Monthly Archives: March 2006

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David Oliver. Hendon Aerodrome: A History. Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1994. Hendon was probably THE most important site for the cultivation of airmindedness in Britain up to the Second World War -- first as the home base of pioneer aviator Claude Grahame-White and friends, then from the 1920s as the location of the annual RAF Pageant, always attracting huge crowds. Today it's the location of the RAF Museum. This well-illustrated little book covers all of Hendon's aerial history, but of course gives pride of place to the Grahame-White and RAF Pageant days.

Malcolm Smith. Britain and 1940: History, Myth and Popular Memory. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Looks like another interesting entry in the burgeoning field of -- what do you call it? Mythologisation of war? Memorialisation? Studies of that stuff, anyway. By the author of British Air Strategy Between the Wars. The second chapter, entitled "The projection of war, 1918-1939" most closely relates to my own research.

John W. R. Taylor. Combat Aircraft of the World From 1909 to the Present. New York: Paragon, 1979. This was recommended to me by members of a mailing list -- I wanted a fairly comprehensive guide to combat aircraft that didn't just focus on the well-known ones from the World Wars, so that it would have the obscure French bombers and Polish fighters (or whatever!) of the 1920s and 1930s that never saw action. And this book is pretty much exactly what I was looking for (and more besides), and it's very well-illustrated too.

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I've been reading George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Penguin, 1989), which was originally published in 1937. Not because it has anything to do with my thesis, but just to broaden my horizons, and because, well, it's Orwell, ya know? I certainly didn't expect to read about the possible effects of bombing in a book about socialism and unemployment. But then what do I read on pp. 203-4, in the context of a discussion of whether a return to a pre-industrial society is possible?

For some time past it has been fashionable to say that war is presently going to 'wreck civilisation' altogether; but, though the next full-sized war will certainly be horrible enough to make all previous ones seem a joke, it is immensely unlikely that it will put a stop to mechanical progress. It is true that a very vulnerable country like England, and perhaps the whole of western Europe, could be reduced to chaos by a few thousand well-placed bombs, but no war is at present thinkable which could wipe out industrialism in all countries simultaneously. We may take it that the return to a simpler, freer, less mechanised way of life, however desirable it may be, is not going to happen.

So at this point in time, Orwell accepted some version of the knock-out blow theory. In fact, he went pretty far, only stopping short of the idea that civilisation itself could be entirely bombed back to the Stone Age. But 'very vulnerable' Britain and perhaps western Europe could be 'reduced to chaos' by bombing, which is pretty much the standard knock-out blow scenario.

I guess this is an example of what Martin Ceadel meant when he wrote that 'literature-and-society' types should 'look for the many indicators of concern about air power, for example, to be found in the literature of the twenties and thirties which is not directly about fear of war'.Martin Ceadel, "Popular fiction and the next war, 1918-1939", in Frank Gloversmith, ed., Class, Culture and Social Change: A New View of the 1930s (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), 162. Oddly enough, later in the paragraph Ceadel actually mentions the same Orwell book quoted above, when he says he will not here be practising what he preaches but will examine only that literature which is 'about the coming war in the same way that, for example, The Road to Wigan Pier is about unemployment'. So the lesson here is obviously that I have to read every single word written in Britain in the three decades or so before the Second World War, so that I can catch everything written about the knock-out blow!

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Andrew Boyle. Trenchard. London: Collins, 1962. Finally got around to buying a copy of the standard biography of a crucial figure in the early RAF.

L. E. O. Charlton. Charlton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938. Charlton's autobiography, originally published in 1931 -- so after his almost-resignation from the RAF over bombing in Iraq, but before he became a well-known airpower pundit. A nice blue Penguin paperback, still in the original dust-jacket.

Constantine FitzGibbon. London's Burning. London: MacDonald & Co., 1970. This popular account of the Blitz was recommended to me as a source on pre-war fears of bombing. I'm not sure how useful it will be, but it was very cheap -- though still about 6 times the original $1.65 cover price!

Christopher Frayling. Things to Come. London: BFI Publishing, 1995. A little book about the big film of the even bigger book -- how it came to be, Wells' intimate involvement in the whole production, and why everyone in the future wears tunics with those giant triangular things over the shoulders. (Well, that's what I want to know, anyway ...)

Claude Grahame-White and Harry Harper. Air Power: Naval, Military, Commercial. London: Chapman & Hall, 1917. On the lessons of the Great War for the future of airpower, and how after the war Britain can and must exercise control over the air as it has over the sea.

F. W. Hirst. The Six Panics and Other Essays. London: Methuen, 1913. Hirst was the editor of the Economist. This is the only contemporary book I know of which discusses the airship panics (and then only in a single brief chapter). I've been looking for my own copy for years!

John Langdon-Davies. Air Raid: The Technique of Silent Approach, High Explosive, Panic. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1938. A journalist who had witnessed the air raids on Barcelona applies his first-hand knowledge to the British case. He seems quite critical of the government's ARP literature.

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A. Just about all the time, it seems, if it's Britain:

Lord Palmerston in 1845, on the coming of the steam ship:

... the Channel is no longer a barrier. Steam navigation has rendered that which was before impassable by a military force nothing more than a river passable by a steam bridge.Quoted in I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763-3749 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 20.

Georges Valbert in 1883, on the proposed Channel Tunnel:

It will be a prodigious event in the life of an insular people, when they find that they are islanders no more. Nothing is more likely to excite and alarm them, or to affect and upset their preconceived ideas.Quoted in ibid., 95. Clarke gives the date as 1833, but 1883 makes a lot more sense, and is confirmed by this page.

