ENGLAND.

DONATED BY CAPTAIN J.R.W. GROVES R.N. (RETD.), ORIGINALLY IN THE POSSESSION OF THE LATE MRS W. REVELL SMITH WHO SERVED IN THE FIRST-AID NURSING YEOMANRY AT CALAIS.

I've never heard of German spies being inserted by air into Britain in the First World War. German spies there certainly were, but I thought they usually made their way there by neutral countries (mainly the Netherlands), sometimes perhaps by U-boat (much as Roger Casement was landed in Ireland in 1916, though he wasn't a spy). Presumably the spy would drop in by parachute (bit risky to land a big plane like that in a field!), but then one has to wonder why he didn't jump after the Gotha was damaged? The information given is unhelpfully vague - it doesn't say how it was known that there was a spy (probably, they found the body), and only the year is given. As it is, there are several 1917 raids listed in Cole and Cheesman which involved a damaged Gotha crashing off the coast of France, but I don't see any mention of spies. Thomas Boghardt's excellent Spies of the Kaiser: German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) seems silent on the matter of aerial insertions.

It reminds me of the phantom airships that were rumoured (and in fact, seen) to be flying around Britain in the years before the war, carrying German spies. Not surprisingly, these false sightings continued into the war, until February 1916 at least.Nigel Watson, ed., The Scareship Mystery: A Survey of Phantom Airship Scares 1909-1918 (Corby: Domra, 2000), 95. Perhaps the rumours later became attached to the Gothas, once they became the principal aerial threat? Or maybe spies really did drop into Britain by air, and I just need to learn more before I speculate ...

Chronomedia is a very nicely done chronology of developments in just about all forms of audio-visual mass media, covering a wide span but inevitably concentrating on Britain and America in the 20th century. Lots of interesting little tit-bits: the first film shot from an aircraft in flight was in September 1908; while in September 1939, British cinemas were closed to prevent mass casualties in the event of air raids - after a couple of weeks, they were open again, which I guess shows just how long it took people to realise that the knock-out blow wasn't actually imminent!

One thing I find fascinating is how rapidly television was developing in Britain (as well as in Germany and the United States) before the war: John Logie Baird's London studio broadcast a television play as early as 1930, entitled The man with a flower in his mouth (about which, see The World's Earliest Television Recordings Restored); while the BBC's first female television presenter was a Miss Elizabeth Cowell in August 1936. Of course, many of these transmissions were just experiments, but a regularly scheduled service from the Alexandra Palace began later in 1936, which continued until 1 September 1939.

There are some reminiscences of these pioneering broadcasts at Television Heaven, culled from a book by television critic Kenneth Baily, Here's Television (1950). There was no nightly news, but the latest Gaumont and Movietone newsreels were shown several times a week. Other than that, current events and concerns were addressed, after a fashion. The programme for Armistice Day 1936 was described in the Evening News:

From the London Television Station last night was broadcast the most deeply-moving Armistice Day programme I have ever heard from the BBC. It took the form of scenes from the German film 'West Front 1918,' followed by scenes in England in peace-time, and it ended on that note of dedication for the prevention of another catastrophe which most people have felt so strongly this Armistice anniversary. These vivid, and at times terrible pictures, were accompanied by an admirable commentary spoken by Cecil Lewis . . .

As that page also notes, one of the first outside broadcasts featured a very small-scale air raid defence exercise!

Within ten weeks of the start of television, Cecil Lewis had taken cameras outside, at night. He provided an actuality programme about anti-aircraft defence. The 61st (11th London)AA Brigade RA demonstrated two ack-ack guns; and the 36th AA Battalion RE handled three searchlights, while RAF planes were specially flown over the Palace.

This co-operative "exercise" staged "a short action repelling the attack of hostile aircraft." The very wording of that programme announcement breathed something of the oddity which most of us found in an exploit that seemed far from reality in 1936. Four years later the flash and crackle of a much mightier barrage surrounded the Alexandra Palace, and echoed through television studios emptied by a real war.

One would like to know why this subject was chosen ... was it just because the sounds and images were dramatic, or was it intended as a reassurance that all was well (since the bombers were repelled)? Maybe both.

Finally, an indication of just who was watching these shows can be found from a BBC viewer survey in mid-1939 (by which time the total audience was an estimated 20,000):

The returns surprised the BBC in showing that television viewing was not confined to any one income group. Taking a sample of 1,200 of the questionnaires, it was found that 28 had been filled in by labourers; and scores were returned by shopkeepers, salesmen and school teachers.

There were more working- and lower middle-class viewers than expected (though still a minority), which is interesting given the expense involved (eg 48 guineas for a 15-inch 1939 Cossor - though it also doubled as a radio! See Television History - The First 75 Years for more.) Still, 20,000 is a tiny number of viewers, especially when you consider that in 1939 there were 990 million cinema admissions! That's a whole lotta Clark Gable.

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Here's a minor curiosity. Many of the leading figures in the RFC/RAF (at least, many of the ones that interest me) had earlier served in West Africa. (They all served in the Boer War too, but that wouldn't have been uncommon for their cohort.) This is the list:

Too much shouldn't be made of this; it's probably just a coincidence. But I can imagine a couple of explanations. One is that adventurous spirits might be drawn to the challenges of serving on the frontiers of Empire as much as to slipping the surly bonds of Earth. (Certainly the biographies of Trenchard and Charlton show evidence of this kind of restlessness.) The other explanation might be that (what I imagine to be) the extreme logistical difficulties of soldiering in West Africa back then may have suggested the advantages of simply being able to fly over all obstacles!

  1. According to Robin Higham, The Military Intellectuals in Britain, 1918-1939 (Westport: Greenwood, 1981 [1966]), 134, an officer whom Trenchard knew from Nigeria was undergoing flight training, and suggested that he take it up. []

This logically should have gone into the previous post about archives, but I got carried away working out what that air mail poster was about! But I had intended to mention two online archives of British newsreels: British Pathe and Movietone (slogan: "It speaks for itself"). These are great. You can search the descriptions for key words - Hendon, say, or "air raid" (or even something not aviation-related, if you are so inclined!) - and turn up all sorts of gems, like a 1923 reel showing off 'London's air defences',British Pathe 314.17. or many items about air raids during the Spanish civil war. Or one from 1938 about a 'seventy-shilling air raid shelter', which a Mr Matthews built in his backyard: it could be made gas-proof, and doubled as a playshed for the kids.Movietone 33260. My favourite is from 1929, about a French air defence technique: covering an entire town in clouds of smoke, to hide it from the enemy bombers!British Pathe 892.09.

The best part is that you can view (and often hear) the newsreels for free! If you wanted to use stills or clips in a documentary or publication, you'd have to pay. However, the online previews should be fine for most research purposes (and you can even save the British Pathe ones onto your hard drive). The search engines and the video playback can be cranky sometimes, but if you start again it will probably work better.

There's a good overview of the history of the British newsreel at the British Universities Film & Video Council, including summaries of the different series that were made, what has survived and where they can be found. There are still several major newsreel titles that don't appear to have been digitised yet (eg Gaumont, Paramount); hopefully that's only a matter of time. Newsreels were an important news medium until well after the Second World War. They had a weekly audience of millions and had an immediacy that radio and newspapers could not match (on the flipside, though, they lacked the timeliness of the former and most importantly the depth of the latter). These digitised archives make it that much easier for the historian to understand just what was being presented to the public in the many thousands of newsreels that were produced up to 1979.

As mentioned at Early Modern Notes, it's Archive Awareness ... something ... in the UK. Lots of events showcasing different archives and themes. There's even a nice aviation-related image on their front page (though it's not obvious what archive it's from, the RAF Museum perhaps).
Hendon 1911
It's an advertisement for the first official British air mail service,And not forgetting the Grand Aerial Gymnkhana and Military Tournament the following Saturday! from London Aerodrome (Hendon) to Windsor, which was flown on 9 September 1911 by Gustav Hamel. He was the only one of the four pilots who attempted the 21 mile distance to actually make it; a pilot was killed in one of the later flights. The point was to commemorate the coronation of George V, but they were a bit slow off the mark: that happened in June! There's more information, and many pictures, at the Royal Windsor Website and at Aeroplanes!

Hendon became a very popular entertainment venue in the years just prior to the First World War; many people from all social classes would have gained their first exposure to aeroplanes there.That the airmail flight was scheduled on a Saturday afternoon suggests that workers (and their families) were part of the intended audience - that's when many of them had a half-day holiday. A useful account of Hendon's growth is given in chapter 6 of Andrew Horrall, Popular Culture in London, c.1890-1918: The Transformation of Entertainment (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001).

Aside from the whole shadow-of-the-bomber thing, I have an amateur (okay - more amateur, then) interest in the Cold War and the fear of nuclear war. Partly because of the obvious continuities and parallels with the area I'm studying, but also because I'm old enough to remember the last flowering of nuclear paranoia in the 1980s. Anyway, from time to time I may post items on the subject. Here's one: a map of the continental US showing the probable radiation exposure from a full-scale Soviet nuclear strike.Jonas Siegel, "The original nuclear nightmare", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2005, 38-9. It's based on data compiled in 1986 by FEMA, and it would hardly have been comforting for policymakers - the 'low risk' areas in yellow represent an estimated exposure in a week of up to 3000 roentgens for unprotected persons, which would still kill many people and leave many more very sick. It looks like it was assumed that the Soviets were following a counterforce strategy - most of the heavily populated regions seem relatively unscathed (though you can say goodbye to Hollywood), and the main targets would seem to be in Montana and the Midwest, where most of the ICBM silos were.

1980s pop cultural landmarks of note: Lawrence, Kansas, was definitely in danger, in the high risk zone sandwiched between two very high risk zones. Goose Island, Oregon, doesn't exist, but it doesn't look like it could have been 'just three miles from a primary target' as the prof claimed. Calumet, Colorado, also doesn't exist, but would have been at low risk - go Wolverines! And Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, unsurprisingly appears to be in a high risk zone, but they wouldn't have been too worried about that, would they.