Lord Northcliffe in 1906, on Alberto Santos-Dumont's flight:

England is no longer an island ... It means the aerial chariots of a foe descending on British soil if war comes.Quoted in Alfred Gollin, No Longer an Island: Britain and the Wright Brothers, 1902-1909 (London: Heinemann, 1984), 193.

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British Empire Games flag

Well, OK, the Commonwealth Games then. British Empire Games was the original name: the first were held in 1930 in Hamilton, Canada. Most of the world probably has not heard of the Commonwealth Games, but it's second only to the Olympics (which it closely resembles) in terms of bringing the greatest number of elite athletes together in the one festival of sport, some 4500 in all, in 71 teams. That is to say, only those elite athletes who happen to come from Commonwealth countries (more or less, the former British Empire). So no irritating Team USA swimmers to challenge Australian dominance of the pool -- instead the big competition there will be from England and South Africa. I think we're safe! In fact, Australia usually dominates the medal tally, which as a sports-mad nation suits us just fine. (Just don't mention the fact that our arch-rivals New Zealand beat us in the 1930 Games!)

Cornwall Commonwealth Games Association

It's not all about sport, of course, politics can intrude; and there are often controversies -- 32 countries boycotted the 1986 Games because of British sporting contacts with South Africa. This year there was an argument over whether to play "God Save The Queen" at the opening ceremony, a bit of a touchy issue in a republican-leaning country like Australia. (Apparently a few bars were played as a compromise.) And the Stolenwealth Games website (a nicely done parody of the official website) is part of an effort to use the games "to raise awareness about the issues of Genocide, Sovereignty and Treaty" in relation to indigenous Australians. One controversy I haven't seen raised here is that of countries who want to participate but aren't deemed eligible. Well, I say "countries" but they aren't universally acknowledged as countries, which is why there is a problem. An example is Cornwall. England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man all have their own teams, and the Cornwall Commonwealth Games Association wants a Cornish team to take part in the 2010 Games in Delhi. The problem is that while it can lay claim to a somewhat unique administrative history, has its own not-quite dead language and a recognisably Celtic heritage, Cornwall has not been an independent entity since the Middle Ages. Unlike the other parts of the UK sending teams, it's a part of England. But as my ancestors hailed from Cornwall, and I find the place and its history intriguing, I'm happy to ask "Where's Cornwall?" and display the CCGA's logo above. (The black and white flag is St Piran's, the flag of Cornwall or Kernow as it is in Cornish.)

Empire Air Day programme, 20 May 1939

Getting back to the British Empire Games, it seems to me that there was a vogue in the interwar period, and perhaps especially in the 1930s, for prefixing the word "Empire" or "Imperial" to various events and schemes. Aside from the Games, there was Empire Day and Imperial Preference. In my own area, there was Empire Air Day and the Empire class flying boats; Imperial Airways and the Imperial Airship Programme. Perhaps with the Dominions "growing up" and increasingly going their own way (the Statute of Westminster was passed in 1931), there was a desire to reinforce the ties of culture and sentiment with something more practical. And of course aviation was an ideal technology for such a purpose.

Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games logo

So why am I writing about all this? Because the 2006 Commonwealth Games are being held in my own town of Melbourne; the opening ceremony was just held a few hours ago. Security is of course an issue: helicopters have been flying all over the place, a very visible police presence, and the Australian Defence Force (including my younger brother) is apparently around somewhere, doing security checks and providing backup. Blue "games lanes" have been painted on a nearby road for the exclusive use of officials and athletes, though mere mortals seem to be ignoring the risk of a $165 fine for using it without a permit. The Games proper begin today. Of course, I won't actually be going -- as an inner-city resident, I will be affecting a suitable air of disdain and watching it all on tv.

Image sources: Wikipedia (British Empire Games flag and Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games logo); Cornwall Commonwealth Games Association; Plane Crazy Heritage.

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Robert Graves. Goodbye to All That. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960 [1929]. Another of the classic war books, that I should already have read.

David Powell. The Edwardian Crisis: Britain, 1901-1914. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 1996. New books about Edwardian Britain are pretty thin on the ground (over here, anyway) so I got excited when I saw this and snapped it up. Of course, it's not new, it's 10 years old, and in fact I think I've actually already borrowed it from the uni library for some essay or other. Oh well, still a nice little book to own, rather expensive though.

Jim Winchester. The World's Worst Aircraft: From Pioneering Failures to Multimillion Dollar Disasters. London: Amber Books, 2005. I nearly didn't buy this, as it's not exactly a scholarly reference text. But I couldn't resist when I read the entry that 'the Flying Flea threatened to bring aviation to the man in the street, possibly by falling on him'! Other aircraft falling into (or onto) my area of interest include the Blackburn A.D. Scout, Bristol Braemar (with steam-powered Tramp variant), Sopwith LRTTr, and our man P-B's Nighthawk, as well as more familiar failures like the Battles, Stirlings, Defiants and Manchesters. Amusingly sarcastic.

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Orac at Respectful Insolence has called attention to the attempted arson attack on The Holocaust History Project, and called for other bloggers to link to the THHP home page as a show of solidarity. There's no proof as yet, but the suspicion is that Holocaust deniers are responsible.

Holocaust denial is pseudohistory, a pathological and degenerate form of history. It imitates the form of historical scholarship, but involves no critical inquiry; the conclusions reached are pre-determined, ideological and anti-Semitic. Holocaust deniers deserve scorn when they pretend to be historians. They do not in general deserve imprisonment, as has happened to David Irving in Austria recently. But they do deserve imprisonment if they use violent means to stifle the debate they cannot win, as may be the case here. The Holocaust is undeniable; there's simply too much evidence for it. Holocaust deniers need to admit that and move on. Until they do, we are lucky to have groups like THHP around, and they deserve our support.